We've had a few cupcake posts lately, and the other day a friend asked Stacy to show her how she frosts her cupcakes so perfectly. It's true--she has a gift for creating the most scrumptious, swirling piles of frosting. Of course I invited myself along, camera in tow, and turned the get together into a blog post. Sorry girls--I can't help myself! Thanks to Stacy, Shelley, Melissa, and Deborah for letting me act like the paparazzi while you decorated. You were stellar models!
Just FYI, we used a Wilton 1M star tip and disposable decorating bags in the video. You can find these at big box stores like Michael's, small specialty baking shops, and all over online. We embellished the cupcakes with chocolate monograms and cupcake picks (that Stacy made with her paper crafting supplies). Also, our favorite butter cream frosting recipe is from Food Network. Yummy and easy. Enjoy!
I also wanted to mention that I made this little video using my new Adobe Premiere Elements 8 video editing software that Adobe sent me. In the past I have used iMovie and Windows Live Movie Maker, so it was fun to compare and see the differences between all three. There is definitely a learning curve when moving from one software to another, and I still feel like I have a lot to learn about Premiere Elements. I spent a lot of time using their online Help site, which was wonderful. It includes pictures and diagrams to help you navigate the many menus and screens. But my movie took a lot longer to create than it should have. Hopefully I will get faster the more I use it.
One thing I love about this software is how you can use so many different effects on the video. It's a lot like Photoshop. It's great to be able to fix the color or lighting in a clip that is too dark, or crop something a little closer. You can also apply stylized effects like gausian blur or beveled edges. It also has a ton of cool text options. I was impressed that I could set the "style" for my text so that I didn't have to keep fixing the font, color, and size in ever clip that I had a text overlay. Like Photoshop, Premiere Elements is pretty powerful editing software, which was a little bit of a detriment to little 'ol novice me. I felt like there were a lot of options that were way over my head, even after I read the Help section. But I'm sure that, too, will be less of an issue as I use and understand the software better. You'll be hearing more from me on this subject. . .