Sweet honey bear

During these last frozen days of winter, it is very easy to catch a cold with fastidious and painful sore throats. Yet, no need to be disparate about this: actually, this could be the pretext to appeal to old handmade remedies, such as the hot milk with honey that, more than being miraculous, it is also delicious!

 

 

And this gave also the pretext to find out a cutie: the amazing sweet honey bear! Yes because the honey is delicious but it is even sweeter in a cute container! To this fetish item, I wanted to dedicate a new collection of mine, formed by a stamp set, some stickers, a pencil case and a felt brooch. Check out all these items in my etsy, I hope you like them!!!

  

The pleasure of tiny things. Emilia's creations

Sometime ago I discovered the wonderful world of the vintage wooden type drawers. They are a really cute embellishments, able to give a cozy and personal touch to my sweet home. And, since I discovered this, I cannot stop myself to buy this kind of drawers when I find them in Parisian flea markets... hopefully, it is not so easy to find them and, since my first one, I was able to find only other two! Indeed, I fear that the walls of my little attic already reached their maximum load capacity!!! Once hanged on the wall, the race starts to find out all kind of tiny things to fulfill all the cases. During my researches for cute miniatures, I discovered Emilia and I fell in love with her amazing creations!

In her wonderful shop on etsy, Emilia shows a lot of cute miniatures in polymer clay. She also proposes to make custom orders. And this is what I asked: it was sufficient to send some pictures of Fifi and after few days I received this tiny marvel! It is unbelievable the care that Emilia puts in details and the perfection of this very very little miniature. In order to understand the size of this miniature, it is sufficient to see the photos here around: I have taken some photos of this miniature with the littlest items I was able to find in my home. Isn't it the sweetest thing ever seen? 

 

 

 

 

And here's the miniature of Fifi installed in its place on my new type drawer: She's now found a special place amongst other little friends!!!

Geometric style

Even if geometry was so boring at school, I find out that it could be very stylish if turned in some cute jewelries to wear. During last times, I have done a series of geometric forms with Fimo, with which I subsequently produced some garland necklaces... I made them in various colors and in two variations of forms, one with the shapes of a triangle and one with the shapes of scalloped (half circles), I hope you like them, check them out on my etsy!!

 

 

Inspired by these geometric forms, I have also made a series of hand carved rubber stamps, in which there are a triangle, circle, star, square and a polygon with the shape of a bow. They can be used to embellish you paper projects, but also on other surfaces. Using them on fabric, for instance, I created a cute pattern with with I've done also a pencil case. I hope you like all these geometric creations, you can find them on my etsy!!!

 

The Spring Festival !!!

The Spring Festival starts today and, as each year, certain districts of Paris are going to be covered of red lanterns, dragons, lions and other items that belongs to the Chinese tradition. The Chinese New Year is henceforth a folkloristic tradition in Paris: for a week, many activities are organised in several corners of the town and will end next sunday with the "lantern festival" and the traditional Dragon Parade (Le Défilé du Dragon). Today it starts the year of the Snake, which takes the place of the Dragon. And to celebrate the new year and bring good luck with me, I have done some special hand carved rubber stamps that you can find on my Etsy: a Snake, a Cat (Meneki-neko) and a Daruma Doll!!

 

According with the Chinese mythology, the origins of this festival comes from the legend of Nian, a monster  that lived in China and was used to come out from its lair once a year to eat crops, livestocks, people and, especially, children. Then, it was discovered that Nian feared loud noises and things colored in red: for that, the red is still now the lucky color of Chinese New Years and traditional parades are accompanied by dances, songs and fireworks!

As far as the New Year brings with it good intentions and wishes for the future, I have made during last days some Daruma dolls. These dolls, which belongs to the Japanese and Buddhist traditions, are talismans of good-luck and perseverance. It is believed that they can help to realize our dreams and projects. I have already presented these dolls one year ago (see my blog here); this year, I have bought one of this doll in a Japanese shop here in Paris (the bigger one in the picture here above), but, as I had a lot of desires to express, I have also produced more of them with my hands in paper-mache.

If you want to make your own Daruma, I would like to share with you these instructions to make the paper-mache (about 1 kg of dough). You need 5 sheets of newspaper, 3 spoons of vinyl glue, 3 spoons of flax seed oil, and 3 spoons of plaster in powder. Tear up the newspaper sheets in little pieces of 2-3 cm with your hands following the sense of the texture. Leave the paper in a pot with some water for a couple of days for macerating. Then, you can boil the water and you can use a hand blender in order to make the dough more homogeneous. Now, your paper is a mush that has to be filtered in order to expel the water in excess (do not squeeze too much the dough). At this stage, add the glue, the oil and the plaster and work the dough out. The dough is now ready to be used to make your Daruma: a tip to do these dolls is to insert a weight on the bottom of the doll in order to stand up ad a roly-poly. I hope you have fun with paper-mache!!!

Happy birthday Fifi!!! Dog party hat template

Today Fifi turns 1 year old! Happy birthday to you, Fifi!!! I had a lot of fun in organizing a very little birthday party with a special birthday cake (some corn beef),  a candle, a gift and... a party hat!!!

 

 

The most difficult thing was to find on-line a template to make a party hat that fits with the small Fifi's coconut... and, for that, I made it to be shared with you! Download it here, print it, and use it freely to have fun for your next dog-party! In my case, I have also embellished it with a circle stamp - that was the eraser of a pencil! Happy birthday again, Fifi!!!