Welcoming my 500th blog follower

Thanks so much for following my blog! This is an amazing journey for me, and being able to share my passion through here is something I still look forward to everytime.

Looking forward to my next free giveaway? I'm going to start working on it soon...

Meanwhile, have a great weekend and here's recent photo!

New purple vintage dollhouse miniature flowers - Hydrangeas.

Vintage Woodwork - French Chic Trays

I've been hard at work these few days working on these vintage woodwork french chic trays.

Making another batch of trays for the collaboration project with Jacqueline has been a sweet, fun and inspirational journey!

I had the chance to try new sweet colours and painting styles too.

Here are 2 colours that I'm pretty excited about. Not just because it's another ordinary pink or blue, but there are some special touch ups I did to it. Notice that shimmery sheen? Maybe it's not so obvious in this picture, but tilt it towards the light and it will be pretty obvious :)

Trays are sent off to Jacqueline...

Meanwhile, if you're interested in a colour of your choice, just let me know. :)

Clay Jewelry - French Chic Gerbera Daisy Necklace

Ever heard of the "wear a plant" necklace concept? I saw this a few weeks ago. It's actually a planter necklace concept, and you can plant your desired herb or plant in the acrylic planter and wear it on your neck. I was fascinated with the concept which prompted me with this original idea. Last week, I finished making the cupcake planter dollhouse miniatures. An idea came to my mind and I wondered what if I made it into a clay jewelry necklace?

I started to do some research and after finding a few simple elements, I made my first wear a french chic gerbera daisy necklace.

Hope you like it!

Dollhouse Miniature - French Chic Ivy Plant

I saw this real french chic planter in a magazine. I don't really know what's the proper term for it, but it's like a cupcake base wall hanging planter. It was the cupcake base that caught my eye. I found it elegant, original and just so cute. I couldn't resist and thus I had to make it into adollhouse miniature french chic ivy plant.

It was really fun to make. Seeing it come to life is even more exciting.

Making dollhouse miniature plant is still a new area for me. Every plant turns out a little different from the previous.

I hope you like this!

2.4cm tall and 1.6cm wide

Another view

A shot with my hand (took it in my balcony)

I want to win this...

I gotta be honest with you man...(stealing the first line from Dennis Quaid latest hidden camera prank at Ellen Degeneres Show) I don't really have a thing for clothes that much.

But there is this one - a style that I like very much. Simple and chic. Plus it is in a colour that I absolutely love. Mustard Yellow. A few years ago, I discovered mustard yellow and I fell in love with it.

Isn't this gorgeous?

I would wear it just like that - if I win it. I want to win it so bad.

French Larkspur, together with Jeanne Oliver Designs is giving away this beautiful dress shirt. Hop on over to here to see how you can win this too.

By the way, I hope you do enjoy that prank. It cracks me up everytime I see it.

Food Jewelry - New Macaron Earrings

Last week, I decided to make some more food jewelry using macarons with the shades of dusty pink I've earlier discovered while making the miniature pink rainbow cake.

Here are my dusty pink series of macaron earrings. I'm quite sure at some point later, I'll be adding new shades of pink once I discover them. One can't have too many shades of pink.

The 2 lightest shades has specks of pink and purple in it. Like some real macarons do!

Working on a new plant right now...I'm quite excited and hope to show you photos real soon!

Just Because

I like taking photographs of things, like flowers for example.

I asked the florist if she had any pink roses. She told me it was all sold. I was a little disappointed. She opened her fridge and took out all her roses. There were yellow, bright orange and red roses. I was going to get the yellow one if there was really no pink roses. Out of the whole stack, I spotted 2 bright ones. I asked her what colour are those. She told me fuchsia.

Ok.

I never had a fuchia rose before, so I said I'll take it :)

It's beautiful.

Meanwhile, do drop over to my sweet friend Jacqueline's blog - check out our collaboration project. This has been really fun, and I enjoyed exchanging ideas with Jacqueline. I'm really looking forward to see what Jacqueline comes up with the rustic french tray.

In another week or more to come, I'll show you what another sweet friend does with the rustic french tray.

2 friends, 2 trays, 2 totally different usage. :)

I'm listening to J-French Toast. It's by sheer coincidence that this song I really like is linked to a food name...I don't go searching for songs by food names :P

Her voice reminds me of Aya (Lysa Aya Trenier).

It's a catchy, happy tune.

Have a Happy Weekend!

Cake Chef Competition on TV Champion

As promised earlier, this is a not to be missed Cake Chef Competition on TV Champion. I found this really exciting and fun to watch, and I'm so glad a few of you who have enjoyed watching the dollhouse miniatures competition video have left me comments to let me know about it. Thank you! I have much confidence to introduce you the REAL cake chef competition and I find this extremely exciting and entertaining. You may understand why after you watched it yourself.

But first, please do not watch this if you're feeling hungry. All I could do after watching 45 minutes of cakes and pastries was thinking of that fluffy strawberry cake in the first segment. Oh, and that white chocolate dessert that won Round 2. I'm not a fan of white chocolate, but the contestant grated some lemon peel into it to bring down the sweetness of white chocolate, so I would like to try how it taste like if given a chance. Here is the photo.

Again, you might want to see if it's worth 45 minutes of your time before watching this. So here is the summary:

Round 1:

6 contestants are to make triangle slices of strawberry cake out of round sponge cakes. At the start of the competition, you see them rushing to get a sponge cake and hurrying back to their tables to start work. Each have to slice the sponge cake into half, apply whip cream, cut strawberries, put it in the middle of the cake, apply more cream, place the other halved spongecake on the top. Apply cream all over, cut it evenly into 8 pieces followed by more decorations. After the cake is done, they need to place these slices neatly on a long table.

This is the interesting part. The goal is to fill up the long table with as many "sell-able" cake slices as possible. The judge will examine each cake slice. Cake slices which are messy looking and badly sliced are considered "not sell able", therefore they will not be counted. Speed is not the main criteria in this competition segment.

One of the chef interviewed revealed that his shop does not sell such triangle cake slices. At one point, you also see the female host shouting to a chef, as he missed out a strawberry on the top of the cake.

Round 2:

4 contestants have to use chocolate as the main ingredient to come up with an original chocolate cake design. 1 of the contestant used pumpkin in his cake. 3 contestants used dark/milk chocolate in their cake, except for 1 who used white chocolate.

A group comprising 30 women who love dessert will be the judges of this segment. They will vote for their favourite cake.

Final Round:

2 contestants have to create an original christmas cake. Cake size must be 30cm wide and 40cm tall.

I was amazed by the techniques and their decoration skills, and I hope you all will enjoy this clip! Let me know!

Note: There will be a 30 seconds commercial before the clip starts. After the commercial ends and you find that the clip loads very slowly, you may want to let the clip run for 1-2 seconds before pausing it. Let the whole clip load before you play it :)

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/DP1Rv4r43tw/

Dollhouse Miniature Cake - Pink Rainbow Cake

Last week, I was looking around for a new cake inspiration for dollhouse miniatures. I might have been looking at pink cakes when I found the most amazing pink rainbow cake in shades of pink tones. Not just any pink tones, but the most lovely shades of blushing pink. I went kind of crazy and spent some time studying the layers in detail. Did she use food colourings, did she use fruit puree, how did she get those lovely muted pink? Those were the kind of things I was thinking about even though I don't bake.

And of course, I had to come up with a dollhouse miniature version of the pink rainbow cake. Here's mine.

Measuring 2.6cm tall by 2.6cm wide

I use pink cream in between the cake layers.

Dollhouse Miniatures Competition on TV Champion

I found this video on the internet and thought you all might enjoy it. I'm not sure how many of you have watched this, but it's a Japanese dollhouse miniature competition.

The video clip takes about 45 mins long, but it is interesting and I find this really rare.

I found another one on a real cake competition, which I'm sure my friends who bake in real life would like it. And maybe the rest would find it very enjoyable too. I loved it. So perhaps that will be the next video!

Maybe you don't have 45 minutes to spare, and so here is a summary which you can then decide if you want to spend 45 mins watching this :)

Also it might come in handy for my English speaking friends who want to know what's going on.

Summary:

The famous Japanese show "TV Champion" hosted a competition for dollhouse miniaturists. There were 4 contestants.

Round 1: Each participant was to pick a shop along one of the designated streets and make a dollhouse miniature version out of the shop.

Shops picked include a Japanese Furniture Shop, Flower Shop, Men Apparel Shop and Italian Restaurant.

The top 3 moved into Final Round.

Final Round: Each participant was to create a miniature scene from a Fairy Tale/Animation/Comic book.

Scenes made include Japanese comic "Tomorrow's Joe", Three Little Pigs and Alice in Wonderland.

In case you were wondering what happened in the end, the winner was invited to the TV station, but the person ended up sick so he couldn't make it. He said his face was swollen 3 times the original size that he just could not appear on TV. I thought it was quite funny they made a cardboard version of the winner and put it on the throne.

Note: There is a 11 second commercial in the front before the actual video clip starts.

Japanese Silicone Cream – What resellers and manufacturers don’t tell you about

This blog article is about the packaging problem with a particular brand of Japanese Silicone Cream.

Let me start off by saying the cream itself is a fine product. However, from my experience, the packaging seems to cause the cream to dry out if you do not transfer it into better air tight containers.

This really baffles me. Apply it in the context of a skin care or food product. When you buy a skin care product, food sauce, jam or peanut butter off the shelf, you believe and trust that the product would be best kept in the same container that you bought it in. Nobody thinks about transferring the product into another container for storage. But this is what actually happens with the Japanese Silicone Cream. When it dries out, you can't use it anymore.

In another occasion, I noticed that even a brand new cream with the lid still sealed had the same issue. The silicone cream in the jar with an unbroken seal has dried out.

In my opinion, there could possibly be something wrong with the design of the lid. I hope the manufacturer is aware of it and improves on the quality of the container.

For those of you who are using this product and do face the same issue, I’d love to hear from you how you store this. Also for some who decides to purchase this cream, it may be best to have back up empty tight lit containers to store it.

Hope that helps!

Bits and pieces of dried Japanese silicone cream that I tear out. Feels elastic and slightly rubbery.

My finger flipping the whole chunk of dried Japanese silicone cream

Photo of the day

The photo of the day that I'm posting is not related to any dollhouse miniatures today. But I took this photo a couple of days ago, in the late evening. It was the day I came back from my camera "cleansing" session. I found a fungus/mold growing in my beautiful lens, and to be honest, I did not dare to clean it out on my own because I fear scratching the lens. Also, I did not know if the fungus was on the surface or inside the lens. Thankfully it's only on the surface and I had it cleaned free of charge. :) Apparently, it's quite a common issue in where I live, due to high humidity here.

I wanted to test out my cleaned camera again that day and took this shot in the back of my balcony.

A wild plant growing...

Off to get ready for an exciting day :)

Fill In The Blanks Friday - 8 July 2011

1. My plans this summer include nothing special. I live in a country with summer all year round so it doesn't feel special :P .

2. The best summer I ever had was - I can't recall any best summer unfortunately. June holidays as a kid was fun since we were out of school and had time to relax, play and be kids .

3. Summer is lots of ice water, turning on the fan 24/7, preferably eating in air-conditioned places, popsicles, iced pineapples, jellies, anything cold .

4. My favorite summer food is iced pineapple. it's the latest thing I discovered quite a while ago. I would ice the pineapple during afternoon and eat it as dessert after dinner .

5. The best way to quench a summer thirst is with iced water or iced lemon tea .

6. My summer uniform consists of shorts and t-shirts .

7. The best thing about summer is having a lot of sunshine; laundry dry super quickly and they smell great .

Hope your summer is off to a great start!

Dollhouse Food - Chocolate Dome Desserts

I made these dollhouse food a while ago, but haven't had the right opportunity to show them until today. I have taken some photos couple of weeks ago, but they were not up to my expectations.

I took these again after I had my camera cleaned out. Now I realized that cleaning makes a difference. I love these new photos and I hope you will like them too!

Chocolate dome desserts - I remember I had a chocolate mousse dessert a little while ago, and it was the most delicious thing I've had, even though generally, I'm just not a chocolate fan. However, chocolate goes really well with raspberry, and the chocolate wasn't very sweet. It was just the right combination!

With the taste of chocolate and raspberry in my mind, I created these in dollhouse miniature scale.

Cross Stitch - I want these...

Though I have a whole pile of cross stitch charts and kits sitting there waiting for me to complete them, I can't help but drool over these new things I found on the internet. I'm always looking around for new designs, and see what's new and cute out in the market. I'll be dreaming about these ones by Madame La Fee tonight. I want them! They are just too cute!!!

Passion Fraise

Passion Chocolat

Histoire de Pommes

Jour de Marche

All Photos from Casa Cenina

Build Your Own App Using Ovi App Wizard

Did anyone try building your own App using that Ovi App Wizard thingy that's on the left hand side scroll bar of my blog just below my facebook badge?

I thought it was pretty cool and fun. Basically you can build an App which can be downloaded as a mobile phone application. No programming skills needed. I just made an App based on my own blog. It's so easy. Just enter the url of the site of what you would like to make an App for, pick a background, choice of colours, that's it!

This is what it looks like when you are building it. Nothing complicated!

You can click on one of the entries to see what it looks like!

I'll be interested to see what happens after mine gets through! Currently, it tells me that mine is in the review queue.

Dollhouse Miniature Food - Macaron Pops

After making dollhouse miniatures cake pops, another idea came into my mind and I envisioned macaron pops. Although this is not a new concept in the real baking world (it's funny how I have to say the "real baking world", which means the real edible ones), but I do have to think about how I want to represent these macaron pops in dollhouse miniatures world. :D

Playing around with dollhouse miniature food colours is another enjoyment for me. For me, finding colours that goes well in the dollhouse miniature world probably feels like a real baking chef who has found a new recipe. :)

Different from pink, but this has a very happy summer feel, what do you think?

Macaron pop display measures about 2.8cm tall and 1.5cm wide

Another view

With my hand in this shot

Can't run away from Pink

Just a random photo I took a while ago...

Pink Macaron Pops

It didn't occur to me until I took this photo, that what it struck me was how simple it is. I like its simplicity.

I hope it brightens your day! :)