Donuts, but make it fancy Part 1

 Sometimes I get a need to go all out. Even if it's just for fun.

In the case of donuts, I definitely do that.

I recently added two of these donuts to my Folksy store; I made them around a year ago, and both took around a week to complete, but I really would love to rehome them and thus have listed them to sell; please go take a look if you are interested! (folksy.com/thewingeddonut)

So, the two donuts that I'll be talking about today are the ones listed; Midnight Moon and Dreaming of Nostalgia.

Pictured; Dreaming of Nostalia donut

Pictured; Midnight Moon donut

Starting with the Midnight Moon donut;

I was really interested in using Swarovski crystals in at least one of my donut designs, and while coming up with ideas I was looking at Pinterest and found a lot of inspiration for night themed aesthetics. What goes better with a night sky than stars? So straight away I'm scribbling out the details and chose the blues I wanted. I went for a wool felt base and polyester felt accents this time, though I think it might have been because I was not able to get the blue I wanted in wool, but the polyester worked perfectly fine in this case.

The donut design is a lovely blue with some gold specks that I added in myself, hand made 'piping', some as swirls and some as layered elongated pieces; I just take three elipsis shapes and fold each one in half, and then sew them together at the bottom before sewing them onto the base. The donut features some white moon decals and of course finished with the Swarovski crytal beads in AB round. Around 30 beads were used total.

I was a tiny bit concerned that during the filling and sewing of the donut, that there might be some tension, and since I wanted this to be a bit more robust, I had sewn in rings into the centre and outer edge of the bases using some very thick felt. This made the weaker parts of the felt much stronger. It might not have been necessary, but I felt it would be a good safeguard. I'd started using that method of strengthening after I worked on my first donut design, though the wool felt base was a little thinner and not as sturdy as the blue I'd used this time.

As for the Dreaming of Nostalgia piece, this was a last minute design I came up with without any prior planning or sketching. I had some scrap felt left that I really wanted to use up in some way, and I just happened to have a couple of sheets of mint that I wanted to use too, and so Polly Pocket sprang to mind when I put the colours together that I had. I wanted to do hearts, swirls and I still had plenty of crystal beads left, so I put those to good use too.

Using the same inner strengthening method, I had the bases prepped, and then started making the elements to go on the top. Originally I was going to also use a dark yellow to make stars, but I felt that it was really needed in the end, and just stuck with the pink hearts. The frills on the sides were a last minute choice that took a bit of figuring out to make them look uniform and of course look good, but in the end they ended up looking adorable, and with the crystal beads as a finish, they just screamed out 90's nostalgia.

The most difficult aspect to these donuts though is definitely the finishing touches. The edges of the donut alone take around a day to complete; this is because of all the layers of felt needed to make the piping effect. Each one requires three layers, and each has to be cut, folded, sewn into threes, and then with great difficulty, stitched onto the already finished donut. This is tricky, but the piping does stay in place, and is integral to making the design look finished. I'm still figuring out a better way to add the piping, but this seems to be the best way for now.

So there are the first two designs! In the next part, I will be showcasing my personal fancy donuts, my inspirations for them and why I refuse to let them go!