Eliza Frye, Will You Marry Me?

I am achingly enamored by Eliza Frye and her work, I want to marry her even if I'm female, straight and happily married. I can't stand looking at her work for too long because I ache with the beauty she produces -- I'm not even kidding. She sells hand-printed mini books, her paintings and other beautiful stuff. I want, I want.

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.

Eating Asia's Num Banh-Chok

I've always believed that food made by your own hands tastes a lot better than anything otherwise. My mom is a firm believer of handmade and hand-prepared food and she'd mention that manually prepared food is superior in terms of taste, texture and quality. Of course, she'd been handling food all her life that she can actually tell the difference. For me, it's mostly romantic. Food is much more soulful when human skin touches it and I seriously think that a metaphysical part of the person preparing the food is incorporated in the finished product.

I came across this entry from Robyn of Eating Asia and I found the whole process of making something as mundane as rice noodles utterly poetic and romantic. A bit of warning - you may find the images disturbing if you're extraordinarily squeamish and/or a stickler for food hygiene.

Enjoy.

photo from eatingasia.typepad.com

Bowls, bowls

One of the crafts I wanted to dabble in before was pottery. I have all sorts of pottery books I bought years before but I've yet to try it. Watching this video makes me want to seriously take up pottery.

I Am Floored

Photo from decor8 blog.

This is just too wild. Wow.

Gourdo, my Gocco

I first saw Gocco in a Flickr set of Benita Larsson, a Scandinavian designer I discovered at Apartmenttherapy. She posted a photo of her printed cards drying on the card rack and some hanging on a clothesline. I fell instantly in love with the little printing machine that could and I looked around for places I can buy the Gocco. Luckily enough, I found a distributor here in Manila (yes, here!) and I couldn't have asked for a more considerate, efficient and not to mention, well-stocked seller. When December came, my husband provided the cash to buy my Gocco, which only took an email and several text messages to process the order. Two days later, a big box arrived at my doorstep filled with Gocco goodness! Christmas for me definitely arrived early.

It was after a week or so before I got to try my new gadget as I was afraid of screwing up and wasting precious supplies. I diligently studied the instruction manual, as well as other online sources and thankfully enough, my first Gocco attempt was successful!

I'm really greatful to all the online Gocco gurus for posting their generous tips, videos and instructions. For newbies in the world of Gocco, here is a list of helpful links that you can read through before using your Gocco:

1. From Etsy labs

2. My rockin' supplier

3. Great tutorial, cute felted stuff

4. Gocco homebase

5. Novelty old school video tutorial

I'm compiling my own tips and instructions -- watch out for it!

Gocco Rocks!

Surfing Away

The New Year extended break had me scrounging around for things to do -- which was mostly cleaning our cluttered apartment. Aside from that, I got to trawl the interwebs for all things handmade, gawking and oohing and aahing over lovely, handmade things. Below are my top websites/resources for everything handmade:

1. Smittenkitchen - a site of all things yummy, handmade and homemade. I followed the poached egg tutorial and made a relatively passable one -- this one coming from a total egghead (hee) when it comes to poaching eggs. Excellent tutorials, photos and hilarious notes.

2. Burdastyle - My resource on everything about sewing and handmade fashion. I'm not a big sew-er, but I find the sewing tidbits really helpful and the patterns make good prints. Besides, the word "burda" is coincidentally the Filipino word for "embroidery." Sign up to access the site's full features, it's quick and free.

3. Craftzine- I love Craft magazine and most of the projects in the mag are further elaborated on the website. I'll write more about Craft in another entry. Yep, it's that good, it deserves its own entry.

4. Makezine - Make magazine is a sister mag of Craft so of course, this is a shoe-in. Make also features handmade stuff, albeit more on the industrial side. Think robots, automatons, bottle rockets, soldering irons, etc.

5. Instructables - The granddaddy of everything handmade on the internet. Here is where I watch plenty of videos, access instructions (duh) and scout for possible projects.

6. Ohjoy and Sweetpaul- for inspiration on everything beautiful and exquisite.

7. Oldschoolhandmade - need I say more? :)