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...

  

 

 

 

 

Easter hat

I finished a new hat today, it's for a trade with Monika, who in exchange made the drawings I posted yesterday. I'm honoured that she thinks my hat is worth two of her pretty cameo watercolors!

 
 
  Nayana's little "outfit" is just pieces of ribbon and lace pinned around her. Hopefully one of these days I'll have enough time to sew something.

Accessories

As much as I like doll photos I love accessory photos as well. I'm particularly enamoured of this shoe photo by Marina.

Yesterday I finished another hat for a contest in the Enchanted forum and was inspired to take this accessory-only photo.

 

The fan is from an Alice Leverett kit I bought years ago but only made yesterday. Not a great success I'm afraid, I should stick to hats!

 

New hat

A new hat I made yesterday for a giveaway in the Enchanted forum.

Necklace by the lovely Paige. And just for fun, Chandrakala warholized :

   

Another crown

Photos hastily taken during lunch break!

 

  

  

 

Queens of heart

The other day while shopping in Avallon, in a bookstore-cum-stationery store, I found gold and silver spray paint and glitter, which gave me the idea to make crowns for my dolls.

I had first gotten the idea from this tutorial. My version was very quick to make. I cut some lace from my stash to size, stiffened it with a product called "Powertex" which I happened to have at home (I applied it using a chopstick and my fingers), then I draped the lace around the neck of a wine bottle covered with plastic wrap and let it dry. Then I sprayed the lace with the metallic paint, and once dry again closed the crown with white glue. The last step was glueing some glitter on the points. It took about 5 minutes, drying time not included.

 

  

 

Blue hat

I hadn't had time to make any doll things in ages, but this week finally I took the time to make this hat, a prize for a contest that was held in the Enchanted forum. I wasn't expecting much luck with the scanty light of a cloudy late autumn afternoon, but the first three photos came out in quite nice colors. It was also the occasion to unwrap some of the Rement miniatures I had bought in Japan in July and not touched since then. I especially like the silverware and the swan-shaped puff pastry.

 

  

  

 

Fake cake

Sorry I've been late for the MCI drawing...work has been hell this week, I've worked day and night and stressed more maybe than ever before. The winner is...Georgina! Please send me your address.

After the lollipops, last week-end  I tried a mango cream cake...

I tried cutting the mango mousse slices with a cookie cutter but the clay stuck far too much, so I used a blade instead. For next time, I ordered Teflon spray which I hope will help.

I made a big mess with the silicone sealant - my hands were full of it and it took forever to get rid of it. I'm no good at piping - don't know if I'll ever be able to make one of those cute piped borders.

My first attempt at a cork clay base ended up too big, so I finished it off as a cookie.

End result is far from as nice as in the book, not too bad for a beginning I guess but took way too long to make.

Feeling like knitting now - I've unearthed a sweater I had begun a year or 2 ago. Finished the back and am going to start the front. I'm a very slow knitter so it will be probably a month or more until it's finished!    

Fake sweets - frosted lollipops

While on holiday, I bought a book about fake sweets made of polymer clay and different kinds of clay. Actually, I saw first the macarons and ice-cream in the latest issue of Dolly Dolly, and it made me want to see more. So I got the book by the same person who did the article in Dolly Dolly, I think she's by far the most talented of the fake sweet book authors.

Yesterday I tried the lollipops, which seemed to me the easiest things to make in the book. I was right, it wasn't too hard, since the frosting hides small imperfections in the sculpt. Who knows, with practice, in 20 or 30 years, I might be able to try my hand at the book on the cover.

I used the ingredients shown above, Modena clay, acrylic paint, glass beads, Q-tip sticks and glue.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take good photos.

For the packaging I used pretty plastic bags, stickers and paper cutouts  I had bought at Yuzawaya in Kobe - I can't resist this kind of thing.

  

Next time, I'll try something a little more elaborate. I'm not good at sculpting, but perhaps with a cookie cutter I can manage.