I Love Handmade

Charm Bracelet & matching Earrings

Today, we had another 'Crafting Bella' gathering. This time, we had five of us. We started with a very satisfying lunch as made by my hubby. We enjoyed vegetable soup, homemade pizzas, bacon-wrapped scallops and thanks to Cangi, we also had walnut bread pudding. And I made the mini raspberry-topped lemon muffins. Then, we proceeded to make the jewellery. There are two basic techniques used in this project. The simple one is how to properly open and close jump rings. The other is a little bit more complicated - wire wrapping using headpins. But the bellas caught on after a few practices. And after some time, all had completed a set of very beautifully handmade dangling earrings. Everyone rushed to the mirror to try on their earrings after they're done. It was funny as I had done the exact same thing when I worked on them beforehand. Some started the bracelet too, and they brought the remaining materials home to finish. It feels a bit like school today; there's handouts, video presentation, class work, then homework. Ha ha. And viola, here is the finished project.

 

And here is a group picture, showing off our own homemade earrings. Can you feel our sense of accomplishment? LOL

Jewellery making

I made these for someone's birthday. I have started making simple earrings and liking the results. They make nice gifts. I think the hard part is actually coming up with the design and finding the right beads and the right hairpin, clasps or hook. I just went to a bead store in the textile district after work today to buy the materials for the next craft gathering. (We are making jewellery next time.) I had some ideas in mind and actually sketch them on paper and brought it to the store, in hope to find the right materials. But it's quite hard to do in such a short time since the store closes at 6pm, and it was like a quarter to six by the time I got there. Boy, those street cars seem to stop every 30 secs. Quite annoying. The nice lady there helped me find the right stuff...probably because she wants me out of the store, so she could get off work. I will probably need to go back once I finally the designs. I hope the other girls will like the jewellery when we make them in the gathering.

 

Baby Onesie

I made this for my hubby's co-worker. The baby onesie was made using Quickutz baby clothes die set. I haven`t been crafting lately even though I have two more requests. I have been using all my spare time to read the Twilight saga. I just finished the second book, New Moon. And I can't wait to read the rest. The first book is so much better than the movie, although Robert Pattison, the actor who plays Edward Cullen is really good-looking. I know I'm no longer a teen, so not supposed to gush over a 23 year-old actor. But it's hard not to look at Pattison and not dream he's the character, Edward Cullen in the books. If you like suspense and romance, I highly suggest you read it. You'd enjoy it!

I {heart} Mom

April 24 is my mom's birthday. Our family took her to Spring Rolls for her birthday dinner. I was going to make her a cake, but I got sick that week so I bought her the cake I was going to make. My sister brought mom some beautiful flowers, which made Mom happy. I also made mom a birthday card. Here`s mom and I with the card.

 

 The flowers were made from four different punches. The words are cut from the metro fonts from Quickutz. The pretty edge was cut using a Martha Stewart punch. The pattern paper is from the Urban Prairie line.

 

Sweet Peas

I felt like I did so many different things last night after work yesterday. First, my DH and I enjoyed a "Date Night" at Milestone's. They had a special promotion for a buy one, get one free for an appetizer, main or both. Lucky for me that by the time I walked over there, my DH already got us a table. The meal was Yum-O! Then, we got back home and I cleaned the dirty dishes leftover from before and also cleared some stale food items from the fridge. Then, I worked on a baby card for a co-worker. More on that later. At 9pm, it was time to watch TV. It was the 100th episode of Lost. Yah! My DH turned me into a loyal fan. When you watch the show, don't think too much and ask questions. Just follow along, and you’ll enjoy the show. In between the commercials, we watched American Idol. (Bye Matt!) Then, I finished working on the card - I took out the sewing machine to stitch the borders. Then, it was time to go to bed, except I had to stay up late to watch a late night talk show since they were talking about Lost ... soooo regret it as I had to get up super early for an appointment this morning.

Enough ramblings...onto some crafty things. The baby card I made was for the FREE card that my co-worker had earned. Remember the `Buy 9 and Get 1 FREE´ deal I mentioned when I first started selling my handmade cards? Well, she actually earned it. Wow. First, I had no idea how I`d design the card. Then, it all came together having gathered some of my fav papers and embellishments altogether. My absolute favourite part is the green pom-poms as the peas in the pod. So cute!!! Machine stitching is a relatively new technique to me. It`s such a hassle to take out my old heavy-as-a-rock hand-me-down sewing machine (and it even requires a big power adapter). Anyway, I think the pink stitches really take the interesting factor up a notch… well worth the effort. Ya think?

 

Vache Qui Rit Soup

 

Lately, I feel inspired to try to cook something. So, I picked up Laura Calder's new cookbook "French Taste - elegant everyday eating". If you know me, I'm by no means any expert in the kitchen. But I feel somewhat confident with this super easy soup. There's really only about 4 main ingredients. It is a zucchini soup thickened with the commerical cheese. The brand of the cheese has the picture of a laughing cow. ("vache qui rit" means "laughing cow")

Here`s my adapted recipe:

2 small onions

4 zucchinis, chopped

2 cups of chicken stock

Salt and pepper

A pinch of Cumin

4 triangles of the Laughing Cow cheese

All you do is put the onions and zucchinis in the chicken stock. Simmer it for about 15 minutes until the ingredients are softened. Turn off the heat. Add the cheese. Then puree the soup. You could either use an immersion blender or ladle the soup mixture into a blender and puree. I, then, pour the soup through a fine sift for a smooth consistency. You can skip this step, if you prefer.

There it is, here is my vache qui rit soup - sounds fancy, but as you see, it's easy peasy. It taste yummy too. The cheese makes the texture creamy, but doesn't leave a strong taste. Apparently, every French mummy knows how to make this soup for their kids. There are tons of recipes in the book, I hope to share more with you soon. Au Revoir, mon amis!

New Crafting Club!

Yesterday was the first meeting of our new crafting club. Several girlfriends of mine thought it would be great if we would gather together once every so often to enjoy crafting together. We are currently discussing the name of our club. Maybe you could help. In english, we are thinking of calling it `Crafting Bellas`. And in chinese, there are several suggestions. We have yet to gather together to discuss the specifics of the operations. But I`m sure it will all work out. I hosted the first meeting at my home. Originally, we had five girls, but two of them could not make it, so there were three of us. We began with a lovely tea party.

 

  

I made a cold tea drink too. I had this drink in an eatery once and I replicated it. It is a black tea infused with orange juice and mint. I skipped the mint leaves though. It was okay, but wasnt great. The hot tea was japanese green tea. I was happy I got to use the teapot set. I made cucumber tea sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, seafood toast and the bunny cookies. The scones and brownies were store bought. I put some chocolate eggs on the brownies cuz I thought it would look like a nest. We had some shrimp coctail too. Yum. After the tea, we made some greeting cards.

Then, we had dinner. All thanks to Chef Victor!

 
And look at the dessert I made! It is pavlova with strawberry. It is my first attempt. It is merigue nest with whipped cream and strawberries. It actually turned out pretty good (in my opinion, anyway). Actually, I should mentioned that Cangi`s husband is here, but I didn`t get a pic of him. Thanks to Eddy for driving to get here and introduced a great game to Victor.

      

Bird Call

Tonight, I had to make a masculine birthday card for a friend's father's birthday. Masculine cards are always a challenge since I can't use scallop edges, my fav prima flowers, nor lace edges. So, I thought I would make another card using the Cuttlebug emboss folder, Bird Call. I made this card before, but I never posted it. The sentiment was embossed and then sanded to reveal the white core from the Co'ordination paper.

Bookmarks

First of all, WHOO HOO! It's the long-awaited weekend! Yay! After working tweleve days straight, I just can't wait for a bit of rest, especially when the weather this weekend is warmer than it has been for a while now. Plus, it's time to change the clocks, which means the day will be longer. Yay! And before you know it, summer will be here. Super excited.

Craft-wise, I made many many bookmarks with selected Bible verses for church, as requested by Pastor Ginny. She and the visitation team will be giving them to the people they visit.

 

 These are the mass production design, thus, they are simpler. But, I made a few that are more special. See below. The eagle was cut using the digital cutter, the Silhouette. The monkey was cut using a Quickutz die, exclusively made for a Toronto craft store, the Urban Scrapyard.

 

Baby Album

I made this scrapbooking album for a friend's baby shower gift, in addition to some baby clothes. The album was a joy to put together because most of the pieces were cut and labeled. All I had to do was follow the page-by-page instruction booklet and assembled the scrapbooking pages. The scrapbook is from SEI. I put the yellow post-its in place of the pictures. I also added some fun stickers of my mine own, just for fun.