Short update
August 29, 2008 at 12:09 am | Posted in Craft - Blogs, Misc. | Leave a comment1. I am supposed to be busy before November. I’ve got a thesis to finish. As I am graduating, we need to move out soon and finding a new place is the hardest part. There is not so much time for crafting or blogging.
Walilie! They look like brothers
April 9, 2008 at 9:01 am | Posted in Craft - Blogs, Craft - Books, Craft - How-to's, Craft - Inspirations, Craft - People, Craft - Websites | 1 Comment
Left: on Craftzine yesterday
Quiet
October 20, 2007 at 9:45 am | Posted in All Finished Crafts, Craft - Blogs, Craft - How-to's, Misc. | 1 CommentTags: animal, bunny, craft, handmade, knitting, softie, stuffed, toy, tuzki, yarn
It’s so quiet this morning. There is no so much noise from the trains as usual. I almost started to wonder if the GDL already started their strikes. Hopefully, they haven’t YET. Maybe people just don’t wanna go out so early because of the temperature drop overnight. We can finally expect a real winter this year. 🙂
I didn’t have a nice sleep last night. After some weird nightmares, I got up and waited for the sunrise. Only after the sunrise can I take photos of the little toy I made before I went to bed last night. It’s a bunny, a typical quiet creature.
Carving with a Theme
August 29, 2007 at 10:45 am | Posted in Craft - Blogs, Craft - Inspirations | Leave a comment
Little Red Riding Hood carved mic
Some Gnome Fever
August 14, 2007 at 9:34 am | Posted in All My Sketches, Craft - Blogs, Craft - How-to's, Craft - Inspirations, Craft - People, Craft - Websites | 6 Comments
I was a little upset for no reason. Every girl gets upset like this sometimes, I guess. I don’t wanna do any crafting, and sketching became the first thing I can think of. I can finally start the first page of my “new” sketchbook, which was bought 2 years ago.
Unbearable Cuteness
February 19, 2007 at 11:12 pm | Posted in All Finished Crafts, Craft - Blogs, Craft - Misc, Craft - Websites | Leave a comment
Finland may be the top country in my travel plan because Moomins are from there. My old paper mache hippo I made years ago had something in common with moomins. That’s why Rioky’s livejournal got my attention immediately. Her felted moomin characters are way too cute. I also found out my favorite needle felted cat which I saw somewhere else was from her too. In addition, she felted totoro TOO! I am so looking forward to her new works. As usual, I wish I could read Russian when I found such gorgerous stuffs.
Another cute thing I have share is the “A Teddy Bear a day” project from Cindy Hains. I’ve came up with a lot of stories when I was going through all the teddy photographes. My favorite one for the moment is Learn English, as I am also feeling a little desperate for study (exams) right now. I am a little hestitated whether it’s allowed for personal use. I am using the one in “Taylor’s newpaper” as my desktop wallpaper.
And, here is a mosaic picture of the lamb purse I made for J before, one of my most satisfied craft projects ever. It’s a small metal-clasp purse with a key ring on the lamb’s tail. Its “furs” are handmade white pompons. Its ear, head and limbs are from black felt. The body is made from muslin and cotton.
I can’t wait for the exams to be finished so as to start something NEW! 😦
Made in China (1)
February 5, 2007 at 5:15 pm | Posted in Craft - Blogs, Craft - People | Leave a comment
As a Chinese, I should really show you nice crafts made in China no matter how much some crafting-related Chinese have disappointed me. There are many young/new people very promising in China. And they deserve to be known.
When I was surfing random online picture alums last night, I found a felt panda similar to mine. With multiple forum watermarks on it, the picture did not tell me anything about the crafter itself. It took me a while to trace down the picture. I am glad I finally arrived in the interesting blog Happy 0 by someone named “happy”, obviously a panda-lover and a cat-lover. Don’t miss her toy category for all her creations as well as her toy collection.
I guess her main interest is not crafting but drawing. Although she might not be very skillful in sewing, she can always implement her own design with colorful felts. IMHO, fresh original ideas are more important than well skills, which can actually be obtained by practice. Anyway, her stitches are as neat as her cartoons. Her simple tutorial on felt toy is worth a look. My favorites are her cat-shaped game console (GBA and another one) for her black cat. Besides, the pictures of her crafts are sort of professional. The style is quite cheerful, however, a little too vivid. 😛
More sites coming later….
*A la cartonnage
January 10, 2007 at 2:03 pm | Posted in Craft - Blogs, Craft - Books, Craft - How-to's, Craft - People, Craft - Websites | 9 Comments
French is just a languge too hard for me to learn. It seems to be a fashion to name one’s products with French names. Or it is only true in Japan?! Maybe it is much more romantic using a French name than English ones. Or, they tried to imply the techniques are from France? Since le duvet deux, I’ve seen quite a few Japanese crafting websites using French names. I saw another one recently. That’s Yumiko Komizawa(駒澤由美子)’s A la cartonnage.
As shown in the picture on the left, both Yumiko’s works and her website are about cartonnage (dont confused with Egyptian mummies), namely fabric(mostly cotton)-covered cartons. The technique can be traced back to France in 19th centry. There is a basic tutorial of how to make such nice boxes. In the galleries of Yumiko and some other people, you can find various applications of this technique.
Yumiko has published 3 books last year. My favorite is the first one, especially the box for coasters on the cover. I have to admit I like the coasters more than the box. 😛
The second one(ISBN430928065X) applies mainly Hawaii-style fabrics for cartonnages. No ideas about the third one. Thanks to a Chinese crafting blogger zoe(?) who are living in Japan, I’ve got a bunch of nice links related to this topic, including Japanese and French ones. (If you are interested in x-stitches/embroidery, dont miss one of zoe’s archives.)
1.Shops and tutorials
casane
Atelier M
Fabric House Bit
Fossette
Le Monde Du Cartonnage
Cartonnage
Ombelle
2.Personal BLOG
Comfortable Space
@telier A&G
http://le-cartonnage.net/index.html
Atelier PetitPoint
..neige+..
Webring of cartonnage lovers
3.Another person that has published 3 books on this topic:La Baguette
4. Related Japanese books
(2)はじめてのカルトナージュ紙で作るフレンチテイストの雑貨小もの
(4)紙で作る!―クイリング、スクラップブッキング、フランス額装、カルトナージュ
Again, all these lists are from Zoe’s blog.
As for myself, I would rather use fabrics for sewing. It seems too extravagant for people, who do not have a huge collection of fabrics, to cover cartons with cottons. Nevertheless it’s still nice to read and learn some techniques like this. We can still use nice wrap paper for that.
Also from Japan, there is a nice tutorial of making paper-mache lampshade. That’s something I am interested to try.
BTW: via batixa’s blog, “the last knit” is another must-see video clip.
Xmas party countdown
December 14, 2006 at 4:17 pm | Posted in All Finished Crafts, Craft - Blogs, Craft - How-to's, Craft - People, Craft - Websites | 2 Comments
Hubby finally agrees to come with me to the Xmas party at “Noam’s cabin”, thus this new little bear is officially the present I will bring for the gift exchange now. I just finished assembling him this morning.
Instead of an amigurumi, I would rather call him a thready teddy since it’s not in a typical Japanese style of crocheted creature. In fact, I adapt parts of a pattern, mainly the head and legs, in Teddy Bears and Friends (Feb 2004) by Berta Hesen-Minten from ThReAdTeDs. Her patterns work in such a different way compared to Japanese ones. The most obvious difference is the bear head in this pattern is made in one piece. Usually, bear noses are crocheted seperatedly or cut from felt, and then stitched onto the face. Besides, Japanese amigurumis’ heads are usually worked from top to bottom or vice versa. The one I just made was from the front (nose) to the back.
Another difference is that my bear have not only legs but also big feet! I felt like making a pair of little boots when crocheting the legs. It’s such a funny way to achieve the shapes. Berta Hesen-Minten uses increasing stitches, decreasing stitches as well as slip stitches, for example the round between the nose and the face. Slip stiches are relatively rare in Japanese patterns. Although I was not able to follow the whole pattern, I tried out nevertheless all the special approaches I never knew before.
The parts turned out to be very traditional in terms of teddy bears. It’s even possible to install plastic joints, which I don’t have and I am also too lazy to make. 😛 In other words, everything after crocheting the parts is exactly the same as making a sewn bear, e.g. stuffing, joining, stitching nose and mouth and putting on ears and eyes. As many other bears, he can stand by himself in certain positions. 🙂
My favorite part of this bear is his little brushy tail. My roommate in undergrad used to say a teddy bear without a nice tail is not a real teddy. I quite agree with her of this point. I always forgot the tails to avoid more work when making bears, but not any more! I used the yarn cut from the parts to make a mini pompom for the tail. The pompom is smaller than 1cm^3 thanks to Tatalina’s nice tutorial, which uses fork to make pompoms.
hmm….I hope someone in the party would like him and take him home happily. 🙂
BTW: One of the reasons using this yarn is Melanie’s amineko. Another reason is ….it’s left-over from my blanket project.
Crafters are all around
December 12, 2006 at 10:11 pm | Posted in Craft - Blogs, Craft - Books, Craft - People, Craft - Websites, Misc. | 1 Comment
I was a little surprised this afternoon when I walked into the foyer and saw Rebecca, one of my classmates, sitting there knitting. It has been at least 6 years that I can’t find anyone (geographically) *around* me doing any crafting. I was quite excited as if I found the new continent.
Even though I dont knit, there are still lots of common topics we can talked about other than schoolwork. 😀 For example, we talked about the different pattern notion systems in Japan and in the West, as well as Japanese books! She was making the gloves showed above(I dunno why I can’t remember this word at the moment I talked to her-.-) from the book 北欧のニットこものたち(ISBN4529041409), which is about Nordic knitting. Rebecca had the book with her, so I gotta take a look. There are many beautiful patterns in the book. However, those patterns are way too complicated for me, who only knows the basic stitches.
We also found out Shimada Toshiyuki(嶋田俊之), the author of the book, is a guy. I am not so surprised as I knew Hirose Mitsuharu(広瀬光治) was very famous for knitting. I thought Hirose Mitsuharu, namely “knitting prince”, might be very special in Japan. Now, it seems to me knitting is quite common for Japanese guy. ping used to introduce a crafting group of men. They are much more interesting than Hirose Mitsuharu from my point of view. Their blogs gave me a whole afternoon of laughing. 😀
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