Ages ago I showed you very quickly how I decorated my tray table. I love this thing to death because it means that I can work out in the lounge room without having a gigantic burning laptop scalding my legs! Because it’s adjustable I can make it flat and do crafts and nail art on it too 😀
The problem with it is that on tiles every time you move it scrapes and make horrible noise. This is what the bottom of the feet look like, the tiles have actually worn through the paint! So my solution is to make it some socks to keep it’s feet warm 😀
You need:
Felt
Needle and possibly pins
Similar coloured yarn
Scissors
Lace for decoration
First detach the legs so it’s easier to work with. Lay your felt underneath it so you can measure how long you need it. You are aiming to have a long tube which will fit around the legs all the way up to the first hole in the side. My felt wasn’t long enough to do that so I had to use two pieces to make it long enough.
The cut out pieces, one for each leg.
To join the two pieces together I used a shoelace style stitch. This is to make sure it lays as flat as possible, you don’t want a wobbly table!
All sewn together into one piece:
After you’ve sewn them together, just make sure it’s still the correct length…
Now sew the other one 😀
Now thread your needle with the yarn. Wrap the felt around the end of the leg and stitch (or pin) it in place to hold it.
Using a blanket stitch start sewing the felt into a tube around the leg.
It should look something like this:
Keep going all the way up!
When you reach the top where the hole is poke the needle through it then wrap the thread around a few times. This will secure the sock at the top of the leg so it doesn’t wiggle down while you’re using it.
Now at end you started at use the yarn to close up the hole.
Looks like this:
So this is what it looks like with the socks fully on..
Now it’s time to decorate 😀 I sewed a ring of lace around the top of the sock.
Finished! Heehee they remind me of cute little Lolita style socks 😀
Much safer for the tile and a lot less of that irritating scraping noise!
Finished!
On another note, with all the questions I’ve been getting lately about nail art I’m going to do a FAQ like the Hime Style one I did a few weeks ago. If you have any questions you would like included just comment or contact me.
I blame Lolita brands for this obsession. If they didn’t keep including them in prints or in sweets deco maybe I could forget about how melt-in-your-mouth-delicious they are… maybe I could ignore the fact that they are incredibly pretty… and maybe I could stop thinking about how I desperately want one for breakfast today with a cup of tea…
But no!
And so it goes on until one day I got so frustrated I decided to make them myself. I suppose that’s in keeping with the spirit of this blog ^_^
I searched and searched for a recipe. Many were too complicated with things like measuring the temperatures in the room and comparing the humidity to get the correct amounts for different parts of the world!? Macarons are apparently the most fickle of all deserts.
Finally just as I was about to give up a friend sent me a link to Not Quite Nigella’s Recipe. It seemed easy enough but I wasn’t too keen on the idea of pistachio as I wanted James to actually eat them too. I kept searching until I found the Tasted By Two version. Seemed easy enough… and so the experimenting began! After maybe 10 batches I have modified the recipe for our kitchen/temperature/humidity/what ever other ridiculous things macarons are scared of. I am not a baking purist, I just did what worked! These techniques might not work for you but I assure you that my result was freaking awesome 😀
So here is everything I’ve learned about macarons and my modified version of the Tasted By Two Recipe:
What you need:
Ingredients for chocolate macarons with chocolate filling-
For the outside bit:
65 grams Almond Meal
80 grams Icing Sugar
40 grams Caster Sugar
1 table spoon Cocoa Powder
50 grams Egg White at room temperature
Oil spray
Pinch of salt
For the filling:
Cooking chocolate
Butter
Thickened cream
Icing sugar
Utensils-
Scales
Sieve
Aluminum foil
Mixing bowls
Electric beater
Baking trays
Spoon etc
Piping bag/Small plastic bag
Gather everything together 😀
Line your trays with aluminum foil. Yes in the photo I’m using baking paper… and you know what, it sucked. Every recipe I found said to use baking paper but EVERY batch that I did using baking paper failed miserably. So what I ended up using for the successful batches was aluminum foil *very* lightly sprayed with olive oil. I’ll talk more about the failed batches and how to avoid that later!
Measure out your almond meal. Having the correct weights is very important so be quite careful. Now about the almond meal… many recipes I found said that you should crush the meal even further in a food processor to make it extra fine. I don’t have a food processor so I used it straight from the pack. No problems so far.
This is how fine it was:
Do the same with your icing sugar and sift them into your bowl. Make sure there are no lumps.
Then mix them together very well and make sure the consistency is even.
Now weigh your castor sugar.
And your egg whites. Egg whites are another highly debated point of this recipe. Some say you should leave them out over night, some say leave them for a week. I made macarons with eggs right after cracking them, over night and week old… and they were all exactly the same in my opinion. I really don’t think it makes a difference. Just make sure they aren’t too cold or else they won’t froth well.
Put your egg whites into a mixing bowl.
Add a pinch of salt to them
Now using your electric mixer beat them until they become slightly frothy.
When they look like this you should start adding the castor sugar a little bit at a time…
Keep beating…
… until it looks like this 😀 The eggs should be light fluffy and peaky.
Now this part is quite fun! You should take your mixed up icing/almond and add 1/2 of it to the egg mixture.
Mix it up carefully, don’t be over zealous otherwise it will end up like cake. Once the first half is mixed in, add the rest and repeat.
According to a lot of recipes it should form ribbons off your spoon when you’re done. XD
Now mix in your spoon of cocoa
Delicious yes?
Ok time to get ready to pipe them. You can use a proper piping bag but if you’re not keen on cleaning one you can just use a plastic bag and throw it away after ^_^
Put your mixture into the bag!
And tie a knot into the top of it.
Now cut off the corner with a pair of scissors and pipe circles onto your tray.
Apparently some people will actually draw circles onto the baking paper to make sure they are completely perfectly shaped… I don’t really think that is necessary. If I wanted perfection I would go and buy them, I like he idea of mine being a little individual ^_^
Ok! So we’ve done the hard part! You should take your tray and bang it on the counter a few times to get rid of any air bubbles. Then leave the macarons on the counter for 1 hour to settle. While they are settling let’s talk about some other variations!
James doesn’t like chocolate much either so he asked for some blueberry flavored ones.
I used tinned blueberries, crushed them and added to the mixture just before piping.
This is easy enough, you just need to add slightly more of the dry ingredients to counter the wet of the blueberries. If you’ve made a couple of batches you should be able to roughly guess at what the correct consistency should be.
My absolute FAVORITE flavor is green tea with pistachio filling. OMG this is seriously awesome. All you need to do is add 1/2 a teaspoon of matcha powder to the mixture instead of your chocolate powder. I’m using one from Tea2 but any will work.
Green!
They all look so pretty!
When you come back to the macarons the icing should have formed a very slight shell, you should be able to touch the top without getting your finger wet. Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius. When the oven is ready you can put in the tray and cook for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes you should be able to see the little crinkly bottom feet, if not something has gone wrong! Cook for another 4 minutes and then allow them to cool on the bench.
This is a picture of the first time I tried to make them, they weren’t very pretty but you can see the little crinkly feet I’m talking about…
Leave the macarons to cool while we make the filling.Basically all that is involved in that is melting chocolate in the microwave, adding a little cream, butter and a little icing sugar so it doesn’t go solid again. Very delicious. Be sure to taste it along the way 😉
The pistachio variation on this is basically crushed pistachios with butter and icing sugar to make a delicious paste:
Now it’s time to remove the macarons from the tray and turn them over… the bottoms should look like this:
Below is a good example of failed bottoms. The reason this didn’t work is because they weren’t cooked long enough so the insides were liquidy. They stuck to the (stupid) baking paper and collapsed when being removed. Still tasted good though.
Take a half and spread some filling on, pop another half on top and you’re done 😀
Taadaa! Success!
And here are the delicious green tea ones:
So there you have it! No longer will I be a slave to sweets deco and brand prints! Next time I crave macarons I’ll bloody well make some! 😀 Mine may not be the prettiest ever made but they tasted damn good and nobody complained so I’m happy!
Hope you all enjoyed the adventure as much as I enjoyed eating all of the failed and successful batches of macarons!
Lately everywhere I look there are pompom hair bands so I thought why not do a pompom hair band tutorial!
Seriously it’s hard to turn around without seeing some kind of variation! I’ve been seeing them worn in hair and as bracelets or tied to bags. At first I couldn’t stand them but they’ve been slowly growing on me… and now I think they’re cute! The only thing is that here in Aus because they are more hard to come by they are very expensive, who wants to pay $20 for a hair tie?!
So I decided to make my own and it took around 10 minutes.
What you need:-Pom poms in various colours
-Stretchy jewelery thread
-Needle
-GlueDecide on the pattern you want and lay out your pom poms in a circle. I used 9 medium pom poms but you might need more or less depending on how big you want it and how squishy your pom poms are.
Get your stretchy jewelry thread and thread it onto your needle.
Pick up your first pom pom and thread it onto the elastic. Don’t go straight through the middle, go slightly to the side so you can fit as many pom poms onto it as possible.
Thread them all on!
Once you’ve got them all there, thread your needle through the first one pom pom again. Pull the thread tight to form a circle. Depending on how thick your stretchy thread is you might need to go through all of them again to make it extra sturdy.
Now tie the thread off in a double knot. Make sure to pull the knot extra tight but be careful it doesn’t pull the pom poms too close together or you won’t be able to stretch it over your hair! Finish by adding a tiny drop of glue to the knot for extra strength.
Taadaa! I am Wonder Woman deflecting bullets!
The lovely Super Kawaii Mama shows us you can use all kinds of sizes and colours:
Great for entertaining yourself as well.
And SKM’s doggie is an even cuter model:
And of course you could just wear it like a normal person…
Enjoy ^_^
Next post is going to be a Hime Gyaru FAQ so if you have any questions this is the last chance to get them in 🙂
Let me know if any of you make a pompom hair band too!
It’s no secret, I love cake. No I don’t think you guys get it… I looooooove cake. So much so that the first thing I thought when I was trying to think of a way to store my false eyelashes was cake… and you’ll see why in a minute 😀
If you’re anything like me you have a lot of lashes. Here in Aus they don’t come in the nice little trays, they come in stupid plastic packets which mean it’s really difficult to store and reuse them. My counter tends to look like this after a few days…
Very ugly, very messy and very unhygienic. So what to do? When I found this cheap craft storage box at a $2 store I had a great idea 😀
I decided to turn it into this:
Yep. It’s an eyelash cake.
The storage container looks like this when it’s filled up. Each compartment has it’s own lid so when you need one set they won’t all fall out and it’s transparent so you can see them all at once. It’s exactly the right size so your lashes don’t get crushed or out of shape.
So let’s get started! This is what you need for cakey lash storage:
-Paper clay. I picked up a kit from Singapore but I’ve seen this same kit available on Etsy as well. -Container -Cute ribbon -Icing bag with nozzles -Optional if your paper clay kit doesn’t come with white icing you can use acrylic modeling paste (read more here) -Small false flowers
So this is what came in my kit. It has lots of molds and a couple of colours of clay and a ready to go icing kit.
I wanted a strawberry for my cake so I made one with the mold like this:
Put clay in both sides of the mold.
Squish it together..
You get this:
Remove the extra and you’ve got a strawberry.
You can make pretty much anything you want by hand as well as it’s really easy to work with. I made some macarons, hearts, icecream tops and some of those swirly chocolate wafer stick things.
Also squish some of the yellow clay flat and cut out 8 fairly equal triangles like this. These are going to be the slices of cake on top so make the roughly the same size as the container sections.
I make a bunch of clay bits and pieces at a time because they need to be left to dry over night.
The next day!
Now that everything is nice and dry let’s get going! Turn your container upside down so the lid parts are on the bottom and coat the top sections with epoxy glue.
Glue the triangles you made on 😀
Now decide on the design you want on the top. I like to lay mine out first so I know that it will all fit!
Before I go ahead and glue it all, here is a mini tutorial inside a tutorial on making the wafer swirl things. After they’ve dried you can add the chocolate. I paint mine with brown nail polish 😀
Paint the swirl… fairly self explanatory! Let them dry really well before you add them to the cake!
Now back to the cake!!
Time to cover the edges, get your pretty ribbon and glue it around the edge. You should align it as close to the bottom lids as you can without obstructing the opening/closing. Don’t worry about having a large gap towards the top, we’re going to fill that with icing 😀
I decided to put flowers on the top of mine, glue whatever you decided to put there ^_^
Time for icing!
Fill your icing bag with whatever you’re using for the icing (please use the paper clay or acrylic modeling paste rather than silicon as silicon attracts a lot of dirt in the bathroom) and get any decorations you have for the top close at hand.
Morning everyone, odd post today, it’s a DIY jewellery holder shaped like an icecream 😀
Apologies if this tutorial is a little vague, I’ve been sick all night/morning so if something doesn’t make sense feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll update it ^_^
Today’s post is a reader request! Many readers have written in and asked me to show them how to store certain items in a cute way. For example how to store earrings/jewelery/belts/other junk in a creative way that still displays how pretty the items are. There have been so many requests that I’m going to have to turn it into a series of posts… so this is the first.
This is for girls with a small number of earrings/rings/whatever that they want to store.
Firstly, as always you should gather your materials. I’m making mine out of felt but you could use pretty much anything.
-White Felt -Pink Felt -Brown Felt -Dark brown felt -Needle and matching thread -A small amount of stuffing, I cannibalized mine from an old pillow. -A ribbon bow -Scissors -Glue gun
Firstly grab your brown felt. and cut a circle the size you want the base of your ice cream to be. Mine was around 6cm across. Then measure out the circumference of your circle and cut two uneven rectangles (trapezium), the smaller sides should be a few mm bigger than 1/2 of the circumference of your circle, while the longer sides should be maybe 1-2cm more. This is how we’re going to make the cone part of the ice cream.
Put the two trapeziums together and use a blanket stitch down both short sides:
This bit is a little tricky but you should blanket stitch the base to the part you just made. My tip is to put an anchor stitch on each side then sew around, this way your circle doesn’t move while you’re sewing.
Now flip it inside out… and you have a cone! Go you!
Now let’s make the ice cream part 😀 Ok get your ice cream coloured felt together. You are going to need enough for 3 swirls. I am using standard sheets of felt (I think they are around A4 size). Cut one of the white pieces in half length-ways, this will form our two white swirls. Pick a contrasting colour (I’m using pink) and cut one piece the same size as the white you just did. You now have 3 pieces the same size to be used in the swirl… does that make sense?
Fold a white piece in half and loosely stitch down near the open ends so it forms a tube like this:
Fill the tube with a little stuffing, don’t use too much otherwise your ice cream will be too fat and wrinkly to roll up.
Now repeat with the other two pieces. Stack them together in order and stitch them loosely together at the bottom. You can see in this picture that I didn’t have a wide enough piece of pink felt so I had to use 2 piece stitched together >_<
Now it’s time to roll it up 😀 With the good side (the one with all 3 colours) facing you, roll the corner backwards and stitch it in place.
Keep rolling in a downwards motion so it forms the shape of an ice cream…
Stitch the bottoms in place as you go so nothing unravels.
It will probably take you a couple of goes to get it the right width for your cone as well as the right swirly effect but if you don’t like it unroll and start again until it looks like this:
Securely sew the ice cream so it’s not going to unravel and put it to the side. Get your cone part and fill it with some stuffing…
Now place your icecream in the cone and arrange the stuffing so it fits. Turn the tops of the cone over and stitch it to the icecream part.
When you’re done it should look something like this!
Now get your ribbon bow and the dark brown felt. Cut out a bunch of match sticks from the felt that are around 2/3rd the height of your cone.
If you want a really nice finish you should stitch these on but I didn’t have much time when I was doing this so I just used the hot glue gun 😉
Anyway add your ribbon bow to the front and then glue the match sticks around the cone like this:
If you have left over felt you can make a chocolate stick to go on top by rolling a piece up and gluing it in place ^_^
And that’s finished! Now you just need to add your jewelery:
You can hang earrings in any of the swirls as well as rings and small necklaces.
The chocolate swirl is also really good for wrapping longer items around.
So there you have it, a pretty way to store smaller collections of jewelery ^_^
Next in this series of reader requests is going to be “How can I store a really large collection of earrings in a cute way?”
Thank you for everyone who has been submitting reader requests, I’m a bit behind on posting at the moment but I promise they are all on my “List of things to Post” so I will get to them eventually!
In the mean time if you have any other requests please don’t hesitate to send them to me via my Contact page.
Also let me know if you make your own DIY jewellery holder!
So if you’ve been following my Twitter you’ll be aware that I’ve been testing out Circle Lenses!
So what are circle lenses? Basically they are coloured contact lenses which make your eyes appear bigger, they are very very popular in Asia especially with Hime Gyaru models. I’ve been interested in trying them for like 2 years but never got around to it until now when E-CircleLensoffered to send me some 😀
You can’t imagine how excited I was when I came home from Melbourne to a package from E-CircleLens!
Inside the package were 3 different lenses, some pamphlets and instructions, 3 cases and a cute little doggie travel kit!
How cute is this? The little cases for the lenses have bows on them!
They came with cartoon instructions showing you the do’s and don’ts of putting them in and caring for the lenses.
This is the little doggie travel case! He’s found his way to my handbag now!
The doggie opens up and inside is… a mirror, tweezers, a bottle for contact solution and a case!
All of the lenses come packaged really well in styrofoam, when you take them out they are in little glass bottles like this:
It took a bit of work to get the aluminum lids off but that’s probably because I’m incredibly weak heehee!
These ones here are the Aryan Ring Circles.They have a diameter of 14mm which is huge and they last 1 year.
This is a photo of me trying to put them in for the first time. Considering how un-coordinated I am, it’s surprising I didn’t lose an eye! It was a lot easier to do than I was expecting, I think if I can do it anyone can!
So what kind of difference do they make? Here is me with one of the Aryan Ring ones in and one eye natural. Big difference right?
And when you add some make up, they look awesome!
These ones look really dark but still have a burst of natural colour through the middle.
Here is a close up comparison between natural eye and made up eye with the Aryan Ring Circles:
The second set that they sent me are called Walkure Brown and they have a diameter of 14.5mm! These ones are my favorite because they are the absolute biggest! Here’s the comparison between my natural eye and the Walkure Brownup close:
These ones were slightly harder to apply because of the size but once they were in, they just look fantastic! The dark brown works really well with hime style as well which is great for me!
I was surprised how natural they looked on me as my eyes are actually green normally ^_^
From a distance they just look cute!
The third set I received was the Angel EX Greenwith a diameter of 14mm. I was excited about these ones because they were so natural looking and they really made the green in my eyes pop! It probably helped that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them in Ageha as well 😉
It’s such a pity that these photos don’t seem to capture the real colour of these lenses, they are a really deep vibrant green in real life. I wore them to lunch the other day and got 3 compliments about my eyes, no one even guessed I was wearing lenses XD
They are darker than my natural eyes but the green really stands out!
Pretty!
So my review! Ok the quality of the packing was really good, the box arrived dented by a careless post office worker but the insides were still perfectly ok because of all of the packaging. The complimentary instructions they include are really easy to follow and well set out. I have never used lenses before and I managed to put them in very easily. I have to say that unlike some other resale companies I’ve dealt with, the staff at E-CircleLens were super helpful and really knowledgeable about their products. I couldn’t have been happier with the support I received. The actual lenses were really comfortable to wear and after I got the hang of actually putting them in I didn’t really notice that they were in during the day. On the first day that I wore the Angel Ex Green ones I actually forgot they were in, if James hadn’t reminded me I probably would have gone to bed with them in XD If you want your own sets, all of these lenses can be bought via E-CircleLensfor around US$40 and they last for 1 year if taken care of correctly.
I’ve made a fun little video tutorial to show you how to apply circle lenses, click below to see!
So in conclusion, my first experience with Circle lenses has been really positive, I’m definitely going to keep wearing them and I want to get lots more different colours to try out 😀
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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