St. Patrick's Day Fun

What better excuse to come up with new latte art designs than St. Patrick's Day?  I spent most of the day at work etching these in lattes and cappuccinos for customers...

Up first, a pot of gold and rainbow:

A shamrock, of course... with the printed ticked showing that the server actually did request "SHAMROCK ART" in the latte:

 And a winking leprechaun with a pipe (not to be confused with Popeye the Sailor Man):

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today's mission was to pull off the best latte art heart possible on Valentine's Day.  Now, I actually don't pour hearts that often, so today was actually very challenging.  I don't think I have the right technique down, because all my hearts keep distorting right when I try to do a finishing pull through the middle.  Any suggestions?

The heart in the large picture is one I want to try to perfect.  I started releasing a small bit of foam, pinched it off as if I were to do a tulip, and then poured the next layer and pushed it into the first, resulting in that bold layer of crema between the white foam.  Cool effect, and eventually I could work my way up to making it look something like this.

Igloo

This week while in Colorado I took advantage of the crazy amount of snow and built an igloo.  When else would I get the chance to do that?  It took me two days of work (maybe 5 or 6 hours total), and you can totally fit four people in there and play some spades if you want.

This igloo, on the other hand, took maybe 30 seconds to "build":

Christmas Etching

Not much advanced technique here. Dollop some foam in three stacked circles and then etch away.

I was going for Santa, but ended up with more like an elf. I started with a tulip pour without the finishing pull-through, dragged some white up for the cap, and etched in the rest. The beard is just swirled all around. Done in a paper cup.


I don't know if anyone else has done one of these angels before, but for me it was an original idea. The wings are rosettas that I finished off down their sides and not the middles, then dumped out lumps of foam for the head and body. Minimal etching was done for a halo, mouth, and arms. Here's a free-pour version of the same thing: