Month: May 2011

spring critters

Posted on by trish

Found two snails in a bush with pink buds on my way to the subway.

 

Went with my mom to her neigh­bour­hood park last week­end. Saw lots of geese. Can you spot the koi fish? They were giant! Peo­ple must not be heed­ing the “Don’t feed the fish/geese” signs very much…

 

“Come on now. Get up! Quit danc­ing! We need to fin­ish cross­ing this road!”

 

Not crit­ters, but equal­ly delight­ful — mushrooms!

 

Ground cov­ered in pink petals (and I wish I could cap­ture the petals falling from the trees…)

 

They fell from this bloom­ing tree.

 

Saw these exot­ic-look­ing flow­ers in some­one’s front lawn.

 

And one of my favourite flow­ers in anoth­er front lawn.

 

And one day, we walked past this bloom­ing tree with tiny pink flow­ers, each looked like an orchid. Wish I know what the tree is called…

 

Anoth­er one of my favourite flow­ers — for­get-me-not bush­es as far as the eye could see! (well, I’m exag­ger­at­ing a bit — but there was a lot of them!) At a his­toric house muse­um we vis­it­ed yes­ter­day. (I’ll write about it in a few days!)

 

Spring is full of hap­py encoun­ters :D

Hope you’re enjoy­ing the warm weath­er and all the new life that it brings!

 

 

favourite things + sunday video

Posted on by trish

Since I post­ed the teacup project on Fri­day, and I’ve got tons of favourite things saved up for the favourite-things post, I fig­ure I’d post them on… Sun­day! I promise next week we’ll be back on sched­ule… though I doubt that any­one but me cares what day I post what. But I still think that it’s good to be con­sis­tent… it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter in the end in terms of the blog, but it’s good prac­tice for me, I think. A kind of self-dis­ci­pline, I guess, in prepa­ra­tion for oth­er endeavours…

Any­way, I digress. Mov­ing on to crafty things! :D Since school’s out in less than a month, let’s start with a few sum­mer vaca­tion projects!

 

I imag­ine this would be love­ly qui­et activ­i­ty for a rainy day. And I think kids would­n’t get bored of it too eas­i­ly, since there’s so much detail in the fab­ric and it would take a while for young kids to fig­ure out all the dif­fer­ence between them. And good news for grownups — since they’re made of fab­ric, they’re wash­able! From The Purl Bee.

 

Pret­ty self-explana­to­ry idea but a good idea (or, more prop­er­ly, a good thing) nonethe­less. Vaca­tion mem­o­ry jars from the Martha web­site.

 

Got left­over CD cas­es after the music’s been stored on the ipod or phone or what­not (I can’t keep track of these devices)? Don’t throw them out — make a labyrinth for the road trip / train ride / line-up for the roller coast­er ride / long wait at the doc­tor’s office! How-to on Bloe­sem Kids.

 

I love craft projects involv­ing egg car­tons, because they’re so easy to find. And these tiny pirate ships are so cute! For a sum­mer­time pirate-theme par­ty, per­haps? From The Cel­e­bra­tion Shoppe.

 

Beau­ti­ful “stained glass” win­dow made with pressed flower petals and con­tact paper! What a won­der­ful way to show­case those sum­mer blooms. From The Art­ful Par­ent.

 

I’ve nev­er real­ly seen alu­minum tape at the store before, but I’ve also nev­er real­ly looked for them… these gar­den mark­ers make such a love­ly addi­tion for the herb gar­den (and a very resource­ful use of recy­cled plas­tic cut­lery!), I’ll have to keep an eye out for this awe­some tape if I do plant a con­tain­er herb gar­den this year! How-to on Aunt Peach­es.

 

More edi­ble plant har­vest­ing! I nev­er knew that dan­de­lion flow­ers are edi­ble (and actu­al­ly taste like hon­ey)! I knew that dan­de­lion leaves are edi­ble because I’ve seen them at the gro­cery store, and my mom actu­al­ly tried to cook with them after see­ing how it was done on a cook­ing show. But our over­grown dan­de­lion proved to be real­ly tough and fibery and dif­fi­cult to eat :S Any­way, spot­ted this on Lil Fish Stu­dio, which includes a link for the recipe! :D When I first saw the post I was so ready to head out for a dan­de­lion har­vest, but then I real­ized that I had no can­ning jars :( Now all the flow­ers have gone to seed, so I’ll have to wait for the next blooming.

 

The pearly discs on this neck­lace were made from bub­blewraps! That’s right, bub­blewraps are not only good for pop­ping when one’s bored. Instruc­tion on Craftzine.

 

No sewing was involved in the mak­ing of this zip­per pouch! How, you ask? Well! You’ll have to see the how-to on Instructa­bles! (It’s pret­ty incred­i­ble!) (Sor­ry, lame rhyme, I know. Could­n’t help myself.)

 

Love this braid­ed head­band from Ruf­fles and Stuff! And it does seem real­ly sim­ple to make. I’m sure I can find faux leather at a fab­ric store, but I won­der if I could find a sub­sti­tute… pos­si­bly at the thrift store…

 

And more braids! I do like braids very much — they cre­ate visu­al inter­est in a very sim­ple way and the look is so ver­sa­tile. Braid­ed belt tuto­r­i­al on Sew, Mama, Sew!

 

I think I squealed when I saw this — a car­rot cake toi­let paper cozy, from The Blue Crab Stitch­es! I’m par­tial to car­rot cake, and the icing car­rots are so cute! I don’t real­ly use TP cozies but I can see it being a great TP dis­penser with some mod­i­fi­ca­tions. I grew up using TP from a TP dis­penser (like this one that looks like a cup noo­dle, for exam­ple) for run­ny nose instead of box­es of Kleenex around the house, and most of the Chi­nese fam­i­lies I know do the same. Because we’re fru­gal, I guess.

 

These hot choco­late cup­cakes are mag­nif­i­cent! They’re from Diary of a Lady­bird, with some instruc­tion on how to make them, for those skilled in cake dec­o­rat­ing. As for me, I’m going to have to wish for some­one to make them for me, because I know noth­ing about cake dec­o­rat­ing :P (via Inspire Me Now)

 

And final­ly, because it is Sun­day, here’s this week’s Sun­day video! As some­one who habit­u­al­ly talks to inan­i­mate objects as if they could under­stand me, this def­i­nite­ly pulls on some heart­strings… Remem­ber, you too can be the cre­ator of many hap­py end­ings — please recycle!

Hap­py Sun­day! :D

a quick cup of tea

Posted on by trish

 

Today I present to you — a teacup book­mark, with a hang­ing tea tag! :D Pos­si­bly a father’s day gift for a tea-drink­ing, book-lov­ing dad?

Or for any­one who enjoys a good cup of tea. And a good book. At the same time.

So! Instead of favourite things Fri­day this week I’m going to share how I made this teacup book­mark, because one can only do so much in a week, and I’ve had this idea in my head for a while now. It was some­thing that Mike has seen some­where and told me about it, and I was inspired by the Vic­to­ri­an Tea we had at the Toll­house.

It may look like there are lots of steps, but it’s actu­al­ly a pret­ty quick project. It prob­a­bly took me under an hour to make all three, and that’s with my picture-taking.

So! It’s time to get out the glue and scissors!

… and a bunch of oth­er stuff… here are all the mate­ri­als and tools I used.

  • Used gift bags (one could use oth­er kinds of paper as well, but I thought gift bags would be a good idea because it’s coat­ed, so it’s slight­ly heav­ier and more durable than, say, con­struc­tion paper, and they have nice pat­terns. And because I save them when peo­ple give me gifts and I have tons on hand)
  • Cot­ton thread (I used cro­chet thread because that’s what I have, but thin yarn or kitchen twine should work too).
  • A glue stick
  • A mark­er (or pen)
  • Scis­sors
  • A thick tapes­try needle
  • A util­i­ty knife
  • White glue
  • A ruler (if you want to be precise)
  • A cut­ting mat (or some­thing to cut on, like old magazines)
  • Teacup tem­plates

I made up this project part­ly to learn how to use Illus­tra­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly draw­ing sim­ple shapes and curves. So I made this set of tem­plates with dif­fer­ent teacups and a tea mug. Just click on either the image or the link above it and it will bring up a PDF file. Print it at 100% and you’ll get the same size teacups as the ones I made (each is 3 inch­es wide).

First, I cut out a tem­plate. It might be eas­i­er to cut out the part inside the teacup ear with a util­i­ty knife. (Or teacup han­dle? It’s “cup ear” in Chi­nese and I’ve always called it that…)

Next, I traced the tem­plate on a part of the bag with the pat­tern that I liked. (I used a Sharpie for this so it’s eas­i­er to pho­to­graph, but one could use a pen or a pencil)

Then I removed the side of the bag where it’s fold­ed, so it would be eas­i­er to cut out the teacup.

Then I cut along the top edge of the teacup, and the gen­er­al area around the teacup through BOTH lay­ers of the bag.

So now we have two pieces, with a straight edge at the top.

I then cut a piece of cot­ton thread, about 5 inch­es in length.

I tied a knot close to one end of the thread. Then I placed a drop of white glue on the back of the piece that does­n’t have the teacup trac­ing on it, about 3/4 inch from the top edge. I then put the end of the thread into the drop of glue, with the knot just below the glue, like so…

Then I cut out a scrap piece of paper (from the cut-off of the tem­plate) about 1/2 inch tall and 1 inch wide. I glued this piece of paper on top of the thread and glue dot, with the knot stick­ing out, like so…

The thread is now locked in and won’t get pulled out easily.

I then slather a gen­er­ous amount of glue from a glue stick onto the back of the piece with the teacup trac­ing on it (not white glue, or the paper will buck­le), and then pressed it onto the piece with the string, lin­ing up the top straight edges of the two pieces (it’s OK if the oth­er edges don’t line up, as long as the top edges are lined up).

Wait a moment or two for the glue to dry com­plete­ly, then cut out the teacup shape. Again, it’s prob­a­bly eas­i­er to use the util­i­ty knife to cut out the inside part of the mug ear (aka mug handle).

Ta-da! We’re almost done!

Now for the tea tag. One could do lots with it, like write a mes­sage (like hap­py father’s day?), make a mono­gram (cut out a let­ter from the mag­a­zine?), or just leave it blank. But here’s what I made…

I sal­vaged the fold­ed side of the bag that I removed ear­li­er, and cut out a 1“x2” rec­tan­gle, then fold­ed it in half, with the white side fac­ing out.

I then cut out some tea leaves on one half with the util­i­ty knife (free-hand too! I was pret­ty proud of myself).

I then used a tapes­try nee­dle to poke a hole through the mid­dle of the fold.

Then I thread­ed the end of the thread (with the oth­er end already attached to the teacup) through the hole. I then slather a gen­er­ous amount of glue with the glue stick on the half of the paper with the leaf design. I placed the thread end on mid­dle fold of the paper, so it lied along the fold, then I put a drop of white glue on the thread.

Fold the top down and… ta-da! A one-of-a-kind paper-cut tea tag!

And guess what? The book­mark is ready to mark those pages! :D

I also made a pink one, with a flower tea tag, for an herbal tea kind of day…

 

Now I’m going to make myself a nice cup of tea. Thanks for stop­ping by! Have a great weekend!

 

tea at the tollhouse

Posted on by trish

The invi­ta­tion was nailed to the tree and the neigh­bour­hood was wel­come to come for tea on Vic­to­ria Day :D

We had been want­i­ng to vis­it the Tol­l­keep­er’s Cot­tage Muse­um for a while now, and the Vic­to­ri­an Tea gave us the per­fect excuse to final­ly make our way there on the long week­end (I’ve always want­ed to try scones with clot­ted cream!).

We drove by it a num­ber of times (well, rid­ing in oth­er peo­ple’s vehi­cles, since we don’t own a vehi­cle) and I nev­er real­ized that it was a muse­um until we saw its brochure at anoth­er muse­um. This toll­house was built around 1835, and the entire struc­ture was built from one local pine tree! The orig­i­nal planks are dis­played on the side of the museum.

It was orig­i­nal­ly locat­ed on Dav­en­port Road, one of Canada’s old­est route. The his­to­ry of the road itself is actu­al­ly pret­ty fas­ci­nat­ing. It came into being when the First Nation Peo­ple used the route to trav­el from Mon­tre­al to Nia­gara at the end of the Ice Ages. It’s now about 6km from the lake, but it was once the shore­line of Lake Iro­quois (now Lake Ontario)! It blew my mind to think about how all of that land (and all the side­walks and streets and sub­way stops that I fre­quent) was once submerged.

In the 1800s tolls were col­lect­ed by com­pa­nies that built and main­tain the roads. This is the lit­tle win­dow where the tol­l­keep­er col­lect­ed tolls, from about 1835 to 1895.

Alright! Enough with the his­to­ry for now, though I do enjoy it very much, but tea and delec­table pas­tries await us! Look at this spread, and the sil­ver teapots! No Toll House cook­ies, though :P  (Did you know that Toll House cook­ies were invent­ed by a woman whose fam­i­ly oper­at­ed a toll­hous an inn that used to be a toll house? Any­way, I digress…)

And the teacups were so beautiful…

And final­ly, home-baked scones, with clot­ted cream!

We’ve heard lots about clot­ted cream but have nev­er had it. Mike thought it would be kind of like cot­tage cheese, and I thought it would taste like but­ter­milk, but it actu­al­ly tast­ed more like real­ly thick whipped cream, which was absolute­ly deli­cious and makes me want to have it every morn­ing with toast.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we for­got to ask the muse­um staff where she got the clot­ted cream. I lat­er tried to see where one could buy clot­ted cream in the city, but appar­ent­ly because it’s made with unpas­teur­ized milk it can’t be sold in Ontario. Though I did find recipes for “mock” clot­ted cream, like this one involv­ing sour cream, and this fanci­er one involv­ing mas­car­pone  cheese and lemon zest, which were quite intrigu­ing. I might make some for a tea par­ty one day!

We did more tour­ing after we had some tea and scones. I won’t bore you with all the pho­tos I took, but the more notable ones include this apple peel­er, a nice, sculp­tur­al piece of machinery.

There were cer­tain sec­tions in the wall that showed the orig­i­nal brick and plas­ter wall. The staff docent told us that the plas­ter was made of horse hair, earth, and ox blood, because ox blood con­geals quicker.

Hap­py birth­day to Queen Victoria!

The staff docent also let me hold one of the chick­ens for a pic­ture on the front porch. The one I was hold­ing did­n’t have a name, but the one sit­ting on the table is called Bostune (I think that’s how it’s spelled).

And yes, I even wore my gar­den par­ty out­fit for the occa­sion :D

Before we left we wan­dered into the back­yard (which is actu­al­ly a city park, I think), and I spot­ted a giant mush­room grow­ing on a piece of chopped wood!

At night, we enjoyed some love­ly fire­work dis­plays on our balcony.

‘Twas a love­ly week­end :D

I like to vis­it his­toric hous­es and loi­ter in their living/kitchen area and pre­tend that I’m liv­ing in the past, and we’ve had a love­ly vis­it at the Tol­l­keep­er’s Cot­tage. It’s a quaint lit­tle house but root­ed in so much his­to­ry, and the muse­um staff were so friend­ly and extreme­ly knowl­edge­able. Plus after vis­it­ing the Toll­house one could wan­der over to Casa Loma and Spad­i­na House and enjoy their beau­ti­ful spring gar­dens… Oooh! This com­ing week­end is Doors Open Toron­to and one could get into all of those muse­ums for free! Def­i­nite­ly worth a vis­it if you’re in the neighbourhood!

Have a won­der­ful Wednes­day, everyone!

adventures of avocado finn

Posted on by trish

Meet Avo­ca­do Finn, my new plush friend! :D

Avo­ca­do Finn is no ordi­nary fish. When I first met him, he did­n’t quit look like himself…

He was a maki roll.

 

A maki roll with… a tail?

 

Ah! Flip­pers!

No fish has ever gone to being a piece of sushi and come back per­fect­ly intact. Avo­ca­do Finn is tru­ly an extra­or­di­nary fish. And a rather friend­ly fel­low, too. His goofy smile puts every­one at ease…

… and makes you for­get, that as a fish, he should­n’t be able to sur­vive out of water. But look, here he is, chat­ting away, and Mike does­n’t even seem to notice the difference…

And I was com­plete­ly enchanted.

And then I remem­ber this car­toon I used to watch when I was a kid, called “Gold Fish Warn­ing”, about a pink gold fish that not only could live out­side of water but also fly.

(Yes, huge spark­ly eyes and pink hair. Clas­sic girly anime.)

Whether Avo­ca­do Finn has any­thing to do with that pink gold­fish is a mys­tery, as Finn him­self has­n’t giv­en me any clue about his per­son­al his­to­ry. But he’s made him­self quite com­fort­able on our couch, and made a new friend.

He’s even able to make Fil­bert the cat believe that “fish is friend, not food” (at least when it comes to Avo­ca­do Finn).

Don’t need to feel bad for Fil­bert though, he’s in heav­en just hav­ing those balls of yarn around, and he always loves a new friend.

To make your own extra­or­di­nary fish friend see genius fish-to-sushi cro­chet pat­tern from Irka! While you’re at it, be sure to also check out the awe­some egg-to-chick­en pattern!

Hap­py Tues­day! :D

 

 

from seaweed to mussels

Posted on by trish

Remem­ber this cardigan?

 

I called it “the sea­weed cardi­gan”. It came from this pat­tern, and I took a fun pho­to of it, with me attempt­ing to imi­tate the severe look on the mod­el’s face, because I had a sim­i­lar hair­cut and used a sim­i­lar colour yarn, see?

 

Well, I unrav­eled it.

I tried “block­ing” it (and wrote all about it here), but who am I kid­ding, it’s acrylic, it’s not going to make a dif­fer­ence no mat­ter how much I soak it and how long I stretch it. I tried any­way and to my sur­prise it did stretch to a shape that fit for a moment — enough time for me to take a pho­to. And then when I took it out again after a few weeks I real­ized that it had shrunk back to its sad, mis­shapen self.

It does­n’t fit me prop­er­ly so it’s real­ly unlike­ly that I would wear it; I might as well use the yarn for some­thing else I want to make. The cardi­gan is real­ly a clever and beau­ti­ful design, I just did­n’t use the right yarn. Per­haps I will try again using a yarn with bet­ter drape.

So here’s the new mus­sels dress! :D (because the pat­tern is called “tunic with mus­sel pat­tern”)

 

 

It works for warmer weath­er too!

 

The pat­tern itself is pret­ty straight­for­ward but the way it’s writ­ten is a bit dif­fi­cult to fol­low. I had to unrav­el and restart sev­er­al times to under­stand its struc­ture. But after that I just kept try­ing it on as i went (a nice thing about a top-down pat­tern!) and made up my own stitch count, increas­es, etc.

Any­way, I’m quite hap­py with how it turned out :D Def­i­nite­ly some­thing I would wear often.

Some­times (or, more often than not) I’d make a gar­ment sim­ply because I’m intrigued by the pat­tern, and once I made it I’m not that inter­est­ed in wear­ing it. So, instead of keep buy­ing new yarn I’ve been check­ing my clos­et to see if I can har­vest any yarn for mak­ing new things.

So! Next week I’ll show you how a yeti turns into a hip­pie. Stay tuned! :D

 

sunday video

Posted on by trish

A pro­mo for the Toron­to Com­ic Arts Fes­ti­val! The actu­al fes­ti­val has come and gone (will have to watch out for it next year!), but it’s real­ly love­ly how this clip illus­trates the rela­tion­ship between the artist and his/her tool, and that’s time­less. Enjoy!

 

 

 

favourite things friday

Posted on by trish

This week we have a wide assort­ment of favourite things from bokeh to unnec­es­sary quo­ta­tion marks — great fun! :D

 


I’ve seen cup­cake gift box­es being sold in the book­stores, but here’s how to make your own! It even comes in three love­ly flavours: ruf­fled, twist­ed, and shaved choco­late. Very pret­ty tuto­r­i­al at Lit­tle Birdie Secret.

 

This is so cool! A thumb-con­trolled water­ing device (water stops stream­ing out when one places thumb over the hole on the lid) made with a recy­cled jug. Accord­ing to the mak­er, ‘the orig­i­nal earth­en­ware “thumb pot­s” were used in 17th and 18th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish gardens’. I would so make one if I have a yard. How-to on Fun in the Mak­ing.

 

Fil­ing is no longer a chore with this vin­tage-book-turn-expand­ing-file! Can it spark moti­va­tion to final­ly sort those recipes / receipts / ren­der­ings of a time trav­el­ing machine? Very detailed instruc­tion on Just Some­thing I Made.

 

For those back-of-the-nap­kin sketch­es and scrib­bles that are too bril­liant to sim­ply file away (it’s true, the most bril­liant com­po­si­tions are almost always done on scrap papers), or those pre­cious draw­ings from the kid who thinks you’re the coolest aunt/uncle/teacher on earth, here’s a sim­ple yet styl­ish way to make them part of your decor and every­day inspi­ra­tion. From Cre­ative Jew­ish Mom.

 

Craft meets office! Great for when one needs a break from the 2056-page doc­u­ment, or when one wants to leave a thank-you note on some­one’s desk, or when one’s cubi­cle is in need of some dec­o­ra­tion. Sim­ple origa­mi flow­ers made of post-it notes, how-to on Sen­si­ble Liv­ing.

 

I was nev­er real­ly a Lego fan, but I like to wear neck­laces and I love the bright colour and sim­plic­i­ty of this Lego neck­lace. I won­der if my par­ents still have the buck­et of Legos in the base­ment… how-to on The Long Thread. (Speak­ing of jew­el­ry made out of game pieces, I also like the idea of a Scrab­ble tile neck­lace — also very sim­ple to make, and personalized!)

 

It’s like my Hong Kong pen­dant, but on canvas! Make wall art with fun fab­ric and places we love — tuto­r­i­al on Crafter­hour.

 

We don’t have an SLR, but maybe it will work on Mike’s super cam­era… Tuto­r­i­al to make your own bokeh shapes (to fit on a cam­era lens and turn out-of-focus points of light into shapes, like the flow­ers above) on How About Orange.

 

 

I nev­er knew that plas­tic but­tons can be dyed! Appar­ent­ly with this par­tic­u­lar kind of dye it works won­der­ful­ly. How to on Rit Dyes.

 

Sew a ter­rar­i­um! I love the quaint mason jar, but the sculp­tur­al qual­i­ty of this clear vinyl ver­sion is also inter­est­ing. Tuto­r­i­al on Design­Sponge.

 

This is genius — a wal­let, that can also turn into a tote! (the zip­per on the top is the wal­let part, and the tote is fold­ed and closed into the side zip­per) Per­fect for gro­cery shop­ping, trips to the park (to col­lect leaves and wild flow­ers for press­ing!), or trips to the beach (to col­lect beach glass and fos­sil-embed­ded rocks!) A very clear and detailed tuto­r­i­al on Sew Mama Sew.

 

More sewing trans­for­ma­tion — turn a sweater into an infin­i­ty scarf! (also called a cir­cle scarf, which is essen­tial­ly a long cowl) I pre­fer cir­cle scarf to reg­u­lar scarf because the ends of reg­u­lar scarf tend to get caught in my coat zip­per. Would­n’t it be cool to make this with t‑shirts for the sum­mer, with patch­es of dif­fer­ent colours and graph­ics? Hmmm… How-to on Adven­tures in Dress­mak­ing.

 

Kathreen of Whip Up shares a recipe for mak­ing tea ice cream, which can be sub­sti­tut­ed with one’s favourite kind of tea, plus a great list of oth­er tea ice cream recipes. It looks so love­ly in the dain­ty tea cup, per­fect for a sum­mer tea party.

 

And final­ly, Mike sug­gest­ed one of his favourites — the blog of “unnec­es­sary” quo­ta­tion marks! It is one of “those” blogs that I vis­it “peri­od­i­cal­ly” for some “good” laughs. (Here is anoth­er “exam­ple” of one of “those” blogs) He also bor­rowed the book from the library, which we read togeth­er over din­ner and I tell you, it was def­i­nite­ly a chok­ing haz­ard. So please, if you do check out this blog or book, put away the food and drinks first. (Anoth­er exam­ple of this kind of books is Ching­lish — my sis­ter, Mike and I read it togeth­er in a book­store in Hong Kong and we fell over each oth­er LOL-ing. But I think it’s espe­cial­ly fun­ny if one were Chi­nese or if one knew Chi­nese peo­ple real­ly well.)

 

On this note, I will end with a favourite quote of the week:

The cre­ative adult is the child who survived.
— U. LeGuin

 

Hap­py Fri­day, friends! :D

stamp a little joy

Posted on by trish

Last week I was mak­ing some greet­ing cards and thought they would look nice with some stamped let­ters. I don’t own any let­ter stamps, but I thought I could make just the let­ters I need­ed with my col­lec­tion of corks and a glue gun.

 

The stamps them­selves looked bet­ter than the imprints they made. It was just dif­fi­cult to get an even sur­face. Writ­ing with hot glue was hard­er than I thought! And the let­ters turned out rather squig­gly. It was alright, but not quite what I had in mind…

 

Then I remem­bered that Mike has a col­lec­tion of met­al types. To stamp these, I made a makeshift ink pad with a wad of paper tow­el and some acrylic paint.

 

But are there enough let­ters to make up a greet­ing phrase? Or even just a greet­ing word? It’s time to put my Scrab­ble skills into good use.

 

elm…
loft…
globe…
norm…

Ok, greet­ing words…

Aha.

 

The lit­tle joys in life, are stamp­ing let­ters and socks with cher­ries on them.

 

Have a hap­py Wednesday!

 

 

toppers at work! :D

Posted on by trish

Yay! Cus­tomer photos!

The snow mush­rooms were a cus­tom order from a love­ly bride, to serve as cake top­pers at her wed­ding, and one of the wed­ding guests kind­ly for­ward­ed some pho­tos to me (thank you so much!).

Here they are stand­ing on top of the love­ly cake, so very hap­py to be able to help cel­e­brate this beau­ti­ful event…

Cheers, to the new­ly-weds! :D