Like A Light Bulb

I recently decided to participate in a year-long cooking and baking challenge that was proposed on a forum that I frequent. The idea is that each week an ingredient or style of cooking or cuisine type will be chosen, and everyone who wants to participate will cook/bake something that fits the theme. Then you take photos and post them to the forum so that everyone can see everyone else’s creations.

I’m pretty excited about the whole idea – it sounds like a lot of fun. I suspect I’ll quickly become overwhelmed because I don’t cook too often these days (cooking Western food at home is way more expensive than eating out where I live in Thailand), but I’m excited none the less.

The year-long event doesn’t technically start until the beginning of the new year, but because a number of people were rearing to get started, they proposed a “Week 0″ challenge. It being December, the theme of “Holiday Cupcakes” seemed very appropriate.

I chose to make some eggnog cupcakes using homemade eggnog and topped with homemade toffee. They came out quite tasty, although I wouldn’t call them mind-blowing. I’m sucker for light, airy, fluffy cupcakes, and as far as my experience has shown me, this is hard to accomplish when making something other than a basic yellow cake, or maybe red velvet (yum…red velvet). So although these had a really nice eggnog-y taste, they lacked the airy fluffiness that I really enjoy. I still ate most of them, though.

As for the icing, I don’t usually make buttercream frostings, so I’m not sure the secrets and tricks to making them smooth and creamy. I found the icing I made to be sort of grainy. Maybe I just need finer icing sugar? I don’t have many powdered sugar options here in Thailand… The kick of rum that the recipe called for was nice, though.

I adapted the cupcake recipe from An Edible Mosaic with just a few tiny changes. The icing recipe came from Annie’s Eats (she also had an eggnog cupcake recipe – it was a bit different from most others I had seen). If you want to make your own eggnog and toffee, I got the recipes from AllRecipes. The toffee recipe came out tasty despite the fact that I don’t have a thermometer and the butter ended up pooling on top of the hardened toffee. The eggnog recipe was just plain yummy. I’m saving that one for future use.

I’ve included the recipe for the cupcakes in this post, while the icing recipe is in the next post. There is a text version of the recipe, followed by an experimental picture version.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 c eggnog
• 1/4 c veg oil
• 1/4 c butter, melted (that’s 4 Tbsp)
• 1 1/4 c sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 c flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350F and line and/or butter your cupcake pan. Get two mixing bowls ready.
2. In your larger bowl, beat together the eggs, eggnog, vegetable oil, melted butter, sugar, vanilla until well mixed.
3. In your smaller bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Sift it together if you’d like.
4. In two or three batches, add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring a bit in between. Mix until just combined. Don’t over-mix! There should still be lumps in the mix.
5. Fill your cupcake pan to between 2/3 and 3/4 full. Pop them in the oven and bake for 18-22 minutes.
6. Take them out to cool when they pass the toothpick test (that’s when you poke it with a toothpick and it comes out clean – I’m sure you already knew that). Let cool completely before frosting them!

I used an Eggnog Buttercream Frosting for mine, which was perhaps a bit much eggnog flavor, but still good. Feel free to top with a sprinkle of nutmeg, cinnamon, chunks of toffee, or whatever else strikes your fancy.

And here is the picture recipe! You can just save it to your computer as a complete recipe! I think it’s kinda fun.

As a child of the 90′s I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by a spurt of technological growth. Although every decade had its fair share of advancement, I like to think of the 90′s as special, pretty much just because my childhood belonged to it. There were CDs and DVDs, cellphones, the Simpsons, the freaking internet. It was a great time to be alive!

My favorite part of all of this were the awesome new video games that kept rolling out. Although my parents refused to buy me my own Super NES, I had a good friend who owned one. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time at her house… (don’t worry – I wasn’t using her for her SNES – we’re still friends today). She always had what I consider to be the “good games” such as Final Fantasy, Zelda, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger. I was a big fan of the RPG/action genre.

One of my very favorite games of all time though, was never released in the USA, where I grew up. It was only released in Japan for some reason. In order to play it I had to use an emulator and a pirated copy of the game that had been translated into English by an adoring fan. It was called Seiken Densutsu 3. It was a beautiful game with great music, great leveling and character systems, and a pretty decent story-line for the time. I. Loved. That. Game. Still do. I still play it to this day.

This cross stitch is a tribute of sorts to Seiken Densutsu 3. This is Lise (aka Riesz), one of six playable characters in the game. She was the princess of the Wind Kingdom of Rolante, forced into a great adventure after her little brother is kidnapped by one of the bad-guys. She was always one of my favorite looking characters, although not necessarily my favorite to play.

I did something new with this cross stitch. I stitched it on 28 ct Jazlyn cloth, over one thread instead of two. I like to think of it as “bit stitching” or “pixel stitching” because the cross stitches are so small. Even using one strand of floss it was a bit wonky to work with, but I think I like it. I can fit more detail into a design and not use up so much of my precious cross stitch fabric if I stitch over one thread (it’s kind of hard to find quality fabric here in Thailand). On the other hand, I can’t use any half or quarter stitches. I think I’ll do some more experimenting with “pixel stitching” before I have anything conclusive to say about it.

If you want this pattern, you can have it for free! If you’re slightly nutty about older RPGs and love this game (and cross stitching), go ahead and stitch up the pattern:

Lise/Riesz Cross Stitch Pattern PDF

I mentioned in my previous post that along with the cross stitched fish, I also sent my craft exchange partner a small wirework creation. Because she made a point to state that she liked Cthulhu, and I wanted to make her a little something extra, I whipped up a free-form, tentacled pendant!

There was very little planning for this – I basically twisted wire randomly in my attempts to keep all the bits and pieces from falling apart. Then I adjusted the tentacle bits until I thought they looked alright. It’s not a spectacular piece of work, but I actually quite like it. I just hope my exchange-ee gets a kick out of it!

Oh, I used gold-colored craft wire, a pale green quartz, and a few seed beads.

It’s that time again. Time to gather resources and muster up some semblance of creativity. It’s craft exchange time.

It feels like my last craft exchange was just a few weeks ago (if you look at how many blog posts I’ve done since the last exchange, you’d think that was true). But no, it was almost 6 months ago that I last exchanged crafty goodness with another random person halfway around the world.

I find that I enjoy doing these personalized crafts, but once I’ve sent my gift off, a great weight lifts from my shoulders and I find that I’m glad that I do it only once every 6 months. Don’t get me wrong – I really enjoy participating. I’m just always really nervous about making “the right thing” for my partner. Once it’s in the mail, it’s out of my hands and I can mostly relax. I have to admit though, my giftee made it pretty easy for me this time around, so it wasn’t as stressful as it could have been.

My giftee wasn’t a cryptic or secretive match. She seemed pretty darn cool actually. She had more than enough personality that coming up with something totally customized for her was pretty easy. It’s always nice when ideas come to you so quickly.

Without going into much personal detail about the meaning behind my creation, I’ll just say that it relates back to a childhood memory that she mentioned. I just have to hope that she likes, appreciates and understands the gift! I made her another, small wire-work creation that I’ll share in my next post.

A few weeks ago I got a surprising comment on my blog: a request for a custom pair of earrings! I was torn between excitement that someone liked my earrings enough to custom order a pair, and apprehension that perhaps it was just a sneaky spammer (I get a lot of spam comments on this blog, argh).

As it turned out, it was indeed a real person, and a very nice woman at that. She was an acquaintance of my craft-exchange partner from back in May. My partner apparently wears the earrings I made her often enough that they inspired her friend to contact me. Pretty awesome!

So after a number of back-and-forth emails, I laid out my design plans and set to work. Luckily, I had enough green and amber-y colored beads (per her request) to make a pair of earrings that I was quite happy with, and after sending them off to their new home, their new owner assured me that she quite liked them as well. In fact, she said that she loved them! High praise, if you ask me.

This is my first custom order from a complete stranger and I have to admit, it feels pretty nice. Knowing that there’s someone out there who likes your work so much that they’re willing to seek you out and contact you is pretty rewarding. A big thank you to my custom requester!

The earrings were made in the same style as those I made for my craft-exchange partner. I used sterling silver wire, peridot, citrine, rutilated quartz, tourmaline, chrysoprase, and dyed freshwater pearl. I’ve dubbed them Ferrara’s Garden.

Oh boy, has it been a while since my last post or what?! I sort of have excuses for this, namely because my Mom and sister were visiting for two months over the summer, but also because I basically lost my jewelry inspiration. I’m always impressed with those folks who are able to constantly find inspiration for new creations because my muse seems to get bored and wander off for months at a time. Stupid muse…

I’ve since returned to another interest of mine: cross stitching! I’ve been a cross-stitcher since around 10 years old, going through month-long or even year-long dry spells. Somehow I always come back to it, though. Occasionally I’ll get into making patterns, which is what I’m up to right now.

My most recent completed pattern is the “Health Potion.” If you play the oh-so-popular World of Warcraft game, you might recognize these potions. We have the weak low-level potion there on the left, and getting progressively more awesome as we move to the right we come to the bad-ass high-level potion with the funny top.

The pattern only uses whole cross stitches, so you could stitch it on Aida cloth if you wanted. I used a gradient of red and golden-yellow DMC floss and a bit of Kreinik blending filament for shimmer. The backstitches are nice long backstitches so as to create as smooth and seamless an outline as possible. I’m personally happy with the outcome.

If you’d like the pattern, it’s on Etsy: Health Potion Cross Stitch Pattern

Well, I have an update to my last post. All that was wrong in the world has been made right! My craftee finally received her gift! It took five long weeks, and I had given up all hope, but it somehow finally arrived. My craftee was amazingly appreciative which made this whole craft exchange experience very much worth it, even after all the angst of thinking the package had been lost. A happy ending to a tumultuous story!

And now onto my newest creation…

I love these earrings. The stones woven into the basin of the teardrop-shaped hoop are tourmalines. They match the rutilated quartz and peridot teardrops quite well, I think. The peridot is especially clear and sparkly with a lovely olive color. I let myself go with the freeform wrapping at the top of the earrings. It was fun looping and coiling the wires into a lovely alien-esque centerpiece.

The style and colors remind me of one of my favorite artists: Brom. I discovered his work for the first time almost 15 years ago and have loved him since. His work is dark and somewhat macabre with lots of black leather and strong characters. One particular piece of his (the one pictured to the left) even has the same coloring as these earrings, so I gave them the same name: Bluff.

The similarities don’t stop with the coloring. The earrings have a mixture of masculine elements (dark, coiled wire) and feminine (dainty, shimmering gems) which is similar to the strong androgyny found in the piece by Brom. Okay, maybe I’m reaching for straws with that analogy, but I thought it sounded pretty good! Either way, I like both Brom and these earrings, so why not throw them in together? Hope you guys enjoy.

Well, I have bad news. It seems that after waiting for 5 weeks, my gift is not going to make it to my craft exchange partner… Lost in the mail, it seems. I’ve never lost a package that I’ve sent with the Thai Post, but I guess there’s always a first time. I’ve also learned a lesson: find a UPS office.

I can’t even begin to describe to you how sad I am to know that she is not going to get the gifts – the Sailor Moon characters and earrings – that I beaded for her. I put a lot of energy into those Sailor Moon characters especially. I was so proud of them. And I was really excited to see her reaction, but now she won’t get them. I’m so bummed!

I’m now trying to figure out what else I could make her, as a make-up gift. So far, I can’t bring myself to make more beaded Sailor Moon’s because I’m being melodramatic and feel that it would be “too painful” to bead them again. I know. That’s kind of silly – but it’s how I feel at the moment. Maybe another pair of earrings? I really want to make something that would (hopefully) mean something personal to her, though. Not just a pair of earrings. I’ll have to think on it some more.

Stupid post office…

I did get my gift, though. *Insert guilty face here.* I feel like I’ve somehow cheated the universe by actually receiving it. It’s a lovely drawing/painting inspired by the summer solstice, a.k.a. Midsummer, a.k.a. Litha. It’s full of lovely warm colors that bring to mind bonfires and the heat of summer. It also came with a pretty little silk handkerchief and a note detailing various Midsummer festivities that are celebrated around the world. I’d like to find a frame for the painting and hang it up somewhere nice. So thank you to my crafter, whoever you are!

And I’m sooo sorry to my craftee! I feel awful.

This post is a continuation of my previous post where I featured some beaded Sailor Moon characters that I sent to my craft exchange partner: Sailor Moon post. They weren’t the only gifts I sent her, though!

Along with the beaded Sailor Moon characters, I also made her a pair of earrings. I kept it kind of simple since I don’t know whether she’s into big dangly earrings (or even if she has pierced ears – I really hope she does). She listed purple and orange among her favorite colors, so I did my best to combine the two (although I had to use an orange’y yellow since I don’t really have orange beads…). Amethysts and yellow tourmalines were my weapons of choice, as well as a smattering of tiny garnets and ametrines. I used oxidized sterling silver to tie it all together. They were pretty small overall, but I quite like them. I just have to hope that my craftee likes them as well! I’m crossing my fingers and waiting (im)patiently for her to announce that she got my gifts. I hope all goes well!