Last week I got the privilege of working with the lovely ladies of Ravishing Radish. Famous for their mashed potato bar, Ravishing Radish is a neat little venue and wedding/event catering company down on Lake Union. Their new happy hour spot on Eastlake, called simply Ravish, was the perfect backdrop for our shoot.  The concept was a no-brainer- Lisbet, Vickie, JoAnna, and Heather are sassy gals who love to have fun. Oh, and they LOVE champagne. Add in some pretty pumps and frilly aprons from Antrhopologie, bake at 350, and voila! Holiday Card A La Fun!

We’ve been pretty busy over here lately with all things luluweddings.com, gethitchedgivehope.com, and mcconnellphoto.com…. so busy in fact that our Cupcake Thursday shoots have fallen by the wayside yet once again. We’ve been a-scheming, and coming up with some fun ideas, just haven’t had a solid 4 hours to shop & shoot & edit & post it!

The lovely Eliza knows all things AWESOME and RANDOM and INTERNET, and found this little gem. Johnny Cupcakes is my BRANDING AND MARKETING idol- his graphics, his business model, his statement- it’s so concrete it hurts. And he doesn’t even make cupcakes.

Without further ado, a little Cupcake Thursday inspiration in the form of Kamp Grizzly’s CUPCAKE CANNON. Pretty sure I’ve never heard of anything that could be more epically awesome in my life. Just watch.

Don’t be surprised if you see the nation’s largest cupcake fight surface as one of the next CT posts. Now… if I can only find a field we could shoot in and 150 volunteer warriors.

And about 20 dozen cupcakes.

3 words: Bella Cupcake Couture.

cupcake image courtesty Sharlane Chase

If you’re planning on having cupcakes at your next event or wedding, and feel that the uuuugly paper wrappers they come in ruin your display, pick up some wrappers to dress ‘em up.
More importantly is the reason why we decided to make this post our Cupcake Thursday post. Bella Cupcake Couture has been a great supporter of our charity, Get Hitched Give Hope, and when I caught wind of this event, I squealed with joy. They’re sponsoring Seattle’s Cupcake Camp THIS SATURDAY! If you’re a cupcake fanatic, want to support the Hope Heart Institute, or just wanna eat some cake, come on down!

WHAT: Cupcake Camp Seattle

WHEN: Saturday, April 10, 2010 11am-2pm

WHERE: 415 Westlake Ave Seattle, WA, 98109

Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the one with the frosting on my face.

Entries for our Cupcake Thursday contest came from all over the world- Seattle to South Africa. Orlando to Calgary. Bakers, photographers, designers, moms, and teenagers.

The photography skills. The ingenuity. The baking craft. The artistry. The stories behind them all… MAN the stories. We had tears in our eyes while reading through your stories, tears of joy, hilarity, and compassion.

It’s been so fun meeting all of you.

And it was SO hard choosing just one.

But THIS is the one.

Congrats Mikkel Paige, for a job VERY well done. We adored your passion for baking, photography, and painting, as well as the planning and care you took to make this image.

When I read about this contest I was immediately energized and anxious to enter.  I’m a cake decorator and photographer (aspiring professional anyway) and this was the perfect opportunity to practice and fine tune my skills in both.  There was some self-imposed pressure when I started to think what I would do.  How would I get your attention?  Make my cupcakes sparkle and shine?  Make it unique?  When it came down to it, I decided to be me.  To emulate my personality and passion through a clear vision.

The vision that popped into my head was of a few cupcakes in a row (five to be exact – a nice number with a beginning, middle and end) with varying purple shades of buttercream frosting, some white sprinkles (to keep it classy!), silver cupcake papers and a bold painting in the background.  I love bright, bold colors and always gravitate towards gradients/ombre so I envisioned a backdrop that would illustrate falling sprinkles; they’d be dense on top and sparse at the bottom.  Bright orange and yellow paint would complete the look I was going for – lavender to purple cupcakes with an orange to yellow painting…delicious in every way.  (I like to paint when I have the time so now I was combining three hobbies: baking, photography and painting. Glorious!)

A LOT of T.L.C went into the shoot, which I took very seriously artistically, personally and professionally.  I spent a good 5 hours drawing my design on the canvas and painting it (I’m a perfectionist) and at least that long on the cupcakes between making them, filling them (they’re actually chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate chip cannoli filling), and mixing the buttercream colors (which took longer than I’d like to admit to get the colors just right).  After that was all done, I spent quite a lot of time getting just the right “dome” on the actual cupcake when I piped the frosting on them (deciding it wasn’t good enough a few times and scraping the icing off to try, try again!) then added sprinkles and it was time to shoot!  I set up a glorified baked goods photo shoot (cupcakes deserve star treatment, of course) in my apartment’s humble kitchen on my black granite counter tops at about 1:00am (natural light’s my preference but I work full time and the sun’s down by the time I get home). I shot for an hour or so – hundreds of photos with two different lenses.  The reflection of the cupcakes and the painting in the polished stone was a very happy, welcomed surprise.

I have to say that I’m really proud of my entry and it turned out better than I had imagined.   So much time and energy went into every detail of the photo that is attached.  More importantly, it’s filled with love and care for the processes and art forms it took to create it from baking to painting to photography.

We’ll get you all set up with your Totally Rad Action LR Presets just as soon as we possibly can. We hope you enjoy using them and enjoy making great art in the next days, weeks, and months!

This seriously was SUCH a fun project. We judges would also like to give kudos to the following images and descriptions that bowled us over with humor and appreciation:

Orange Soda Photo (the execution is stylish and finishing impeccable!!)

Stephanie Shen (because she said her child had the best “Cupcake-Dar”-cupcake radar-this side of the Mississippi).

Craig Harrold Photography and Carol Harrold Photography (because this is titled “Death by Imposter.” Note that the cupcake is a Ding Dong imposter…. this image made me laugh. HARD. Good work, guys!)

Front Room Photography (because we all HEART animated gif’s!)

Brittany O’Brien (because her tot does this every time she bites into a cupcake. Brittany is known for bringing mustaches to ANY event, and we love her for that!)

And now more fabulous eye candy!! Thank you, each and every one of you for sharing your touching, funny, and amazing stories, imagery, and skills!! It’s truly been a pleasure!!!

Last night, a bunch of bubbly bloggers and phantastic photographers from Seattle’s wedding and fashion industry came out to play for a pop-culture-inspired evening (okay, fine, just to drink some French 75′s and eat Jiffy Pop. Kay? Happy now?). The goal: to sift through all of the wonderful entries for last month’s Cupcake Thursday Contest and choose one very lovely winner.

Each judge received a Very Important Packet: Contest rules, cheat sheet, and her very own unique stache.

Lily cookin'

Our first venture into Jiffy Pop land. And we didn't even burn it!

None of us had ever made the classic champagne cocktail, the French 75, before. One word=sticky!

Jessica, Kim, Lily, Barbie, and Michelle learning the rules of the contest.

Lily’s reaction to a very touching story behind one image.

Kim, Lily, and Barbie oohing and aahing over images sent in by blog readers.

For some reason, in my house, you can't have a cupcake without a pink mustache. Kim, Barbie, Michelle, Jessica, Lily, and I doing our best Real Housewives of Orange County impersonations.

Entrants from all over the globe schemed, painted, baked, photographed, and edited their way to my inbox with their fantastical takes on their ideal Cupcake Thursday post for a chance to win the just-released Totally Rad Action Lightroom Presets.

Stay tuned for the BIG announcement of the grand prize winner, along with some nice eye candy provided by yourselves (my blog readers!!!). It should post at 6pm Pacific Standard Time!!!

Super special thanks to the lovely panel of ladies: Barbie Hull, Jessica Hanaumi, Lily West, Michelle Moore, and Kim Bamberg. Cheers, girls! Hope your upper lips have healed

Alrighty, hold yer horses. Calm down and read on!

In my travels and conversations over the last year with other photographers and casual friends, one thing always seems to make itself into every conversation: Cupcake Thursday.

I love that readers stop in each Thursday, in hopes that they’ll catch some images from our somewhat (okay, hardly!) regular photography series of poppy photography and mouth watering descriptions of scrumptious sweet cakes. I’ve even heard that when the CT post is delivered to some inboxes via subscription, a certain someone/sometwo celebrates with their own version, Champagne Thursday (or were you just pulling my leg, Rubin?). I think next time I’m comin’ to YOUR place.

So here it is.

A challenge for you. On my birthday .

I want to see YOUR version of the ideal Cupcake Thursday post and image, and we’ll post the winner here! Here’s how it goes:

• Shoot a cupcake. Conceptual or Real. Store bought or Homemade. Shoot people enjoying the cupcake. The cupcake dressed up and in a far off land, gnome-style. The cupcake in all it’s beautiful frostitious glory. Pretty much any interpretation of what YOU would do for YOUR Cupcake Thursday as long as it’s legal and awesome and entertaining. I wanna see your creativity, your ingenuity, your mad photo skillz.
• You can be a hobbyist, pro, or an amateur. Don’t worry if you don’t have super expensive top of the line pro photo gear. We won’t put much weight on technical ability
• A group of our cupcake-obsessed-photography-loving-peers will independently choose their favorites based on creativity, concept, and execution.

“What’s in it for me?” you ask? We’ll publish an entire CT post with your image and the method behind your photographic madness. Or your recipe. Or your review on your cupcake experience.

Oh, and you’ll win one of the industry’s favorite processing and production products, the BRAND SPANKIN NEW TOTALLY RAD ACTION PRESETS FOR LIGHTROOM!!!!

Here’s how you can enter!

• Submit your photo to info (at) mcconnellphoto (dot) com, with the largest dimensions being 700 px wide or tall as a jpg all ready to post.
• Share a little description- method behind the madness, inspiration, technique, photo recipe, baking recipe, cupcake baker’s name, etc.
• Must be submitted by Feb 25th at midnight-ish. Winners will be posted on March 4th.

Alrighty, happy conceptualizing, story boarding, prop shopping, and shooting!!!!  I can’t WAIT to see what you guys deliver to my happy lil’ inbox!

Instead of spending 20 bones on cupcakes for silly self-enjoyment and an irrelevant-to-real-life Cupcake Thursday shoot/post, Lily and I decided to do something a bit more worthwhile and meaningful.

We’re going to donate it to the “We Heart Sharlane” fund instead.  How about you, do you have $20 to spare? Let me make it REAL easy for you: http://weheartsharlane.showitsite.com