Eurovision!!!

Anyone that knows me would say that I have a slight Eurovision obsession. Well, they might not say slight! But anyway I love Eurovision. The ridiculous songs, the excellent commentary by the one and only Graham Norton, even the tedious voting bit at the end, I love it all. So this year I decided to get into the Eurovision spirit with a bit of nail art. I chose my 10 favourite songs, hard to pick a list that long (especially as my favourite song didn't get through the semi-finals, not that I'm bitter!), and had a go at reproducing their flags on my nails, thankfully I didn't pick any overly complicated ones (ahem, San Marino). Here are my attempts, for obvious reasons the simplest flags are on my right hand, and you can test your geography by not looking at the captions!

Left Hand

Right Hand

Poland

Switzerland

Norway

Malta

Hungary

UK

France

The Netherlands

Denmark

Austria

 It was a well-deserved win for Austria and Conchita Wurst last night. An incredible performance, and after prejudice from some parts of Europe, nice to see some tolerance. For anyone that missed it:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRUIava4WRM

Marble Cupcakes!

So this weekend it was the birthdays of two of my lovely friends in the Earth Sciences department and as usual I promised cakes. I mean, I have plenty of time to make cakes, it's not like I have exams in a few weeks, oh wait...

Given the choice of basically any cake they settled on marble cakes. I still can't work out if it was a valid choice or just an excuse for yet more geology puns, but marble cakes were provided anyway.

I just made basic chocolate and vanilla marbled cupcakes but they tasted good and were much appreciated, although slightly overshadowed by the amazing chocolate and ginger geology themed cake my friend's sister made him!

The marbling technique began to improve a little by the end!

CAKE!

Purple Stripes

So I am pretty much incapable of walking past a display of nail polishes without wanting to buy one of them. Sometimes I can resist but yesterday I was tempted by two, what can I say, they were on offer! After much deliberation I decided to try one from the Barry M Silk collection first. I got a lilac-y colour and, not really knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised when I painted it on. It has a nice smooth, matte finish with a slight shimmer. It was however a bit too pale for my liking to have just that on my nails so I decided on random purple stripes to complement it. I then painted Avon's matte look topcoat over everything to match the original 'silk' finish. I've not used the topcoat before and was again pleasantly surprised. It paints on pearlescent over the glossy nail polish but after a minute has a completely matte, slightly shimmery finish. Definitely something I need to experiment with more!

The selection of colours I used

Geobaking

So I have decided it's finally time to post some cakes on here, ie. I finally made some (decent?) cakes. My friend Becky spotted a geology baking competition online and, as we are both avid geologists, we decided to give it go. Having checked out other entrants we though:  how hard can it be? Turns out we were very wrong... Still some of the baking turned out well and the decorations are a masterpiece if you squint!

First up we have assorted fossils made of puff pastry. Easiest thing to make: ready-roll puff pastry sheets and chocolate spread then roll up/cut, oven bake. Simple, tasty and actually resembling fossils (ish)!

Ammonites (more like gastropods if you're being picky!), bivalves and brachiopods

Next onto the cakes. Rather than one big cake like some of the other entrants we decided on cupcakes individually decorating in geological themes. We made basic cupcakes and buttercream for the top then pooled our very large collections of cake decorations and brainstormed like mad! It turns out geological diagrams on cupcakes aren't the easiest thing to draw, especially in chocolate writing icing but they tasted good and the rest of the geologists in the department loved them! I'm thinking we should bonus marks in the exams later this term for the accuracy of some of these cakes...

From top (L-R): Volcano cross-section, subduction zone, olivine/plagioclase thin section (in crossed polars)
Middle: Schematic bony fish, echinoid fossil
Bottom: Schematic tetrapod, ammonite, sedimentary bedding

Here's the link to the other competitors:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23geobakeoff&src=typd

Nautical Nails

Now that I've started my blog I guess it's time to actually upload some content so we will start with my current nail design.
I've recently bought some really thin tape that I thought would be perfect for nail art and decided to use it for stripes. As I was testing it this time I didn't want to use the technique on all my nails and a nautical theme seemed perfect as it allows for stripes and other designs. You can see the finished result below and I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out.
To get the stripes I painted my nails white then, when it was dry, covered over sections with the tape. Over the top I painted the blue, then peeled off the tape when everything was dry so it didn't smudge thus revealing the white underneath. The anchors were painted on with a fine detail paintbrush by my brother as he volunteered and my coordination is a bit rubbish for things like that!
Hope you like them as much I do! :)

Anchors away!

And So It Begins...

So the inevitable has happened and I've finally started a blog because that's what people do now isn't it? They find something they like and they tell others all about it...
Anyway, as the blog title suggests the things I like are cakes, or baking in general though it does tend to be cakes, and nail art. Hopefully like-minded people will discover this blog and give it a read, if not then why am I bothering?
So I'm sorry if I tend to ask stupid, searching questions or state the obvious from time to time but that's just me, deal with it. And without further ado: welcome to my blog!