Hello Pink Kitty!

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

("Hello everyone!") *

Hello everyone!

Many of you who don't like in UK may not heard the big news about the pink cat. Yes, pink cat! :D Girl living in UK, who loves pink and has dyed pink hair herself, decided to dye her cat PINK! ^o^

Here's the link to news website.

And here is a picture of "Hello Kitty":)

The girl put photos of her cat on Facebook and then someone "friendly" alarmed RSPCA and they have taken her cat away from her, claiming that this was an act of animal cruelty. I really want to start swearing now because I don't agree with that. What about all the dogs that have to wear stupid outfits and jewellery (and other weird and stupid things) just because their owners want to look fashionable with them? Why no one is taking their animals away from them? Isn't this animal cruelty? It really pisses me off (sorry for language). I'm a great animal lover. I haven't got any animals now because I haven't got flat big enough or much time so I'm waiting for it in the future. And I really hate people like this, who go over the top and make a big thing out of nothing.

Here are some picture I found on Internet and please tell me which animals should be taken away from their owners: the cute pink cat or these ones below:

The dogs on two first pictures are wearing costumes but still they must be really heavy and that IS cruel! The second two are dyed in random colours and they look bad, really bad. I would like to punch that smiling women!

I'm sorry that this post wasn't about nice things but sometimes I have to say what I think, and this news made me really angry. In my opinion this kitty looks cool in pink and food colouring is not dangerous for humans or animals. And apparently kitty is coming back soon to his owner :D

Hope you don't mind me posting about all of this! ^_^'

And I'm interested what do you think about it :)

Thanks for looking!

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

 "See you tomorrow!"

Free Etsy gift & something amazing :)

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

Hello everyone!
First of all I would like to say thank you for all of you who joined my facebook fan page, I really appreciate it! For those who haven't seen it, the link is on the right side of this page ^_^ Check it out as I will be posting news and information about promotions there. And talking about promotions:

To celebrate the opening
 of Sweet & Tiny shop on Etsy,
 I will be adding
a cute FREE GIFT 
to every order!
(Hurry up as this promotion won't last long! ^o^')

There, I said it :D I decided to say thank you to those who will trust me (with my 0% feedback!) and place an order. And I like to give gifts too! :D

And the other thing I would like to share with you is something I saw in front of my flat. I wont say what, I will show it to you:

So what do you think? I just couldn't find words! Maybe I'm simple person but things like that just take my breath away! :D And remind me how lucky I am living where I live now. Maybe one day I will show you my place... ^__^'

Till the next time!

And thank you for looking!

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

 "See you tomorrow!"

Sweet & Tiny Etsy Shop finally open!

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"




Hello everyone!

I'm back after couple days of brake from blogging! I'm really sorry that I didn't post any photos of my creations. In my defence I have to say that I finally opened my first ever Etsy shop! Whoop whoop! I'm really happy and excited! I have listed some items (check pictures below the post) and I will be adding some more soon. Hopefully you'll like it :D I'm waiting for your opinions, maybe i forgot about something or you think that something is not right? I'm open to any constructive comments :D

I'm not sure if prices are OK. I checked similar items on Etsy and I tried to be a little competitive so here you have :D
I also must say that I struggled with taking photos a lot! It was just a battle with different backgrounds and lack of light. Here I can give you who wants to start selling on Etsy, an advice: check your items carefully before taking a photo. I wasted so many nice pictures because I didn't notice tiny bloody hair on my sweets, just later after downloading them onto my PC! Nightmare! So after about 100 photos I finally got the ones I like. I decided on mild backgrounds, not like the kawaii ones with bright colours etc. I wanted this to be a bit more classy, just how I want my products to be :) Although I plan to make some crazy items too in the future! :D

You can also check my page on Facebook, I will post updates about new sales and products. I want to get my own address for Facebook so please add me to pages you like! :D I need at least 30 people! I will be really grateful for your help :D

And here you have some sample photos. Some of them you'll probably recognize from my older posts :D I have upgraded them to cute phone charms :)

So tell me what do you think? :D
See ya next time! And thanks for visiting my blog! ^_^'

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

"See you tomorrow!"

Tuttifrutti Giveaway!

This is a courtesy post for i-fran from Tuttifrutti blog. She's having a 1500 visits celebration (congratulations BTW!! ^__^' ) and making a great giveaway! To participate you need to do following things:

1. Follow her blog

2. Leave your name and email in this entry

3. Make a post about it or add the celebration image to your blog

I want to participate because it's my first giveaway I'm in! ^o^'

And I'm really exited about it! 

Hope you will join!

And again congratulations i-fran!

A little confession & some mangas and animes :)

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

I'm back again. I mean I wasn't away or anything, I was just busy with different things. Well not that busy :D Maybe a bit lazy, maybe a bit depressed or maybe just... I don't know. Sometimes I just have "grey" days, when nothing is working out for me ^_^'

But now I'm back, although without photos of things I made. I did make a lot recently, but I don't want to post them here yet. I want to make a surprise for you (yes you, the people that are following my blog, stalking me or just popping in for a second. If you are reading this - I'm saying big thank you :) .

I think I have finally finished my Etsy shop. Policies are done, I have checked shipping rates at my post office, I know what I will wrap them in (I got really cute boxes ^^) and I finished my banner. I think I might have gone a bit over the top, but oh well - I can change it in a future if I'll get a better idea for it :) It looks exactly the same as the one I've put here (look on the top of the page :) .

I have also created a fan page on Facebook for Etsy shop. I mean, I know that I'm not famous or something, it will be just to promote the shop. This is a hint for all of you having Etsy shops - create a fan page on FB :) I might also use it as a fan page for this blog. I'm not sure yet. I don't want many of my FB friends to know about my blog or Etsy. I'm really shy and sensitive for any nasty comments -____-'

But what I really wanted to share with you (except of that rubbish at the beginning :P ) is anime! :D Yeah, I've spend some time reading other people blogs and I started to think about anime and mangas again :) So I thought that I could show you which mangas and anime I really like (or watched in the past and enjoy them :) No, it's not meant to be like: "Hey look at me!" Naah, it's a blog so I'm sharing :)

First Sailor Moon. It wast THE first anime I watched. It was broad casted in my country and straight away I fell in love with japan, anime, mangas and everything asian :) I remember coming back from school and watching episodes, every day. And even if they were so similar to each other, I never got bored of them! :D And I must say that I've never read Sailor Moon manga. I think that anime is much more beautiful (saying that i think that I might get punched by someone! :P ).

 And does anyone remember this guy! Gigi la Trottola! Well at least that's how I know him! :D THE funniest anime after Dragon Ball and Yattaman! (I will mention them later :P) I just loved his faces and character! And he was the sweetest boy ever in any anime series! :D 

Yattaman was also cool :) I loved that little piggies! :D

And off course Dragon Ball!

I think that my favourite series were the first ones. And they were the funniest! Later everything just got to serious :)

And here is I think my THE most favourite title:
Oh! My Goddess!
(Aa! Megami-sama)

This series have totally influence my drawing style. I am a big fan of Kosuke Fujishima's style. It's just amazing. The hair, clothes, the movement of fabrics, the lines, colours, faces and emotions, storyline...... Oh too many things to mention here! If you haven't seen this series, you just have to at least see one episode or check manga. This is just a classic in my humble opinion ^__^'

 

And I still can't decide which character is my favourite! They are all amazing and so individual that it's just too hard to decide! :D

And so I think I owe all of you a big apologies for a massive post :D and say thank you for those of you who actually read thins till the end and are reading these words now ^_^'

I will try to post more often in the future, I promise. It might not be about deco sweets every time, as I'm back to work full time now, but I will try it to be equally interesting for you.

And one more time - big thank you for following me. I didn't expect to have so many followers! :D Yes, this number 12 is a lot for me! :D

Till the next time!

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

 "See you tomorrow!

First product preview!

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

This will be quick post because I am really tired lately and I need more sleep than I'm getting now -__-' For last two days I think I slept less than 10 hours. I know, it's my fault, I chose to sit in front of my computer for so long. But that's how i am. I get involved into things totally :) And so I have finished DECO Forum General rules. I also wrote all Policies on Etsy, I just need to check the shipping prices at the Post Office to be shure that my parcels will be posted correctly. I just need to design a banner and I haven't got any ideas what will it look like...

Also on my lunch brake, I took some quick pictures of couple of my mobile charms I will sell on Etsy. They all are in different colours. here is a preview picture of one of them:

I came up with this background design randomly and I must say that I like it a lot :)
I'm really interested what do you think and if I should change anything?
Now I have to go to sleep and have a good rest -__-' I need it.

Edited:
I also would like to mention that there is a new website about Deco:
http://www.https//sites.google.com/site/allaboutdeco/
Join for free ! :)

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

"See you tomorrow!"

Cupcake phone charm and more

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

It was a next day working on the forum and finishing the rest of phone charms for Etsy. Some of you might find it weird, but I really cant write about myself o_O I tried to write a bio and welcome page but I just gave up. It just looked funny. I have to do it next week and add all the policies which are just horrible, as I don't want to charge too much and Royal Mail website gives me different prices every time.

The other thing I want to say is the shop owner - let's call her Mrs L. :D, loved my phone charms and suggested to make some fridge magnets and key charms as well. I just need to price them and get back to her in a weeks time. I'm so happy! ^__^'

I also gave two charms to my friends in exchange of feedback about them. I want to know if they will be durable enough to survive in someones bag :D So the only pictures today will be one of those charms. It is similar to the ones I will sell on my Etsy :)

I'm sorry for dark pictures, but I haven't finished this one till late evening :( As you can see
i will add some blink to my "collection". This one is a economical version, the proper cupcakes will have Preciosa crystals added on (they are very similar quality as Swarovski crystals). The pearls I use are good quality Czech glass pearls and the findings are silver plated, so even if it's just a phone charm, it's still really good quality :) I think that customers who like cute accessories like blink too ^___^ And I like to make blink things so everyone will be happy :D

As for a Forum, I have added some new things so if you are interested check the link on the right or at the bottom. And I'm very pleased that we have more people joining in but no one is posting anything! Come on, don't be shy and introduce yourself! :D  

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

 "See you tomorrow!"

Changes in forum

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

It's a next day I have been working on the forum and I have made some changes. First of all I have changed the name, from Mini Sweets to DECO Forum. I think it's a better name as it will appeal to more people, not just clay lovers ^_^
I changed the layout of the forum and added deco den section and separated deco sweets. I also created web buttons for it and added it to my blog (the one on the right and at the bottom). They are just quick ones but it all can be changed at any time. If you would like to add it to your website or blog here are the links:

Long banner:
<div style="text-align: center; font-size: 12px;">
<a href="http://decoforum.findforum.net/index.htm" target="_blank" onmouseover="window.status='Over 2500 unique products from Japan -- click now!'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" title="Over 2500 unique products from Japan -- click now!">
<img src="http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad89/rikku25/decoforumbannerlong.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a>
</div>

And the small one:
<a href="http://decoforum.findforum.net/index.htm" target="_blank"><img src="http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad89/rikku25/decoforumbannershort.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a>

I'm sorry but I don't know how to put it here in a different way :P If you would like it to be in different color to mach your blog just let me know :)
I really hope that this forum will start living it's own life. It's like my little baby :D Grow baby grow! ^______^'

I also had a chat with the owner of the cafe I work at and she liked all the phone charms I made! Whoop whoop! She said that maybe she could sell some in the cafe and tomorrow I'm going to speak to owner of the shop next door, maybe she'll like them too :)
Hopefully I will finish making all the stock for the Etsy too and start making a logo and banner. It's my last day of holidays so I have to make the most of it! :D

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

That means "See you tomorrow!"

Mini Sweets Forum

This will be a quick post. I didn't want to add it to my previous one because it's just a different topic :)

I have created a free forum about clay sweets, kawaii things and all the Japanese cool stuff. The reason for that was I just couldn't find any website or forum where I could ask a question about making deco sweets etc. , show my work and ask for help and advice. There is of course Deco Den Journal but there is no clear classification of topics or easy search engine (just like on normal forum). Therefore I decided to create one. I tried to advertise it on Facebook, Live Journal  etc. but no response :( I still have access to this forum but I'm too shy and without any experience with managing it. I wish I could have someone trusted I could run it with -___-'

Here is a picture showing you how it looks like now:

and here is the link to it.

Anyone interested please visit it and make it alive finally! ^_____^'

Cookie phone charms



みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

("Hello everyone!")

I have been quite busy last couple of days working on accessories I would like to start selling. As I mentioned in my last post, I have made cake slices, sweet rolls (like rolly poly, I think that's the name of it :P ) and mini cupcakes. They are finished now, I just have to make some blink blink decorations and attach them to mobile straps :)
Here are some pictures of cookies I made a week ago.

I decided to make mobile charms from them as they are too big for other types of jewellery.
 I think they look quite good :D I won't show you the rest of them until I put them on sale in my Etsy shop. Yes, I do have my Etsy shop, it's just pretty empty now and needs a lot of decoration ^_^'

I still need to work on the quality of my photos as they are the first thing that customers see visiting online shops. I have think about lots of things, like the photos background, packaging etc. I also want to ask at the owner of the shop that is next to my work, if they would like to sell some things, even just to see if it will sell or not. So wish me luck! ^___^' 

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

"See you tomorrow!"  

Fimo strawberry slices

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

Finally I got a new camera! :) It's my early birthday gift from my super extra cool
boyfriend ^_^'', and now I can take proper pictures! And you can see all the little mistakes I made, which you couldn't see on my old pictures! Haha! :D
Now I'm really happy because I can start thinking of selling my things and I wont have to worry about the quality of my photos.
But anyway, back to subject.
I've started making some new things today, like sugar rolls and cake slices :) I haven't finish them yet, because I had to go to dentist in the middle of a day and I got anaesthetic injections, which numbed half of my face -___-' so I just couldn't be bothered to finished anything. I will try tomorrow and hopefully the weather will better than today and I will be able to take some nice bright pictures :)

So today I would like to show you my strawberry slices, which I made earlier this week according to a tutorial link,  posted by Tiff on her blog. Those slices were meant to be made with air dry clay, but because I haven't got any air dry clay (and  because if someone tells me not to try something, I will definitely try it :D ), I decided to make them with polymer clay. So it's a kind of mixed type tutorial, I think :P

First I made tiny strawberries, about less than 1cm big.

They were a bit of pain, as it was quite hard to paint them inside, but I managed :) I made them exactly like it is said on that blog, but instead I used Fimo translucent clay. I shaped it first and painted with acrylic paint, dried it for a while and then sliced it before baking it. And yes, I baked clay with acrylic paint on it :) I'm naughty :D But actually nothing happened. No bubbles or cracks. It got darker where the seeds are but that's all. I only forgot about one thing. I haven't varnish them and the silicone I've put them into, has changed its color to a slight pink O_o' Well, now I know to varnish anything that is painted with acrylics before putting it into a silicone.

Next I decided to make bigger slices with a bit different method. I thought that you can buy polymer clay canes which you slice and you don't have to bake. I was wondering how they do it? Is it because they are so thin or they bake them for a shorter time? I decided to try out the second way. I made a long cane from translucent Fimo clay and baked it for about 15 min. Now I can tell you that I could bake it for 10 or even less minutes. I don't know how would it work with normal clay, I will try it in the future :)

After cooling it down I painted it with acrylic paint and varnished it to give it nice glaze. (This tool above is just a knitting needle which is really good for making holes in strawberries :)

After it dried, I sliced it and painted inside also with acrylic paint, just diluted with water. I must say that baked translucent clay just "soaks" the paint in! :D

This is picture taken with new camera. You can even see little cracks on the slices, because I didn't knead clay properly :D After painting them inside I varnished them with satin glaze, to seal the paint inside. Below you have finished small slices and some of the large ones just to compare the sizes.

As you can see I am risky person and I like to try things no one ever tried before :) Well maybe someone has put acrylic paint and clay together in the oven, but I haven't heard about it and everyone is saying that it won't work - well it did. And my oven is fine, strawberries look OK and I'm happy :)

Just to add something: if you would like to try it, then it will be only on your responsibility :P I'm not paying for any damage you'll make tho! :D Nah I'm just kidding :) But seriously, this apparently is not a proper way of making polymer clay slices, but I made it this way and it worked. Just to prove that it is possible :D A bit time consuming,but if you like to torture yourself painting every slice separately and you haven't got air dry clay, then this is a way for you :)  

また、明日！

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

 "See you tomorrow!"

Usefull things

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

("Hello everyone!") *

It's Sunday today so I decided to have a quiet, peaceful and spiritual day :) I think I need to think about everything and organize myself physically and mentally ^_^ Therefore I haven't got anything to show you today, maybe tomorrow. Yeah definitely tomorrow :D

Instead I would like to share with you some of my ideas on what to use in your craft projects. I must say that I haven't use all the things I showed you below, but I will in the future ( I mean i bought them so I want to use them right? :) . Some of you probably found these ideas before, but I'm sure that there still are "lost crafty souls" :) Please don't expect some mega discoveries here, they are more my little tips, which you might find useful like I did. 

First I'd like to tell you about small plastic wine glasses I found in UK party store "Peaks". I wanted to buy some glasses but the only ones I found on Internet were glass ones and they were quite expensive. I found them randomly on the cake toppers section and they were only 40p each! I think it's around 60 cents  in USD :P I know that these are not the smallest ones, but they could make great (bigger) phone or bag charm.

Next thing I found were tiny moulds. Most of you may have seen them on craft or deco websites. The reason I'm telling you about it is that you can buy them much, much cheaper if you search for them on eBay as "a 3D nail art moulds" I think I bought one for around 2.5 dollars each :) Almost three times cheaper that on the other websites! :D

This is a thing that every one of us is using. Fake sugar. I know you can find it everywhere. But what about different colours? And price? :) On Altered Element UK website you can buy different colours for just a 1.95£ (plus postage off course! :) per 40g pot which is really a lot!

I haven't found any other websites selling this,but maybe they do in Germany, looking at the brand of this sugar (http://www.efco.de/) .

This one will be short as I assume most of you is probably familiar with it. You don't need to use only toothbrush for making a texture on your biscuits or cookies. You can also use  a cleaning brush, which have much stronger bristles than even a toothbrush for smokers :) (I remember how embarrass I was buying this toothbrush in a pharmacy because I don't smoke! :D ) You can also use the tougher side of a clean washing up sponge. I haven't tried this yet but I saw it on Japanese blog and the results were amazing (she was using air dry clay).

For any of you that cant be bothered making clay flowers I have this: flowers for cake decorating. You can probably buy them in any sugar craft shop or Internet. Mine are about 1cm wide so they are perfect for cupcakes or not so tiny projects. They come on the thin wire and you can just cut them to the desired lenght :) They also might look quite good on deco  projects I think. Something a bit different than plastic flowers :D

The last thing I want to show you are metallic markers and contour lining paint for painting on glass. I'm planning to make little individual chocolates and I didn't know how to create gold transfers on the chocolate decorations. I found something like this on the Japanese blogs and I was wondering how they've created this effect. You can buy normal chocolate transfer sheets quite cheap but the patterns are not small enough for clay projects, I think. So in the future I will just bake little piece of chocolate clay and then just paint a pattern with colour I want and then varnish it :) Sound simple, we'll see how it work. 

The contour pastel I think would make quite nice tiny 3D dots, like gold chocolate decorations or patterns, as the 3D paints tips are not fine enough for me. But as I said, it's an idea so far but worth of trying :)

Wow this was a long post, didn't plan to make it so long, hope it wasn't boring :P

I would like to hear from any of you who would like to try these things out and see if they work for you too. Maybe you have other ideas I haven't think  of? Someone told me that I'm telling you my little secrets but I think that we all should stick together in the sweets making world :D So if I know some tricks that would make your life easier, why not sharing it? ^_^'

また、明日

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

"See you tomorrow!"

More cookies

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

"Hello everyone!"

I don't really know what to say today. I'm still a bit confused and mentally lost after yesterday :( I have so many thoughts in my head. On the one hand I really want to start selling my things, but on the other hand I don't think I can do it :( I totally lost my confidence after checking Etsy and eBay. There are so many people selling much better quality products! But I know that I have to do it otherwise I will be forced to make less sweets and that would just break my heart -___-''

But even being so down today, I still managed to create something :) I finished these cookies I made earlier this week and soon I will make phone charms with them, or something else if I'll figure out what :P

These are the first ones I made so they are not perfect :P

These look a bit better but I forgot to make little leaves for roses :P

I think these are my favourite ones :) They look a bit more classy but I think they should have something more on them, like a bit of glitter?

I'm looking forward to hear what do you think about them. Costructive opinions are much welcome! ^_^''

また、明日

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

"See you tomorrow!"

First cupcakes

みなさん、こんにちは！

Minasan, kon'nichiwa!

("Hello everyone!")

I've been quite busy today and I didn't have time to make anything new :( I had a long conversation with someone very important and I've been told that I have to cut my spending. Basically I'm trying to save for my dream home :) (and I would LOVE to have a special little room for my crafts too ^_^'' ) Therefore I will have to start control my shopping habits, especially when buying my craft supplies :( But that seriously made me think about selling some of the things I've made. I mean maybe not now, because I know that I have to practice, but maybe in close future? I just want to have some funds to still be able to make sweets... Oh well, we'll see. For now it's just a thought in my little head -__-''

But anyway. Here are the pictures I promised yesterday. I made these big cupcakes from Fimo Air Dry Clay. I thought it will be white but it just looked like a normal gray paper clay. I didn't know what to do with it. I have already opened it so i decided to try to put them into mini cupcake cases. I don't think they look good (I'm still on my quest to find a way to make perfect cupcake in cases! :D ). I didn't want to waste them so I just practised icing on them. I also made this little stand from a cheap wire and sprayed it with craft paint :D

I'm really sorry for quality of the photos. I took them this evening :(

And these cupcakes below are tiny, about 3cm high. I was going to wrap them into cases cut from actual real cases but it didn't work :( That's why they are plain without the pattern on the bottom.

And the chocolate ones:

Hope you enjoyed it :)

また、明日

Mata ashita! (^_^)'

"See you tomorrow!"