Sunday 29 May 2011

Mimi Paintings


Hello everyone!
I love everything that is cute and off course everything Japanese and I'd like to show you something mega cute I bought recently. Some of you might know this lovely lady Mimi and her blog Mimi Paint. I've been a fan of her work for long time and finally I had an opportunity to buy her paintings! :D
Mimi creates lovely watercolour and Kanji paintings, filled with cuteness of little bunnies, cats and other small animals. I was lucky enough to purchase one painting with bunny and a set of three small paintings. I also received this lovely note from her :)


I have to say that her artwork looks just amazing! I've seen a  lot more of her paintings on her blog and I the photos don't show how beautiful they are in reality :) I received the letter with paintings when I was at work and I couldn't stop jumping around and showing her paintings to everyone! :D And funny things is that my friend from work who is Chinese, said that these Kanji writings are in Chinese... Hmm maybe they are the same as Japanese ones? I don't know because I don't know Japanese nor Chinese language :D

Anyway, if you love cute and Japanese pictures check Mimi's blog and her eBay and Etsy shop! I promise you won't be disappointed!

BTW now I have to find pretty photo frames for my cute paintings! ^_^'

Thank you again Mimi! :D

Friday 27 May 2011

Sweet treat plates selection

Hello my dear friends!

I've said before that I've taken more photos of sweet products I made for the market and today I'd like to show you sweet treat plates selection :) I wanted to make plates like this for long time but I was a bit worried that they won't have any practical purpose for potential customers, but desire to create them was so strong that I just couldn't resist and here you can see the final products!
This first sweet tray was made totally by luck. I had it for a long time and I couldn't find any idea for it. The ice creams at first were meant to be bag charms but I made them too big (for my standards..) and just on the last day before the market I decided to glue them on this tray. It still was to boring for me so I added this mega cute sticky lace around it and guess what? I glued ice creams wrong way around! I was left with the lace joint at the front and I had to figure out how to cover it and that's how this cute little cookie found its way onto this tray! :)

I also made some ice cream wafers with trimmings and sweet wafer "pipes" filled with whipped cream. I remember having them when I was a kid back in Poland :D They were longer that the ones I made and they didn't have this chocolate drizzle :)

Here is one of my favourite ones although I struggled with composition for this deco plate... My boyfriend told me that it's a bit too much on it but I really wanted to add both millefeuille and the filo pastry petite four (I didn't know how to name it... :)
Anyway I like it and I'm really pleased with my new pastry sheets. They were made individually and then painted and glued together to imitate the real pastry sheets.
I have to say that I haven't heard about charlotte cake before until I saw the fake one somewhere on Japanese blog and then the beautiful one on the Dolce Mente's blog. After that I had an idea stuck in my head to make one and now that I had plenty of fruit pieces made I could finally put it together in cute little charlotte cake :)
I did have a few problems with it, mainly with sponge fingers. I didn't measure them properly and I was left with a gap and no sponge fingers left, so I had to remake them and measure everything properly :)

The last dessert was actually inspired by my mom's sweet treat. She used to make this layered cake with sponge on the bottom, funny mixture of cream and jelly in the middle (her own idea :D ) and simple strawberry jelly on top. I just added strawberry slices and sweet deco on top :)
Now, I could tell you the secret of what is the top jelly layer made of but I will wait until someone will guess :)


 
I hope you enjoyed reading this post and thank you for visiting my blog! :)

Sunday 22 May 2011

May Market news & squishy goodies

Hello everyone!

I'm not dead yet, I'm still here! :D I looked recently on my Blogger dashboard and I noticed that my last post was about three weeks ago! What a shame! :D But it's all because this market day I had this Saturday and i just couldn't find the right time to blog.

How was it? Well it was good :) Much better that my first market just because this one was only for handcrafted items (well most of the stalls) and it was a nice sunny day with fun fair next to the building where the craft market was held.

I thought that I will have to make a lot more stock but I've checked what I've made so far and I realised that I've already had more than half of what I needed. But I had so many new ideas in my head and I just couldn't stop making new items! Luckily I ran out of Fimo air dry clay week before the fair and that stopped me from making new things and I could focus on finishing products I've started making before.

I have to say that I haven't sold much but enough to get my costs back for this market, two next ones and taxi costs, so it wasn't that bad. I had a lot of interests only because it's a total novelty here and people just didn't know if it all is real or not. Funny thing is that next to my table was a stall with handmade soaps which smelled really nice. People walking next to my table were getting hungry looking at my items and when they were walking to the next table with soaps, they were saying: "Oh fudge!..." and the owner was like: "No, it's soap.............." I think that she had enough of it at the end of the day! :D

Anyway, I took some quick photos before the market, but because I didn't sell everything I still will be able to take some proper photos soon and show you everything  I've made so far :) And here you can see photo of my foam cupcakes and donuts. I totally love them and I was telling to almost every customer to squish them! :D Everyone loved it!
I made lots of candies and I wanted to add them to the cupcake chains but then I decided not to and instead I made some candy bracelets (photos coming soon).

I added only one piece of sugar coated candy to each cupcake. Also later on I added piece of chocolate charm to donut's chains (you can't see  that on this photo because they were varnished and drying at that time :)


I have to say that I took only one photo of my stand, with my mobile phone camera and it just doesn't look good. I was really shy and I didn't want to look like a weirdo... :D I will try to take some photos next time, as I will be doing next craft fair on 16th of July and 5th of November, with Christmas theme (oh I have so many ideas!). I also was invited to the Christmas fair on the 27th of December and I think that will be my last fair this year.
I'm also thinking to stop selling on Etsy and create website just for Sweet&Tiny products, and I could reffer customers to it, because I was asked a lot for my contact details last time and I didn't have any business cards. Shamefull! :D Next time I will be prepared!

I hope you enjoyed this post and thank you for visiting my blog! :)

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Juicy raspberries and red currants

Hey guys!

I'm here again this time with photos of my juicy raspberries and red currants :) They are made with Sukerukun clay and then painted with translucent acrylic paint. The decoration leaves are real because I still need to practice my leaf making skills :D
I don't have much time to write long blog entries at the moment, so you can expect short posts with photos only for some time. I'm getting a bit stressed to with market day getting closer and closer, and I'm worried that I won't be able to finish everything I want to make... Oh well. I think I just need a deep breath, cup of coffee and get back to work :D

 
Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog! :)

Sunday 1 May 2011

First foam donut bag charm

This will be just a short post because I'm quite busy with all preparations for my market day. I'm making little bits and bobs now and I don't have many finished pieces to show you, apart of this cute foam donut I've made recently. I know, it looks a bit funny :D It was just a try out to check how the sauce (glaze) and modelling paste will hold on the foam. It's perfectly fine because donut was varnished first and this gave the sauce and fake cream grip. Also the deco is not really interesting as I just wanted add something simple without wasting much just in case it wouldn't work :D The donut is still flexible even with varnish and glaze, propably because they are meant to be flexible (that's what says on the bottles). The part with modelling paste is not flexible because modelling paste dries hard, but I'm not worried about it :)

I gave this donut to my friend and she will test it for me. I always give some things to my friends for free. It's a great advertising and I can check what might go wrong with my fake sweets too :D

Anyway, I'm off to make some more sweet things!
Thank you for stooping by! :)