Christmas Cookies!

Here are all the holiday cookies I baked this Christmas. Above we have Ghirardelli Chocolate Crackle Cookies. The recipe is on their box for double chocolate brownie mix.

Lemon ricotta cookies with lemon glaze. Giada Delaurentiis' recipe! She has you spoon the cookie dough onto the baking sheet. If you want perfect circles, it's best to pipe the dough.

Oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and green raisins... because red and green is Christmas. Recipe is from the Quaker oatmeal box!

Chewy ginger cookies. My friend's gramma's recipe. Here, I tried to get all fancy with the decorating.

Sadly, I did not have time to bake traditional gingerbread cookies. Wish I had :(  But these are quite enough to last me throughout the holidays!

2015 Ornament Swap

Christmas is my favorite favorite holiday. I love having holiday traditions. This year, I rounded up a bunch of friends for my annual handmade ornament swap. The friends who participated were mostly from Alex. I invited everyone over to my place for a Christmas pizza party. This batch is very impressive! Everyone is setting the bar higher each year.

Top row: candy cane, snowflake, and Christmas tree made of cracked marbles
Middle Row: angel, taco, and meowlet kitty
Bottom Row: paper pine cone, stained glass penguin, and Krampus 

 All the ornament swag before we busted them all open. There was such pretty packaging and gift wrapping!

Forest Animal Soft Blocks

I had so much fun making the jungle animal soft blocks for Ruby, I came up with another set with a forest theme. Here we have an owl, deer, bunny, raccoon, fox, and bear. I'm thinking about making a bunch of these and putting up on the Etsy store.

Jungle Animal Soft Blocks for Ruby

I miss being a toy designer. Since I'm not currently a professional, I may as well make toys for fun. Here's a set of jungle animal blocks I made for my friend, Mariclair's baby, Ruby. I am told she loves to knock things over as she is sitting up. Joann's Fabrics had a few textured and printed pattern felt so I experimented. After some attempts of using regular poly-fil for stuffing a square shape, I found foam to be the ideal material for the cubes to hold their shape. There's also a rattle inside. In a perfect world, I'd stuff the penguin's wings and elephant's ears with some crinkle material since babies like that feature.

I realize penguins may not be considered a jungle animal but my friend made a special request. They're at least included in "Madagascar", right? Ruby will be getting these over Thanksgiving when a mutual friend makes the delivery. Hope she likes them!

pizza brooch

I tried looking for a pizza crochet pattern to make a little brooch. I wasn't able to find one so I made up a pattern after a couple tries. It didn't turn out so bad. Although after making a few of these for friends, I realized crocheting made my carpel tunnel syndrome flare up! Dr. Friend's orders was a couple Ibuprofen and a wrist splint for a day or so.  I'll have to make these in moderation :(

Baby Smocks for Emmy

A friend told me about some baby smocks she was making. She showed me a pattern and it looked easy enough! You can buy this pattern on Etsy. 

 

Happy Teeth and Candy Party!

 

Happy Teeth & Friends - Peachy Pink

 

Teeth Time

 

Way of the Ninja Tooth - Blue

I browsed through Spoonflower and picked some super cute fabric prints. Here are some teeth related prints I bought for my Cousin Sonia's baby, Emmy. Sonia is a dentist so I thought these prints were very appropriate. 

Baby Emmy is big enough to fit into the baby smock now. The back side is lined with terry cloth for easy clean up. Hope this makes feeding time more fun!

2014 Sketchbook Project

Yes, yes, I know. It's 2015, but this sketchbook was two years in the making! I finally had time to finish it so here it is. It's about my trip to London a couple years ago.



I'm heading to the the Brooklyn Art Library tomorrow to drop this baby off in person!

-- EDIT --

Here is my book making its way home to the Brooklyn Art Library! 

Girl Scout Thin Mint Ice Cream

Yesterday the weather was awful. It was hot and steamy. So grozzzzz! I felt like I was amidst the Jurassic Period. So I used the left over Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies I had and turned it into ice cream. I used a little bit of green food coloring but looks like I didn't use enough. Still very tasty though!

 So cool and refreshing!

Re-cap: Fort Lee Arts & Music Festival

My friend, Liz, and I participated in a local arts and music festival over the weekend. It was bright and sunny, perfect for a day of strolling, eating street fair food, and listening to live music. Neither of us has had a craft booth before so I figured this was a good opportunity to get our feet wet.

[Liz's advertising poster for the Fort Lee Arts & Music Festival.]

Interestingly, people bought most of my old crafts and my newer creations were barely touched! I ended up earning enough money for gas.

Mini Strawberry Donut Cell Phone Charms

Here's a mini donut I made. So small and cute!

Kimbap, Geem, and Mandoo Cell Phone Charms

Kimbap! A Korean picnic staple!

Geem! Or as the Japanese would call it, nori. Or laver. Whatever, it's dried and roasted seaweed!

Mandoo! Gyoza! Dumplings! Perogis! Empanada?

Ice Cream Cell Phone Charms.

Liz and I are sharing a booth at the Fort Lee Arts & Music Festival in a couple weeks:

I've been scrambling to figure out what to make to sell. There are too many choices I couldn't decide! So I may end up doing a little bit of everything I think of. This weekend, I made these cute ice cream cell phone charms. I bought a couple cute plush cell phone accessories in Korea and thought I could make my own. Here are three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.

Animal Graham Crackers

While I was in Korea, I bought these super cute animal cookie cutters at Daiso. When I came home, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to use them to bake cookies to send to relatives as a 'thank you' for showing me around.

I used these recipes for regular and chocolate graham crackers.
Cutting these guys out of the dough was so much fun!

Bunnies!

Lions!

Elephants!

Bears! Oh my!