For my dragons!

Can you imagine being in medieval  times and seeing this adorable dragon storming your castle? I'd slay it...and then eat it alllll up! Yummy!

My friends and I call ourselves the "Dragons" since we are so ferocious and fierce. We even have matching tattoos for each other! One of the dragons, Dana, will be getting married at Bettie's in September, too, because Bettie's is the food store of dragons: posh, fierce, stylish and awesome. That's the way we roll.

Rebel Yell

Confession: I used to be a goth. And I loved every second of it!

But now, I am somewhat all-American, with a bunch of tattoos and old piercing holes. But that's OK. I love my ink. You won't see me on Ugliest Tattoos.

However, if cupcakes rebelled, they, too, would get piercings and ink, and wear black eyeliner around their lips as well as their eyes. They would wear ruffled shirts and have spot-on facial hair. They would smile for pictures only when they are around their friends. Otherwise, they are so serious.

Yet, we all know they would be filled with a sweet, delicious filling that makes you happy on the inside...for they really are happy people. Just on the inside.

I scream, you scream...

Bettie's rolled out a new product a month ago - cupcake ice cream!

Basically, it's crushed up cupcakes and homemade ice cream. The Red Velvet is divine, but my personal fav is the Coffee Oreo! it's a coffee ice cream with oreo bits and chocolate cupcake with oreo buttercream swirled throughout. 

So this envelope is inspired by the amazing ice cream! The poor little cupcake, too - they got his friend, Jimmy, in the ice cream! OH NO!

80's Throwback! Care Bears

I have a confession to make. I am obsessed with the Care Bears. I have a Bedtime Bear tattoo on my foot. I own four or five Bedtime Bear plush toys and my family has another dozen or so of the other bears in storage. They are so cute! I happened to stumble across the plush toys the other day and found Birthday Bear! I forgot she had a cupcake on her tummy, so I thought it would be cute to feature her in an envelope.

CARE BEAR STAAARRREEE!!!!!!

80's throwback! My Little Pony

See? I told you my envelopes were getting better, thanks to the awesome pencil set my Mattie gave me!

This was drawn on one of those days when I didn't have a clue what to do. I texted one of my best friends, Dana, and she said "My Little Pony."

 Genius idea, Dana!

Originally, I was going to just draw cupcakes on their butts, like the My Little Ponies. But then I decided to do something a little different - how about My Little Cupcake - with their bodies as cupcakes?

So, My Little Cupcake was born.

I love this envelope, so much!

Anyone else have an idea for a really good 80's cartoon theme? Besides Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - mattie's suggested that one about 10 times now. I'm a girl. I like girlie things. Not gross sewer turtles that are trained by a sewer rat.

Plus turtles and cupcakes? I pass. Not a big fan of salmonella.

Hoppy Easter!

I drew this one up in maybe ten minutes. I was bored at work yesterday, so it was either going to be Zombie Jesus Cupcake, which seemed a bit sacrilegious, or an easter bunny cupcake, which seems more fitting.

Happy Easter everyone!

The Bettie Horror Cupcake Show

I love Rocky Horror Picture show. I was at a loss of what to draw one day, so I asked another one of the Bettie's, a sweet girl named Kira, what to draw. She mentioned RHPS...and I was sold! Oh, and that would be a red velvet cupcake in the corner. I imagine that would be too devilish for Janet.

Dr. Cup C. Ake

The lips

All freehand.

I draw all my fonts freehand, using just a picture or idea as a basis. This is also the first picture I drew with my new pencils! The envelopes are about to get a million times better than anything you have ever seen!

Thrill me, chill me, fulfill me, creature of the night!

I wanna go back to my little grass shack...

I used to live in Hawaii. Even now, to this day, if someone asks me where I am from, I don't say "Connecticut" or "New York," regardless of how heavy my accent becomes. I am always going to say Hawaii, since that is where I feel most comfortable and accepted for who I am.

The envelope says "My 'aina, my hale, my aloha," which is a a totally haole (white person) way of saying "My land, my home, my love."

I have a rather large 'ohana (family) on Hawaii. 'Ohana doesn't always mean blood family, but it means someone who is just as close to you as family - Hansen, Kristin, Whittney, Adam, Chelsie, Jill, Brooke, Lillie...and the list goes on and on. These are people that I am there for and they will always be there for me!

So, this envelope is for you, 'ohana! 

Oh, and no one actually walks around wearing grass skirts and coconut bras or a ti leaf lei or a plumeria lei...but many people do wear aloha shirts!

To everyone else: ALLLLOOOOHAAAAA!

April showers bring cupcakes

Well, that's the theory, at least. However, in upstate NY, I believe it may be "April showers bring already over-flooded rivers and cold weather."

I dediced to post this today, since it's the first day since last Tuesday that it's been sunny. Yay! Hopefully it stays that way, so when I got to work, it's warm on the bus and I don't have to use the propane heater anymore. 

So this picture was rather easy and fun to draw, but the best part is the Mai Tai cupcake! It's a pineapple cake with a coconut creme frosting. It tastes amazing! The pineapple is sweet and not overpowering and the coconut is light and fluffy! It's one of my top 10 favorite cupcakes!

I had a friend ask me a good question yesterday: "What do you do when there aren't any customers on rainy days?" Usually I make sure the bus looks nice - people track in mud and dirt, so I wash the floors and clean the windows upstairs so people have a better, smudge-free view from the sky-deck. I'll restock the cupcakes, organize the cupboards, make everything look acceptable and then, if I have any down time after that, I sit down and read a book.

I work 3-6pm, today, and I have no idea what to draw, so if you have any ideas, leave it in the comments!

Let's Go Yankees!

I am a huge Yankee fan. Take it or leave it. I was born in NY, grew up in southwest CT (Yankee country, where the only real rivalry down there is Yanks vs Mets), and yes, I play fantasy baseball.

I made this envelope mostly to piss of my boyfriend, who hates the Yankees. one of the first dates we went on was to a Yankee game, where his beloved Orioles were playing my awesome Yankees! It was snowing and cold, one of the first games of the season, and his Orioles won. I'll never forget that game, either. We were surrounded by hundreds of drunk Yankee fans and Matt is sitting there, wearing black and orange and quietly cheering "yay, go orioles! go team!" He must be the Orioles lucky charm.

To be honest, I really don't care too much for the Boston/NY rivalry. I think the Patriots are a great football team and I love the Celtics, although whenever they play a NY team, I will always cheer for the home team. They always have good games against each other, as they are both great cities for sport teams!

But NY is just a better city. Just sayin'.

Under the sea, Under the sea!

Funny story about this envelope - it cursed the markers! No, seriously, all the markers dried up at one point or another while drawing this envelope, as you can tell by the color gradient in the ocean.

My best friends and I have a slight obsession with Disney movies. And by slight, I mean we sing along with every movie, knowing all the lyrics.My personal favorite is Hercules (envelope coming soon) because Meg is such a proud woman!

But my second favorite is probably Little Mermaid because Ariel knows what she wants and she goes for it. I like that take-charge attitude. Plus, Ursula is such a terrifying antagonist! She is a giant octo-human-pus that turns merpeople into seaworms. King Triton is a bit, stuffy, though. I wish he were a little bit more relaxed - maybe take a sedative or something to calm down once in a while. His anger issues and need to control his daughters every move really leave a sour taste in my mouth.

And so the Little Cupcake has a tamer looking Ursula, a calmer Triton and Ariel looking a lot healthier than that absurdly skinny figure that Disney gives all their princesses.

My mom always said that I eat like a pig...

So, at Bettie's, we make cupcakes for your dog, affectionately known as Puppy Cuppies. Someone mentioned to me that we should make Catcakes...and so an envelope was born. If we are going to do Catcakes, why not also do Equine Eatables or a Bunny Bake? It's a great idea! Have an entire branch of Bettie's dedicated to cupcakes for your animal family! Anyone have any recipes?

Bunny Bake

Puppy Cuppy

CatCake

PorkCake

Mouse Munchie

Equine Eatable

Bovine Bettie

Sometimes, I think I have too much time on my hands...

What type of cupcake would you like to see made into an envelope? Let me know in your comments!

I'll never let go...

If Forrest Gump is my favorite movie, Titanic is definitely my second favorite. My entire family loves this movie - we can recite it all line for line and my younger sister can even cue every sound effect, ie: "Cal smacks Rose."

My all time favorite scene has to be the scene when Jack and Rose first kiss on the bow of the ship, the last time the Titanic ever saw daylight.

Now, if we were to replace all the characters with cupcakes, call the ship the Cupcanic and use crayons to make a sunset, it looks a lot more delicious.Seriously - you see that whipped frosting for Rose's hair? Yum! And Leo DiCaprio as a cupcake looks so much more yummier (not that he isn't already, but as a cupcake, you can, literally, eat him up!). So, this my friends, was the last time the Cupcanic ever say daylight.

And yes, every time I see a foggy window, I DO make a handprint, thanks for asking.

Taking a quick break

Hey fans!
I'm taking a quick break. There has been a family emergency that I need to attend to, so I will, hopefully, return on Sunday! Until then, rest assured, I have many many envelopes waiting in the wings!

-L

Mama always said, Life is like a Bettie's Cupcake - REALLY FRIGIN AWESOME!

If you know me at all, you know my all time favorite movie is Forrest Gump. I know pretty much every line, I can outsmart the people with the trivia at Bubba Gump Restaurants. I even know Jenny's address and Forrest's APO address when he was in Vietnam. I can tell you how many Dr. Peppers Forrest drinks at the White House, what brand shoes he wears, and even what days Jenny and Mrs. Gump are born and when they die. I know the length of time it took Forrest to run across country and the bus driver's name. I have about 8 pages, front and back, worth of notes that I took on the movie when I was really sick one day.

So this is my Forrest Gump envelope. I want to make a better one, since I ran out of time on this particular day.

It says, from the left, going counter-clockwise: "Lt. Dan Taylor," "Bubba Blue," "Mama said they were my special shoes. They'd take me anywhere!" "Jenny Curran," "Jenny and me, wes like peas and carrots," "Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates. You never know whatcha goin' get!" and my favorite line from the movie: "Lt. Dan! I got you some ice cream! Lt. Dan, ice cream!"

My boyfriend knows how much I love Forrest Gump, so whenever we are somewhere near a Bubba Gump Shrimping Company restaurant, he takes me. We used to eat at the one in Honolulu at least bi-monthly! 

I'm going to remake this envelope when I get a chance. Maybe just have my favorite scene re-enacted with cupcakes...

Cupcake Gothic

OK, so I really hate this painting for some reason. By "this painting" I mean the original, American Gothic. It always freaks me out. I look at it and wonder "what the hell! why aren't they happy? And why are their faces so long?"

So I did a quick, five-minute sketch of a cupcake gothic. It looks much better. and yes, I know the pitchfork goes in the middle, but it looked weird when I sketched it out that way. 

And now I got a great idea for my envelope today! I also have to download the past two weeks worth of envelopes to my computer, so everyone can see the difference that really good pencils make in my artwork. My envelopes are ten times more impressive!

And so the lion fell in love with the cupcake....

I admit, I read Twilight. I liked it. I watched the movies. I liked it. I'm not a Twi-hard by any means, but I love the books. Then again, I love all the books.

Last year, I was hanging out with two of my best friends, Dana and Gina. Dana and I had the genius idea to try to reenact the meadow scene from Twilight (you know, the scene were they both irresponsibly skip school and then Bella lays out in the sun with a vampire in a remote and distant location?) Well, Dana loved the picture so much that she put it up on her wall. 

I figured, if two crazy ladies can do the meadow scene, so can cupcakes.

I even tried to make the Edward cupcake sparkle a bit, but instead, it looks like he has really bad acne. 

My favorite part about this envelope? The text - that is such a hard text to reproduce, freehand, but I loved it!

The Cupcake Swan

So, my all-time favorite movie that came out recently is Black Swan. Natalie Portman deserved the Oscar - her portrayal of someone suffering from schizophrenia, which seems to be comorbid with dissociative identity disorder at the end, with her white swan/black swan personalities, (again, I LOVE psych) was spot-on, albeit a bit dramatic.

So I opted to draw the Black Swan in cupcake form.

I am really pleased with the way it came out!

The Death of a Cupcake

Today is a twofer! 

First off, I made this envelope when I was really angry. I was working on DeeDee that day, for a special event. I ran out of cupcakes, but I still had about 4 hours left in the day, so I jogged down to DeeDee's little sister, CeeCee.

(CeeCee is our delivery van! Isn't she cute?)

Anyway, I was driving back to DeeDee with about fifty cupcakes just chilling in my backseat, when, all of a sudden, some idiot cut me off. Now, usually I am the first one to say "oh, sorry, I'm a bad driver," but I can assure you, I had a green light and had just started going when someone came zooming up the cross street, drove through their red light and cut me off. I slammed on my brakes, causing a dozen peanut butter cup cupcakes to go flying forward and onto the ground, icing side down, also taking along a four pack of red velvets.

I didn't realize the extent of the damage until I got back to DeeDee - and then I was infuriated! Was driving through a red light worth a) risking your life and b) the life of over a dozen cupcakes?

Hence, my angry passive-aggressive note came to fruition. 

But since that envelope isn't exactly artistic, I will post something that's pretty cool:

This is from the Bettie's coloring book. We are doing a coloring book for kids who have birthday parties at the bakery and stuff like that. So, since everyone knows me as the artsy fartsy one, I started drawing the pages for the book! This is one of them. It's my royal red velvet cupcake. Isn't she fierce?

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Stay tuned for some awesome envelopes this weekend!

In Soviet Russia, cupcake eat you

By far the most terrifying movie when I was a child was Jaws...yet it doesn't seem so bad when it's a cupcake eating you! Then you get to play around in it's cupcake stomach, lined with cake and frosting!

This was a quick five minute sketch that I did a week or two ago. I had the Jaws theme stuck in my head (mainly because it's the only song, besides Kumbaya, that I can play on the piano and I started my day out by trying to play the piano).

Not my best work, but it still makes me giggle, just thinking about giant cupcakes swimming in the water, coming to eat you. In Soviet Russia, cupcake eat you.

Elvis and Marilyn

This envelope was originally going to be really decorated...and then I got bored and decided to read instead. Sometimes, I am really feeling an envelope and I take it all the way - shading, details, etc.

With this one, I was unmotivated but didn't want to leave a blank envelope. So I opted for two cupcakes: Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. And yes, Elvis is supposed to be sneering at the camera, but that didn't come out right in the photograph. It looks way better in person.

On another note, I got a surprise present from my boyfriend yesterday. I was having a horrible, horrible day and I get home and lo-and-behold, there is a package waiting for me. My Mattie sent me a set of 21 pencils and erasers! He loves my envelopes so much that he surprised me with some high-end pencils! Now I have a bunch of different hard and soft leads for the pencils as well as some charcoal (which I LOVE to use - one of my favorite mediums). There was even a kneaded eraser in there, which I actually love to use for smudging. This is one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received - I am actually excited to go into work and draw today's envelope! Hopefully it becomes as detailed as I imagine it being in my head.

Hurry Up Spring!

I drew this envelope because I am kind of getting tired of winter. Now, for me to say that is kind of a leap. I am a huge winter sports fan: I love to ski (that's how I met my boyfriend) and I love wearing winter clothing. I love hot coco and I absolutely adore tromping through feet of snow. That being said, I also recently moved from two really warm climates: Hawaii and California, so I would have been pleased with a mild winter as opposed to the past few months of torture.

So, I figured if everyone begging Mother Nature to ease up wasn't doing the trick, maybe giving her an offering of a cupcake envelope would please her.

I love the flowers I drew, too - they look so adorable and it makes me wish that there were actual cupcake flowers, because I would put those in my garden...and only cupcake flowers.

Does anyone have any other good ideas for an envelope theme? Leave a comment and let me know!

World of Cupcakes

I am a geek. A self-proclaimed nerd. I play video games when I can. Of course, my favorite game is World of Warcraft. For those not in the know, World of Warcraft is the world's largest MMO RPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. For $15 a month, I sit in front of my computer and pretend to be a werewolf (called "worgen" in game) or an alien whose spaceship just crashed to the Earth (commonly known as Azeroth) - those are the Draenei. Sometimes I go plain Jane and pretend to be human..

There are two factions you can play: Alliance or Horde (commonly known as Pretty and Ugly). I'm a girl, I play Alliance because they are prettier (actually it's because my server has a low Horde population).

But there is actually a funny story behind this envelope. I am in a long-distance relationship with my boyfriend of four years. One way we go on "dates" is by playing this video game together. I was really brain-dead one day and couldn't think of what to draw on my envelope, so I texted him - and he texted me back with the World of Warcraft logo. It took me about three hours to draw this envelope, too, because it was so busy at work that day - but he was texting me, asking for me to send him a picture.

Well, Mattie. Here you go. World of Warcraft Cupcakes.

Undead, aka Zombie

Orc

Night Elf

Draenei aka Alien

The logo

Blood Elf, the Night Elves evil cousin

Human

So, this is my shout out to all you fellow geeks out there! 

If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gunna love someone else?

So, I am slightly addicted to RuPaul's Drag Race. It is the fiercest show on TV. At the end of every episode, RuPaul encourages the drag queens to love themselves: "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gunna love someone else?"

Of course, I had just finished watching the newest episode (bye bye Shangela! and good riddance) and I wanted to make drag queen cupcakes. Well, that didn't work out so great, so instead, I wanted to make cupcakes that represent love...and what better way to do that then to have them carry the word "love" with their stick arms?

I had fun drawing this envelope - it was drawn in and done in maybe 10 minutes. Easy but cool!

Also a great t-shirt logo idea, right?

and now for a kid-friendly version for today: Bettie Street

Admission: I HATE Sesame Street with a passion. It creeps me out - the puppets are so scary! Only exception is Cookie Monster, who suffers from some sort of OCD comorbid with an eating disorder and Oscar the Grouch who is obviously depressed. Like I've said before - I love psychology! But I had no idea what to draw. 

I ran with Sesame Street after my best friend suggested it. I actually had to research Sesame Street and see what the characters looked like. Do you know how hard it is to draw Big Bird as a cupcake? 

Oddly enough, Bettie's Cakes actually makes Elmo and Cookie Monster cupcakes per request! So I used our actual cupcakes as the base for the drawing. I used some crayons to color them in, but I have very few colors to chose from, so Elmo ended up being "Violet-Red." Oh well - he looks a lot less scary in violet-red.

Cupcake Sheen is WINNING!

I may be slightly obsessed with Charlie Sheen. I don't know if it's because I am a psych major and I love watching him and diagnosing him or if he is just so frigin gorgeous. Either way, he amuses me to no end.

So I made a Cupcake Sheen. He is smoking an icing-rette and drinking some sugarshine (with a straw, of course, he keeps it classy) while thinking about a pretty little lady cupcake and educating the public on drug abuse. 

REMEMBER EVERYONE, DO CUPCAKES, NOT DRUGS! Sugar highs are way better than any other type of high - and probably a lot healthier!

Does anyone have another great celebrity for me to cupcake-ize?

Bustin' out my Bettie!

So I tried to freehand Bettie. She didn't come out as good as I hoped and kind of looks like a zombie with her one leg all twisted funky. I do really enjoy using this font, though. It's easy and looks clean and fun.

Just in case you were all interested, the information I put on my envelopes is basically Name, Location, Shift time, Cupcakes remaining at the end of my shift, and total sales. 

I won't ever post the sales numbers or cupcakes remaining, but you can all see my general shift times so if you decide to swing by, you can say HI! and maybe give me a good idea for an envelope. There are days where I think to myself "did I do this one already?" or "What can I draw in a half hour that won't look too bad?" I need fresh, new ideas!