My January & February

I skipped over my January post as I was too busy with preparations for the Zine Fair, hence this bumper, two-month update. January seems like a world away now, and I can't possibly imagine that I had three whole weeks off work. I did do a few crafty things during this time, though.

I finished two crochet projects, both monsters, and both started in 2013. The first was Mixtro Monster by Stacey Trock. I was up to the stage of stuffing and sewing on the embellishments. His eyes are zanily quirky, though as the eyes come in pairs I have two single mismatched eyes in my stash now. I'm sure they'll come in handy for another zany monster.

The second was one of my own design. It was meant to be a test piece but I really like the way it turned out, particularly the mouth. I had so much fun making him. Choosing the eyes was especially satisfying. Husband and I named him Urgg.

I decided to glue some gems to my earphones so as to more easily tell left from right. I thought I may as well decoden a few other things while I was at it: some makeup brushes and the lid of my foundation pot.

I was also briefly inspired to do some watercolour painting in my Hobonichi. I posted this picture on Instagram, even though I wasn't entirely happy with it, and got quite a bit of encouragement, which was nice. (Parts of it are shiny because the paint was still wet.)

Over the holidays I had time to have fun with my food, too:

There was also work to do, though -- harvesting my fruit trees. There was a lot of everything this year: apricots, plums, then nectarines! We were caught a bit unawares this year, so decided not to make jam, but used the slow cooker to stew nearly everything. We ate the last box of nectarines fresh, and it was lovely!

Last week I got my nails done! For most people perhaps that's no big deal. For me it was a huge step in overcoming my anxiety. I went to Miss Jay's Nails and Beauty, who I highly recommend. What a sweetie! I celebrated by posting it on Instagram with lots of cute graphics:

More selections from Instagram:

Decoden Etsy Shop Review and Project

Yesterday I was moving some stuff around in the hobby room, and I came across a haul of decoden supplies that I'd bought from MissSapporo on Etsy last year and never done anything with. I must be in a very crafty mood at the moment, because I had a sudden urge to deco things, straight away!

But first I will write about the shop itself a little bit. When the supplies first arrived, I took some photos of them, so why not do a review? I have ordered from MissSapporo twice now, and I was absolutely 100% happy with the whole experience both times. Here is my most recent order (well, May last year actually, but who's counting!):

The parcel arrived very fast from Japan. In fact, everything I order from Japan comes amazingly fast, compared to the U.S. and even closer places like China and, ahem, other parts of Australia. Everything was parcelled up very carefully with bubble wrap, and there was a lovely note. From the words Yuriko had written, it was clear she remembered me from last time. It was really lovely.

Along with my order, there was a little parcel of extras! I wouldn't order anything Barbie-themed normally, but I loved the other items. Yuriko also has another Etsy shop dedicated to fabrics, which I have ordered from once and had the same wonderful experience. She also seems to have regular sales and discount codes available. I would definitely recommend purchasing from her!

Now for the decoden project. I needed something to decorate, and fast! I chose this powder compact from Daiso. Even though it's a cheap compact, it works really well for me, so I can see it being in my life until it's all gone. But as you can see, it's in a prominent spot on my makeup stand, and it's boring!

Boring!
Gathering my supplies. I used a toothpick to apply the glue in small patches. I made myself a gem picker with a chopstick and some gaffer tape, but I ended up using the toothpick to place the gems as they were so small.

I decided to use one of my square cabochons in the centre, and I chose a colour that would match the hot pink gemstones. I put the bunny and rose on at this point to add extra interest:

Getting there! I was working on our coffee table, and leaning over became a bit painful after a while! It was getting quite late by this point, so I left the rest for the next morning.

Finished! The gems were a bit uneven on the edges, but I don't think it looks too bad. Next time I think I'll start at the outside edge and work inwards.

Back where it belongs:

No longer boring!

Decoden Followup

It's been two weeks since my first batch of decoden projects, so here's an update on how they've fared so far.

I've noticed that the durability of a deco project depends on a lot of factors: the type of surface to be decoed; whether it's curved or flat; the material the surface and gems are made out of; the size of gems used; the type of glue used; whether the item is going to be handled a lot.

All of my deco jobs were successful except one. I'm very happy with the lip gloss lid and the pen. Whenever I use my pen at work, it makes me happy! In fact, I want to add more to the next one and have a real "decoPEN"! The lip gloss lid also worked extremely well. Even though I grip the lid and handle it every day, the gems have stayed as stuck as anything.

The unsuccessful deco was on the BB Cream tube lid. This was the one I decided to do at the last minute. The bow charm was wobbly right from the start and came off after a couple of days. I know what went wrong, though. Even though the surface of the lid is only slightly curved (not like the domed lid of the lip gloss), the bow is much larger than the tiny rhinestone gems, so most of its surface area was not firmly attached to the lid. Also, I think the back of the bow is made of a different material to the other gems; that could have had something to do with it.

A few of the tutorials I've seen advised using two-part epoxy glue (araldite), so next time I'm at the hardware shop, I'll get some and see how it goes.

3 Days of Craft :: Semi-Festive Edition

I'm happy to say that I have my craft mojo back good and proper! So much that I decided to declare another 3 Days of Craft! True, the 3 days aren't consecutive (the public holiday falling this-coming Tuesday), and I have plans to do other things as well, but I'm not letting that stop me!

Technically I didn't make this first item during 3 Days of Craft, I made it earlier in the week, but I'm sharing it anyway. It's Husband's birthday cake!

It's not actually a cake, it's the Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownies from an older issue of SBS Feast Magazine. The fudgy chocolate brownie mix is given a heavy dose of peanut butter sauce, swirled through it before baking. It's supposed to be served with more peanut butter sauce, melted chocolate and ice cream, but I just made a chocolate icing and decorated it with store-bought white fudge writing icing and mini chocolate eggs. He loved it!

Now to 3 Days of Craft proper. Unfortunately there was a bit of a hiccup on Day 1 (yesterday). I decided I wanted to make a Christmas project (possibly a pair of advent calendars), so I just quickly hopped on to Pinterest to get some ideas. I ended up spending all day on there.

Oops.

It did help me narrow down my options and be more realistic, though. To make a really nice pair of advent calendars is going to take time and money. Even the more budget ones involved supplies that I don't have. (How would I get hold of 48 matchboxes??) I think we'll just buy a couple of kiddie ones this year, and I'll start earlier with making some really nice ones next year. Having pinned pictures of hundreds of festive craft projects, I decided to start with something quite simple - a Christmas garland!

I crocheted a chain using some red acrylic yarn leftover from another project. I held it together with a strand of sparkly silver yarn that I saw when I was re-organising my projects. I hung it up in front of the lounge room window. Then, using photos from Pinterest as a reference, I cut out some circles of paper and cut them into snowflakes. I'm a bit ashamed to say, but copying designs from the internet makes prettier snowflakes than ones I've made in the past.

Then all I did was staple them onto the garland! I have only done 5 snowflakes so far, and the garland is less than half full. But I figure: it's not even December yet, so I have some time to finish it!

Then, I was inspired to start doing decoden! If you read my last post concerning the nature of decoden, you may have wondered, when is it going to actually happen? Well I declare it happened today! But it's still just baby steps so far. Here's my decoden setup:

I happened to have a cute tin from Ikea lying around, so I'm using that to keep all the supplies in. So cute! I used an old envelope to work on and squeeze the glue onto. A plate to put the gems on. As for the chopsticks, I'd read that you should have a thing called a Magic Picker to pick up the gems with, but Violet le Beaux said that a skewer or chopstick with a blob of blutac on the end works just as well. And it does! I used the other chopstick to dab glue onto the projects.

I have to say - those gems are darned tiny!!

But the 'Magic Picker' really makes it so easy! yay! I decoed my lip gloss (inspired by the photo of the decoed lip gloss tube, which I showed in my last post), a pen, and popped a couple of gems on the ends of 2 of my crochet hooks. I had a bit of glue left over, so I went rushing into my room in a tizzy to find something else to deco. I grabbed my BB Cream and glued a little bow to it. So fun!

Maybe a cheap disposable pen is a strange thing to deco? But it's only a few gems, and every time at work when I look at it, it'll remind me that I'm more than just a public servant salary-man drone. Here's a juicy close-up:

Other things I've been working on lately:
✔ As I mentioned above, I re-organised my craft projects. I put some wintery ones from the lounge back into the hobby room, and brought out some that I do want to work on so they're handier to get to. Yesterday when I was on my Pinterest bender, I also created some more specific pinboards for different crafts, so instead of spending hours trawling through stuff, I can go straight to what I'm looking for in future and hopefully spend less time on the internet. (I'd like to think that time spent wasn't all in vain!)
✔ The Rainbow Afghan. I've finished all 14 sections now, and I'm just waiting for the black edging wool to arrive from Bendigo Woollen Mills to finish it off.
✔ I've been working quite a lot on the Babbi Blanket. I'm on the 2nd-last square (out of 20), but I realised today that I don't have enough edging yarn left to finish it off (I've been using it for the Squares Blanket as well). So I had to place another order with Bendigo Woollen Mills! Oh dear! ツ
✔ I've decided on a new zombie afghan project and I have both the wool and the pattern all ready to go. BUT - I've vowed not to start it until I've finished BOTH of the above projects. I promise!

Happy crafting!

[Later]
I found a parcel on my doorstep soon after writing this post - it was my wool! So happy! I can finish off my Rainbow Afghan now!

Consider if you will : Decoden

What is Decoden? It's a craft and/or fashion that comes from Japan. The 'deco' part is short for 'decorated', and the 'den' part is short for 'denwa', meaning 'phone' in Japanese. In a nutshell, it's the Japanese version of bling. Decoden has been popular in Japan for a while, but has only been seen in other countries in the last couple of years. I can see why it's such a popular craft: youth culture in Japan is very much about self-expression and individuality, and when everyone is walking around with the same model of phone or ipod, the urge to personalise it must be irresistible!

When I first heard of decoden a year or so ago, I liked the idea of it, but thought: it's not for me. Part of me loved it and wanted to embrace it, but the realist in me knew that it wouldn't fit into my current lifestyle. As anyone who knows me knows, I'm not that into my mobile phone. Heck, I forget to take it with me half the time! Plus the model I have is a style that doesn't come with a case. And I could picture myself on a crowded tram, tired after a long day, in my conservative work outfit, whipping out something like the above. It would be just too bizarre. So I had no desire to decorate it. And quite frankly, things like this were a bit scary:

The other thing I'd seen decoden used with was nail art. From day to day, I'm lucky if I have nail polish on at all, let alone unchipped and more than just a quick swipe of a single colour. So when I saw things like this, I was gobsmacked!:

Wow! I really admire art like this, but it's just too impractical for me (or for most women, I imagine). The dress code at my work doesn't specifically cover nail art, but I'm sure that if I turned up one day in something similar to the above, I'd be pulled aside for a bit of a chat.
For a long time I was content to sit on the sidelines and consider decoden as one of the Crafts I Don't Do. I admired it from afar. But then .... a few weeks ago, I saw this:

My heart started beating faster. I suddenly realised that I could have decoden that worked for me. I could bling up things that I use every day. Things that I only use at home, if I wanted to keep it private. And it didn't have to be precious things where it had to be perfect, either. I could do a little bling or a lot, as the whim took me. I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to decoden!
To the internet I went, checking my blog reader for tips and most importantly, where to get supplies from! Mana Starre's Blog had a handy list of her top 5 decoden suppliers, which led me to Miss Sapporo on Etsy. I procrastinated for a few days, and I'm glad I did, because when I went back, there was a 20% off everything sale! See, it was meant to be. So I bought up big. Here's my haul:

Look out for decoden soon!

In other news, I've taken up a little crochet again as well. Not so much to really be worth taking photos of, but hopefully soon. I worked a little on my filet crochet horsehead design, and quite a lot on my rainbow afghan. In fact, I'm excited to say that I've started the last section! (It calls for 14 in total.) It's finally time to buy the edging yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills. I think the reason why I've suddenly latched onto this project after all this time is: it's a zombie project. You know the ones, even if you're tired after a hard day at work, you can just sit in front of the TV and churn out a couple of rows without any thought. You don't need to refer to the pattern or try to remember complicated stitches. It's just nice and easy.

In fact, I'm specifically looking for a zombie-style pattern for my next afghan project. Yes, I am.

Tiny Thriller, from Mochi Mochi Land.