Bumbury Bound

I've managed to get it under control (ish) again, but I'm crippled with a long term Animal Crossing addiction. I've been shaking down trees (suck it tree), and digging up fossils since the 1st game came out in 2002. But the newest incarnation, Animal Crossing New Leaf has left me useless. I mean this time around I'm the mayor you guys! I can't sit back and expect Tortimer to take care of things, I'm dragging the town of Bumbury from forest squats to forest splendor! I... I... I have a problem...


So yeah this game came out over a month ago, so old news. But I've been playing since then so where was the time to blog about it going to come from? (That's right it wasn't.) After chewing my nails waiting for this game to come out for what feels like a lifetime, it ended up one of those great moments in life where fulfillment totally lived up to expectations.

This time around there are so many things to do. Muck about on a tropical island with actual real life friends (I still have those if they pay animal crossing too),  play hide and seek with my townies, build stuff, make clothes, and there are squeaky hammer toys! Yup finally a game that fully captures all the chores of my daily life in virtual life! 

Most of all I'm really enjoying customizing my town. Making my own little world to run around in, and clothes for my alter ego mayor Lady☆Bro, and pals, you have so much more control to make the game personal in new leaf. 

Also happy to have the game back on a portable platform too (pre-ordered the limited edition DS to enjoy this life suck in style!) it just seems like the most natural fit for the game. It's also kinda social now too. You can collect the houses of the players you pass in the street through street pass, and the device connects to various social media to share photos and bitch about townies building their houses in the middle of your carefully planned grand avenue (don't even try it guys!) with other borderline shut ins too.

So anyone else an AC mayor too? Maybe one day we'll streetpass from across a crowded room.

I started a little archive of animal crossing QR codes over on Dolly Daydream, and Tumbling my adventures on my little Bumbury Tumblr and with the Cheetah Gang (all of whom are hilarious!). And of course you can take a peek at my town in the dream suite if you like houses with lot's of pink. 
DC: 5700-2203-2275

Right guys, I have an illuminated heart dedication ceremony to attend, I mean work to do...

Tea is Always Greener

There was a time when I had more than enough teacups. Then it came to my notice that perhaps the cups and saucers also needed small matching plates to complete the setting? Now I have enough pretty trios to perfectly host a good old English afternoon tea. But what if the tea I'm hosting isn't terribly English? What if it's my latest wagashi treats and a perfectly brewed Japanese green tea with them? What then!? Well, we could go with my regular English and French bone china, or... we could start exploring another avenue of tea wear, we could try drinking from a small amount of Japanese tea wear, just a few setting for just a few guests...

And it's that kind of thinking that can get a girl into trouble. It's that kind of thinking that can lead to this, my first Japanese teacups, and a whole new world of gilded porcelain and lacquered woods.

To start off with are these two, meoto yunomi, or married couple cups. The big one for the fella, the little one for the girl. I'm guessing you're thinking what I was thinking at first too "sure give the man the lion's share!" but the size is actually an ergonomic consideration. Since the cups have no handles, how they feel in the hand is an important consideration, and since ladies on average have smaller hands than guys, the girl's cup is slightly smaller to fit more comfortably, and the boy's slightly bigger for the same reason. I have to admit, first drink I went for the big one, because "no one will tell me how much tea I can or can't drink!" but yeah in the end, the smaller one really does feel better to hold and drink from. I have to hand it to the wife cup! Different teas usually have different specific cups/bowls to go with them. Yunomi like these are taller than they are wide, and a less formal cup you can use with just about any tea.One of the reasons I liked them as a first Japanese teacup.

Another big difference between western and Japanese tea settings is that in the Japanese setting, all the pieces aren't expected to match. They are expected to compliment, but not be identical. I rather like this approach. It opens up for so much more creativity and personal taste. Not to mention greater possibilities for laying out the pieces you have to be different each time!

So obviously to start I also picked up these neat little plates for serving the sweets that accompany the tea, and to go with my lovely little cups.

I hoped the rich wood grain shining through the warm colored lacquer would play well with the tones in the teacups, and that the small gold pine needle would echo the pine motif on the cups as well. I'm not sure how good a setting they might make to someone who grew up with this type of tea wear, but to my maybe overly English eyes they work well. One of the main reasons to enjoy nice tea wear is the good feelings it brings to the flavors you've brewed. The happiness these items bring me mean in that aspect at least they work.

Still saving up for the perfect saucers to accompany the 2 cups (got my eye on these 2...)

Been doing more research, and started to pull in other pieces to the set. It's big subject, and it's always good to have more to blog about. So I'm going to go get a quick cuppa right now and write more about my latest teaventure next time!

High Society Dressing

One of the perks of my job is getting to work on interesting custom pieces I don't usually get to tackle. Recently one of my most stylish clients asked for something a little bit different, a re-production of a Grace Kelly movie dress she had fallen in love with.

In the movie High Society Grace Kelly wears an amazing sky blue and white stripe dress by Edith Head as her character Tracy Lords sweeps into magnificent room to dazzle the reporters from Spy Magazine. Big sleeve, big skirts, and big glamor!

At first glance it seemed a fairly simple construction, but a glimpse at the back, and a showcase at the V&A showed a more complex meeting of solid and sheer fabrics that Ms Head was famous for. On top of that tracking down a strip silk in just the right size stripe, and just the right shade of blue took some serious supplier sleuthing. Fortunately I contacted a silk supplier in NYC the week they happened to get in the perfect fabric!

The project took a lot of experimentation to get the right drapes and translucency, as well as more than 17 yards of pure silk!

A few changes here and there to fit the lady who would be wearing it, but certainly an enjoyable challenge, and one I was sad to see leave the studio! (The waist on the dress is actually much smaller than the display mannequin, hence the gap on the over skirt band)

Crafting meets Cooking

This weekend was my birthday! I got dressed up, got some books, ate some great food, and got lots and
lots of tea! (lots of tea). I love tea, I love drinking it, serving it, making pastries to go with it, and when it comes to English tea I have it pretty much down. This year however I'm looking to play out more with green teas.

They still work well with my usual tea service, but felt like it would also be fun to try bringing in some new tea traditions to the party. On the way are some first pieces toward a small Japanese tea set (and people thought I had run out of tea-wear to collect!),  and today I started taking a few baby steps into the world of wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets, often made specifically to go with green tea. Something a little different from my usual cream tea with  killer scones and home made clotted cream every now and then.

A while back we were lucky enough to try a few different kinds of wagashi from a wonderful shop in LA, and some others from Minamoto Kitchoan in Mitsuwa to get a taste for them. While I' await a big old book on the subject to drop on my doorstep, this weekend I took to the internet for some recipes and got my hands sticky trying to make a type of wagashi called nerikiri.

 The first step was to make a batch of sweet white bean paste, the second, to keep half the bean paste for fillings, the other to create the neriki, a kind of marzipan texture dough which shapes and colors like a dream. The result just like my first scones was a little spotty, but life is all about practice!

The whole process took somewhere over 3 hours, so it's not something to whip up the day you plan to serve them, but the bean paste and dough are freezable, so possible to keep on hand for faster making when the mood hits.

Typically served with matcha ( powdered green tea), the sweetness of the cakes is to play well with the bitterness of the tea, so if you go towards the top end of the sweetness scale from the online recipe, it's dialed right up to one hundred. In the future for full leaf green teas like I usually drink, I think I'll dial the sugar back a little.

The big thing with wagashi is they are supposed to be a treat for all the senses. Silky textures, good flavor, and candy for the eyes. Shaped to match the seasons, wagashi specialist's sweets look like perfect works of art! Mine, so far, maybe not so much. Had a go at hand shaping some like the pinks currently gowning in my front garden, and experimented using a petit four mold in place of the traditional wooden kashigata to see how that went (not brilliantly).

Certainly looking forward to learning and trying more when my book comes. It would be smashing to bring a bit of the surroundings to the tea plate this summer drinking tea outdoors. Next up "jelly" type wagashi. The retro hostess in me can't resist a pretty treat that wobbles!

Tiny Tree Take Out

Every year right after the cherry blossoms fall, the apple blossom tree in our back garden bursts into life! Spreading a white canopy over my outdoor tea spot, it's one of my favorite couple of weeks during Spring. I'll admit it, I've hugged that tree, and the thought of leaving it behind when we move is one of the things that makes the idea of picking up sticks that little bit harder.

I might not be able to take the whole tree with me, but maybe, just maybe I can take the son of apple blossom with me?

Out and about town this past week with my sister and her awesome fella, we stopped by the national arboretum to take in the spring blossoms and national bonsai museum. Tucked in one of the twists and turns of their bonsai collection (which is breathtaking by the way!), was this incredible little apple blossom  bonsai! Perhaps fate? I've always wanted to grow a bonsai tree, and what better way to take my favorite tree with me? Right now I have a few cuttings lined up around the house, and going to also try growing from seed once the big tree produces fruit, as well as some late summer cuttings further down the line.basically I;m trying everything for the best chance of there being at least one that will make it to become a tree.

A great site my sister's fella, out pal and bonsai enthusiast Martin put me onto is this one bonsai4me.com, it has some great information of just about every stage. Beyond that crossing my fingers for tiny tree success, just think of the decorative and DIY possibilities in this amazing living art form?

Go Go Ghoulia!

I love my vintage, I love my Ghoulia, and I love to keep the 2 things as close together as possible! When Monster high dolls first came out, each character had such a strongly personal style. Ghoulia was my instant favorite (I was late to the game and got into them around the same time the wave 2 dolls were dropping) I loved her 60's Night of the Living Dead's Barbara style, and Thriller 80's touches. It seems the designs tend to go back and forth between the 60's and the 80's but as a vintage girl it's always been her 60's flavor I loved the best!

A while back I did a couple of custom monster High dolls dressed up in real world versions of their fashion influences,. A proper, elegant, lolita Draculaura, and 2 straight 60's Ghoulias. The 2nd one with black gingham trousers I sold, this dotty darling I kept!

She's found her way into my heart as one of my current favorite dolls, but I hadn't really had chance to photograph her until this week.

I recently acquired a giant printer/scanner for work, and aside from being great for digitizing my pattern drafting, it also prints out at the perfect size for Monster High doll backdrops. This little set of photos is the first with my printed backdrops, and one I hope really captures the retro geek chic of the lovely Ghoulia!

There are some more photos from this set over on the main Dolly Daydream site...

1957 Beauty Ads

You might remember an age ago me talking about collecting vintage catalogs (and now also magazines) for work research. I love pouring through the different styles from different decades, and figured you guys might as well! So I'm slowly starting to scan in bits of the collection.

 One of the latest bits of dusty old paper to come into my hands is a vintage hair stylists magazine from 1957, Pretty much everything is of course black and white, except for a few choice ads. I love the bright pops of colors with the monochrome illustrations, as well as all those delicious typefaces! Have to admit, I feel especially bad for the chick with crocodile hand.