Friday, March 27, 2009

Sugar Art

While I was making caramel for Creme Caramel early today, I was fascinated with how plain white sugar turned into a golden, gooey, fragrant mess at the bottom of my pan. I've always been intimidated with sugar. As a child, I got burned by hot caramel and that experience effectively kept me away from cooking sugar for a good decade or two. I found some other interesting things people do with the good ole sweet white grains:

Amazing blown sugar:


Here's a how-to for pulled sugar decor (just ignore the super old-skool soundtrack and graphics)


It seems so easy, but I'm sure it takes a lot of skill to do that.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Gold Filling

Maybe I should do this to my new (old) cracked Wedgwood plate:

Chip at the back

Cracked plates filled with 24K gold and finished with handmade enamel flowers. More gold-filled plates and stuff over at Crackery Crockery from Ornamented Life

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Invitation Madness

I've been so busy lately, I think I may have accidentally stumbled into the business of invitation printing. I bought my Gocco purely as a hobby, but I've been printing non-stop since December, mostly invitations for friends.

First one was for the birthday party of the mom of a good friend with a retro-funky theme:



I printed the text in my trusty old computer printer because I was afraid of using Gocco for text but the rest of the designs are Gocco-printed. I cut out the felt circles and affixed them with a grommet to lock the invitation flaps.


Next was my bestfriend's wedding invitation. They're fun enough to pick the photo stencil design (I was secretly hoping they'd pick that, so yaay!) and the rest, they gave me carte blanche.



I chose a scripty font for the text and gold ink -- I fearfully printed it using the Gocco this time, to great success -- on white parchment paper. This one turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself (heee).



I have another wedding invitation project in the works, I'll post it here when I'm done.

It's super fun to Gocco!

Wedgwood Love

My husband and I are currently updating our apartment and in one of my furniture-hunting expeditions, I came across this lovely, heart-shaped gem of a small plate:



It was love at first sight. This little piece was in a display cabinet by the cashier and was behind other trinkets. The color called out to me, as I'm presently in a blue-white phase. I was afraid to ask how much it was -- it looked too precious to be cheap, and in a thrift store, you know that something that's encased in glass is bound to be valuable. I was enamored enough to ask and the shopkeep immediately brought it out and quoted a price. It was priced at Php 500 (a little over $10), which I thought was expensive for a thrift shop find and I was ready to put it down and do a little sour-graping. Just when I was about to ask the owner to put it back in the cabinet, she immediately added that it's now at Php 200 (about $4) due to the largish chip at the back of the plate.



I didn't care about the chip, I whipped out my wallet and gave her the money. I love everything about the plate, inspite of the damage. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the back is embossed with the word Wedgwood. When I was younger, I was enamored by a set of Wedgwood plates that I still think of to this day but I failed convince my mom to buy the exquisite set because a) it was horrifically expensive and b) my mom had plenty of dinner sets.



I researched some more of the one I just bought and I learned that I have a Jasperware, one of Josiah Wedgwood's enduring and popular inventions. Jasperware is a type of stoneware with a matte finish with white handcrafted embellishments and features ancient Greek or Roman scenes.



Here's a video of Wedgwood craftsmen making exquisite Jasperware by hand