Dinosaurs from Foamboard

Based off of those wooden dino skeleton "puzzles", easily available from the likes of eBay. I'd punch out the pieces, then take a picture of the leftover "waste"... convert that picture to high contrast, trace lines in Gimp and make a cleaned up bitmap and printed it out in MS Paint over several sheets of paper. Pieced these together with tape and cut them out then laid them out on foamboard (foam coreboard).

Here's Stumpy (nicknamed that because the design and accompanying photo made him look quite short & stout):


and Pterri, who now hangs from the ceiling of London Hackspace

Random Pretty Pictures #3

Needle felted Minecraft Squid & Spirited Away Soot Sprites

Both handfelted using a felting needle and pre-dyed merino wool.

Cookery: Malaysian Goodies!

I can't even remember how I first found random Malaysian cookery things on ebay but it sat in my watch list for so long I finally decided to make a move on purchasing.
Luckily it was all fairly cheap things and the postage was very reasonable considering it was coming from the other side of the world.

I decided to buy a fish-shaped cake pan:



These are Bahulu They're very similar in texture to trifle sponges here in the UK.

I also bought a mooncake press, which I've still not tried out.


and a jam tart cutter/mould... which I did not read carefully on the size so it's actually the smallest jam tarts I've ever seen.

Make Do & Mend - Creative Jeans hole repair

Make a problem into a feature.

My jeans sometimes wear out where I put my housekeys in my pocket and my purse/bag rubs against the lump of keys in my pocket. Strangely this never wears out the actual jeans pocket...

Anyway, I had this cute fabric I found in a store in Brighton last year and I thought it'd be cute to have it peeking out.

I made very very tiny white stitches, trying to match the natural weave of the denim.

It's held up pretty well and as it wears a bit more, more of the alien peeks out.

Random Pretty Pictures #2

Sleeping Spike Snowglobe

I had this tiny jam jar around (from an afternoon cream tea) always with the idea of turning it into a very tiny snowglobe.



I made this using fimo clay to make the little dragon, which I then baked. I added in a little detail using a super-fine archival pigment ink marker. I used some white sugru to build up a base that looks like a pillow and sealed up the jar with some water, a touch of liquid soap and some glitter.

Random Pretty Pictures #1

Cookery: Japanese Baking

This is kind of just a brain-dump/photo-dump post. Sorry for the lack of enrichment on this post.
Japanese Cream Puffs

With a cookie-like crust layer on top. It's from this recipe but tweaked a bit: http://www.littlejapanmama.com/2011/09/pai-shuu-cream-puff-recipe-like-beard.html

Japanese Milk Bread, using a roux base. This may become my new default bread recipe. It's lovely for cinnamon bread.


Related: Japanese Choco Coronets... Soft bread baked around cream horn moulds, filled with rich chocolate custard

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream at London Hackspace Open Day (May 2013)

How to make ice cream.

Put some double cream, a dash of sugar and a few drops of flavouring into your trusty Kitchenaid Mixer bowl.

Slowly pour in Liquid Nitrogen while running it on low speed.


Serve.

Playing with fimo some more

Warmed up my old black fimo in the microwave (really briefly, a couple of seconds at a time) then mixed up some translucent + white sparkly fimo to make faux cameos and ammonite/snail things. Used a twist drill and wiregauge drill bit to drill the holes after baking.




Having recently been to a talk on Art & Food Through The Ages at the V&A, these now remind me of oreo cameos... Hmm...