Biscuit's House

Pretties

I had the week off last week and did a few things with Puni. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera when Puni and I went to a park in the west of Paris designed around the theme of Alchemy (there to unravel one of the enigmas in our Paris Enigmas book), and when we went to the horse racing tracks near where we live for an Easter egg hunt. Puni also went to a chocolate egg making class for children, and while she was there I spent 2 hours shopping - got MSL magazine at WH Smith on Rivoli street (I love the Easter issue) and bought some crafting supplies at the City Hall Bazar.

I found these lovely fabric "dolls" for children to paint - the one on the left is still blank, the one on the right is finished. Puni painted it, but I had to touch it up as she had gone over the lines in some places. I used white paint to fix it - but the white paint was a bit less white than the fabric, so in the end I had to paint all over the white area, and go over the black lines with a black marker to redefine them. It was time-consuming but I think the end result is quite pretty.

 

We tried making marbled eggs using plastic eggs and marbling paint, but the results were disappointing. The examples shown in the store looked very pretty, ours look rather dirty... Puni also talked me into making eggs for her like the ones in one of her favorite manga, Shugo Chara. It's quite a lot of work, I made the pink one with the hearts using masking tape as a guide, three more to go...Right now I'm making the one with the diamonds, I shudder to think of what it will be like to paint the clubs and spades patterns...

 
 

We also spent a few days at my parents', while there I took Puni to the funfair, which is each year for the whole month of April in my hometown. I had to make a detour to my favorite home decorating shop - Puni flashed on three pretty decorated wooden eggs, and I got another glass dome for my favorite corner of the house. It's a pretty one with heart patterns and I love this grouping of the three domes.

 

 

That's also the place where I had bought the ceramic religieuse pastries when I went there several months ago.

 

And yesterday, we invited a friend and her grand-daughter to tea, and Puni made Easter cupcakes. They were far less pretty than in the recipe book, but they tasted good!

 
Tomorrow is back to work...ouch.

Arrietty

I loved the movie Arrietty. I had bought the book years ago when I was living in Japan, but I don't think I ever read it, and it got lost sometime when we moved house. Actually I saw Arrietty twice, the first time in Japanese, then a second time in French.

Arrietty is probably not one of the best Ghibli movies. It's a bit slow sometimes and at the final scene, I felt like the story was barely beginning. I think my favorite are Spirited Away and Howl's moving castle. Of course I also love Totoro and Kiki's delivery service, but I saw them so long ago and they are such classics, it's difficult to compare. Even if not up to the best of Ghibli standards, I enjoyed Arrietty a lot, not so much for its storyline or plot perhaps, but for the visual sense of wonderment given by the play with scale. I love the contrast between the human world and Arrietty's world, the magical scene when she discovers the dollhouse, and I like to reflect on the ingenuity deployed by borrowers, and various details linked to scale. For example, water is shown in a proper scale, with raindrops looking like little balloons next to Arrietty, and tea coming out from the tiny teapot almost in a single drop to fill the tiny teacup ; so how come fabric is so thin and flowing looking on Arrietty's body, not thick and rigid as it should be for such a small creature? Did Arrietty and her mother weave it out of spider thread? And of course, poring over drawings of Arrietty's house in the "Art of..." book is a never-ending source of pleasure, trying to work out how the rooms are organized, and which objects of human everyday life have been used as materials to build and decorate it.

Then there is the music - not so impressive perhaps the first time I saw the movie, compared to Joe's Hisaishi's sweeping orchestral themes, but I found the idea of celtic music for a Japanese animation movie intriguing, and bought the soundtrack CD. Puni and I quickly became fans of Arrietty's song, and the second time I saw the movie, I enjoyed the slow moments combining music and visuals.

 For my birthday, I got an Arrietty bag, and of course, after seeing the movie Puni and I became a bit obsessed with Arrietty's room and how to reconstruct it. So, we're going to try and make one. Of course, I can never hope to make an Arrietty doll as perfect as Amily Lau's, not to speak of her room - she recreated everything exactly how it is in the movie, down to the patterns on the wallpaper, the fabric for the sheets on the bed, the specially woven carpet.

I'm not a builder of dollhouses so I chose a ready-made doll room, even if it's not exactly right for the layout of Arrietty's room. For the doll, I'm going to use an Edith Flack Ackley pattern. So far we've got flowery paper for the walls, fake lawn for the floor, a big "D" to make the bookshelf above the bed, a table and chair, red clay for the stool, miniature books and a light bulb. Now we need time...

  

 

 

 

 

Del Rey

Last Friday, I spent the day in Antwerp. Spring has finally sprung, the day was fresh, sunny and warm but not too hot, with this "new" feeling that you get at the beginning of spring. I don't have any memories of having seen Antwerp under the sun until now, and I noticed things I had never noticed before, like the zoo next to the train station, and also saw the new pagoda entrance of Antwerp's Chinatown. Speaking of the train station, it is beautiful inside and out, and I so wish I had been there to see the fabulous Sound of music flash mob that took place last year.

On the way back to the station, we made a stop at the confectioner's, Del Rey.

 

I went a little overboard in this pretty shop and bought a box of cookies, two "containers" of chocolate for the people in my team who had stayed at the office, a chocolate egg for Puni and a jar of the famous speculoos taste. The chocolate fish is an extra in this photo, it's not from Del Rey but from the local pastry shop-cum confectioner's-cum tearoom.

 

The cookie box was too pretty for me to resist, and of course, I couldn't buy just an empty box, right?

 

I'm curious about the speculoos paste, but I haven't tasted it yet. I've been too busy sampling the cookies. The box is not empty yet but I'm working on it. The diet will wait another week...

Not dead yet - and new shoes

Guess what, I've decided to start blogging again (there may still be one or 2 people worldwide still interested?). There won't be much of interest; since moving to my new job 2 years ago (more responsibilities, more stressful), and living now in Paris suburbs with all that entails in terms of time spent commuting, I've done next to nothing as regards crafting. I still have projects, but they never come to fruition. When I retire, normally in 20 years, maybe sooner if I win the Euromillion, I'll have lots of things to finish...

So maybe now this blog will be mostly talk. It used to be mostly photos, as I used to prefer showing what I made and not write pages about it, but now...

As posted on Flickr and in the Enchanted forum, I got new shoes from Marina, as part of a trade. Back in November last year, I sent her something, and got the shoes in exchange. Needless to say, I'm the one who got the better part of the trade! I can't tell what I sent her because it's something she will use in her work, let me just say it was something perishable.

The pink shoes are my favorite of all my ED shoes so far, they do remind one of pastel-colored macarons and cupcakes and Sofia Coppola's vision of Marie-Antoinette's world. They almost deserve having a miniature Versailles built around them. Maybe one day, I should take an ED to Versailles and take photos there. Now I really have to get on with that new ED outfit I was supposed to make - starting from the underpinnings - I have a few days off towards the end of April so maybe...?

However I kind of regret getting the hopscotch shoes in silver, as I have 3 other silver pairs of shoes already. If someone has them in another color (bronze or enameled) and would like to trade, please let me know. I would pay the difference for enameled shoes. I may even throw in a crocheted corset or handmade hat...If I can't trade maybe I will sell them and order a new pair from Marina. sold

Amaranthe (middle doll) is a bit left out, she's made of resin unlike the other 2 who are porcelain dolls, so she can't wear silver shoes without stockings, and I never finished the pair I started making for her. I tried silver shoes on her only once, and didn't succeed in completely wiping out the little grey mark left by the silver. Also I'm afraid that the silver could scratch the resin. Leather or fabric shoes would be better for her.

I do hope that Marina succeeds in marketing the resin doll line soon...more ED owners will mean more people offering wigs, clothes, shoes and accessories for sale.

In her latest blog post Marina mentioned a new assistant...that would be a big step. Ever since I discovered her, I've been following her career with much interest. I knew from the start that she was headed to big things, which is why I didn't hesitate to buy 2 dolls from her in a short time, I knew that soon they would be out of my reach. I keep hoping that she'll release a line of clothes, wigs and accessories that other people would make to her specifications. Her first employee apart from Chad, that's a new page being turned, I know she will keep surprising and wowing us again and again.

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More photos on Flickr.