Vintage Lace Necklace

Did you watch Academy Award yesterday? I missed first 1 hour, but I watched rest of it.
The fun part is not only knowing which movie or actor/actress won the award, but also seeing the beautiful & gorgeous dresses. 
Whose dress is your favorite? My vote goes to the dress Kate Blanchett wore.
I realized that many dresses have lace on them and look beautiful. Such as Scarlett Johansson’s & Melissa Leo’s.

Unfortunately I can’t afford those gorgeous dresses, so I did what I could do. That is make some jewelry I got inspiration from those dresses.

Vintage Lace Necklace

I conected some vintage lace with beads and chain.

  Here is how it look when you wear it.

It makes me feel a little more gorgeous than usual.

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms by HirokoDT featuring a trench coat

This set was created in a Mini Editor on kristinaclemens.blogspot.com/2011/02/lets-pretend-its-spring-contest.html

Needle Felted Hair Accessory

I made some necklaces and earrings using needle felted beads, so far.
And today I made hair pins. I wasn’t sure if felt beads would work well on a hair pin or not, but I think the result looks quite cute.
What do you think?


I put them up on my My Etsy Shop. Let’s see if somebody is interested in this item or not. :-)

Memory of HAWAII: Garlic Shrimp

When we traveled to HAWAII last December, we ate many many wonderful food over there.
The lucky thing was one of my husband friend lives in there and he recommended us great local restaurants.
He especially recommended Shrimp Wagon in KAHUKU.


According to him, this Shrimp wagon is LOCO’s (Loco = local people in Hawaiian) favorite food truck. Sometimes he drrives to KAFUKU just because only for Garlic Shrimp dish.

Rice and macaroni salad (up left), and garlic shrimps on the cabbage salad (up right).

And it was AWESOME!!!!!!! It was so good that I can eat it everyday!!!!! It was really worth to drive far from WAIKIKI beach just for this dish!!!!

Two months has passed since we came back from the trip, suddenly we missed HAWAII and the taste of garlic shrimp!!!!

Sometimes I like to challenge myself to cook what I ate in the restaurant. I try my best to recall the taste of the dish and figure out its ingredients and seasoning to cook it in my kitchen.
And this is my version of Garlic Shrimp dish.

Rice is same as original. Instead of macaroni salad, I made potato salad. And garlic shrimp on the cabbage salad like original.

Here is what I did.
I prepared shrimp with garlic, salt and white pepper with some potato starch. Potato starch helps to keep shrimps tender even after its cooked.
And I sauteed them with butter. Also I added some garlic powder in the end.




The result was really good! I could put some more garlic and butter… But hey, it was a first attempt, so I am happy with the result. It was really close enough what we had in HAWAII.
And less butter is less fat and a little healthier anyways.

Work in progress “A Deer in the Forest” 2

A new idea came to me for my project “A Deer in the Forest”!!!
I was waiting for this moment for 4-5 days!!!! Finally the moment has come!!!

I decided to wrap this piece with vintage lace.
This same idea was used for my other necklace "Elegant Bird”, too. And I thought the vintage lace will fit to this deer piece very nicely.
I applied it onto the piece using a glue gun. It was applied very carefully, to not spread the glue all over the place.
And this is how it looks now.

Front

Back

Now the next step is deciding what I will make with this center piece.
A necklace, key chain, or brooch!? Mmm… I will wait till an idea comes to me again.

Needle felted necklace “Rain drops”

Rain continues 2 days in LA… Too bad…
Just one good thing is I can focus on crafting more ‘cause I don’t wanna go out.
And this is my new necklace.

“Rain Drops”

Well, without sunshine, it is really hard to take a nice photo…
It is similar to the earring(“Raindrops in LA”)what I made before. Same color wool for tear drop center piece.


Mmm… It is really hard to take good photos… I know rain is good for nature but not good for taking photos…

Work in progress "A Deer in the Forest" 1

I like drawing. My profile photo which I am using for this blog, facebook, and Etsy is my drawing, too.
I paint it 2 years ago with acrylic paint.
Recently I didn't work on anything big as that paint, but I am still sketching random stuff whenever I have time.

Then one interesting idea hit me.
Why don't I use my drawing/painting for my handmade jewelry?
It will be more one-of-a-kind special jewelry for sure!!!!

And this is the first one I tried.

"A deer in the forest"

The color of the deer is dark purple and tree is green.
The leaves coming from right and left upper corner are fabric.
This mixture of the material gives me more interest both visual and texture wise.

Here is the photo from the different angle. A little darker, but I think you can see the color and texture a little better in this photo.

I will update whenever I have progress on this project.
The process of creating some new thing is really fun thing for me to do :-D

Farewell, my baby

Well… this title is kind of dramatic… LOL.
I don’t mean an actual "baby." (I don’t even have a baby yet, unfortunately.)
I just mean “baby” as a metaphor for my crafting product :-)
Because today one of my products went to somebody’s hand!

I didn’t tell my friend about the shop because I didn’t want them to feel that I am demanding them to buy something from me.
So I just announced about Etsy shop on my blog only.
And she was the first one, I kinda mentioned it among the other daily random things.
She checked my Etsy shop and she said she loves my Needle felted Earring “Rain Drops”.


Surprisingly she decided to buy it!!!!She definitely made me happy!!!!
Perhaps she just being nice to me. Maybe that's the majority of the reason why she made her mind… But partially I want to believe that she simply likes the product :-)

My baby will go to somebody’s hand, but I know she will take care of it, so I am happy.
This is what I would say to my baby as the last word from me:
“Farewell, my baby. Please make her happy a lot!”

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!

I hope everybody spent a great Valentine’s Day today.
Mine was awesome!
Originally we tried to go to the movie “True Grid”. I even don’t know what the movie is about but I heard that is good movie and Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon are good actors, so I thought it cannot go wrong!
However, the sad thing is we found that the theater nearby our house doesn’t show the movie any more… Too bad…

In the end, we came up the idea to eat, drink, and watch the movie in the house.
And we picked “Amelie”.

  “Amelie” is a very cute French movie. I like the main actress Audrey Tautou .
She is in the movie such as The Da Vinci Code,  Coco Before Chanel, and so on.


Having good dinner (I cooked beef and vegetable with champagne) with some glass of good red wine, and Lindt Chocolate for desert… It was such a gorgeous night.

But 30min. ago, some more surprise was happened.
We could see some fireworks!!!!!
 
Some of them were shape of the heart!!!!


That was such an unexpected present to us in the good way.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! Too bad, it’s not on weekend this year. But it is still a happy, romantic, and fun event for couples.
Do you have any plans for tomorrow?

Needle felted necklace “Angel Heart”

This is my version to show Valentine's Day's fuzzy, warm feeling.
I hand needled 100% wool into felt.
And I added two pieces of vintage lace on top of it. They look like wings of an Angel.

I hope everybody will have a great Valentine’s Day!!!!

Needle Felted Necklace “Blue flowers”

Finally I made one finishing product with “Yo-Yo” which I made last September!!!!

Necklace “Blue Flowers”

I mixed it up with a needle felted indigo blue flower.
It is asymmetry design but Blue color tied it together in my opinion.

I even add small needle felted indigo blue beads on the “Yo-Yo”.

Between the needle felted beads on the both side, I put light gray/silver beads.
It sparkles under the sunshine.
I love something sparkle!!!
To me, this mixture of different materials really works!
What do you think?

Crochet: Flower Brooch

My mom is a knitting/crochet teacher.
She is still teaching at the several different craft studios in Japan.
I don’t have the instructor certificate like she does, but I know the basic skill of it, thanks to her.
Recently I am into needle felting stuff, but all of sudden I felt like to doing crochet.
But I didn’t have guts to make something big… well… that’s usual me
Anyways, this is what I made today.

Flower Brooch

The color of the yarns are purple, beige, indigo blue, and purple from outer layer. And each yarn has sparkling gold or silver element in it.
I didn't use wool yarn so that you can wear this brooch year-round.
Back side looks like this. It’s easy to put it on the clothes, bag, or anywhere you want.
It was fun to do crochet once in a while.
I think I will make some another small thing again

Needle felting: 2 birds

I love birds.
Even though their poop on my car makes me crazy, I still love birds.
Maybe I love them because my first pet in my life was a parakeet and I have such a great memory with him.
Even when it comes to my craft project, I use birds as my motif a lot.
Yesterday I made those two love birds.


One is made of dark blue wool as its body and light blue wool for its eyes, beak, and wings.
And the other bird was made of other way around.
I don’t decide what I will make out of these two tiny birds.
Maybe brooch or necklace… or ring?
I will wait to make next move until my inspiration comes to me.