No food today. Well, at least not here.

I spent the weekend with sewing inbetween checking for updates from Fukushima.
Pillowcases I made. And stamps for decorating them.

My material: kitchen towels, the kind of linoleum you use when you´re feeling artsy.

Cut towel. I used most of it for these 35cm pillowcases (made to fit the little babyblue pillows you get for little money at that one big swedish furniture store...)

Pinned together with pins.

Still only pinned. I always need to make sure everything really fits so I put the pillow in. Fits.

Sewn. It´s one single seam really because the towels are already seamed. The flap is already nicely seamed, inside and out. Less work=more fun.

My materials pt.2. The stamps (5 of them), fabric paint (black), a roller that came with my linolum kit, old newspapers to protect my pretty floor, old newspapers to put inside the pillowcases because the paint bleeds through, rubber gloves.

My stamps. The yellow one is cut from foam rubber. I wanted to try both. My favorite is the dancing monkey.

Here we go. I kinda like them. Now, what can I do with ten pillowcases?

The fruits.












Well, that was easy once again. I hope you don´t mind that this isn´t really a tutorial... I´m betting there are people out there that can explain how to sew a pillowcase much better than me.

Next will be more food, I promise.

Still more than concerned about Japan. And getting a fundraiser together at Uni (where I study Japanese, mind you) is much more difficult than it should be...

Anyways, distraction.
I had some nice, very inspring talks with my friend Conny from over at Little Design Café lately and among all the craft-talk I mentioned how Macarons weren`t difficult to make and so I said I´d post about it here.

Fill the batter into an icing bag. Pipe it onto a slighty buttered baking sheet (I used baking paper because I´m lazy...). It has to be even drops, not too high, try not to make points, about as wide as... well, actually as you want them. Just not too big, keep them bite size. Make sure they all are about the same size because they´ll need to fit together.

You might need one or two tries to really get how much filling is enough but hey, you can just sample the ones that you feel are not pretty enough to give to others.... And look at how beautiful they look once you got the hang of it. So professional. With so little effort.

I´m all worried about the earthquake in Japan... So I decided to post here to get my mind off things.

I´ve always wanted to try messing with fondant. My lovely sister gave me Fondant for Christmas and so...

Maaaan, it´s kinda... exhausting. I think it´s better if you know what you´re doing, have a plan or a theme and just do what you wanted. But. I didn´t have a plan, I didn´t have a theme and so both my attempts at trying to make cupcakes pretty ended with only a few cupcakes.

Here are some pictures:

This first batch I made all by myself.
I also got a leave-mold. Nice.

My first try at making a rose. Kinda big...

Mini Cupcake turned upside down then covered. Not looking too good. But I like the idea.

All (four) of them. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to make those. I need more practise.

The second batch I made with my friend Conny. I figured it`d be more fun doing it together. And it was. But still we didn´t manage to make lots. Yes, we did spend probably too much time chatting like old women but still...






Fondant flowers. Cut out with Japanese cutters.

A ribbon. It looks so easy. I can tell you, it´s not.

White on white. Very elegant if you ask me.

Another rose. Smaller this time and with a leaf.

Conny`s beautiful daughter Supercute-Sophia being proud of her cupcake. She loved the Leaf-mold.

That is all we made. Two big ones, two little ones each.

Next time we´ll make more. We´ll make a plan beforehand and don´t try to think of cute things while we´re at it. We absolutely won´t forget the stars! We will use unpowdered gloves for kneading and modelling the fondant. We will have more little cookie cutters. We will make better cupcakes (the little ones were terribly dry). We... Well, we´ll just make it better. Right? Right!