Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Port Dickson

Sorry about not being to post in ages, we have officially moved a 100 + KM away from Petaling Jaya to Port Dickson!
And... It's pretty messy and busy here so I don't really have much time for blogging, let alone resting!

My cakery is about 90% done, Papa says that he needs to place a few more tiles up on the wall although I can't really see any empty cement spots... All my caking things are scattered around the room in boxes and the room ALREADY smells of cake and sugar, for some reason which I am not exactly sure of...
I CAN'T wait to start putting all my things into it's proper place in there and of course take a couple of pictures for you awesome followers to look at! And... I have a SURPRISE too! (Once the cakery is a 100% complete.) Am VERY excited about the "surprise", I hope you are too! Winky face*

Oh yes, I am also helping Papa with his woodworking! I love woodworking it's FUN and it's also art right?
Varnishing our new/old (We had them for a while but we never actually USED them in our PJ house.) benches and chairs. I have ALWAYS loved painting (Walls and wood but I suppose painting on paper is fine too but not as fun!), carpentry and watching the workers build our Port Dickson house... I just find it... Interesting.

I need to keep this post short so that's basically all the interesting points, the rest are shifting furniture and blarh!

Tioman (For a week.) in TWO days! Stay tuned to THAT blog post!

~K

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Helga

Meet Helga, my shadow puppet that I made during the Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones preview out of A4 size card stock and that Christmas tree fluffy plastic garland thing!

I/We got the chance to perform in the VERY empty hall of mine (We are currently in the mids of shifting to our place in Port Dickson (I can't wait to start un-packing things into my new cakery! Woot woot!*), Sunday would be my last day here in PJ! So my hall is furniture less at the moment, PERFECT for a shadow puppet show!)) with my brother, Fai  and our shadow puppets!

Above:
Helga feeling rather bored, she's picking her nose. I made her it her own booger, I am sucha horrible puppet master!
(Like her warty nose, very tangled hair and fangs?!)

Below:
OMIGOSH! You did WHAT?!



Above:
Helga's scolding/shouting pose she has with my brother's most of the time... 


Above and below:
Meet the puppet masters!


I can't wait for another puppet workshop we are having tomorrow with Mr Bunk! Thanks for organizing another one, Mommy!

~K 

Ratatouille

I know! I know! I am a few years late of posting this post! Haha!

I found this on one on my "Follower's" blog a couple of minutes ago and I was just thinking about how I LOVE food as well, I mean we all can't live without food but I don't eat just to be full/contented (Most of the time.). I eat to be HAPPY it doesn't really matter if it filled my tummy up because no matter what I eat I go hungry in the next 5 minutes!

So anyways Ratatouille (I had to Google on how to spell it!) has always been one of my favorite Disney movies, because it's food related?
Nah not really... I love the "Anyone can cook" part because in my brain it's translated to "Anyone can cake" in my mind and how far he went for his passion of cooking! (That's how far I plan to go with mine, hopefully I become as successful as a rat in the future!)   

Or I might just become a critic... Testing out all the best food in the world, yum yum yum! What a nice daydream*

~K 

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Stick, Stones, Broken Bones

Me: You know what?

YOU/ Person reading my blog at the moment: Just TELL me already I am NOT saying "What" because you want me to say "What"!

Me: You just said what TWICE ,Dearie. I am pretty sure you can say it again. Annoying smiley face*

YOU/Person reading my blog at the moment: Jeez, oh fine.. WHAT?!

Me: I think... I just came back from the greatest show on Earth or Mars or Neptune or Jupiter or Saturn or even Pluto! Oh... Is it not considered anymore? My apologies!

Ehem. How did you like my little play? On the one I went to today wasn't as annoying and boring as this it was SO hilarious I was totally out of breath from laughing my head off by the time the 1 hour shadow puppet show ended!



I REALLY wished it was like a couple of hours longer because that 1 hour felt like 20 minutes! It was over in no time! But if it was a couple of hours + I would probably be dead since no air could enter my lungs from all that laughing! EVERY single scene was pure AWESOMENESS! Simple yet AWESOME it made the whole theater of audience laugh their head off and "Hooting"!

HOLD IT! You know what? (Haha! I am asking that question again! Whoops!) I am in the NEWSPAPERS  (Whoops no "s' but I think it sounds better like this.) because we went for the preview of the play/show a couple of days ago and we got to make our OWN shadow puppets out of cardboard/card stock and plasticy fluffy Christmas garlands for the hair AND go on stage to make our very own shadow puppet show (I made a female witch/vampire named Helga that had a SUPER warty nose, some messy fringe and a long pony tail and of course, FANGS! I did bite my brother's puppet's neck quite a lot, his looks like some Roman king because of the garland that looked like that leafy crown they have! We also found some pencils on the floor and pretended they were magic wands, we made our puppets cry out a couple of Happy Potter spells at each other and pretend to faint/die! Hahaha! *I did a quick scan of what I wrote and found out I wrote "Happy" instead of "Harry", did you notice? Tongue sticking out smiley*), I had an AWESOME time there and it managed to convince us to go for the actual show! Again! Smiley face*

Check it out: HERE
It should be pretty easy to spot me, I am the odd one out in the row of little kids on stage! Hahaha!


Above:
Mr Bunk AKA Jeff Achtam Helping me start off with my (My Mulu bracelets made a nice necklace for my witpire!) hand puppet! The bottom part of your thumb is the bottom jaw, awesome right? Gosh! I wish I was THAT creative!

Below:
Mr Bunk performing Micheal Jackson's "Moon walk" during the preview, it was one of the 3 he demonstrated but this was the one I loved the most because he made it do lotsa crazy things! 



So anyways we had 3 extra tickets (We bought a package thingy-ma-jig.) so my Mom told me that I could invite 2 of my friends since my brother, Fai asked his bestest friend in the whole wide world Arian to come already.
I invited Zed Dabaliewee and Swathy without expecting them to be able to come but they DID in the end! I was super surprised and of course SUPER happy!

I haven't seen ZW in a REALLY long time and I was pretty excited that I could FINALLY meet up with her again! She came early to my place and we played our "traditional" game of Screaming Scrabble, a game that uses the scrabble tiles without the board that was taught to me by my Uncle! It is pretty much my FAVORITE board game in the world!
Want me to teach you how to play it? Just don't cry if I win okay? Tee hee!
We did tweak it a little since we have been playing it for AGES to make it more interesting, as in more difficult  of course!

Pretty soon it was time to leave for the PJLA theater in Jaya 1, we had Wendy's (I personally love that particular Wendy's because it's only channel on their TV is MTV!) for dinner since it was just opposite it!

While we were waiting for the food I decided to give Swathy a ring to remind her about the show and it turns out she was out photocopying some stuff?! Gave a her a bit of a "talk" and she came anyway, late but she came so I am pretty contented. Smiley face*

It turned out we were 5 minutes early for the show in the end! Woo hoo!
Since both Zed Dabaliewee and Swathy has never seen a shadow puppet show in their entire life they were pretty darn jumpy excited! And so was I of course! I have never seen one before let alone go for a play! Unless you count the preview!

Then all of a sudden "PLOOPF" the lights went off and we were sitting there 3 rows away from the stage in COMPLETE TOTAL darkness... Ooowh.
Swathy did a "Whoooooooo oooowh" in my ear, I let my fingers go slowly down ZW's spine! What fun we had scaring our selfs!
After a couple of minutes in the rather noisy darkness, everyone started wondering what happened to the lights! A single spot light came on and in came Mr Bunk wearing a funny looking shirt with a vest on top, too short rather high up pants and a woolish hat (He wore quite ordinary clothes during the preview!) from the entrance at the back!
All eyes were on him and he was checking on all of us and then he went into the row behind us and... Took of f on of the audience's shoes! Those black type of shoes you wear with a tuxedo. Which left the whole crowd VERY curious on what he was going to use it for!

He then asked the owner of the shoe if it was "Expensive"! How...Very kind and the he did some of his puppetery magic on it.... He used some masking tape (I noticed he absolutely LOVES them!) and added a stick? or something straight at the heel then he took a rainbow clown wig from a line of costumes behind him and a balloon, he started blowing the balloon the the wig it was starting to look like a head then he threw a roll of masking tape to one of the young audience in the front row and asked him to tear a few strips for him, he began to stick them to the balloon in a very interesting way that it stuck out, once he was done with that he told him that he could keep the roll of masking tape as an souvenir! And then proceeded to cut it into a pair of glasses, a nose and mustache! (I am not too sure if the rest of the audience could see it but I could since I went for the preview! I could see taht Swathy and ZW looked pretty blur? on what he was doing!) Then some "movie" music came on and the balloon clown with glasses was watching TV on the screen, he made it laughing during the funny parts and act really scared during the horror/gory parts and made it eat popcorn and guess what the shoe was?! A drink! Genius! (The shoe got passed back to the owner after that!)

After that there was 'Kung foo" fighting, Chess playing, dancing with a air guitar and horse back racing! Every single act was SO clever (And funny, DUH! We would clap as loudly as possible and "Woot" after every scene! I have NEVER done that before! Because I have never watched anything this amusing and clever! You should see what he uses to create the scenes and puppets with and the way he handles them! He was lying down on his back during the "Chess playing scene" because he was using his hands to control a husband and wife puppet's heads, his FEET to control their hands and to move the chess pieces and his mouth to control their TONGUE! And to speak of course...)!

I have 5 words for you, JEFF ACHTAM.IS.A.PURE.GENIUS.
It's a MUST watch if you have a chance to! (Before he flies back to Canada! Hurry people!!)

~K

P.S Zed Dabaliewee and Swathy if you are reading this... Guy in the white shirt! Hahaha! Huge grin*

Monday, May 9, 2011

Interview w/ SinChew Daily

Yippee! Feeling SUPER hairpee and hyper right now!
The interview and photo shoot ended about 15 minutes ago, I feel so proud of myself. (For achieving a solo interview and making Onyx Ophelia Moonbeam (I just uploaded her on CakeCentral and there are 35 views and 1 Fav already! She's gonna be on the most favs in no time!) in 2 days! Oh and waking up at 7 AM, I haven't done THAT in a while...)
Singing Billionaire repeatedly in my head right now because I feel that I will be smiling next to Oprah and the Queen VERY soon, you just wait and see!

Mommy took a photo of me with Onyx Ophelia Moonbeam after the reporter and photographer left:
(It's been some time since I actually had a "real smile" and this is a real one. proud proud proud!)

Cupcake Tee! (And necklace! Try spotting it!) (And turquoise finger nails!)


Let's continue from my previous post where I stopped to take the cupcakes out of the oven...

These are the cupcakes with uber chic cupcake liners (I am pretty sure they were meant for muffins but... err... never mind!) I bought from the City bakers sale:

I had a couple of them for my breakfast! I was starved... To the BONE!
Only iced them when photographer arrived, she was late.
It was just a simple white and light pink "poo" ( I couldn't find my large star swirling tip so I had to use the round 2D tip, bleh.) swirl with my signature miniaturized rainbow rose on top, I am pretty sure you can imagine them!

Mommy took such blur photos of the interview so they are not going to be up!
Just imagine me with 2 ladies chatting and being surrounded by Onyx Ophelia Moonbeam and some cupcakes or in other words a tea party (With rather strange questions being asked!)!

So anyways the interviewer entered my very empty (Half of my room is already in my brand new caking studio in Port Dickson!) caking room and saw Onyx and the un-decorated cupcakes, she.. Wasn't impressed.
So NOT the emotion I was expecting, my heart sank... Deep, Deep down... Trallalaa

The first question she asked me was how old I was, I said 13 with a huge DUH in my head.
She should have done more research on my blog because she looked rather shocked, I know I don't look 13!

Then I talked about the deco.. Blah blah, string work, blah, billowing, blah blah blah hand painted butterflies.. Then we got to the flower.

Her: You MADE the cake?!!
Me: Annoyed face* Yessssh... (Another huge DUH.)
Her: And the decorations?
Me: Nods* (Why would a cake that isn't mine be in MY cakery?!) Yes, everything including the roses.
Her: Touches the rose* I thought it was FAKE!!
Me: (She REALLY didn't do any research on my blog about my sugar stuffies..!) No, it's made from gum paste.
Her: Wazzat?!
Me: Explains* (Question to readers: Aren't interviewers supposed to do some research about the person's interests and stuff they use before the interview? At least some basic things? Curious face*)

It was scary... Having someone so blur interview you, blinks*

She had plenty of questions about me home schooling as well, most of them were asked before by "other" people around me.

Ugh, I just wished I was interviewed by someone who would just do a bit of research to at least know what fondant is!

~K

Onyx Ophelia Moonbeam

I had a request for an interview for a Chinese (WHYWHYWHY?! Not English?!) newspaper, the one I mentioned on my previous post I think.
I didn't get her "Green Light" for the interview email until 2 days before the day they were coming to my house for it!
I had already planned to make a mock wedding-ish cake and some chic KCC styled cupcakes for it but since I didn't get the reply I didn't start preparing for them until 2 days before which was pretty RUSHY but I decided to do it anyway..




Pretty proud of myself this time round because I managed to make 3 full bloomed English roses + The royal icing FISHNET + A freehand gemstone + Play with my lace cutters that were rotting in a corner since the Diploma.. + Foliage, try out the 'billowing" (No, I did not misspell it!) that was trending on Cakecentral (Because they couldn't figure out how to do it! I don't really want to brag but I kinda did the the step-by-step how to make it in my head and got it in a minute! Anyone want a tutorial?) a couple of weeks ago and other cloth like techniques that I have ALWAYS wanted to do and all this in my favorite colors (Which not many people like because there is the awesome color BLACK in monochrome, crazy old fashioned people thinking black is bad when it is actually the color that makes every POP!), Monochrome + P!NK! Smiley face*

I am SUPER glad I managed to squeeze all this into 2 very full caking days and make it turn out perfecter than I want it to. Another smiley face?*

I guess you could say this cake was inspired by (Don't laugh! Mommy was the one that borrowed it!) The Revealing Story of Underwear (Young Reading Series 2 Gift Books) so this is pretty much like a dress-ish cake and I want to try billowing so this was the perfect cake to make! 
It said in the book that some rebellious (I guess it is supposed to be a very "Hush hush" matter wearing underwear?) women during the Victorian age or something like that.. (I have a horrible memory I think.) Purpose made their underwear (This long white frilly pant.) show from the bottom (Can you spot the white lace underneath the black err... waterfall of gum paste?) of their dresses so therefore my Onyx is a rebellious cake! 



As for the cake topper I made the same pink roses like I did for the Rosey Posey Cake.. Only I COMPLETELY forgot to curl the last few layers of petals back. By the time I realized it all the wired petals were already hardened! But I guess they still look alright!


After placing everything on the cake I thought the top tier (The one with the roses, DUH.) was pretty plain looking so I added some colorful hand painted (Getting quite addicted to painting on gum paste/fondant, it's super FUN!)  patchwork cutter butterflies to cheer it up!
I think it looks MUCH better and no so empty!
Have I ever mentioned that I absolutely HATE making the big butterfly because the wing are too big for it's body so it always septate/breaks?! Oh well... I used royal icing to piece it back as usual cause I can never make a PERFECT one! Soby sob soblah!


And of course I mixed a little Vampire-y Goth-y-ness into this cake, check out the black lace work and that ruby onyx gem stone, LOVIT!
I piped the "Fish net" (Tweaked the original design a bit, it has um.. stuff hanging down now? I wanted to pipe a tassel of some sort but it didn't really go very well so I just left it the way it was.)  at 7 in the morning when my eyes were barely open because I didn't want the humidity to collapse it if i piped it the day before!
I am glad it turned out pretty and even. Yet another smiley face*


Ooh! The cupcakes are out of the oven! Time to gooo... Can't wait for the interview! Stay tuned!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

How to: Air dried clay/Gum paste wood look

After many busy caking days and days out of the house I finally had an "At home" day.
I started on this "secret" (At the moment it is.) clay project last night, I have been wanting to do it since I got very VERY obsessed with it/her/him (Circle the one you think is correct!) and I finally had the time to, yippee!

Made a few parts of the body last night, decided to make the " wooden stand" as a tutorial today.

One of my goals this year was to improve my figurine modelling skills which I am still COMPLETELY utter rubbish at! (It just does not come as easily as piping or flower making.) 
So this clay project is one of my "practice" sessions I have when I am free/bored.

Oh right, back to the "How to" which I haven't even started with yet!

You will need:

Air dried/drying (I can't seem to remember the name very well, but it ISN'T polymer clay.) or Gum paste
PVA glue/Edible glue AKA water or water+tylose
A peanut butter/Nutella jar cover or just any round surface which includes the top of your cake!
Some ribbon
A paint brush
A wooden skewer
Light brown, dark brown and black oil paint or gel food coloring 
A knife, the blunter the better for this project! 

Skip to "Step 2" if you wish to do it without the base/cover.  


Step 1:
Spread a thin layer of glue on the cover with the back of your wooden skewer.
Roll out some clay/gum paste, use the bottom of the cover to cut the shape out.

 

Step 2:
Draw some "Deep" horizontal lines (Or vertical, it's up to you!) with your knife.
Not so deep if you are making the wood off the cover.
(Excuse the ribbon for the next few photos, it isn't supposed to be there till the end.)


Step 3:
Draw some "light" random vertical lines. 


Step 4:
Use the tip of your wooden skewer to poke "nails" on both sides of every vertical line.


Step 5:
Use your knife to lightly cut the "wood grains" on the clay/gum paste.
The "Dark" lines (The first lines you drew.) may go out of shape at this point so you might want to re-do them.
Leave to dry over night, actually 3-4 hours are fine as long as the clay/gum paste hardens a bit. 


Step 6:
Start by painting a light brown base coat, make sure the white clay/gum paste doesn't peek out.
Add a few streaks of dark brown on the "plank" it self and the lines.
Dip the tip of your wooden skewer in black and re-poke the "nails".
Oh and add your ribbon on now! If you did before and if you were a messy person (Like ME!) you would have gotten brown/black paint all over them!

TA-DAH!!

You should probably end up with a pretty realistic looking piece of wood. Smiley face*

~K

P.S Hope you enjoyed (And benefited from)  my latest ultra short tutorial! Feel free to comment on how it was!

Pages