Mini Cinnamon Croissants

Or as I like to call them, Little Puffs of Heaven! Seriously, though, puff pastry and cinnamon? Together?! MMMMH! 
I remember years ago, when I was living in Cyprus, my mum came home, from a trip to London for work, with British goodies. One of which were canned crescent rolls! It's basically a can that you twist (like a Chinese burn) and it pops open to reveal a roll of dough. When we unrolled it, it kind of reminded me of toilet paper :P in the sense that it had dotted sections that you tear off, only they were triangles. So what you do is tear off a triangle - gently - spread it with chocolate spread, butter, ham, cheese, whatever your heart desires! Then you roll it up, pop it in the oven and boom! Homemade croissants! Anyway my point is when I moved to London I was looking forward to finding them in the supermarkets, but apparently they are an American thing, I think. Good thing is though puff pastry works just as well and that's where I got the idea for these Mini Cinnamon Croissants!


You will need:

• Puff Pastry
• Brown Sugar
• Granulated Sugar
• Ground Cinnamon
• Butter or Margarine

First you want to put about two tablespoons of butter or margarine in a glass or bowl and melt it in the microwave. Next you want to lay out a sheet of puff pastry on a flat surface and brush a layer of melted butter over it. If you don't have a culinary brush - I think that's what they're called - just drizzle the butter on the dough with a spoon and spread it with the back of the spoon.

Now combine 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and one of granulated sugar - you don't have to use both if you don't have brown sugar - and half a tablespoon of cinnamon in a bowl and stir.

 Next comes the fun part! Sprinkle the mixture over the the buttery dough. Make sure you have a thick, evenly spread coat.




Now you need a knife, preferably not a butter knife, it needs to be sharp enough to cut the dough without dragging on it. To make the croissants you need a triangle shape, it's easiest to cut the dough into right angle triangles. I cut my sheet of dough into 8 rectangles like so: 

And then cut the rectangles diagonally to create two triangles.

Now, starting with the wide end you need to begin rolling the dough towards the point, but roll along the diagonal edge and not the straight edge otherwise your croissant will come out lopsided. You must make sure that the point is always centred as you roll. Once you've rolled it you need to curve it slightly to make a crescent shape, now it should look like a croissant.

Little tip! Before you press down the tip, put a blob of melted butter then press it down, to make sure it stays down. 

Once you have rolled all your croissants, lay them on a baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper or foil covered with butter so they don't stick. Also make sure they are not too close to each other as they will puff up! 

If you have some melted butter left brush some over the croissants before you put them in the oven. This will make them go golden and keep them from tasting dry, it's not too important though. Now you need to bake them at 190 C/375° F for 15 - 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them, they should be a golden brown colour when done.

I took these to the 'cocktail party' I had with my friends and they loved them - I think :P Anyhow, these really are delicious! And even nicer hot! Hope you enjoyed this post, until then, stay creative!

Chocolate Bar Birthday Wreathe - DIY

So it was my friend's birthday this week and just like any other normal person, she loves chocolate!  I have various pins on my Gifts board of tutorials for 'candy bouquets' or 'chocolate birthday cards' and I wanted to make something similar for her. I went to the supermarket and bought multipacks of different chocolate bars and then I remembered that I had a Styrofoam ring at home which I bought last Christmas but never used. So I decided to make a Chocolate Bar Birthday Wreathe!

You will need:

• 12 chocolate bars - they can be different ones
• A Styrofoam ring
• Hot glue gun
• Toothpicks
• Glitter and glue or Paint
• Ribbon/Random sweets (optional)

Now first you want to cover the Styrofoam ring, as it may show through. You can either paint it, wrap it in ribbon (make sure it's not too thick) or do what I did and coat it in glue and sprinkle it with glitter :D It's hard to go wrong with glitter! I used silver with a touch of red:

Once it is dry you need to decide how you  will arrange the chocolate bars. As I had 3 Crunchies, 3 twirls and 6 Kit Kats, I decided to go: Crunchie, Kit Kat, Twirl, Kit Kat, Crunchie and so on. And I used 12 chocolate bars to arrange it like a clock so it is symmetrical, of course if your ring is bigger or smaller you may need more or less. This is how I laid mine out:

Now it's time for sticking! Okay so at first I tried to just hot glue the chocolate bar on but it was not strong enough and this is what happened:

Not good! Especially if there will be the weight of 12 chocolate bars on it!So I had to think of a different way: Toothpicks! I cut the toothpicks in half and hot glued on one half - pointy side up, obviously - to the bottom of each chocolate bar, like so:

And then you simply start placing them on! I added another dollop of hot glue before pinning the chocolate bar on, just for good measure. Make sure you know exactly where you are placing each chocolate because once you have pinned it, it will be quite hard to move! Anyway this is what it looked liked once I had stuck all the chocolates:

I wasn't quite sure about the gaps in between, I felt that it needed to look a bit fuller. So this is where you can use a little imagination, you could stick some ribbon, feathers, anything decorative in between the gaps, or nothing at all if you feel it looks fine, it's entirely up to you! Personally I would have liked to have had some mini chocolate bars, or small sweets, but I didn't have any and it was too late to go and buy some. So I raided my little sisters draw and found 12 small sweets or lollipops to stick in between the gaps. 

I didn't use toothpicks here because the sweets were small and light. So my friends, here is the finished project:

I'll admit it's not the most neat and uniform looking wreathe but I don't think it matters too much, just the sight of all that delicious chocolaty sweetness I think will put a smile on anyone's face!

It was kind of hard to wrap, in the end I just sort of bunched some wrapping paper around it and popped and ribbon bow on top:

My friend loved it, it's a great gift for anyone you love who loves chocolate! Good luck and let me know in the comments if you try it out, until then, stay creative!

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D.I.Y. Edible Glitter - Pintest

Okay so my friends and I are planning a cocktail party, and by cocktail party I mean a small group of people messing around with mixers and grenadine and juices... trust me it's not as fancy as it sounds! Anyway while searching Pinterest for exciting cocktail recipes I noticed that some of the prettiest cocktails had edible glitter in them or around the rim. I then came a across a pin with a recipe for edible glitter by The Dessert Lover. 

However when I clicked through to the link there was no post or tutorial, there were only brief instructions in the description of the pin which were: 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of food coloring mixed, bake 10 mins in oven on 350* to make edible glitter 

Now I followed these instructions and mixed blue, with a tad of green food colouring (to make turquoise) with sugar, spread it on a plate and placed it in the oven for 10 minutes on 180°C:

Now I must say that the image that I saw on the pin (top image) was deceiving as it is actual real sparkly glitter and not edible glitter made with sugar, so when I took the plate out of the oven I was dissapointed. The colour that I added had evaporated, so I would recommend adding maybe 1 1/2 - 2 teaspoons of food colouring. However, after stirring it several times, I noticed that the sugar had gained a beautiful shimmer, that shines in the light. It was quite dark but I managed to take a few photos:

Although it does not resemble glitter I think it will look lovely around the rim of cocktail glasses or sprinkled on cupcakes as it adds a lovely shimmer! Also since the colour was bleached, it kind of reminded me of snow which makes it the perfect addition to Christmas cupcakes, cookies, cocktails or cakes!! Good luck if you try it and let me now how you decide to use it! Until then, stay creative!

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Christmas Bells are Ringing...

Well they are in my head!
I love Christmas, I love seeing the shops filled with Christmas decorations, the streets decked out in twinkly lights and that general feeling of joy in the air.

I also love thinking about what presents to buy for my loved ones, I pride myself in being observant and knowing exactly what everyone likes; that my sister will love that perfume or my mum will think that hat is gorgeous. I strive to get the perfect present for everyone. And then after the Christmas shopping is done, comes the second best part: Wrapping! I absolutely LOVE wrapping presents!!! Every time I pass the gift section in shops, with rolls of decorative paper, spools of ribbon, sparkly gift bags, it fills me with excitement! Is that weird? It probably is, I'm a weird person, but I don't care, I love wrapping presents! Anyway the best part is giving the presents and seeing the person's face when they open them, I know Christmas isn't about presents but making someone happy, and showing them that you love them, that's one of the things I love about this holiday.

Moving on, Christmas calls for DIY decorations, creative gift and card making and festive baking! Feel free to check out my Christmas board on as I will probably be making things from here, to blog about!

Until then, stay creative!

Introduction

Hi, my name is Anastasia and I am a Pinterholic, i.e. addicted to Pinterest! If you're reading this, nice to meet you and thank you for visiting my new blog.
Let me tell you a bit about myself, I'm 17, live in the UK and have a passion for crafting, creating and DIYing! This passion has only grown with my addiction to Pinterest, I have over 7000 pins over 38 boards; the majority of my pins I would say are DIY ideas, crafting tips and recipes. However I got fed up of pinning and pinning saying that I'll try that out another day, guess what it's been 2 years since I started pinning and I could count the amount of things I've done on my hands!
Another thing I have noticed is that sometimes I'll find an interesting tutorial on pinterest or a life hack and think to myself: that seems too good to be true, does that actually work? Is it as easy as it looks?? And I know there are other people out there who have the same thoughts.
That is why I have decided to start this blog, I would love to share my creative journey with others and also to test out some tutorials and tips for those of you who are unsure. Plus, hopefully this blog will motivate me to indulge my creative urges and start turning my many pins into realities!
My other passion is filmmaking, I love to create videos, that is why, I might start creating video tutorials for some more difficult crafts, thus combining my two passions!
I also have an Etsy account where I hope to sell some of my creations for people on pinterest who like the look of some decorations or things but don't have the time or whatever to make them.

So guess what, Christmas is around the corner, yes I know it's only October but the end of October and before you know it you'll be putting out cookies for Santa, trust me time flies quicker than you think. Anyway my point is that Christmas is the perfect oppurtunity to try out many of my pins, especially since I have a whole board devoted to Christmas :P  I'll be posting lots of Christmasy crafts and decorations!!! (hopefully :P)

Here's my pinterest page if you're interested:  http://www.pinterest.com/stazi97/

Hope to see you on my next post, until then, stay creative!