Valentine’s Day Tea

I am nowhere near the deft photographer I might like to be, and sometimes I think reading so many food blogs and magazines maintained by people who are not only very talented and creative cooks but also stylists and photographers makes me feel slightly inadequate.  But!  This past Sunday was Valentine’s Day and I took it upon myself to entertain my friends with a refined array of cookies and tea cakes befitting the theme.  Mostly it was an excuse to try out a bunch of things I’ve been thinking about lately.  With my lovely fellow baker Rhyannon I spent all weekend cooking and decorating various sweet delights, and here is the result:

Originally, the tea party was set to take place outside, but the weather conspired against us and we were crammed into the living room instead. I used an array of vintage (and a few faux-vintage) plates, cake stands and trays along with lace doileys handmade by my grandmother and great aunt to get right into the Sunday tea spirit.

Lemon Meringue cupcakes, coconut ice and gluten-free cherry florentines

The lemon meringue cupcakes you see here were my personal favourite. I’ve always wanted to combine the charms of my two favourite deserts – cupcakes and lemon meringue pie – but previous versions I had tasted never quite lived up to my expectations. The cake was too dry, the lemon curd not tart enough or too stingy. These are kind of a cheat’s version – I used cake mix and store-bought lemon curd because there was so much baking to do – but they were truly delicious. Since you have to double bake them (to set the meringue) the key is to use a very moist vanilla cake that won’t be dried out by a little extra time in the over, but is still light and fluffy. Green’s Vanilla Cake Mix does the job beautifully! I might have to try and make these from scratch sometime soon, though; watch this space.

Vegan chocolate chip cookies, vegan sugar cookies and lemon and berry tartlets

These chocolate chip cookies are absolutely to die for, and you would never guess they were vegan. I adapted a Martha Stewart recipe to exclude butter, milk and eggs and make these lovely chewy cookies safe for my vegan friends. The sugar cookies come from another veganised Martha recipe, complete with vegan royal icing, which I’d never managed before!

Lemon and blueberry friands and finger sanwiches

What’s a tea party without finger sandwiches? We had cucumber, tomato (pictured), egg, and salmon-and-cream-cheese. The friands were Rhyannon’s creation and they were absolutely as delicious as they look.

Vegan chocolate cupcakes

These beauties were made from the famously divine recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, with my own simple vegan vanilla buttercream. Mmm.

Pink lamingtons

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day, I certainly did! Although I had a bit of a sugar hangover on Monday morning…

A Heart of Red Velvet

I haven’t posted in such a long time, but I’m hosting a Valentine’s Day tea party on Sunday so hopefully I’ll have some photos to share from that next week. For now, though, I just had to show you this gorgeous love heart cake tutorial from i am baker. It actually looks quite straightforward, and you could use any cake recipe you like as long as it’s fairly firm.  It’s too late for me to add it to my Valentine’s Day menu, but I’ll definitely be trying it out in the future. I’ve got a birthday coming up in April…

Lovely Letterpress

I feel head over heels in love with letterpress printing a couple of years ago. I love the crisp inked lines of print combined with the rich, tactile quality of words and images embossed into beautiful thick paper. I love velvety soft, thick cotton rag paper and torn edges and jewel-bright inks. I love knowing that painstaking labour has gone into producing this delightful art object, whether it’s a framed print or an invitation or even a business card or a recipe card. I’ve even considered making up a fictional wedding so I could buy samples of letterpress wedding invitations from all over the world, just to touch them and look at them and enjoy the beauty of fine printmaking. Imagine my joy when I heard about Bespoke Press, a traditional letterpress printing house based in Brisbane, Australia! Bespoke produce beautiful art prints as well as notelets like these charming invitations:

“Please Join Us” invitations from Bespoke Press

But even more excitingly, they have just launched a special project to give emerging illustrators a chance to have their works commissioned for a limited edition print collection. The resulting illustrations are as ecclectic as they are charming, and can be found showcased on the Bespoke Press website. Here’s my personal favourite:

Vintage Chair Limited Edition Print from Bespoke Press

To launch the limited collection, Bespoke are offering a giveaway on their blog where you can win a full collection of all ten limited edition prints. What’s more, up until the 16th of October you can get 10% off the entire range available through the Bespoke Press store by entering the discunt code “SALE” when you make purchase. The full details of the giveaway can be found here.

More Stitching

Trawling through old CRAFT posts, I discovered even more awesome embroidery, this time by Flickr user nerdgirljulie.

 

Twitter embroidery @michaelianblack by nerdgirljulie

 

How cool is that? It’s really fun to see something as modern, instant and dare I say disposable as Twitter enshrined forever in painstaking hand-embroidery. I’ve thought about embroidering or printing funny tweets before, or otherwise transforming them into art, but these are just precious, they look so much like the real thing! There are more tweets in nerdgirljulie’s Flickr stream, and for all you Buffy fans there’s this as well:

 

Tact as defined by Cordelia Chase by nerdgirljulie

 

Love it!

While I’m on an embroidery kick, check out Embloggery: a blog in which every post is embroidered, freehand, with no planning or sketching ahead of time! It doesn’t appear to be terribly active any more, but the archives are fascinating.

You should also check out Mr X Stitch’s Spam Stitches, cross stitch designs based on real spam emails. I appreciate the idea of making annoying (and sometimes bizarre) junk mail into something fun, creative and beautiful.

Adventures at Wildilocks

It’s been weeks now since I got my completely new hair, but I wanted to wait until I had good photos before I blogged about it. My fabulous new look is thanks to Miss Kat and Kelsey of Wildilocks Melbourne.

At 10am on the big day, my friend Clare and I arrived at Wildilocks armed with mini cupcakes, Orangina, cameras and laptops, ready for our transformation. Before we get started, here’s what my hair looked like before 10am that day:

Pretty ordinary, right? Long, brown, all the same length, nothing very exciting. Anyway, I felt like a change. So armed with food and electronics, we arrived at Wildilocks, met the marvelous Miss Kat and Kelsey and got started.

The first step? Cut it all off! I used to have rather short hair four or five years ago, and I was starting to miss it but I didn’t really know what I wanted, so Miss Kat had at me with her scissors and created a really cute asymmetrical cut. It’s quite short at the back and on the left side, but comes down to chin length on right right. Even while it was still wet, it looked pretty adorable.

(I have to apologise in advance for the quality of the photos – a combination of an old camera and reluctance to use the flash in dim lighting left me with a lot of blurry, yellowish shots, alas!)

The new cut

Step two was stripping back all the colour with a surprisingly gentle bleach. Yes, it made my head itch like crazy, but it didn’t smell which was kind of amazing! Had my head wrapped in gladwrap for a while, then came toner to turn the brassy yellow to a nice cool platinum blonde.

All bleached and toned

Even after the toner, the ends were still a little yellow, so a bit more bleach went on with the colour foils.

Me with a head covered in foil!

After sitting with foil all over my head for a long time, it was finally time to rinse out the dye and the extra bleach. Of course, because the dye was such a strong colour, that had to come out first, and carefully, so it wouldn’t tiny my whole head! Let me tell you, bending over a sink while your hair is being washed upside down is painful! My poor back!

Time for styling!

Still, it was worth it once I saw the colour. So bright, and a great contrast with the blonde! Next it was time for styling and then…

New hair!

I feel like a punk Barbie or My Little Pony crossed with a cupcake. It’s great fun having crazy hair, and I was actually really impressed by how well the blonde/pink combo goes with my skin tone. I was worried I’d just look too all-over pink, but if anything the bright shade actually tones down my sometimes overly rosy complexion. The dye is called Atomic Pink and it’s by a company called Special Effects. It’s a permanent colour, not a rinse like some other bright hair dyes, and a month on from the original treatment the pink is still as bright as ever!

Raspberry ripple

Here’s what Clare calls the “raspberry ripple” effect of the thin layer of blonde laid over my major pink patch. It makes everything look just a little bit softer than having a hard line of pink at the part of my hair, and I kind of love it.

Of course, while I was having all this done, Clare was getting exciting hair too.

Isn’t it cute? As you can tell from the progress photos, Clare’s hair is naturally curly, so it doesn’t look exactly like that last shot any more. But it’s still purple, pink and fantastic.

We were at Wildilocks for the whole day; turned up at 10:00am and didn’t leave until almost 5:00pm! But it was an amazing experience – the ladies of Wildilocks are just awesome and we listened to nerdy music and looked at lolcats all day. Plus, even if it had been the most boring day of my life, the transformation would have been totally worth it. If you’ve never had a drastic change like this kind of cut-and-colour, you can’t imagine what a rush it is to look at yourself in the mirror (for days afterwards!) and realise over and over again that your hair is PINK! I’ve had it for a month and it’s starting to grow out and I still can’t stop grinning every time I look in the mirror. It’s been an excellent confidence boost and a lot of fun, to boot.

Thanks Wildilocks!

Clever Cross-Stitch

 I recently rediscovered the joys of cross-stitch. Not only is it a soothing creative project that can keep my hands occupied while I’m watching TV, listening to an audiobook or sitting on the train, it’s also endlessly adaptable. With a sheet of graph paper and some coloured pencils, anyone can design a simple cross-stitch pattern and then execute it. I’ve been designing my own Star Trek patterns recently, which I’ll share here once I’ve honed the design a little more and finished a couple of samples, but I’ve also been searching online (mostly Etsy) for some cute and interesting patterns by other artists.

Set of Four Retro Phones by Tiny Modernist

Tiny Modernist has a collection of wonderful original cross-stitch patterns for sale, depicting great examples of mid-century modern design. This lovely quartet of phones makes a great art piece, don’t you think? There’s also a fantastic set of modern chairs, as well as some examples of mid-century architecture.

 

Dinosaur by andwasabi

 

andwasabi has a huge range of charming cross stitch patterns and kits available, from adorable animals to sweet sayings, monograms and even food (I love the onigiri!).

 

Soy Sauce by andwasabi

 

The nice thing about buying cross-stitch patterns online is that the joy they provide is endless. Once you’ve finished the project, you have a piece of art to enjoy, and you can reuse the pattern again and again to make gifts for friends and family. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even change the colours for an entirely new look. And who knows, you might be inspired to start designing patterns of your own.

Etsy Find: Maid of Clay

It’s been a while since I posted here. Life got a bit hectic for a while, there. I had a drastic hair change which I’ve been meaning to blog about, but it will have to wait another day or two because today I want to talk about the beautiful porcelain faces made by Maid of Clay on Etsy.  I was directed to her store by a post on Ooh, I’ve Got Something To Show You! (great blog for discovering new artists and designers and generally wonderful things, by the way, especially on Etsy).

 

Faux Bois Hair Pendant

 

About this little beauty, the artist says: “I thought of the myth of Daphne, who turned into a laurel tree while being chased by Apollo. This Daphne just got a really cool hairdo”.

These wonderful faces are delicately formed and painted and have so much character and charm. They’re serene, surreal and sassy, with devil girls alongside human cityscapes and ladies with flowers for eyes.

 

Moon over the Skyline City Girl Pendant

 

Then there’s the Frida Kahlo collection, a tribute to the artist in honour of her birthday on 6 July. There’s a range of Fridas in varied costumes, all with prominent eyebrows and beautiful, delicate features.  I could stare at this artist’s work for hours.  Just lovely.

 

Tres Flores Frida Pendant

70 Years of Ruby Slippers

 
 

Wandering down Bourke Street last night I caught sight of something wonderful in the Myer windows.  Apparently, 2009 marks the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz on film, and in celebration 19 designers have recreated Dorothy’s famous ruby slippers with a modern twist.  The resulting footwear has been making the fashion rounds and will eventually be auctioned off to support theElizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, but right now it’s in Melbourne, gracing the Bourke Street windows of Myer department store.

Here are some of my favourites (bear in mind it was really hard to get decent pictures in this lighting!):

Jimmy Choo

 

Oscar de la Renta

 

Alberta Ferretti

 

Pretty much the only things that all the shoes have in common is that they’re all red, they all incorporate glittering Swarovski crystals in some way, and they’re all fabulous. It’s always such a thrill to see a new take on a classic old look.

I Love Terrariums

Everyone’s talking about terrariums at the moment, and I just love them. They bring the outdoors inside all year round and add a bit of life and style to any room.  I think a little terrarium would be a great addition to an office desk, just as soothing as any desktop zen garden

Beautiful recycled glass pear terrarium from Viva Terra.

They’re a great way to reuse old glassware, too.  Here’s a great tutorial from Cookie on how to make your own trendy terrarium.  You can use anything, from big old mason jars and fancy bell jars to empty coffee jars from your kitchen and discarded vessels of all shapes and sizes.  Susan Beal of West Coast Crafty shows you how to make a teeny tiny terrarium out of an old baby fod jar!

If you prefer your handmade decor to be handmade by…someone else, you can check out Made By Mavis on Etsy.  This moss terrarium No. 131 is one of many charming terrariums for sale in her shop (she also sells desktop contemplation gardens which are just as lovely).  In fact, Etsy is full of these, just search “terrarium” and you’ll find ornaments, jewelry and even kits you can put together yourself.

Smart Shoppers

I’m loving Showpony’s trompe l’oeil purses and totes.  Everyday canvas shopping bags with a witty twist, like the Clarissa vintage shopper.  The site describes these bags as being “all the glamour of a real vintage bag with the practicality of a shopper”, genius indeed. Plus, the organic cotton bags are fair trade certified. What’s not to love?

 

 

Aside from the vintage handbags, there’s a whole range of clever printed totes with eye-tricking designs, like the Corset bag and the Frill bag. A sensible bag with a fashionable sensibility.