Creating A Special Birthday Surprise

When it comes to occasions, I honestly don't think it's possible to beat something that's been handmade. Handmade gifts are so special, they're completely personal, totally unique and the thought that goes into them is a sure way to let somebody know that you truly care. 

Ethan, my eldest little boy turned 6 on the 17th and the day before his birthday my youngest little boy, Logan had been a very busy boy creating something really special in the form of a handmade birthday card and some very tasty Pokemon biscuits to celebrate his big brothers birthday. 

I'd received an email a few weeks before from arts and crafts superstore Hobbycraft who'd asked me if we'd like to collaborate with them. I have many fond memories of getting lost in the aisles of Hobbycraft as a little girl, wanting to buy so many of their products and I'm even the same now as an adult as I still love anything art and crafty and I'm totally addicted to pretty stationery, so Hobbycraft is a slice of heaven in that sense. 

Hobbycraft had always been somewhere that I'd associated with having a great art and crafts range, but I hadn't realised until recently the huge section of high-quality birthday decorations and baking products that they offer too, and so I thought a really lovely way we could collaborate would be for Logan to get involved with creating a more personal, special surprise for his brother by making AND baking him something totally unique. 

Firstly, Logan set about creating a special birthday card for Ethan and to do this he started with choosing a coloured card from the huge pack of bright coloured cards and envelopes that we'd received from Hobbycraft. The pack is priced at just £5.00 and for that, you receive 50 brightly coloured cards and envelopes ready to be personalised and decorated. Our boys are massively into creating and crafting for occasions so for us, this big pack which allows the boys to make their own special cards is absolutely perfect. Logan picked out a purple card because that's his favourite colour and then a red envelope because that's Ethan's favourite.

Next, he decorated the outside and the inside of his card with some lovely bright stickers. Balloons for obvious reasons and cats because Ethan is like his Mummy in that he's very fond of them. The stickers were a big hit and were such good quality too - the balloon stickers were 3D and the cat stickers were glittery and Logan had no problem whatsoever getting them off of the sheet himself ready to stick on to his card. 

He had so much fun choosing and using the different coloured gel pens, he even did all the writing himself by copying what I'd written on a separate piece of a paper, which for a 3-year-old I thought was so good. There are some fantastic colours included in Hobbycraft's gel pen set from pastels to neons to metallics, I can't believe that the whole 50 pack of pens is just £5.00!

For the finishing touches, Logan added on some personal birthday stamps which made him feel really grown. I think stamps are such a great idea to help theme handmade cards and it's great to know that they can be re-used over and over too. On the front of his card, Logan also added on a big glittery golden number 6. Hobbycraft sells numbered card toppers in both gold and silver and in the numbers from 0 to 9, I think they make for the perfect finishing touch and they're so easy to add on, you simply just peel off the protective backing and stick the number on wherever you'd like it to go. 

Logan absolutely loved creating a card for his brother, he spent ages putting a lot of thought into the design of both his card and envelope and he was so proud of the outcome. Now that we have the blank pack of cards, the pens, the stamps and we know where to get some quality reasonably priced stickers from, I think card crafting is going to become quite a regular thing in our house! 

SPECIAL BIRTHDAY SUPRISE PART 2

The next part of the surprise was an attempt at making some Pokmeon themed biscuits for the Pokemon-loving birthday boy. Baking is not something we do regularly in our house, we usually opt for the shop bought cupcake kits that you can get and we have fun with those. But I have to say we had SUCH fun making our Pokemon biscuits and Logan loved it so much more than I even thought he would - it held his interest the entire time! 

The inspiration for the biscuits came from a quick google search - I found what turned out to be a really easy to follow guide on a blog called shewhobakes.co.uk and we managed to find everything that we needed to make them from Hobbycraft minus things like the eggs and flour which we had in the cupboard.

For our Pokeball biscuits, we used the following...

Ingredients;

• 125g cold unsalted butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 250g plain flour

For the decoration;

• Red, white and black ready to roll icing
• Circle cutters
• Two much small circle cutters (we used bottle lids)
• Paintbrush & edible glue 
• Buttercream
• Rolling pin

To begin with we mixed the butter, sugar, egg and flour together into a dough.

After we'd made our dough we wrapped it up in cling film and put it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes, we scattered some flour on our chopping board and Logan rolled the dough out ready to start cutting out our circle biscuit shapes. 

When this was done we placed them on a baking tray and then in the oven at 170c for 20(ish) minutes.

Afterwards and whilst they were cooling off, we began rolling out the white and red icing and then cutting out our circle shapes again. We then cut them in half. 

We also cut out our black icing strips.

 And also the smaller black and white circles.

And then it was a case of sticking it all together using the edible glue and the (very tasty) buttercream.

Logan was so good with the sticking and loved seeing the Pokeballs come together!

 This was our finished result!

When we were finished we decided that because Logan had done so well and was so proud of everything that he'd made, that it was only fair to let him surprise his big brother a day early. So we set up some lovely comic book superhero paper plates, cups and napkins and a sparkly silver happy birthday balloon bunting from Hobbycraft's decoration and occasion range and then we laid out the card and biscuits that Logan had proudly made. 

When Ethan returned and saw what Logan had done for him he was over the moon! He loved his card, especially the cat stickers on it and he thought the biscuits were really cool! We each had one after dinner and I can confirm that they tasted amazing - not bad for the fact that we'd never made biscuits from scratch before!

Creating this birthday surprise for Ethan was so much fun for Logan, it was so nice to see him so engaged in what he was doing and then feeling so proud seeing his creations come together at the end. It was also a fantastic opportunity to be able to work with Hobbycraft on such a fun project and to be able to explore their occasion and baking range. One thing that has always stuck out the most about Hobbycraft for me is just how good quality their products are yet how reasonably priced they are too. After the fun we had with doing this, we can't wait to get stuck into our next make or bake project! 

Shop Hobbycraft's fantastic range of arts, crafts, making, baking and occasions at hobbycraft.co.uk.

 Thank you for reading. 

  Alex xo

*This post is in collaboration with Hobbycraft