Ocean Themed Christmas Tree

So after a long absence from the blogosphere, we're finally back with new stuff! This week's post is dedicated to Ai's Christmas tree! She wanted to do something a little different and went with an ocean theme. She used blue and gold as her color scheme and she even made her own ornaments. She used those clear balls from Michaels and filled them with seashells that were also from Michaels. Anyways, on to the tree! 

This is one of the ornaments she made. Like I said, she used those clear ornaments that people usually use to paint on and filled them with shells and crushed seashells. This one has an awesome starfish attached! 

Ai also made her own bows. She used the same materials we used to make our hair bows.

A nice looking shell with a little ribbon hot glued to it.

The cute sparkly flower is also from Michaels.

The seaweed looking stuff was also another great Michaels find. 

Ai couldn't find a big enough starfish to top her tree so she made her own by gluing a bunch of shells together in the shape of a star! 

A nice picture of the tree lit up. 

So that's all for this week folks! We hope everyone has had a wonderful time doing their holiday crafting and baking! We'll see you all again next week after Christmas! ♥  

Halloween Costumes Part 2: Adventure Time

So it's another quick post this week. We haven't had time to get some new stuff up. So we're showing off more Halloween costumes. This time it's my sisters' costumes. They were Finn and Jake from Adventure Time! 



It's Adventure Time!!! The only thing I did for the Finn costume was make the hat and the sword. If I get the time later I think I'll make and share the pattern for the Finn hat.

This Jake costume was one giant onesie like the ones that little babies wear. I had to make my own pattern for this and let's just say it wasn't the easiest thing I've ever made. But the end results was definitely worth it.

Sorry it isn't much of a post this week. As we've been promising we'll have fun holiday stuff up soon! ♥ 

Hello Kitty Nail Art

Ai did our nails for Halloween and we wanted to make a separate post to show all the work she put into them! She is so amazing at doing nails! I just love all the designs she comes up with. ^_^ 

Ai did the Hello Kitty nerd themed nails for herself. The red bows are made from polymer clay. We're actually gonna try to make clay canes sometime in the future! 

These were the nails Ai did for me! Hello Kitty, rainbows, and some fruits!

So it was just a quick post this week. We've got a busy holiday season ahead of us and have a long list of projects and gift ideas to get through! We hope everyone has a fun time crafting during the holidays! ♥  

Halloween Costumes 2011: Hello Kitty!

So I know that this is a few days late but here are our Halloween costumes from this year! 

You finally get to see what we look like! We were Hello Kitty and her twin sister Mimmy! We made all the accessories for this costume (the furry boot covers, gloves, headbands and glasses). Everything else was either stuff we had or bought. 

We bought some plain thick black headbands from Wal-Mart and I attached furry white ears to them. I made the ears from some really plush white fabric and stuffed them with poly fill. Then I made giant bows out of red and yellow plush fabric and also stuffed them with poly fill. 

This is the front side of our gloves. They're made from the same material as the bows and ears. They are finger less because gloves with fingers are really hard to make.

Here's the back of the gloves. 

Here's one furry boot cover. 

These were a really lucky find! We found these randomly while walking around ROSS! They're super cute, comfy, and something we can use again and again. 

And these were the glasses we made and showed you two week's ago here. 

Here have one more random photo of us. (I cut the other people out to protect their identities!) 

So that's all for now folks! We hope that everyone had a fun and safe Halloween! Next week I'll post my sisters' costumes! They were Finn and Jake from Adventure Time. We're looking forward to next year since we already have an idea for our costumes! ♥  

Halloween Cookies

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is that you get to make all sorts of seasonal cookies! Christmas cookies are definitely my favorite to make and I love to go all out when it comes to decorating them. This is actually the first time I've made Halloween cookies and I loved how well they turned out. I'll definitely have to go out and get a wider variety of Halloween cutters!  

I realized that the last time I posted decorated cookies I didn't share the cookie recipe or royal icing recipe I like to use! So naturally, it's time to share! I have a deep obsession with allrecipes.com. They have a wide and varied database and the user comments are helpful in determining whether or not a recipe is worth using.  I like to use this cookie recipe: 

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar 
• 4 eggs 
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out dough on surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6-8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely. 

TIPS: 

This recipe is exactly as written from allrecipes with the only change made is an added teaspoon of vanilla extract. The directions for this recipe are fine, but I do like to do one more thing before I actually bake the cutout cookies. I like to let them chill again in the freezer for 30-60 minutes before baking. I feel that this helps the cookies retain their shape. Also to make cutting the cookies easier, dip your cutters in flour before making each cutout. 

Royal Icing 

Ingredients 

• egg whites from 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons water
• 4 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon of any clear flavored extract

Directions

I am very adamant about safe food handling procedures, so I scoured the internet to find information about the proper way to handle raw eggs whites in an icing recipe. Luckily I found wonderful information from here on how to handle egg whites properly. 

1. In a double boiler or metal bowl placed over water in a saucepan, stir together the egg whites, half of the confectioner's sugar and the water. 
2. Cook over low heat or simmering water, beating constantly with a portable mixer at low speed, until the whites reach 160 degrees F. 
3. Pour into a large bowl and add the remaining sugar and clear extract and beat until you reach soft peak consistency. This is the consistency you'll use to pipe your borders, lines, dots, etc.

To color your icing: 

I like to use gel or paste food coloring for my icings or frosting. Gel food coloring is much more concentrated than liquid coloring and doesn't affect the consistency. Just add a little coloring at a time until you get the colors you want. 

To change the consistency:

To get a runnier consistency for filling spaces, simply add water a little at a time till you reach the consistency you want.

Extra Tips:

Don't let your icing sit out uncovered. I like to take a wet paper towel and cover the bowl until I'm ready to use more icing. 

A cute little ghost dude! I still definitely need to work on my piping it's not as clean as I'd like! >_< 

To make this cute little spider web just pipe black circles onto the white when it's still wet and drag a toothpick through to get a web pattern. Then just pipe blobs for the spider's body and little lines for legs.

A silly jack-o-lantern

A witch with a not so spooky face! 

A vampire bat that's just had dinner! 

A black cat that happily crossed my path until I bit his head off! hahahahaha

That's all for this week folks! Go out and make your own cute and fun cutout cookies! Next week is Halloween so we'll be debuting our costumes for this year! ♥  

Hello Kitty Glasses

So Ai and I have been working on our Halloween costumes, which aren't quite done yet. We just wanted to give you all a little teaser of what we've been up to. Can you guess what we're going to be?! These are some Hello Kitty glasses we made. They're actually just the frames because we couldn't find clear lens glasses and it's dumb to wear sunglasses at night! The bow and whiskers are made with polymer clay and attached with E-6000 glue. (Which is the best glue in the world! It's taken A LOT of trial and error to find glue that works really well. The only downside is that it smells awful and is a little hard to use.) Anyways on to more pictures! 

That's all we'll be revealing for now. We certainly don't want anyone else copying our costume so you'll just have to wait until Halloween to see the whole outfit! Oh before I sign off here have a random spider magnet I made:

A spider magnet for Halloween! As usual you can find our magnet instructions here.

I can't wait to see what everyone has in store for Halloween! Happy costume hunting/crafting folks! ♥  

Halloween Earrings

So there's only 21 more days till Halloween, which is my second favorite holiday! I just love how creative people are on Halloween and how it kicks off the holiday season! ^_^ Ai and I have super cute costumes planned out this year and we can't wait to share them with you. So for now, have some Halloween themed earrings! 

Black cat and pumpkin earrings! 

A spooky spider hair pin and bat and pumpkin earrings! 

Ooooooo cute little ghost earrings! 

That's all for now folks! We'll be doing more Halloween stuff throughout the month and finish off with posting our costumes! ♥  

Sushi Earrings

This week's post is about sushi earrings! Not only is sushi super yummy, it makes cute accessories. As always the charms on the earrings are made out of polymer clay. Now on to the earrings! 

Dangling earrings made out of various sushi! Also onigiri and sushi roll hair pins! 

Onigiri earrings and hair pin! 

So that's all for this week! It's finally October so you can look forward to a new seasonal layout and Halloween themed stuffs from us! ♥  

Some Random Fun Jewelry

So again this week's blog is a real simple one. We're really weird and nerdy and made some silly jewelry. And now on to the stuffs! 

So I've been searching EVERYWHERE for a mustache necklace and I still haven't found the magical store people are getting them from! I finally gave up and decided to make my own and this is it! My own beautiful fancy mustache necklace!!! 

This was inspired by Groucho Marx glasses but I forgot the eyebrows! The other earring is one of those windup chattering teeth toys.

And these are just because we're artists! Making a tube of paint is hard! It took us a few tries but we eventually got it.

If any of you want to make your own jewelry, we basically use the same process for making charms and magnets just on a much smaller scale. You'll need to buy things like chain and earring hooks or studs and some jewelry pliers. Once you have all that you'll be set to make your own fun jewelry! 

So that's all for this week folks! We have some fun Halloween things coming up for October! ♥  

Football Earrings

Summer is finally winding down and my favorite season is approaching. Fall means the start of the holidays and of course FOOTBALL SEASON!!!!! So Ai and I have been obsessed with making earrings lately and decided we needed to make earrings dedicated to our favorite football teams: the Vikings and the Cowboys! (No we are not from Minnesota or Dallas. We aren't really from anywhere since we grew up as military brats. Our dads just picked teams long before we were born and have been loyal ever since and so have we.) 

 Ai's team is the Vikings! 

My team is the Cowboys! 

Sorry this week's post is pretty short. We're saving all of our good stuff for the upcoming months, so expect a lot of holiday themed things for the rest of the year! ♥  


*****P.S. Since people keep asking, we're working our way up to hopefully start selling things by the end of the year. However we absolutely will not be selling things with licensed characters, graphics, etc. It is just plain wrong! And yes we know people love to buy fanart type things, but again it's wrong and illegal! So no, we won't be able to make you your favorite football team or Harry Potter magnets,etc. *****

Cupcake Earrings

So continuing on our quest to make our own accessories, Ai has made earrings! The earrings were just a combination of the things we've already been doing. They're made of bows, clay charms, chains, earring hooks and studs. They ended up super cute! So now on to the earrings. 

Dangly cupcake earrings! 

We really like earrings that match but aren't exactly the same. 

The cupcake ribbons makes another appearance.

So that's all for this week folks! You can look forward to seeing more jewelry in the future! ♥