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Pigs in a Blanket

2012-01-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

The Year of the Dragon is coming upon us. I hope everyone will have a wonderful year! I keep hearing that this year is supposed to be good, and I hope it will be because the Year of the Rabbit is not the best year for me.

But... first some Betty Candy. Some of my goals this year is definitely start sewing and working on dolly wardrobes at least on my days off work. Now that my sister-in-law moved out, things are getting reorganized, including my work space and my schedule.

Let me introduce you to my new project to clothe: my Elfdoll Alice collection! I know that I showed them on Live Mini before, but I don't think people know the story of my dollies. I first saw these cute little piggy dolls on the Blythe forum in 2007 when the ballernia Elfdoll Alice came out. I was very fortunate to find the very first edition of Elfdoll Alice (the one with the top hat) as my first piggy doll in 2008. When I heard that Charles Stephen is going to stop working on the Elfdoll collaboration I then found the 2 Billies for my wedding reception back in December 2008, right as he stopped making them. I then found my little piggy Julia not long after and the Space Pig mug that is my facebook trademark, yeah I got them both at the same time.

I honestly did not know about Charles Creature Cabinet until recently (and things are not that good right now with them), so I thought there are going to be no more piggies! So... these little piggies are one of my favorite dolls besides my Unoa and my Blythes, which needs friends to be with. Anyway, they will be introduced later.

I hope everyone is having a good year so far and hope the Year of the Dragon will be good for everyone.

As I sit around with this crappy cold I hope that at least this picture makes you smile as it makes me smile to know that things can move forward again.

Happy New Year's (part 2 of the tour)

2012-01-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Happy New Year everyone! It is supposed to be the year of the Dragon this year. I hope everyone had a good New Year so far!

Yeah, I have been working through New Year's and pretty much until now. I do not get many breaks on the internship, so whenever they are available I try to sleep, especially since I usually start in the mornings these days.

So... remember that I said I will provide pictures of what a restaurant/hotel line looks like? Well, here it is. This is just a quick overview of them. For more details of everything, just go to my flickr portfolio. Yeah I took pics of the line when I am the only one who man the line, which ironically is 1-2 hours every time I am there when I go in there at the moment. I don't just stand there and do nothing. I clean, I make sauces, I do more prep on the line, etc... and I also help with the banquet crew.

This is what the line looks like from the back, where you can see all the equipment of how things are prepared. As I said, a more detailed photo of the line can be found in my flickr portfolio.

This is the other side of the line, where everything is prepared after it is cooked, then sent off to the grateful (or ungrateful) world out there. Like any artistic field, you really need to have a sense of humor and brush things off easily, which I must admit is very very hard when orders are rushing in and everything is in chaos.

... and this is where the waiters wait for the food, pack foods to go, and heat up the soups/items some more.

This is the ice cream station where when you have to make milkshakes or ice cream plates quick this is where the magic is. It is small I know. You would think it is bigger...

Oh oh, and this is one of the interesting pics that I think of when I am at work. On the restaurant menu we do not serve steak, BUT on the banquets and parties we do all the time, so the expensive meats are locked up tight and sealed until it is time to prepare them. No I do not have the key to the lock, but sometimes I help out with the banquet prep so I see this pretty frequently. The pantries are technically locked with a key as well, but that is easier to get a key for than the meat locker, literally.
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It is so sad when I work this hard and not really able to enjoy my Christmas presents, which ironically a lot of it are tools for the commercial kitchen. Everyone at work has their own knives and tools. The general rule of thumb is: own your own tools. No one at work likes it when you borrow their stuff, especially their knives. Ok a cake tip or so is ok because heck, I might be selling cake tips but I do not have the extra large one but the chef knife... definitely have your own because otherwise you cannot really do much in the kitchen! The longer you work in the culinary industry the more tools that you have, which I guess is the same as if you are working on any job or hobby.

So my husband being the kind of guy that he is bought me some of the tools for Christmas. :) I will have to take pictures of them later when I am not working.

I hope you enjoy this quickie tour of the hotel line! Back to work tomorrow. My schedule lately is 7am - 3pm, which means waking up when the skies are dark. Yuck.

Day off after Christmas work (part 1)

2011-12-27T14:10:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

So... I finally have a day off before the next task: New Year's eve preparations!

How was everyone's Christmas?

Mine was spent working in the kitchen. There was supposed to be a fancy Christmas Sunday brunch going on at the Hotel that I was working with, BUT it turned out to be a lackluster event for everyone because only like 200 people came, not the 300 that was predicted. I was sorely disappointed personally because of all the food that you can eat for that was pretty good, like prime rib, lamb shanks, turkey, shrimp, salmon, etc... and it was rather wasted that not all of it got eaten.

Well... that is not true. Nothing is ever wasted in the restaurant business. I spent the day after Christmas making turkey stock and soup. Prime rib I think did get all eaten because I did not see any of it back, and lamb shanks were one of the most popular scooby snacks in the kitchen.

... and I have some photos for my loyal viewers: A quick tour of my work place!

So... this is what the Crowne Plaza Hotel looks like when I go there. Lately it is pitch black when I go there. I think this is one of the afternoon shots.

... and this is the prep kitchen room looks like from where I usually work.

... and this is the prep hallway where the dishwashers are, as well as the hallway where the servers go when the food was done being prepped. Those giant box like things that you see are food warmers. The schedule is usually on the wall directly in front of you.

... and this is what we usually do. We mainly prep things in the room and put them on the baking racks and wheel them to the hungry crowds outside.

When I say everything is bigger, everything is bigger in a commercial kitchen. This is our floor mixer. I know I have seen a bigger mixer in a bakery but this one is pretty big too. You can see that someone had forgotten about the pizza dough here and it rose to the top. LOL....

This is a pic of my kitchen bosses and one of the many people that finds its way into the kitchen with a giant bucket of horchata. I have lots levels of bosses at work, the highest being the head chef, then the sous chef, then the various levels of prep chefs/line cooks. Yeah... I have lots of bosses.

So... that is it really. I am starting to learn how to work the line of the hotel soon. That would definitely be interesting, but seeing that I am not there yet I did not take pictures of the line. I will when I get there, but for now this will do.

Happy Holidays from the Crowne Plaza!

2011-12-22T15:26:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

So we are approaching the end of 2011. This year has been one roller coaster of a year for me. I am not happy that I did not make much miniatures at all this year even though there is a perfectly fine studio in the garage waiting to be used. It needs a few tools but that can wait.

I learned a lot about myself this year and what I am capable of. Even though I did not do much in the way of art other than knitting and maybe some doll sculpting I know I am still an artist and still capable of making art.
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Instead of miniature food art, I have been making real life sized food art. Right now I am currently interning in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City, CA as a prep cook. As a prep cook I mainly do a lot of preparations for things like the hotel's breakfast, preparing ingredients, and helping out with banquet parties. I cannot remember all the parties we hosted, but it goes along the lines of anyone from parties of 13 - 800 people. :D

Here is a bunch of us (interns and not.) We are a rather multilingual group. We speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese in the kitchen. Since I already speak those languages I am never bored, seriously! I learn new words all the time while we are there. The head chef of course trumps me in languages, but he is intrigued that I can keep up with him in whatever language he decides to speak. We do not speak Japanese yet, but I can try next time in la cocina! :D

... and here is one of the usual banquet sized salads that we do. It is on a huge bowl with all this on top. We do individual plates as well for salads.

We do a lot of appetizers too. This is a plate of ahi crisps. Appetizers range from asparagus spears to large buffet style of seafood.

I do help plate the main courses too, but unfortunately since those are usually done in assembly style I cannot take pictures of that. We would literally serve hundreds of people in half an hour, so no time to take pictures of the main courses. Main courses range from steaks to fish to vegetarian. There is always something for everyone.

However, we do a lot of desserts, both single plating as well as large plating.

So... despite the fact that these are not minis, I am still working on food art. Plating and decorating are still skills that I use from my miniature art skills.

For those who are wondering where the shops are, all the shops (etsy and Artfire) are closed until further notice because of how busy I am. If anyone need something, I will be glad to help out.

I hope this will be an inspiration to you guys out there! :) Happy Holidays and I hope to see you all soon!

Busy holiday season + sale

2011-11-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

So... I am getting real life experience in the world of catering!

This means that I am going to be very busy for quite a while learning about different foods and what people do for the holidays. I am very excited because this will be very inspiring for me seeing what hotels and catering companies do for the busy holidays for hungry customers like us. :) This will probably translate into very interesting miniature art for years to come.

Anyway to celebrate the holidays and my work Itty Bitty Supplies shop is having a 15% off sale until the end of the year! You do not need to type in a coupon for this sale. Just simply put the things in your cart and check out.

Sorry this year does not involve much real miniature work if any, but I do appreciate all of you still reading my blog and reading my thought processes.

Black Friday gifts!

2011-11-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone and happy Late Thanksgiving for those who celebrate Thanksgiving in the US. We usually celebrate Thanksgiving but due to the nature of scheduling we moved Thanksgiving to Sunday instead. I did cook a Thanksgiving dinner for 185 people last week, so I did do Thanksgiving cooking, it was just not at home nor for me.

Anyway, even though I did not touch clay for a very long time, I got a clay tool today from Black Friday! :D

My husband took my dough cutter. Dough cutters are very useful in cutting up the giant blocks of polymer clay, especially when they are hard as rocks. Well... since he took mine for his evil purposes unknown he replaced it with this one.

I really like this one. This one even has a ruler on the bottom so you can measure things out while cutting. Very nifty!

I am still itching to get back to making miniatures, but for now this will do.

Happy Late Veterans day!

2011-11-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Happy late Veterans' day for those in the US! Cooking has been rather brutal as we are entering the stages of cooking for a Thanksgiving party. Yep, you know those battle plans that they have on Iron Chef? Yeah... real chefs have battle plans. My job though is to follow directions on the plans and make sure that Chef is happy.

Anyway, this is not much progress for now. Lately ironically I have been doing a lot of baking. I guess the mini skills I learned over the years is finally paying off (I think):

This is one of the 3 cakes I frosted: a lemon curd cake. I actually frosted 3 cakes today: one white cake which the 2 chefs in the kitchen liked, and 2 lemon curd cakes which I did not try. I frosted the cakes for the 2 teams who each made a lemon curd cake. Seeing how many miniature cakes I had frosted over the years, this was a piece of cake. Haha, cake.

So now that I can show people how to frost smooth cakes quickly the chef was like... you should teach the class how to do cake decorating! Eeek! Talk about putting myself in the spot!

So for all the men and women who served (including friends of mine who are here and no longer) I give you a picture of my actual edible frosted cakes! I will have to muster up some inedible works later. Thank you for your services and keep up the good work!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T15:36:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Thank you for the private Halloween wishes! I really appreciate it.

So this is my costume this year: a Ren fest wench! :D Thank you sister-in-law for the costume for class!

So... today's cooking is so bizarre and Halloween fun that I just had to share it:

So... if I have not introduced my chef that is teaching me, I am introducing him now. His name is Chef Adam Weiner. He has been cooking for 18 years but before he was a bank lawyer (hence the suit; he was trying to imitate his old self). Haha...

Anyway, guess what is he holding?

Yes... he is holding a chocolate covered deep fried corn dog with butterfingers candies sprinkled on it. Yep... he really liked it. He ate most of one.

Lunch was better: we made fish tacos/burritos and yes... we sprinkled butterfingers on it too.

Everything just tastes better with butterfingers sprinkles. If you do not believe me, go try it!

Anyway Happy Halloween! I hope everyone is having a great time.

What I am doing tonight? Ummm... I have to make a breakfast for 13, so I have to study the menu and prepare for that. I will take pictures tomorrow.

Playing with food

2011-10-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Long time no see! Let's just say that October was not my month. First, I had an allergy attack, then I twisted my ankle. After I twisted my ankle, I got one of the worst colds I had in a while. So... Let's just say that this past month sucks.

But... I have been cooking, and hopefully someday these will become miniatures :)

Pork chop with eggs, avocado, and home fries.

Crepe with bacon, cream cheese, and tomatoes inside with butterfly orange and Asian pears.

I am looking at the creative pumpkins that people are carving too. I like these. They remind me of Kiva. I miss the miniature community:

Anyway, it is getting late but I want to share some more things that we do in class. This class is definitely giving me a good perspective of food and how things work. I can't wait to see my work advance!

Making real food for a change

2011-09-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Now I feel bad that I did not have time to blog at all, but at least I can finally reveal my new project: I am going to culinary school!

Why? Because:

1) I wanna learn how to cook. Husband is the only one who cooks all the time and unfortunately that means we eat out a lot. I want to put a full stop to that. So sick of eating out and counting calories while you are out is hard. Not that I am on a diet, but who needs to eat foods that is 1300+ calories a plate??? It is annoying...

2) I completely lost my inspiration for making yummy miniature foods. I don't know where it went, but it is not here. Making real food is much more entertaining at the moment.

3) I need to get out of the house. As much as I love my house, house politics is driving me nuts, and it probably shouldn't be.

So... The school started doing simple things like making real bread and breakfast:

Then it progressed to potatoes and mac and cheese:

... and this week we made things like pizza and so forth. I am having a lot of fun but I am also doing a lot of dishes.

Last night we even did a catering event of sorts to the board of the school, which teaches a bunch of other things as well like how to be an administrative assistant, doing solar paneling, contracting, etc... Culinary seems to be the most interesting out of those because seriously... contracting... been there done that with my dad thank you.

Other than the fact that a lot of my classmates smoke a lot and drinks lots of coffee (which I am allergic to cigarette smoke + sensitive to caffeine) things are going well. The only reason why I am not there right now is because I had a severe allergy/asthma attack and I forced myself to work anyway when I am full of medications. People think I was nervous but when I explained that I am simply full of medications they stopped making fun of me. I think it is time to call the allergist again to discuss medication changes because well... I don't think pushing myself to my physical limits every time with my current sets of medications going to work is a good idea, even when I was working for myself.

Other than that, I can't wait to go back there on Monday! I think I am doing well. I made some friends which is good. :) It is hard to fall off the wagon but once you get back on things should be all right.

I can do art... sometimes

2011-09-09T18:13:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So almost time for new project. It should be super fun and challenging. Tick tock tick tock for that. Won't reveal that until Monday.

In the meantime, my brother told me to practice my other artistic talents if I am stuck on another artistic talent to flush out new ideas. After all, often times artists practice more than one medium, so I am giving it a go.

This is me trying to sketch out a hand while I am drawing it. Since all I have is an iPhone on one hand and posing on the other I only took a picture of the pose.

There are more sketches/pencil drawings on my >flickr.

Also working on this whenever I am out of the house. At last, a miniature knitting project!

This scarf is 1/2" wide x 3" long. It needs another 3". It will have fringes like a real scarf too. I think it is pretty cool but tedious to keep track of the stitches.

So... that is all for now. Sorry I am bland and boring lately. I do sometimes wish I am not so stressed out.

Silence

2011-09-05T01:40:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the long silence. Lately there is more family here than I can handle, so I have been spending time with them instead.

I am waiting for something to start soon, hence my silence.

In the meanwhile, I am trying to knit a dress for my brother's friend's wedding.

Also trying my hand on mini knitting while I am at it. I will post that later.

Summer is not over yet!

2011-08-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Summer is not over yet!

Here is a very small sample of what I have been making. Ya... my eyes hurt and my hands are crampy but here is something for a bigger project. I love the little details before the project gets bigger!

Happy BIrthday (and then back to work)

2011-08-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I want to thank everyone for their birthday wishes on my walls and e-mails. I am very happy to share this special day with people, even if they are all online.

So I think I already showed you some of my presents, here are some more precious presents that my cousin from Guangzhou sent me. Since I do not see the family very often (how about every 10 years at most?), we swapped pictures back and forth last night. I will share with you today the photos he sent me.

This is my cousin with his father. In relation to me, my uncle is my mother's 2nd brother and that is his second son. I have a complicated family tree. My cousin might not look it, but he is 48 and my uncle is in his late 70s.

... and here is my uncle again doing Tai Chi with a Chinese sword. Apparently he is very good at it.

Here is my cousin's picture taken by the Pearl River about a few months ago.

This is a picture of my cousin's daughter with I think my cousin (the older female is my cousin's sister, so another cousin.) I am not sure who the boy is. (This is how bad I am with family these days...)

This last one I thought was rather a treasured photo. This is a photo from the communist era. I have no idea when is the date of this photo other than it must be from the 60s because it showed my mother (the grown woman on the left) and my grandfather in the same picture (he is the one in white with 2 kids on the lap, one of them faded away.) I have never seen my grandfather before and I certainly have not met him. My grandfather was working against the communist before the communist party have been set up. When my mother was in her 20s, her father was kidnapped by the communists, and was never seen again. I bet my mother would like to see this picture too. My cousin said this is the oldest photo he knows. It has my mother's aunts and uncles in there too, and also my aunt but if you ask me... I would not be able to tell you anything else.

*IF I can get a hold of the original photo, I might attempt to have someone restore the photos.*

I don't need much in life, but it was definitely nice to see my family.

Well, back to work I go. The garage is all dry now so all I have to do now is clean the garage, move the furniture around, and get it all working again. There is a lot of work involved but I am looking forward to it!

New Artfire Layouts

2011-08-07T00:10:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So I am having some technical difficulties with Artfire at the moment.

Artfire just had a huge layout change. I had changed my layout to reflect the new changes, but of course since this just came out on Friday, things are kind of breaky on Artfire's part.

I am doing my best to fix the problems that the new shop layout is causing in the background.

The rapid carts on the right side of the blog works as far as I know. I just changed the code to reflect that.

In the meanwhile, if you need to order something from me, you can e-mail me directly at shop(at)live-mini(dot)com and I will send you a direct invoice. All mails will be out on Monday.

Thank you so much for your patience and I hope to get things back together!

Tom Bishop Show!

2011-08-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I was briefly in the Tom Bishop in South San Francisco. The show has gotten a tad bigger than last year and the crowds are coming back. Yay!

I did not see anyone that I know, but that's ok. They some new vendors and old vendors too, so it is an interesting mix of show.

I did pick up some goodies: they have some really nifty cupcake/muffin pans this time, which is smaller than the ones that I got last year. The company that made them made them in 3 different sizes, one smaller than the other! Hooray! I will have to show them with the calipers later.

Anyway, studio is almost back to normal with the wall drying. I got my particle/chemical filters ready for my mask, and a bunch of miniatures ready for ordering.

I am itching to get back to work! Please! That would be my best birthday present. :D

The shirt is done!

2011-07-27T00:40:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Yes it is so hard to find a good time to show this off, but here goes nothing: the shirt is done!

I made a few fundamental changes to the shirt, including no flower (didn't have the patience to crochet flowers) and the border of the shirt is very different, but alas it is done.

Here are some close ups of the shirt (not the best pictures in the world because I just want to have the picture done and over with):

Front view/Back view (they were made to look the same)

The shoulder/border (I just winged it)

The side seams (OMG sewing this is painful! I will definitely convert a pattern to circular next time!)

The bottom border (I made this up, it is not the same as the original but I like it because it flatters my figure more)

Yay! This is a huge achievement because people don't think I am bone headed enough to finish this shirt. It took 3 months I admit working on and off but I think if I was not distracted by my father's illness this won't be such a huge project.
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Ok so next project: I am kind of on the stuck phase because errr... I lost my beautiful circular needle set! :O I don't know where it went. It is probably in the house somewhere with everything else. Grrr... that is my problem. I guess I can finish knitting the socks for my dad (got a sock that is his feet size) and maybe some other little projects BUT for clothing I am kind of lost until I find my circular set (or find a project that only uses size 3 circular needles; I have those still -_-)

I am sure I will find something to do... :)

What I am up to these days

2011-07-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Since I don't have a table to do any claying still I thought I might share what I am doing.

I haven't been doing nothing! I have been sitting around and using Rosetta Stone a lot, listening to foreign music a lot, and of course chatting!
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Lately my cousin from Guangzhou decided that he wanted to connect my mother's next generation family over via Skype. Great idea! The generation gap is too high in my family. My cousin's children are around my age, and I don't know what to do! What do I say? What do I do? Heh, at least I can keep up with them in speaking and language comprehension. My family is very happy that I can keep up with them, but it is so hard! Language needs maintaining, and that includes English and your mother tongue, which mine is Cantonese.
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When I am not chatting, I am working on my shirt still. I am finally on the 2nd yoke part! The yoke on a shirt for those who don't know is the front panel of a shirt (or back). Since this is a shirt that is crochet + knitting finishing the crocheting part is such a relief!
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... and lastly when my hands hurt from the crocheting hook, I am reading these:

Ok, guilty pleasure is finally out. I am a BIG Sailor Moon fan when I was a little girl. The comic came out when I was 6. Gosh 20 years have gone by so fast! When I was a little girl I taught myself how to read Chinese and Japanese at the same time, so I basically read whatever books my dad decided that he will buy for me of the day. Still to this day I get Japanese and Chinese confused often, and that is no good! Thank goodness for online friends and the Cantonese dictionary to set me straight!

Anyway, my Sailor Moon collection is a mixture of both Chinese and Japanese before, but I got fed up with it because I keep getting confused! So my husband decided to buy me the full reprinted Japanese version for me. :D Yes, some of the animation is different and so is *some* of the language. However, if you already have the first edition in Japanese, don't buy the reprint unless you wanted the upgraded art. I think my husband is too generous! (loves)

And for those who wanted this in English (OMG!) Kodansha the Japanese printing company will have their own English translation out in September 2011. Support the main printing company guys so they can do their translations! I had a CardCaptor Sakura bilingual Japanese book. Their translations and illustrations look so much better because the original art is with the company. Tokyopop's (or Mixx) version is not that great. Besides, they are out of print. Me... I will stick with these and dreaming of finishing the first edition booklets myself because that is what I kept... :P

Oh, and if you guys ever want to see Naoko's main Japanese website, it is here: Sailormoon Channel. There used to be a lot more new drawings on there, but I guess people keep stealing it so she took it all down. Such a shame because she finally broke out the tradition of airbrushing and using photoshop instead...
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Ok... musing is over. I should really get my butt to work on that shirt or something...

How to make your own silicone cream

2011-07-10T20:01:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

This is a subjective matter that Pei Li brought up on her blog. Instead of writing a comment on her blog I would write my own thoughts on silicone here.

If you like the Japanese silicone creams you might want to pay attention.

Now I have used many kinds of materials in my day, from clay to resin. I do not claim to use everything out in the market. This is more of my observance on what is becoming more and more in the deco sweets/miniature market: silicone cream for wet looking cream.
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About silicone cream

Before yelling "but you haven't made any work in months" I have been working with my dad building houses as long as I can remember. I did look into buying silicone cream at one point to try it out. I actually worked with "silicone cream" just the other day caulking up the cracks off my bathroom. That was kind of my moment in sparking this debate. Seeing Pei Li's blog of what it looks like when dried confirmed it for me.

That type of silicone that you guys are seeing/using for the cream resemble caulking that is colored differently. Around here because there are so many people who does weird bathroom tiles in houses, you can actually find silicone in pale pinks, greens, etc for basically like $8 a caulking tube in the hardware store.

Heck, you can even find them online if you want to pay for shipping! Just type colored caulk to find a location near you.

If you cannot find the color you want, you can even color the clear ones with acrylic paint. There are whole forums dedicated to coloring silicone and making molds out of them. (This is where I got the idea of writing this from except with a different purpose.)

Of course, it will dry out eventually but it is not the end of the world if it dries out for a hardware store size tube compared to the little tiny tubes/tubs that the Japanese sells with the extra shipping from foreign countries.
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So how do you choose which one to buy/make?

Well like all silicone products it has shiny, matte, and semi-matte depending on your taste in bathroom or kitchen caulking or in this case, deco sweets/miniature decorating.

Edit: Now it is daylight and I can see the package more clearly, For people who live in the United States, This is the silicone caulking I experimented with: GE Premium Waterproof Silicone Silicone II* Clear. It comes in a RED and white tube and it can be very easily found in the caulking aisle. This particular tube I have is 290mL.

There is also another one recommended called GE Silicone 100% Silicone Rubber Sealant Clear that you can try. Since I do not have it on hand I cannot say which one is cheaper.

What do you need?

You need (Pics will come later):

- 1 tube of clear 100% silicone rubber caulking

Caulking in the US comes in 2 sizes: a small one and a big one. The big one is 290mL.

- 1 caulking gun (make sure to buy the right gun for the job. The cheapest one is NOT it, buy the next cheapest one. It should have a needle on it for poking into the caulking bottle directly.)

- 1 small nail (to seal the hole of the caulking later)

- acrylic paint of your choice and color

- piping bag or ziploc bag

- cake tip coupler

- cake tip of your choice

- gloves

- plastic cups to mix up the silicone

- metal spoon or plastic spoon (wood is probably not the best for this)

To open one of these tubes, take a pair of scissors to cut open the tube. Then afterwards, *most* every caulking gun has a needle to puncture the inside of the package of caulk. The reason why I put stars around *most* is because some caulking guns DO NOT have the needle. Don't get that one. You will want to return it. Then put the caulking tube into the caulking gun. There is a plunger in the end that would push the caulk up to the surface.

If you mix the colors yourself how long does it last? I unfortunately cannot answer that question with a straight answer. There are many types of caulking out there. Caulking in itself have fast drying varieties, which can take hours and then the regular, cheap stuff takes overnight to a day to dry. It really depends on which caulking you decide to buy.

If you extract it from the caulking gun the silicone on the caulking gun itself will probably last longer because it has a tighter seal. You can plug the hole on top of the caulking gun with a nail of the hole size. That is where the nail comes in. Even then you can have the silicone eventually dry out in there but it will dry out at a slower pace than just leaving it out in the open.

After you get the amount of silicone you want, add the acrylic paint directly to the silicone before it dries out. The silicone will absorb the colors and will mix well together.

Once you get the color you wanted, just simply use a piping bag (or plastic ziploc bag), a coupler, and the cake tips of your choice to pipe the newly made silicone cream to your creations.

Be forewarned to clean up immediately after you are done. You do not want the silicone to set in any way or it will become a pain to clean up after it sets up, especially in your pastry tubes! Simply use your finger or any tool to just clean up as much of the silicone as fast as possible. If some of them does dry on your tools, use an x-acto knife to carefully scrape it out later.

Also I forgot the smells. Silicone from the bottle definitely has an odor. Be careful not to breathe in too deeply.

Note to all as well: Do NOT wash silicone down the drain! You can clog the drain as it dries in bits and pieces. You do not want to do that. Just do it with a pan of water if necessary and throw the water out somewhere else besides a drain.

How do you get it shiny? It is not as shiny as I am used to.

Again, this really depends on the kind of silicone you buy. If it is not shiny enough for your liking, you can paint or spray on gloss directly on the silicone caulking.
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... and here is my result!

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So here I introduced it: how to make your own silicone cream for your own use at home without the heartache of spending a lot of money on a little tub/tube from Japan! As much as I love Japan, this is really something you can do at home at a low cost.

I am not attacking silicone cream from Japan! It is a fine product! If you have it use it! This is simply a tutorial for the future when you finally run out of the tube or it dried out in the container that there is an alternative, an alternative that can be made cheaply at home from the hardware store with some paint.

I hope this helps you in any way.

If you have questions, ask away!

Retooling my studio

2011-07-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I am back from the 4th of July weekend. San Francisco was actually great! No fog, how unusual!

I honestly miss making miniatures. I miss them to the point that I am slowly gathering all the tools that I had before my in-laws moved in. I am a tool junkie and I like collecting tools. Since I cannot really do much, at least I can get my tools back.

Here are some of the tools that I had bought back new. If you clay a lot do not give up your cutters! It ended up biting me back in the end. It's ok though. I get to look at new things!

And some new ones that I found that are useful: scalloped cutters! I haven't used them yet but they look so awesome!

Lastly, I found these on the world search for tools to add:

These are leaf veiners from South Africa. They are done on hard plastic (not sure what plastic yet.) These are designed for doing leaves and flowers on sugarpaste but it can be used for clay too. The only thing I do not recommend is don't leave anything pressed on there too long.

As always, you can see all these available on Itty Bitty Supplies

Looking forward to making miniatures when there is space. This is rather suffocating.

Happy Independence Day

2011-07-04T00:42:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

For all Americans I want to wish everyone Happy Independence Day! The United States is 235 years old this year. Very cool in any aspect.

Today I am going to spend some time in San Francisco with my brother, the husband, and my brother-in-law and his wife in downtown San Francisco before going to Pier 39 for fireworks. It should be fun.

Last year we went to San Francisco as well but we managed to get on a boat by the bay to watch fireworks. It was one of the coldest events ever as San Francisco likes to drop the temperature VERY quick. We are prepared this year >:P Let's hope I don't freeze...

And for all those who are not in America I hope that you all have a wonderful day around the world. :)

Bye Bye Polymer Clay Canes sales

2011-07-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

As you guys know, I love caning! I can cane all day long unless I have tennis elbows.

However, because of the lack of space, I can't really make anymore of these beauties, so I am letting my entire stock go starting as low as $2 for the old designs and $2.50 for the new designs! They are all at Itty Bitty Supplies. Here are some of the beauties I listed:

Seriously, come grab them now before they are all gone. Unless someone can convince me to make canes again for the masses, this is it to get canes that are completely original and hand designed and crafted by me.

I will continue to cane but those canes will be mine and not for mass sale.

Thanks for looking! Again, they are all at Itty Bitty Supplies.

Getting back to normal

2011-06-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I want to thank everyone for your continued good wishes. I have an update from my dad. My dad had his stitches taken out earlier today. He is doing pretty good other than him complaining that he is "slow," meaning he is slow to catch conversations and watching TV. He can hold at most a 2-3 minute conversation and he can go for short walks.

For a man who used to like to tell stories while climbing on top of house roofs he would say he is "slow." His doctor said this is normal reaction and she said his recovery is going very well. Eventually everything will return to normal and he will probably continue to climb roofs and fix things in a few months.
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Now that things are getting back to normal, it is time to get back to work! Shadow Day for the culinary school is on Weds. I am super nervous about that since I never been to a commercial kitchen before, let alone a classroom simulating one. I am rather curious too.

I found a bunch of these wonderful icing bags. I ordered them the same time as the PME icing tips but somehow forgot about them. I guess that happens from time to time when life gets busy. :/ These are 12" food safe disposable plastic icing bags. I use them for frosting the icing off real cakes, miniature cakes with grace soft or whipped polymer clay + TLS. Like everything I order, when I ordered them I ordered lots, so I am here to share my extras.

You can buy them in either 25 or 100. They are all available in Itty Bitty Supplies
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So there is my quick update. Thank you everyone! (hugs)

P.S: Remember that I used to make polymer canes? I finally found the box of them hidden inside another box in the garage! As soon as I do the count I am having a cane sale. Details to follow as soon as those are sorted out.

... and the winner is!

2011-06-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Thank you again for all your patience and well wishes for my father. My father is doing quite well after surgery. I spent a lot of time with my father and he is doing well, although I took a break this weekend. It is hard to take care of your parents and everyone needs a little break here and there.

Now that my break is over, it is time for the contest winner! I placed all the people who wanted to be in the contest through random.org and the winner is...

Haffina! :D

Thank you very much for everyone that entered and I wish everyone else a wonderful, fulfilling day! :D

Bear Phone!

2011-06-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Finally! A post about myself! I can be selfish can I?

So I am hooked onto San-X, not to be confused with Sanrio. They are 2 separate companies.

I love them since high school when I got bored of Sanrio. That habit never went away and I collect stuffed animals here and there. :)

Anyway, so when I saw iphones that has Rilakkuma or Relax Bear, I gotta get one! They were all sold out in Japan but people are selling them of all varieties (fake ones included) on ebay.

So... here is my iphone, complete with the bear cover on it (early birthday gift from my husband):

... and just timing too! Now if any miniaturist want to talk to me via voice or IM, I do have skype on my iphone. My username is Gamekitty. This feature is great for calling relatives in Hong Kong and online pen-pals.

So that is it for now. I am preparing for the long week ahead. The surgery is on Tuesday at 8:30. We got egg roll cookies, hat, not quite socks, but everything else is good to go on my end.

Thank you guys and don't forget about the contest! That contest ends a week after my father is out of the operation on June 21.

A tale of 2 hats

2011-06-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So today is my dad's scans before surgery. Everything came out great and he is ready to go next Tuesday. He is in a good clean bill of health. :) That is the good news.

So about knitting hats... I ended making 2 hats.

Why 2? Well, at first I made 1 following the pattern exactly as written for the Regular Guy beanie pattern but added "2 inches" worth of stitches to make it looser. Well... let's just say that every knitter has a different gauge for knitting. Despite doing a gauge test, it did not go so great. It happens sometimes. So... I started making up a pattern based on that pattern with different needle sizes and different number of stitches.

I am not complaining though. Both hats turned out pretty well. I have one exactly like my dad's that I can wear to while we wait for surgery. The first hat fits me fine, just not my dad. Dad liked the bigger hat I knitted. It is simple yet comfy.
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Meanwhile, the socks are going well. My mom is jealous. She never knitted socks before, and I was knitting while I was waiting. Socks are tricky I will give them that. I am knitting the heel part for the first sock. The rounds are done pretty quickly since they were just straight rounds, but ya... I am not that great about slip 1 knit 1/slip 1 purl 1. I hope I am doing that part right.

I think the best part of all is that dad loved the hat. I hope he will love the socks too.

Kind acts and words (and a contest)

2011-06-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I want to thank all the readers out there wishing my family and I prayers and a speedy recovery. We are coping as well as we can as you can see here, although everyone is in a bundle of nerves about the whole thing despite the fact that there are people reassuring me that everything will be ok. I think that happens to everyone.

I actually have received a gift of sorts: My first miniature book, which was Angie Scarr's first book!

When I was selling all my books and tools this book was the first one to go. A friend of mine in the Polymer Clay Smooshers guild first saw it and said she had to have it for her collection. That book is sold right away and went to her. After things have settled down I had a small narrow window where I was going to go back to make miniatures. That was before my father's surgery and preparations. She asked me then if I wished to have the book back. I said I would because I honestly missed the miniature books.

This particular miniature book had taught me a lot about how much practice, how many failures, and how happy I was when I conquered something hard in miniatures as well as life. It told me you know it is ok to cry and it is ok to laugh too about the small things in life.

Well, this book has been delivered back to me today. I am so touched by the kindness of my friend for returning it to me (and you all for praying for me and listening to my weirdness over the years) that I want to give it away to a lucky blog reader for being so kind in reading and corresponding to my blog.

Why now? Why not? I just want something good to happen in this world of uncertainty and madness and give someone else a wonderful book to read and learn about miniatures, which can be turned into a variety of things as well!

What do you need to win this book:

1) Join my blog if you have not already done so.
2) Leave me a comment about how you would like to be part of this contest.

For additional chances to win the book:

- like Live Mini on facebook

- tweet the contest on your twitter account

- Spread the word of this kindness via your own blog with a blog post (and send the URL as part of the blog comment)

- Share this contest on your facebook page (and send the URL as part of the blog comment)

- Share this contest on any other social network that you know (and send the URL as part of the blog comment)

Please remember to leave me a new comment for each action you did so I can keep count! For example, if you have done all 6 of the above, you should leave me 7 comments, each comment stating what you have done. :) So I know you have 7 chances in winning this wonderful book.

The drawing will come a week after my father's surgery, which is 6/21.

Good luck! I will stay in touch as much as possible even if there are no miniatures making in the background. I will be around to say hello and keep people updated. :)

June update

2011-06-02T02:20:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

"We come this way but once. We can either tiptoe through life and hope that we get to death without being to badly bruised or we can live a full, complete life achieving our goals and realizing our wildest dreams."
- Bob Proctor

First of all I want to thank everyone for your kind comments and prayers for my father. I am very happy to read your encouraging e-mails to go on!

As for the promise of updating you all with the details of hat and socks, here goes nothing:

I am going to knit this hat starting tomorrow. It is called Regular Guy Beanie. It fits my dad's measurements great and I have his favorite color yarn: sweatshirt gray! When the hat is done it will be lined with sweatshirt material so the yarn is not too harsh against the back of his head but it still stretches. I guess this makes the hat reversible! I am excited because this pattern doesn't seem to be so hard to do, and the sewing machine can use some exercise afterwards. I never sewn knitted goods with cloth before, so that alone is an interesting experiment.

As for the socks, I am using the standard socks off this book:

The Getting Started series is a great series to have for almost anything! I have Getting Started Knitting Socks for a while now. I am a bit nervous because my sister-in-law used to knit a lot and she usually only knits 1 sock and never get to the other one, so I am hoping to be able to finish the socks in time.

Sigh... besides this month's surgery there is also a visit from my brother-in-law, 3 birthdays, and maybe even a new career path on the horizon!

Every day is a different day and I will try to post here to keep myself from going insane!

Something personal

2011-05-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I do have something personal to share.

My father is going to have brain surgery soon. He has a tumor in his brain the size of a machine gumball inside his head. They found it a year ago. My dad thought it would not grow. Unfortunately, it did get bigger, so he will have a major surgery in mid June. The surgery is intense, but the recovery rate is high.

Please pray for me while I take care of my family. I will be making my father a pair of socks and a hat to keep his head safe and feet warm while he recovers. I will post progress of hat + socks, both items I never made before. I will promise to take a picture when I am done. :)

Again, for those lone readers out there who reads this blog, thank you for continuing to read my blog and I will see you soon!

Studio and gardening updates

2011-05-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So at the moment once again no studio. My husband's car broke down so we had to make space to park in there. Grrrr... so the art part got stalled again. How frustrating. The car is fixed but the studio is now squished in a corner. Gah!

(Edit: I just realized how disorganized my thoughts are. LOL)

But on the bright news: We have lots of new plants and barrels!

My mother-in-law and I are working to have a garden that grows food all year round. Since the lemon tree gods already do grow all year round, I think we would like more than just lemons year round.

Anyway... to achieve at least part of the goal we have:

8 shiny wine barrels!

So here is the story that goes with these barrels: I live in a strange neighborhood. It is half residential and half industrial. At the end of the street there is a winery: La Honda Winery. We drove by them often but never seem to have a chance to go in. The winery just happened to bust open some wine barrels and selling them for $25. Since we are neighbors, we just walked down to the end of the block and bought them all!

Here are the half wine barrels coming outside.

... and since we live so close to them (like a block away literally) they drove the forklift all the way to our house! Ya I got film of that, but that needs editing. I will take more pictures of the barrels later. :)

What are we going to do with these? I have no freaking clue, but I think there are raspberries and blueberries calling dibs on 2 of them. :P

Speaking of berries... I planted 13 more strawberry plants to go with the 2 wild ones! :O I did that because 1) loves strawberries and 2) apparently there are garden slugs EATING my wild berries and my mint bush! :O So... I got some sluggo and sprinkled it around the strawberries and mint bush. I hope they will go away :(

Free cool online illustration books

2011-05-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I want to share something special: free e-books!

These are not just any free e-books, they are free Andrew Loomis e-books.

Who is Andrew Loomis? He used to do a lot of illustrations for advertising and the like in the 20s-50s. His books teaches you how to draw in that style, which is popular at the time.

Nowadays there are not as many advertisements that are drawn, but photoshopped. Nevertheless, I love to draw and sculpt and these are good inspiration pieces to look at.

You can download them here: http://alexhays.com/loomis/

Have fun reading! I know I will have fun this week. It is packed but exciting.

Live Mini is Live again!

2011-05-14T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So Live Mini @ Artfire is alive again!

There are many past works available for sale, and there are many more things to list that I keep finding, like the ones above. :) Those will be listed soon.

There are also many strange ideas, schemes, and possible jobs lined up for me as well, but I cannot tell you guys until at least after next week. I don't like counting chickens before they hatch.

But... most of all I want to thank everyone for reading and continuing to follow my journey. I always felt that I am a miniature artist at heart, but there are just too many life changing events in my life that needs addressing, and they seem to always come up around the holidays. For that I thank you for all your patience. :)
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P.S. While you are waiting for my schemes or waiting for me to ship something out for you, have some fun things to look at. My husband has been teasing the dogs with iproducts (both iphone and ipad.) Nikky in particular is rather intrigued with youtube. Here is a video of her watching youtube on an ipad:

... and here is the Cat Piano! There is also a dog piano. My husband is playing it to amuse Nikky. She likes to bark and scramble like mad when she hears it. :) It is a free app so you can download it and play with it to amuse your pets too!

Behind the scenes...

2011-05-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Live Mini is slowly coming back! Here is a sneak peek ;)

P.S. Thank you Cindy for the cupcake wrapper! I got that from her a long time ago. They are very nice :)

Happy Easter (and my Easter eggs)

2011-04-24T17:28:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone and Happy Easter for all those who celebrate it!

This year is not kind to my health. I am down with the flu! Yuck!

BUT I do have some Easter eggs to share with you: my tools!

Just because I am not actively making miniatures here and there right now that does not mean I stopped scouting all over the Internet for tools for people to use!

Itty Bitty Supplies now has:

- Grace whip/Grace whip soft! This is a pet project to get air dry clay around here for people to be able to use. More air dry clay is coming but these arrived first!

- PME piping tips straight from England! For those who are working with making miniature foods these are the piping tips that are needed to make those extra delicate little pipings that makes miniature cake look realistic from afar! I am supplying them for everyone here, along with everything else you need: piping bags, couplers, and the best tip cleaners I know.

- One of my favorite toys of all time is here too: silicone bead makers. Bead makers that I know are basically long tubes where you roll out each bead individually. In this set up. you put down some corn starch (or pearl powder) on polymer clay, roll out a snake of any color you like, press the mold together, and you get a beautiful row of beads that are consistent in size! I love this tool and it is available in many different sizes from 3mm - 12mm in round, some rose beads, and even oval ones!

- Cookie cutters for making great shapes of miniatures. I have these available from 1/2" to 1". More cutters are coming too.

I will keep everyone informed of more tools coming that can be used in miniature/polymer clay.

I am also the guild master of Artfire Miniaturists' Guild and working to promote the many wonderful miniaturists in Artfire. If you have a chance to see their work, please do because they are the same wonderful miniaturists that you know and love, only at Artfire!

Easter Mini Goodness

Curated By: gamekitty

ArtFire.com

Fine Art Photography

So Happy Easter everyone! I hope you like these lovely little "Easter Eggs" I picked up and hope to see you all soon with other cool things!

30 Day Straight Art: Day 15

2011-04-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I am comemorating my 15th post of the 30 day straight art and posting it here too. I am happy that I can do art straight again, even if the art is different than the usual art I do. IF you have not been following the 30 day straight art project it is on the other blog Betty candy.

Onto the post: I am kind of worn out I think because of allergies. Allergy season is in full swing here and ugggg... I am not feeling that great. I did do some yard work though.

Note: I will not claim credit for chopping down this tree! My mother-in-law chopped the tree down for me.

For the tree lovers out there, this particular tree is chopped down because:

1) I am deathly allergic to the pollen
2) The tree is slowly wrecking my driveway and slowly growing into the foundation of the house. While we were remodeling our current house we had to take apart the driveway. We saw the roots growing pretty close to the house it. All we could do at that point was whack the roots off to a safe distance, but if left unchecked it will grow into the house before long.
3) It is growing out of control. Even after we fixed the driveway now it is broken again. Uggg...
4) There is actually a large iron pipe underneath said tree that drains water off the roof of the garage and out to the street. We don't need a broken pipe because of the tree's roots.

I helped put the remains of tree into the bin but nothing more. :/

After we put away most of the tree into the compost bin, I worked in the garage! Remember the claywork?

Well, now it looks like this. I have a pair of feet that I made! It does look super odd but after a while it is kind of me rolling a sausage of clay and putting it on the foot. Nothing is shaped or sanded to perfection yet. This is all "feet play!" Haha...

I am making a top for myself as well:

Right now I have about 10" off the front piece. This shirt is a combination of knitting and crocheting. I can knit now but I can't crochet, so it is an interesting challenge for me.

... and now back to work! I am really enjoying this project and slowly learning the ways of knitting like the pros. ;) I am not miniaturizing my work yet. I will do that later. For now I am just enjoying myself. Isn't that what art is all about?

Polymer Clay Smooshers Tribal Challenge

2011-04-08T23:04:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

As I am slowly rediscovering my miniature roots and working back, I did not forget the friends I made along the way.

Polymer Clay Smooshers of Artfire just had a Tribal challenge! Their pieces are gorgeous aren't they? You can do many things with polymer clay and here is a nice sample of what you can do besides food!

If you want to see more challenges, please visit them! They got lots of cool work! I am still thankful that they took me in and I hope to be able to contribute to them again soon!

Starting to get back to normal...

2011-04-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Life is slowly getting back to normal when the clay sculpting tools are out:

At the moment, I am experimenting with the stone air dry clay La Doll. It is a happy medium that is very durable in its own way, yet flexible enough in my mind to make drastic changes if needed.

Unfortunately, working in the garage = major dust problems. I can't work inside the house now because the 2 residential doggies' fur would get into everything. The garage is a mixture of outside dust + storage dust. I either have to learn to work QUICK and then set them in safe places or face the consequences, and I already had faced the consequences when I got back home from Texas. Ugh. I think air dry clay might end up filling the void caused by the dust by simply drying a lot faster than the dust can settle.

I do have polymer clay in the garage. You guys did not take them all, but I feel like I am riding a bike all over again getting used to the environment.
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On an unrelated note, I am getting many comments about strawberries amongst my friends.

We are starting to believe these little jewels from heaven are actually wild strawberreis! They are small, grows underneath trees, and likes shade. That is completely different than all the conventional wisdom of the growers that we talked to. So we think they are wild and they love lemons. Some of them are starting to ripe now. This berry will get a bit bigger but not by much before it turns red.

Don't worry, no squirrels will steal our berries (unlike my parents' house.) The residential doggies here practically guards the yard every day to prevent squirrel/rat/bird/cat thieves.

Now, what do you guys know about getting rid of snails? Every day I start the day plucking out the snails out of my mint bush and chucking them out of my fence into the open road. We tried beer but that didn't work and I don't wanna buy pesticides. Any ideas?

Mags-nificent Miniatures giveaway!

2011-04-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

A fellow miniaturist Mags of Mags-nificent Miniatures is having a 300th follower miniature giveaway!

You can get one of these funky pumpkins with a rat from her. Aren't they cute?

To enter, just go here and be a follower (and post this link on your blog too) Mags-nificent Miniatures

I will be doing my own as well but that won't happen until at the 200 follower part. :)

Spread the word and have fun! I know I will be having some fun at the studio today!

2011 Live Mini/Betty Candy studio

2011-04-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone and Happy April Fool's Day!

I am starting an ambitious project in Betty Candy right now: forcing myself to do something artistic every day for an entire month to get back to making art. I feel sick both physically and mentally long enough. I had to do something about it. It is time to do something about it instead of being stuck in bed all the time.

In the meantime... how would you like a small tour of my studio?

It is a start... Can't make art without an office ;)

This is the garage, half of it to be exact. Since my in-laws live in my old studio a new one had to be literally carved out of the garage. Otherwise I would go nuts. I think I did go nuts. Most of the stuff as you can see are still in boxes. My husband is a reasonable man so he let me have half the garage. The other half is full of my in-law's belongings but that's ok.

I would have done this a LOT sooner, but all the rain made things rather impossible to deal with. Now if it rains I can work inside, but not before. Before most of the free space is just clogged with lawn furniture to prevent them from being blown away by winter storms. Now that winter is over, I have a great place after cleaning this place for a week. :)

So... the art is slowly coming back. I want it to be faster though, but the garage only has a 15 amp circuit. At most it can light up some lamps and sometimes the toaster oven. Maybe when summer comes I have to plug the toaster oven in front of my bedroom window. Now wouldn't that be a hoot? LOL

Spring is here (almost)

2011-03-16T11:56:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

It has been raining almost non-stop since about January, with a nice few days of frost in between.

Yet, these miraculous little plants survived!

This is my strawberry bush. There are 2 of these, and these things are getting bigger! My mother-in-law said the bushes growing here are defying logic, seeing that they are growing on the bottom of one of the lemon trees where there is shade.

My sister-in-law bought some chocolate mint for the yard. I am not sure why seeing that my mint bush is a monster!

This is a small part of the mint bush. I love mint. The husband uses it all the time for mint ice cream. There is only a small problem: it apparently has some unwanted inhabitants living there: snails. We put out some beer and going to see who visits this beer trap.

Today is finally a good day to take a picture of my sweater dress progress! You can read more about it on Betty Candy.

That is it for now! The weather widget said it will rain for the rest of the week except for tomorrow. I hope they are correct, but at least I do not have to water the plants outdoors. The rain can do that for me.

Project 1: Sleeveless sweater dress

2011-03-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So I have been quiet because apparently allergy season is brutal and it is not officially spring until this weekend. I didn't really want to do too much mainly because of the usual hay fever problems AND my skin is turning itself into one big hive fest. None of my doctors can tell me why so I am resorting to drugs and home remedies. Ugggg...

I have been following the Japanese disaster though and I feel horrible for my miniature friends/pen pals in Japan. Stay safe and keep us informed!

Meanwhile, this is my latest work. It is not a miniature, but I am proud of it. I learned a lot and will continue to learn a lot from this sweater. I will probably wear it proudly once it is finished, mistakes and all. This is my secret project: to learn and shrink my work into miniature through making real life sized clothes for myself.

Here is my sweater in its beginning stages:

You can read more about it on my other blog Betty Candy.

I hope to spring back soon! This project has been an exciting moment for me while I wait for the rain to stop. Once again it is going to rain all week in "Sunny California" Blargh.

New blog layout

2011-03-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I am still working on secret project but I have some time to change my blog a little. It is fun! I don't know why I did not do it sooner.

Anyway, back to work for me. I feel a lot busier and happier since I started the Artfire Miniaturists' Guild and working with Betty Candy!

Thanks for everyone who still reads my blog! You guys are great!

Learning about this AF collection thing...

2011-02-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I am sharing everyone my first ever made Artfire Collections, courtesy of the Artfire Miniaturists' Guild!

I hope you will all enjoy this! Of course, once this is started now I can't stop!

Spring Miniature containers

Curated By: gamekitty

ArtFire.com

Unique Gifts

Quick self-reflection

2011-02-10T15:03:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone!

So as I watch the items leaving to my kind friends and strangers online I realized something.

It is not the tools or the books that makes an artist. It is the experience and friends that you make along the way.

Every day I get e-mails and plurks from my wonderful friends telling me to keep going with making miniatures and recover from all the changes around me. They did not tell me this because they want to commission me to do something in particular, but rather because they genuinely like me as a person and what I like to do.

Not doing frequent commissions of the same things over and over again is very liberating.

At the moment I am working on something miniature, but it is not ready for showing yet.

Thank you for all your wonderful support through e-mails and messages! They are encouraging me to keep going!

I have been stalked!

2011-02-08T16:47:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Live Mini @ Artfire has been stalked by The Stalkers Guild of Artfire!

The Stalkers Guild of Artfire is an Artfire guild that promotes artisans that they think needs more attention. I am so thrilled to be stalked by them!

Thank you so much for your help The Stalkers Guild of Artfire for your generosity! I was truly surprised!

Happy Chinese New Year! (and some free gifts)

2011-02-04T14:11:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone and Happy Chinese New Year! This is the year of the rabbit, so let's hope that this year we will have lots of luck with the lucky rabbit!

I am starting this year with some of the freebie knitting/crocheting patterns I found online.

One of the places I like the most is Ravelry. They are a great place for patterns, forums, and even finding a knitting group! That is where I found my current knitting group! Ravelry have a place for you to sell your designs as well. Support the artisans directly whenever you can!

Another great place to find knitting patterns are online knitting magazines like Knitty. I am a big fan of Knitty for years and years ever since they had a particular article about knitting for Blythes. Wonderful advice and free patterns, what more can you ask?

Last of all, if you actually look at the packages of yarn from the generic yarn store brand, the is a pattern there and they have websites! My favorites at the moment are Lion's Brand and Patons to name 2 of them. You might not have to LIKE the yarn but you can LIKE the free patterns. They usually are royalty free (meaning you can make and sell the stuff you make) and provides the yarn gauge and weight so you can find a good substitute for the yarn if you don't want to use a particular company's yarn.

Libraries and actual magazines are fun to look at too, but they are not always free either in space or in cost. I just like the Internet better for some things.

I hope you will have fun browsing through all these wonderful patterns as much as I have finding them!

Teh Residential dogs

2011-02-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

It is almost Chinese New Year! This year it is the year of the Rabbit. I wish I have more time to do things, but right now I will be happy if the house is clean before the New Year's.

Well, these guys are not helping. Suddenly we got double the size of residential animals!

Here we have the new doggies Nikky the Lab mix (my mother-in-law's dog) and Daisy the Rat Terrier (my sister-in-law's dog.) They live with us now, doing their doggy things: play in the yard, begging for food, and sleeping.

In case of emergencies, Daisy can be used as a flotation device! (No... not really, that is prevent her from escaping through the bars of the metal gate.

I miss playing with minis of any kind. We just gave them both a bath today. Tomorrow, it is the guinea pig's turn. -_-

A different kind of Victorian

2011-01-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Restoring my flickr means I find all kinds of interesting pictures. This is one of them.

This building believe it or not is a British Victorian building within Hong Kong. I saw it the last time I was there in 2004. The building is definitely interesting, seeing that it is in a semi-circle and combines both the British and Chinese influences in one swoop. It is definitely one of the most interesting Victorian era building I ever seen. This place itself looks like it has an interesting history. I did not know what the house looked like in Victorian times but in more recent times this place was an electronic store and it looked like it survived a massive fire. That is all I can see.

I guess this is one of the things that influenced me to work in miniature art. You always see Victorian miniatures through the eyes of Americans or Europeans, but never ones through other countries. After all, British imperialism did not just stop in Britain and influences just America. It is worldwide and widespread and the views are not always positive. I would love to see the Victorian style buildings in places like India or South Africa to see what it is like.

While I was there, this building was being restored. I hope to see this building restored when I go back there.

Before it all goes to ebay...

2011-01-26T12:52:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone!

If anything leftover does not sell by the end of the week, it will go up to ebay.

* edit * I cannot believe I forgot to put the ebay link up! Here it is: http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/livemini

Ok I am going back to bed now... didn't sleep last night...

Flickr restored

2011-01-25T14:39:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone (again!)

I have restored my flickr. You can now view all the previous (and current) work that I have done going back to 2005!

Here is the address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamekitty/.

I hope you like it! Of course, I have to continue to sort out the pictures and add more but it is a start... :X

Betty Candy

2011-01-25T09:31:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

So I am finally unveiling my new project: Betty Candy!

This is what I have been up to lately. It is way different than what I have been doing, but I like it and it is more expressive to me at the moment than what I was doing.

You can find out more about it here:

The Betty Candy!

I will continue to update Live Mini, as I am still making miniatures from this project. It will be a challenge but at this point anything will help!

I hope you will enjoy this new blog as much as I enjoy the experiments!

Thank you!

2011-01-24T16:19:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Thank you so much for all the kindness and wonderful people who send well wishes and help me clean out my studio. I really appreciate all the wonderful people online.

I am so sorry that I could not get back to anyone last week. My husband's sister moved in with us last week with her dog. Now things are extra slow with 2 extra people and 2 new doggies living in my old studio. There are more people, things, and dogs everywhere in a relatively small space. That means it is hard to keep things clean and tidy and organized, both physically and mentally.

The next stop right now is to finish handling all the last minute details (thank you patient peeps for the wait!) and the rest is going off to ebay in one giant swoop!

I am hoping this year would be a good year for me. It is Chinese New Year soon, so that means things can change quickly. I wish I can work on minis of any sort, but right now I will be happy to vacuum the rug.

Liquidy clay goodness

2011-01-18T01:31:00.000-08:00

Ok, it is late, but I have 1 more thing to list at night: the liquidy stuff.

Note: First come first serve. I can only hold these for 24 hours. If you do not respond then the next person can have it. Thank you for understanding.

- Sculpey clay softener (never used): $3

1 1/2 tubes of texture magic + a bunch of PME & wilton piping tubes. It includes many tips including PME 43C & 44C. These are the same miniature pastry tops that miniaturists use for their baked goodies. $25.

Again, if anyone is interested let me know!

Found: Angie Scarr videos

2011-01-18T01:12:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Mail run resumes today but I wanted to add these wonderful videos! I am more of a visual person so videos are great for me.

All these DVDs play on US based DVD players and all $9 each. International buyers welcome :) Just let me know!

Note: All items are first come first serve. I can only hold items for up to 24 hours. After that, it is fair game to someone else.

Banana video

Exotic fruit (strawberries and kiwis)

Angie's liquid fimo course

More to come! I am finding more and more things all the time apparently. This gives you a great idea on how much stuff a miniaturist needs/use, etc... Don't worry... I am sane, but sometimes I wonder about that... :/

Next stop: Miniature books

2011-01-12T16:46:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

So here are the miniature books that I have. I will start off with the Japanese ones. They are all $20 each:

Note: This is all first come first serve. All holds are available for 24 hours only. If I don't hear from you the hold is off and someone else can have it. Thank you.

Making general miniature food: $20

Making Japanese themed things (including food): $20

Making miniature shops: $20

Making 1/6 scale foods vol. 1: $20

Making 1/6 scale foods vol. 2: $20

Making Japanese scenes: $20

If any of you are interested in these books post a comment with your e-mail or just e-mail me at shop(at)live-mini(dot)com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you for all the support everyone! Everyone has been so supportive!

Self-discovery

2011-01-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

As you all know I am an avid clay artist at one point.

I think something mentally clicked. I just could not clay anymore. Here is why:

1) Clay just takes up a WHOLE lot of space and I just don't have it anymore. My mother-in-law needs a place to go so my studio is now gone. It is a sad moment but it had to be done. When I cleaned it out I realized how many miniature things I had! It was astonishing to say the least. All my items that I made are on sale now on Artfire.

2) Clay is not portable. When I was traveling around in Texas I could not clay at all. I can read about clay, but that is not the same as actual claying. I spent 3 weeks in motels/hotels the whole time and seriously... the only thing I could do is knit. I found out that I enjoyed knitting a lot more than before and to me that is kind of odd.

3) I felt like clay is holding me back. I just feel like I cannot express myself through clay anymore. I suppose it is weird because I have spent the last 5 years working with polymer clay.

4) My father-in-law dying at age 54 kind of got me thinking too. If I am not happy doing what I am doing I should quit while I am ahead. I do know that I will continue to make miniatures, but I don't know anymore... I have friends all over the world asking me what is going on in my mind and I find myself not being able to answer them. Maybe I am depressed who knows.

You CAN do a lot of things with polymer clay! You can make food, jewelry, decorations, and so forth, but I reached my mental limit.

That is all for now. I have a busy day ahead of me and I am not too thrilled about it. Thank you for all the kind comments online though. I will be thinking of all of you too while I work to sort some things in my life.

Lack of posts

2011-01-07T13:00:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

There are lots of things going on right now (still) since my father-in-law passed away.

My mother-in-law took over my studio, so I no longer have a space to work.

Even though I have no space to work, I am doing something interesting, but I cannot reveal it yet.

Anyway, just popping in to say hi. After all this is sorted out I will finish talking about the trip to Texas. I apparently lost enough weight for people to notice that I lost weight. I didn't eat anything unusual, but it is a compliment.

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

Sorry if I am silent, but it is time to face the music: family is here so I have no time to work on anything.

However, the new year is coming up and I wish everyone a happy new year and may 2011 bring many good days ahead!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas

2010-12-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I am back in California! It has been a crazy 3 weeks and I am ready to settle down.

However, I can't. My mother-in-law is going to be living with us for a while at least. She needs a room, so there goes my office. I don't mind though. She is a good company and she is teaching me about how to handle her dog in case I had to babysit the dog. I am also doing some interesting things to keep myself occupied, so all is not lost.

Despite all the things happening in my life right now, I am determined to have a wonderful Christmas full of family, food, and love.

So I wish you all a Merry Christmas before I forget. My family from 3 sides are pulling me away for now but I will be back before the new year I promise!

P.S. I did not forget about the rest of the Texas adventure stories. I just haven't extracted the pictures yet.

Texas adventure part 1: The food

2010-12-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I have a spare moment right now. OMG What a journey!

My father-in-law passed away last Friday. In truth, he really passed away as soon as he hit the kitchen floor, as he never regained consciousness since then. It is a sad time for everyone but we are all doing as well as the circumstances would allow.

Right now the biggest task of all is to move my mother-in-law and her 2 youngest children to California. My husband is the oldest and the youngest brother-in-law is 10 years apart, so you can only imagine the difficulty in doing so. Now my mother-in-law's family never had a real chance to take root anywhere, so this is a challenge all by itself. I will post more about this later.

Just because my father-in-law passed away that does not mean that we are NOT going to have an adventure. My father-in-law would have wanted it that way. I never been to Texas before and San Antonio is a good as any place to start off.

For now, I am pretty sick of deep fried foods in general! Now Texas is a huge state. When they say everything is bigger in Texas they are not kidding, including portion sizes and lack of veggies.

So this is what I had so far:

Chicken fried steak with cream gravy. In fact, we ate lots of cream gravy while we were in the hospital: sausages with gravy, biscuits with gravy, cornbread with gravy, etc... You get the picture.

We discovered Jim's Diner by accident. We were pretty sick of ihop (the extended family ate there a lot) and then we found another diner. This place is pretty good but it had things like chili steak, which is a hamburger steak covered with chili. The husband said it is awesome but I am like ewww... I like chili, just not really covered with chili.

We finally went to a Whataburger. Husband ordered the medium burger and it is like twice the size as the burgers that I seen in California. I can't even think of what the big one is like. Believe it or not Whataburger is the state burger joint. They also sell something I like to call ummm... deep fried chocolate brownie pie. Ewwww...

We also went to chick-fil-a which is a place that serves only chicken. We don't have those in California so the husband and all the relatives kind of gorged themselves with lots of deep fried breaded chicken goodness.

Iced tea is also the king here. Everywhere we go there is iced tea. Maybe that is why my husband loves lemon iced tea. It is like water around here, except I cannot have any. They come in sweetened and unsweetened. The husband orders the unsweetened with lemon juice.

See all those things are good if there are real veggies in there. Too many fried foods = bad stomach problems.

Anyway, so this is my first Texas post. I will have more later.

Happy Thanksgiving (in the US)

2010-11-24T16:44:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone!

I want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

We are hosting Thanksgiving this year so we are now busy preparing for the big holidays.

The husband here is the cook. He is the one big on cooking, so I am watching him cook all sorts of interesting things.

One of the things that the husband really likes to make are pies! At the moment it is lemon meringue.

I can never bake like him, but I can imitate his stuff (sometimes)

I am sure there will be more from me from Thanksgiving but ugggg... I will have to share the story later.

The holiday rush

2010-11-12T11:08:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone!

First of all I want to thank my 3 cousins for adding me off Facebook. I really appreciate it.

I don't really get to hear from my relatives much, seeing that they are scattered all around China/Hong Kong and apparently one in Australia and probably more around the world by now. My parents' immediate families are HUGE, let alone their extended families. My mom and dad has 3 siblings each, but they are many years apart. It is nice to be able to at least see what some of them are doing over Facebook even though it is hard to see any of them. Who knows right?

With that fuzzy warm feeling started, the holiday work/portfolio building begins quite nicely.

The first order of the season is a custom order from one of my favorite customers. She makes Barbie miniatures and loves my polymer clay canes. Since I have to cane a bunch for the holidays anyway she gave me some guidelines of what to make and told me to go nuts the rest of the time. Let's just say I took that for a nice little ride and made a bunch of interesting Christmas/cookie/candy canes for her:

I could make a lot more, but since I am getting ready to have family and doctors' tinkering I rather not risk making many more. I think she will be happy with what I have for her so far!

I get to keep the leftover bits of course. Every cane has leftovers, intentional or not. What I do with them is a story of another time.

This is it for now. I cannot believe this post sat empty for a few days!

WIP Wednesday: Rise from the ashes

2010-11-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I am at the final stretches of cleaning and I am finding all kinds of goodies that is really distracting me from doing all the work that I am supposed to do.

I found a few... like this:

Aren't they beautiful? they are all supposed to be white at one point but they got burnt to a crisp in the oven and turned into this. It is kind of amazing what heat can do sometimes. I am not sure what to do with these yet but they look cool.

I also found these little gems I made last year. This is resin + polymer clay + tea leaves! I thought it was cool.

It is great to find all sorts of weird things while cleaning. You never know what you have until you find them. Then you wonder why you lost them in the first place!

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Digital Caliper

2010-11-09T09:50:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone!

I am still sorting out my junk pile right now to gleam all the miniatures that I can salvage from the pile. Now to the nitty gritty things like emptying boxes.

I would say the cleanup is 60% done now.

While I was cleaning up I found this: a digital caliper. I got this off Think Geek but you can probably find this at an online store.

This tool is super useful for miniature making or just any precision work! Mine in particular goes to 0.001mm but some models go 0.0001mm accuracy. I don't think I need my work to be that accurate but 0.001 is good enough for me. This is definitely one tool that you should have if you are serious about miniatures!

Here is the cool tool in action!

There are lots of tools that I keep finding so tool drool is back on!

WIP Wednesday: Live Mini Studio Clean up (part 2)

2010-11-03T13:49:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

So this is part 2 of the Live Mini studio cleanup process: putting everything back together after wiping everything down. This is the hard part for me since it involves a lot of organization.

Anyway, this is the progress as of today. You can see more of the studio cleanup and the descriptions on my flickr. I personally think I need to actually see how the progress is going since the rest of the house is still full of supplies/things to sort out.

So here is more of the tour behind the scenes and what I have been doing.

As you enter the place now

The office desk now

Right next to the office desk

My sewing shelf/creature comforts

My book collection

Sigh I wish I can do more cleaning today but I have a feeling that it won't get much done, just because there is a lot of appointments to go to, but at least I can physically see progress happening and that is good enough for me!

Live Mini studio clean up (part 1)

2010-11-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

In order to do a HUGE production run, the first thing I had to do is to completely clean up the Live Mini Studio and dust this place. For one dust can ruin the mini pieces and the other I am deadly allergic to dust particles. If I am going to spend 8+ hours in there a day for 6 days a week I dang better have this place completely dust free and all the surfaces as clean as possible.

The Live Mini studio is just the smaller bedroom in my house. Like the rest of the house it has hardwood floors. It is easier to clean up but it is harder to clean the clay stuck to it. If I could have it my way (and not in the house) I would just use concrete flooring.

Anyway, temporarily this is what you see when you enter the room:

I have 3 tables. The glass table is great for working the clay and sometimes woodworking and painting. The middle table is usually the sewing/photo table. The last table is the main office table. Until a few days ago all these tables are completely covered with stuff. Ugh. Obviously you cannot work with that so they are all cleaned, wiped thoroughly, and disinfected including the floor.

To be honest, you will never see the place this clean again. I just want to share this with you before I put everything back in place.

Speaking of that, I should do that now before I lose the momentum. ;) I will be back with more pictures later!

Portfolio showing (part 1)

2010-10-31T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Remember I said I will show pictures of my work? Well, here it is.

I am building a stockpile of these for the 2 shows (crosses fingers) that I will do next year. I think it is a bit early to start making these but I use them too so I am testing them now.

Anyway, I like the cucumber but I am not sure which style I like yet so I made both.

The last 2 are more for Barbie scale/nail art but I am practicing making huge batches for later. It is always nice to have a huge stash of these things.

I am going to make other things soon as soon as I finish cleaning out my office. :/ Gosh I hate cleaning that thing out. There are so many chemicals that needs disposing. Gah! It is frustrating... but someone has to do it -_-

Thursday Treats: Knitting

2010-10-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I did say that I do other things than just making miniature foods. This time it is knitting.

I always done knitting. I just don't show it to people mainly because knitting is something I do on my down time. With all this mini making there are hardly any down time between housework, pet care, jury duty (another story for another time) and working 8 hours a day making/shipping minis. Also, I don't like a lot of knitting patterns, so it takes me forever to find the ones that I like.

Anyway, here is my latest knitting project. It is a scarf on Knitty, an online knitting magazine that I look at often. It is supposed to be a spring scarf but when I knit it with gray yarn it seems to be more wintery to me. Here is the pattern.

... and here is my knitting! This is supposed to the bottom part of the ruffle. I had to restart quite a few times because I want to be perfect and NO additional stitches other than what I wanted to put on there, among any other mistakes. This is what I get for knitting at 2 in the morning.

As for the actual miniatures for my portfolio, they are in the oven. I will take pictures of them later.

Polymer Clay Cane Sale!

2010-10-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I am hosting a HUGE polymer clay cane sale on my supply shop
Itty Bitty Supplies!

I have many different kinds of fruit canes, vegetable canes, and maybe even some surprise canes I never released in the general public!

All of these canes are 100% handmade from my studio in Redwood City, CA.

Come check it out! Here are some of the goodies available right now, with more to come!

So come on in to Itty Bitty Supplies, where you can get 1 cane free with every 5 canes purchased! You do not need an Artfire account to purchase anything. You just need to pick them and let me know where to send them.

Thank you very much for looking! I am still working on that darn portfolio. Nothing like warming the studio like a baking oven!

Portfolio building

2010-10-18T16:57:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Now that I have some time to clean everything up (mostly), it is time for minis.

I went to the Good Sam Showcase of Miniatures last week. Sadly it is one of the last miniature shows left in the Bay Area! Can you believe it? A place this big only has 2 miniature shows left and I am going to try to be in both of them. Oy... It will be a long and trying time but I think I can do it.

But first... in order to even qualify, I have to mail off a portfolio, so in order to prepare myself I got some tools to help me out:

Those little baskets I got are really cool! They really reminded me of the ones that my own family uses, which is hard to find around here unless you go into an Asian houseware store. These are 1 1/8" in diameter, a good size I think for mini work.

I found the flour sifters online first. As I don't like to see anything that I cannot touch first I didn't get them online, but rather on the Good Sam Show itself. I thought they are cute and perfect for miniature baking scenes. I am keeping one for myself, of course. Haha... You can never have too many tools!

The last and most interesting thing I have is the skull. It is made by this lady who sculpts them out of rocks. There are many variations and sizes of them but I would like to have a skull JUST for some spooky scenes once in a while. I think this is supposed to be a kid sized head or a baby. I can't tell. It is the smallest size they have.

I can't wait to see what I can make out of all these things!

I haven't touched clay in a long time but all the house cleaning is giving me my confidence back. Let's roll and see what comes out of these goodies!

WIP Wednesday: Clean up time!

2010-10-13T11:45:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Back to my inactive online self... sort of.

To tell you the truth, I have been working on a complete cleanup of my house! This kind of started for:

1) Doing the preparation of the handmade certification for Artfire, you have to submit a picture of your studio/office. Yeah... I don't want to submit photos of my messy place right now.

2) This kind of came up in a strange way but on plurk my friends and I were talking about how one of my friends' bosses was a hoarder. Then we started talking about the SHOW Hoarders. It got me thinking OMG my father-in-law is a hoarder in denial! I don't want to end up like that! It is kind of irrational but as an artist I can see that happening. We need a whole range of supplies to DO the things that we do. I don't want to see that turn to my father-in-law's boxes of doom. He literally carried rats and bugs from one state to another without even opening the boxes! My heart goes to my mother-in-law for dealing with that on a daily basis.

3) The holidays are approaching and I wanted to do my donations early. We have chairs, clothing, blankets, and many other items that can go to families of need. I think I should do my part of donating those items before the weather turns cold.

4) Speaking of the weather today's high is 36*C! It is not even noon yet and it is a pleasant 23*C. It is October for crying out loud! Why is it so freaking hot??? It is supposed to be around 18*C or lower by now. I can't clay in this weather anyway. Premo tends to stick to you without air conditioning and has the consistency of melted taffy. If I cannot clay anyway might as well do the cleaning.

I am still around somewhere. I definitely will take pictures when it is done. Until then, back to the piles I go!

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Monoject 412 Syringes

2010-10-05T17:47:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

To be honest, I haven't been doing much mini-ing for a while. Instead I have been doing a lot of cleaning, talking, and shuffling people/guinea pigs around from place to place.

I am however trying to blog more often. To start off, I want to resurrect the Tool Drool Tuesdays!

I did say I have enough tools to fill up months and months still, and here is one of my favorites:

It looks very simple no? However, a syringe with no needles are quite useful in the miniature world. They are good for putting liquids in tight spots, decorating mini cakes, and filling in things. I use it on all sorts of materials not limiting to liquid polymer clay (TLS, liquid fimo), resin, homemade creams, and more!

Today's tool drool can be found in my supply shop: Itty Bitty Supplies

Speaking of miniatures, this Saturday is the Good Sam Showcase miniature show, which is sadly one of the last miniature shows in the Bay area. The other one is Tom Bishop but I haven't seen that one updated on their website for the bay area. I am going to go on Saturday the 9th! I hope to meet some of you mini people there!

Polymer Clay Smooshers Masquerade Clay Ball

2010-09-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

My Artfire guild Polymer Clay Smooshers are having a fun ball: a masquerade ball! They will feature many talented members and their guests polymer clay creations! There are many different size masks and different varieties out there! Join us for the fun!

Here are some from last year! This year would be a blast and have even more masks to come!

Come join us here! http://polymerclaysmooshers.blogspot.com/

Help us spread the word about the Masquerade Clay Ball!

Blog about this event between now and Sunday October 3rd, 2010 with a link to this blog in your post. Put your blog post link in the Polymer Clay Smooshers comment by October 3rd for a chance to win this beautiful bracelet created by HaffinaCreations.artfire.com

Finally! Some handmade real miniatures

2010-09-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I cannot believe it has been months since I posted any of my work!

There are just so many things in the background, especially my uncle being here. His presence is good, but that means more time with the family, and more time with the family = no minis = my family driving me crazy.

The only time I have for myself is usually at night, so here is the night owl's late night miniature session:

I hope you at least enjoy this circle of tarts! I have more to release later but I want to at least put this up. It is my labor of joy and frustration for a few days.

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Mona Kissel's Modified Pasta Machine

2010-09-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Warning: Picture intensive post!

Remember the annoying pasta machine problem! Well this week's Tool Drool we get to discuss my new pasta machine that I just got in the mail last week!

Before the old pasta machine broke down, I was using an Atlas 150. It is a good machine. I got a vintage one from the 1970s. It lasted me around 2 years. Unfortunately, like all machines that are used on a regular basis, it broke down and all the gutters were completely bent. I thought I can get away with it but alas that answer is no.

So here is my new modified Atlas 180! Mona Kissel sells these modified machines. She modifies the Atlas 150 and the Atlas 180 if you got them but she also sell the machines pre-moded for you. Seeing that you get so much more space with the 180 I opted for the 180 instead of sending the machine to be fixed.

Here is the size difference between the 150 and the 180 before I threw the old junk away:

And it has 9 wonderful settings instead of the vintage 7!

__________________________________

Ok now to get to the point why this is so awesome, look to the bottom of the pasta machine!

So here is why the machine is so great: you can easily take out the gutters without disassembling the entire machine to do it. If you see the comparison photos between the Atlas 150 and the Atlas 180 you can see that my machine has been completely taken apart so I can get at the gutters constantly. With this machine, you don't have to! See those knobs? Those are the magic.

Here is the instructions to take it apart (from Mona's website)

* To prevent scratching of the rollers, especially machines with the new aluminum rollers), set machine to the widest setting before removing blades.

1) Place pasta machine upside down.

2) Unscrew the thumbscrew

3) Remove the blade and wipe blade with a paper towel. Alcohol may be
used on paper towel if needed.

4) Re-insert blade. Screw on thumbscrew.

5) Repeat with the 2nd blade.

... and that is it! It is pretty easy to clean the machine without having to completely take it apart.

I hope this would help anyone who would like to get a modified pasta machine from Mona Kissel. Thanks to Mona I am getting ready to go back to work!
For all of you who wants to buy one, you can look for it here: Pasta Machine Modification.

... and off to work I go!

Pasta Machine update

2010-09-14T11:43:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

So yesterday I took the plunge and get the modified Atlas 180 from this website:

http://www.monakissel.com/toolspasta.html

There aren't any pictures on the Internet out there and information sadly is very limited, BUT as soon as I get my pasta machine I will take tons and tons of pictures for you all! Mona is very quick with responses by e-mail so I am hoping to find out more about the persuader too!

Unfortunately, the machine will not be here until the end of the month. Oh well... sorry guys with custom orders! I will try my best to speed things up.

Friday Finds: Pamplemousse Cakes

2010-08-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

First I have a huge confession to make: I am not into the French chic phase that everyone seems to be in!

Do not get me wrong! I love looking at the French chic desserts, breads, and decorations that many of my friends, followers, followed, and other miniature artisans make! They are beautiful, wonderful, creative, and very cute.

It is just not my style! I like eating fancy French desserts and my husband is addicted to French bread of any style. However, I just don't feel it in my veins, so to speak! Besides, there is nothing French nearby to look at other than the Internet...

... until today!

I found Pamplemousse Cakes as an attempt to explore my surroundings. Redwood City is not the smallest town in the Bay Area. It is definitely not the smallest by land mass, but everything about the town is pretty much right smack next to the train station and the San Mateo County buildings.

While I was gatecrashing the metal arts class (details are in the other blog) I realized that the reason why I am stuck in a slump is because I am home all the freaking time surrounded by house chores! I really needed to get out more. So... I looked up on places to go on yelp and found this place. Being cooped up in the house for too long, I long to just be able to go out and do something, anything, and there it is.

I took my husband to a lunch date and went there. The food is ok to be told, but their eclairs are great! They actually have real French macarons too! I did not get them though. I already spent $30 on lunch and dessert for 2 and don't have that feeling of ordering more things to take to go.

I will go there again to try the macarons because everyone makes dollhouse/decorative/cutesy macarons, I want to know what they look/taste like before I attempt to make some for myself to eat (and maybe dollhouse again?)

Anyway... if anyone of you is interested, here is their website: http://www.pamplemoussecakes.com/

I hope you at least enjoy the stock pictures! (I really need another simple camera for this kind of thing!)

Childhood treats

2010-08-12T22:42:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

So my birthday came and went. Thank you all for the well wishes!

Ever since my birthday I have been trying to peck and hunt for things to do before school starts. My mind is a blank for a while now, and of course, the tennis elbow is not helping.

At the moment, my husband is trying to cheer me up like buying these lychee:

We found this grocery store that sold them in San Mateo. I only got a small handful because most of them let's just say went bad on the shelf. They are not supposed to be squishy or squished with green fuzzy stuff! They were supposed to be nice and firm! Anyway, I ate some and was very happy, seeing the last time I ate some was like 2 years ago.

What are you guys' favorite childhood treats?

Happy Birthday! (and some pics)

2010-08-09T12:56:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

It was my 25th birthday yesterday. I am getting old! Haha... Thanks for all the wonderful birthday wishes around the world from Facebook and Plurk! I really appreciate it!

I spent the day in Monterey, CA. It is a quiet little town that is like 2 1/2 hours away from where I live, although in the college days it was more like an hour.

This is the beach that is right next to Cannery Row. I can't remember the name on top of my head but it is pretty serene. We ate at a restaurant that overlooked the scenery before we went to...

Cannery Row itself! This used to be the sardine factory of the world until the 1950s. Now it is more like a complete tourist trap.

Don't forget the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which we also visited. It was loads of fun but there were too many people! Many people were being loud, rowdy, and very inconsiderate. It seems like both kids and adults forgot that other humans have feet and toes too! I got stepped on a lot.

Of course, there are fish, lots of fish! I am only going to show this one since well... we took over 1000 photos on fish alone! There are other pictures to be sure but hey... I am not sharing because it will take too long!

We had a fish dinner too, but that would come another time when my husband comes back with all the photos stored in his computer.

Tuesday treats: ebay Auctions again!

2010-08-03T16:43:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Sorry that I am not there much again. This time it is because I was working so hard on the shows that I developed tennis elbow! How ironic since I don't play tennis at all. The doc told me to rest my arms and strengthen the muscles so that I don't get tennis elbows anymore. That is what I have been doing. It is a slow battle but I am sure I can handle it.

I have 2 treats for you. Remember that blueberry pie I showed you earlier? It is for an article published in August's edition of Artisans in Miniature! Come check it out. There are many beautiful works in there but my article is 6 pages long full of blueberry goodness. I hope you all like it!

Second, since my pasta machine decides to croak and I am going back to school to learn metalworking, here are some very attractive pieces that you can find on Live Mini @ eBay:

I will be updating my etsy too with more canes that I made.

Sorry if you have to read the repeat of this post. I posted this on my other blog too.

Thank you for the support once again and I hope you find the treats good this time.

Thursday Treats: Pasta Machine

2010-07-22T00:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I know that this is Thursday and NOT Tuesday but it is so important to a miniature/polymer clay artist that it is definitely a must have.

What is this tool you might ask: it is the pasta machine!

Seriously I cannot live without my pasta machine because of my tendonitis. My tendonitis makes working with clay such a complete and utter pain. Without the pasta machine I can basically render my elbows and wrists completely useless within an hour and it takes at least 2-3 weeks to recover. That is no good, right?

This is my pasta machine stock. It is an Mercado Atlas 150. It is usually super expensive in the stores but online you can find it for pretty cheap off ebay. I had this model for 3 years now. I use mine all the time and I love it. Otherwise there is just no freaking way I can condition the clay unless I buy myself a beautiful food processor, but that is another story altogether and probably another tool drool.

One of the reasons why I figured that I even have a miniature blah is because my pasta machine is on the fritz! Sigh... it has been on the fritz for quite some time. Let's just say that the pasta machine is really broken. I was really going to just throw it away and just swallow my pride and buy another one.... until I found the following:

Before anyone throws away a broken pasta machine, look at this website. I found Desiree's Creations! Besides the wonderful clay work there, She has instructions to completely take apart a pasta machine. I followed the directions all the way to the advanced directions, tightened all the screws on my pasta machine and BINGO it worked perfectly again! I am so incredibly happy right now I can just cry! :D

I feel bad to get this emotional over a pasta machine but without it I just can't do miniature work. It is as simple as that.

I need to take some pictures during the day to show you what my crazy pasta machine really looks like. It looks nothing like the pictures, that is for sure.

Summer blues

2010-07-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

It is summer time. It is getting pretty hot around here and there are house chores and other things to be done. After all it is said and done, I wish I can get motivated to make more miniatures!

Here is a sneak peek of something I worked very hard on: a simple blueberry pie. This pie is 3/4" in diameter and it took me a few days to make. The heat of the day definitely did not help here but I did it. I did it! (Insert crazy laughter here)

I hope this heat dies down some. According to the radio, it will be around the upper 90s next week around here. Ugggg...

Plus and minuses of Air Dry clay

2010-07-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So I have been playing with La Doll premix more lately. It is really too hot to run the oven like I used to. Blah summer right?

Well I got some news about the air dry clay playing:

1) You can reuse it! That is always a plus here, especially since I screw up all the freaking time and sanding all the time.

2) You can store it carefully and it lasts and lasts

3) Since it is air dried you can actually speed up the process by baking the clay in the oven. I do it all the time. It usually takes around 20-30 minutes for all the clay to dry up in the oven at 275*F.

Unfortunately, that has the drawback of smelly creatures living in the clay. Ugggg... I found out the hard way today when I was working with it some more earlier today. The clay itself is fine, but it developed an interesting odor. I heard that mold can grow on air dry clay but I didn't know that they can develop the funky aroma too! Anyway, as soon as I bake the clay the smell disappeared or at least minimized to almost nothing. However, if I get it wet the smell would come back. Yuck! It is a cross between the sweet clay smell that you get out of the package and an interesting eggy smell. Bleh!

I don't think this is the la doll smell though.

Since the Michaels is beginning to sell La doll and Premier maybe I should stop being so stingy and just go BUY more clay instead of recycling over and over again. Haha...

Thursday Treats: New blog

2010-07-08T13:51:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

So I have a new blog, guaranteed to make you pay attention to it!

I decided long and hard that I wanted to be a mini metalworker! I blame Catherine for helping me jump start that desire again. I had done some welding in college so I worked with metal before but not really deep into it.

Now I am ready to go to the next step and actually going to do it.

Here is a blog of my journey into doing it. There you will find lots of information about learning how to do it as well as lots of artists both jewelry and miniature weekly that already work with metal. http://minimetalwork.blogspot.com/ Basically, you will see what I see.

If you know any more miniature metal workers let me know and I will add them to the list!

I look forward to see you all there!

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Paintbrushes

2010-07-06T12:53:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Sorry about not having a Monday Artist this time around. I had it all written out then Google sent it to the wrong blog. >< Sigh... The joys of having more than 1 blog.

Anyway, today's Tool Drool is very simple: paintbrushes.

Why paintbrushes? Because there is just so many darn things you can do with them! I use them to shape bowls, plates, cups, and of course, paint with them. I use them with pastels, paint, powders, and so forth too! Very versatile things that you already have lying around.

I don't think one needs pictures for these. The art paintbrushes doesn't have to be the expensive ones either for the fancy painters. I buy mine off Michaels in a giant pack. As long as the bristles are not falling off every time you paint with them and the bulk of it is made with wood or metal that is all I care about. If you have the plastic ones DO NOT PUT THEM IN THE OVEN! It might melt! Not so cool eh?

Thank you for reading!

P.S. One quick note about people waiting for me to ship: can't ship today. I gotta go tend to my mother. She went to the ER and I don't know how long that would take. I can definitely ship tomorrow for sure! Sorry about the wait!

WIP Wednesday: Ebay Sales

2010-06-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I am on the process of putting some of my recent (and older) works of miniatures on ebay.

If you are interested in owning some of the goodies you are more than welcome to visit my ebay page!

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/livemini

I am going to add things every day on ebay until the free auctions listing expires. I hope you will find something you like!

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Ball end tool

2010-06-29T07:46:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Today's tool drool is an odd one: ball end tools.

It is super useful for every day clay applications such as punching holes and shaping. I use mine all the time!

For the kemper one it comes in 2 sizes: medium and small.

Sculpey started making these. I don't have them but they have much bigger ones than Kemper. I am tempted!

If you don't like those and you want bigger/smaller sizes you can find the metal ones on Sugarcraft. You can find the ball end tools under Fondant tools.

Sorry that I did not post last week but I hope this will make up for it!

Monday Artist: Alisun

2010-06-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

It is once again time for Monday Artists!

Today's feature is Alisun. She is a buddy of mine that I talk to every day to keep me sane. Sometimes, I would meet up with her sometimes and have some coffee/lunch and talk about our experiences in the art community/life. Those people are important right?
Being an artist is very isolating. Without friends nearby, I feel like I am in a ditch.

Anyway, besides being my lunchmate, Alisun also makes awesome jewelry. I only wish I can wear them, because they are like candy!

Here are some of her works:

You can find her work here:

Main Page
Blog
Facebook

Shops:

http://www.alisuns.artfire.com
http://www.alisunstoo.artfire.com

Why I went silent

2010-06-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I feel horrible that I haven't been around. There is just a lot going on lately like me slicing deep cuts into my fingers. Sigh I hope they will heal soon!

So other than that, I have been doing a lot of cleaning. My husband threw a dinner party a few days ago and I am still cleaning it (no thanks to him!) I haven't really been making things but I made some things. There are just no pictures yet. I know, I should take pictures but I have been busy working on the show. :/

So that is that. There really isn't much to say. Summer is here. I better get cracking!

Monday Artist: Intothedawn

2010-06-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Sorry this is much later than usual for the day. I had it all thought out but I forgot to actually type it. Haha...

With that said, this time it is my friend Dawn Marie, or IntotheDawn. I met her over at Polymer Clay Smoochers of Artfire. I pretty much plurk to her every day for the past year and got to know her pretty well. :D Anyway, she is a very talented polymer clay artist with very creative ideas on what to do with polymer clay.

Here are some of her works!

You can find more of her work here:

http://into-the-dawn.blogspot.com

http://www.etsy.com/shop/intothedawn
http://www.artfire.com/users/intothedawn

Until tomorrow with tool drool, I am signing off!

WIP Wednesday: Another day working

2010-06-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I cannot believe it is Wednesday again! In the summer the week just goes by so fast. Now 6:30 feels more like 9:30 in the morning. (yawns)

Anyway, so as you guys know getting ready for any kind of show is hard, local or not. I am completely prepared now though. Michaels had a clay sale so I picked up all kinds of colors of clay for cheap: mostly translucent, some black, and yellow. They are all new premo/fimo clay except the black. Let's hope the change in their formula (once again) would be a good one.

One thing I noticed about the newer formula is that you cannot bake it for very long without having them turn colors. I know this is a problem for premo in the old formula but it is worse in the new one. Just a heads up.

Since it is summer, I am making lots of fruits/vegetables (trying to anyway). Here is my strawberry shortcake that needs glazing.

And here are some peeled oranges. I like them but they look more like tangerines, large tangerines.

That is it for now. I gotta get back to work! :/

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Kemper Cutters

2010-06-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Another Tuesday, another tool drool. This week is Kemper cutters! These are the most useful things ever in my work. I use them every day and they are relatively cheap. I always need circles of every type. The tear drop ones make a nice touch on exotic dishes, cakes, etc...

I got these sets:

Tear drop set

Rose cutter set

I got the whole set of these as well: from 3/16" to 1/2".

I buy mine from Clay Alley. You can find them there too!

I hope these little cutters will keep you occupied until next week!

Monday Artist: Mzzthang

2010-06-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I want to introduce my latest friend that is nearby me: Mischelle! She goes by the online handle Mzzthang but she is super nice! I met her one weekend when my other friend Alisun (another friend for another week) came back from Chicago. Her work is amazing and she is the only one that I know that has an actual physical store! She does all the design both web and jewelry, keep an actual retail shop, AND she even makes wonderful soap! She does it all!

Here are some of her actual work for you to drool on:

She also has an Earring of the Month Club! That is brilliant! You get a different pair of earrings every month until your subscription is up. It is pretty original if you are a big earring fan or just a fan of her things!

Come check her out if you have a chance in the bay area! I will as soon as I have a chance and stop being so freaking busy!

Address:
5915 Pacheco Blvd., Suite "B"
Pacheco, CA, 94553
(925) 689-7429

Website: http://www.fo-shizzle.com/
Blog: http://www.fo-shizzledesignstudios.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FoShizzleDesignStudios
Twitter: http://twitter.com/FoShizzleDesign
Plurk: http://www.plurk.com/MzzThang

Artfire: http://www.artfire.com/users/mzzthang
Bonanzle: http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/Fo_ShizzleDesign

All Right! 100 Followers = contest time!

2010-06-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Thank you for reading my blog first and foremost! I am very happy to finally reach 100 readers!

And to thank you all, I got another contest for you:

This time it is one entry per person. The rules are very simple this time.

All you have to tell me is:

1) What do you like about my blog?
2) What is * your * dream food, real or fantasy? Not my dream food, but YOUR dream food that you want to eat. You can have more than 1 but 1 comment per person for the contest.

After you write your entry, I will draw your name out of a hat. The winner gets to win a miniature version of their dream food made for them!

Is that simple enough? Good! Commence commentary bombardment!

Thursday Treats: A Trunk Show invitation

2010-06-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

So I got some great news for everyone: I am going to be in a show!

The local miniature store in San Carlos (next town over) is having a trunk show sometime in August. She saw my article on Dim Sum in American Miniaturist and she is interested in having me join her show. I will be the only one there as a foodie! OMG! I am not quite sure what to do. I never done a show before and this is a good practice for what is there to come.

I will give you more information as soon as I have some.

In the meantime, here is the store: http://shelliesminis.com/shop/

Also, this means that I will not be able to blog as much, but I will keep doing Monday Artisans and Tuesday Tool Drools.

Wish me luck!

WIP Wednesday: Cane work

2010-06-09T02:28:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

So lately I have been working on caning, a LOT!

Here are some of the canes that are available on my main website and etsy. I hope you like it! More are coming soon.

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Clay extruders

2010-06-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

If anyone has keep up with me so far, it is another Tool Drool Tuesday with what I have in my toolbox!

This week it is all about clay extruders. Trust me, I have them all: kemper, makins, even foreign ones! I will show you the 3 general types I have today.

Plunger type Extruder

This kemper model is the basic one that I have. It is really a brilliant because of the tiny holes it has. It is really good for miniature making. The only down side is: it is bad for anyone who has any problems with their joints/hands/etc... Kemper also sells a tool that is like a converted caulking gun for easier extrusion but at the moment I would have to say no thank you. I hate this design the most.

This model here looks like a potato ricer. It works like a potato ricer and it is better for people who have joint problems. However, if you have tendonitis, this is useless simply because the grip part can hurt your hands. You also cannot have long strings of clay, if this bothers you. This is still my 2nd favorite though.

... and this one at the moment is my favorite! The making extruder is really great in design. I really like the spinning design on the top. You can attach a crank to it to make it more ergonomic. This one also takes kemper disks if you got them. The only problem I had with it is: this thing needs oiling from time to time. Otherwise it squeals at you when you crank it. Make sure you oil it first and clean off the excess before operating. Otherwise you get machine oil into your clay and who needs that?

So here are my 3 very different types of extruders that I have. None of them is really better than the other but I got them because I do. I hope you enjoy this segment!

Looking for the 100th reader!

2010-06-07T13:35:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

I am still looking for the 100th blog follower so that I can start a new contest. I am so close! I have 91.

Only 9 more people then I can do a lovely contest!

Can any of you help me out?

Monday Artist: Essenu

2010-06-07T00:48:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Today's Monday Artist is not what people normally think of art, but I think anything handmade can be considered an art form and deserves to be introduced!

Today I want to introduce my personal beauty supplier: Tami or Essenu as she is known as online. Tami started off being an herbalist for a long time, then decided to make her own beauty products after finding out how many weird chemicals there are in the regular skin products that you purchase from the store. Her work evolved from there.

Here are some of her mouth watering products: pure cocoa butter, sugar face scrubs, even homemade lip balm! That woman is a genius! She truly changed the definition of art in my book! I use her products every day on my super sensitive skin and I thank her every day for her products.

Here is where you can find her products:

Blog: http://www.theholisticdiva.net/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/essensu
Twitter: http://twitter.com/essensu

Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/essensu
Artfire: http://www.artfire.com/users/essensu

Tool Drool Tuesdays: Acrylic paint

2010-06-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone and happy June!

I am just doing cleaning today in the office. To be honest, I like to keep my area as neatly as possible (is there such a thing in an artist's life? LOL)

Today's tool drool is short and sweet: I found my acrylic paints again!

Acrylic paints are one of the most important parts of polymer clay. They can make all kinds of cool effects ranging from stamping to metallic effects. Sorry if I am vague about this but the possibilities for acrylic paints are endless in my book. I rather not write them down. Besides, I also paint with them too, so...

Anyway, the kind that I have often are the cheapest paints that I can get my grubby little hands on. Why the cheapest? Because they are still runny most of the time. All I need to do is shake the bottle and then the acrylic paints runs out like a dream!

I also have liquidex artist acrylics too, but I find the cheap ones work just as well on polymer clay.

Now if you excuse me I will go play with my paints. Don't worry, I won't eat them!