How Long Does It Take To Make A Chocolate Covered Pretzel?

Answer: Depends on who is making it.

And if it's Emily, Tim and me then the real answer is: a lot longer than it should.

After much debate about how to best melt the candy and some trial and error...we finally read the box. Things went much easier after that.

We eventually did get the knack of it though and produced thirteen beautifully festive pretzels.

Thanks to Emily for providing the ingredients and Tim for the photography. As for me, I just got sprinkles everywhere! :)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Christmas Cards: A Mass Production

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is enjoying some blessed time with family and friends to celebrate our Lord's birth.

This post has been long overdue but today was when I finally found a little time to put it up. (Sorry for the delay, gals.)

There are some crafts that require many painstaking hours to produce a single final product and then there are others which you can churn out en mass. A few weekends ago, my sister and I went over to our friend Nissi's apartment for an afternoon of crafting. I have no idea how many cards we cranked out over the course of 4 hours but it certainly wasn't just one (as evidenced from the picture above).

Nissi has a love of calligraphy and an indifferent attitude towards card design. I enjoy designing cards but have weak lettering skills - really, it was a perfect match! :) We spent a happy afternoon gushing over paper and art supplies and bonding over our daydream of one day opening an Etsy store. (There's just the small matter of our day jobs which unfortunately, takes up a great deal of our time... :P)

Now for a closer look at some of our creations:

These two cards were designed and lettered by my friend, Wyanne. 

She lined the snowflake with tin foil which looked great in person but unfortunately, I wasn't able to do it justice in my photos.

This was my favorite design. Who knew that black would work so well as a Christmas card? I think it looks classy!

The great thing about punches is that you can use both the positive and the negative. Black snowflakes look surprisingly good.

This was designed and lettered by my sister. Do you recognize where the pieces of the tree come from? That's right, from the tinges of a green punched snowflake. Creative, no?

Will this be the start of a new Christmas crafting tradition? Who knows... but either way, I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas this year! See you in 2016!

A Craft-y Sunday II

Random yet orderly - I like it :)

The downside to being an adult is that all your friends lead busy lives and getting together isn't as easy as it used to be. It's been two months since our last get-together but a few of my friends and I finally managed to coordinate a crafting day last weekend. The main theme: felting! Of course, as it usually turns out, we all ended up doing a mish-mash of different projects.

It was Michelle's first time felting and she ambitiously tackled three different projects (unfortunately, I only have pictures of two.) That patchwork of hearts pictured above is her felted laptop case. We had gone on a shopping trip to Wabi-Sabi, a yarn store (not a sushi shop :P ) a few weeks ago and she had been enticed by a bag of pretty coloured roving (ie. unworked wool). The gorgeous raspberry coloured roving was her favorite as well as mine. It's nice that she finally got a chance to use it.

A single heart to contrast the busyness of the other side.

There was a fair bit of debate over the design: a single heart for the clean and simple look or a bunch of hearts for a more fun, chaotic look? In the end, she ended up doing both - there are two sides to a case after all.

She tried her hand at a 3D figurine after that. It's a mustached cat ghost/monster...sort of like a Pokemon but not.

Michelle is so creative :) 

My sister decided to be very ambitious and started work on a Chocobo (from Final Fantasy for you non-gamers out there.)

Sharp needles and small fluff - it's a dangerous past-time :P

I'm sure its going to look amazing when it is done but she still has a way to go. I guess we'll just have to wait for our next crafting day.

My friend, Nina, joined us but did not feel like stabbing herself with a needle that afternoon. Therefore, she chose to work on a less hazardous project - a pearl and amethyst necklace.

One small bead to start. 

She also did not finish her project that afternoon but got a pretty good start on it at least. It's going to look lovely when it's done. It's a shame that I'm not that into wearing jewelry or I would be tempted to take up jewelry making myself. Crafters are such magpies :).

As for me, I was working on this little puff of adorable-ness:

Is it a bunny? Is it a dog? Okay, it's supposed to be a bunny with its ears flopped down but I must admit,she ended up looking rather ambiguous between the two.

She is still very sweet though. It was through her that I have also finally figured out why Philly, my felted seal, looks so odd - he is way too toned :P. I felted him so firmly that he lost the cute, fat look. This little bunny had layers and layers of wool added on to plump her up.

Unfortunately, a lot of the other girls were busy last weekend and so we had only a small group gathered around my dining room table. Oh well, it was still a great afternoon and there is always next time!

A Valentine Girl's Night

This angle makes our cake pops look awesome.

It was Girl's Night on Valentine's Day; a lively evening of pizza, cake pops, 90's music and Dutch Blitz :). Us CCCO girls trickled into Amy's house between 4:30 to 7:00 pm and set about making a mess in her kitchen. Her house is wonderfully set up for group cooking endeavors. 

Our resident baker, Amy, made the pizza dough before hand. 

In honour of Valentine's day, we decided to shape each pizza into a heart.

A little attention to detail and we even sliced our salami slices into little hearts. (That salami sure had a lot of kick, Michelle!) 

Piping hot, fresh from the oven!

Throughout, we were alternately singing, lipsynching and dancing to love songs from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s - and discovered that we have all heard these songs sung in Chinese while growing up. Mandarin and Cantonese speaking pop singers really like English slow songs :P.

For dessert, we made cake pops. I learned last night that the original way of making cake pops is to bake a cake, crumble it, mix the crumbs with icing and then form it into balls. I must admit that sounds very dense and not that appealing to me. Several months ago, my mom found this cake pop maker in the clearance section of Loblaws and could not resist buying it. We took it out to use for the first time yesterday and were delighted to find that it's really easy to use and works very well. For a quick recipe, we just used cake mix and club soda.

So easy - fresh out of the box and just plug and go!

This was the tester batch. We weren't sure how much batter to put into each well and so they turned out a little pale and uneven. 

The second batch was a vast improvement.

A pair of chopsticks makes transferring these things onto a cooling rack hassle-free. These cake balls taste best when fresh out of the maker with no icing. (Although decorating was fun...)

This was a great idea for a cake pop holder but I think we will need to weigh it down more next time.  It held for most of the evening and only tipped over once. 

We didn't have any chocolate melts so we had to experiment a bit to create a dip with chocolate chips.

Dipping it, unfortunately, was not very successful.

I tried to use the thicker consistency of the icing to my advantage.

A bit of sculpting...

He's not sure what to think...

But in the end, he's happy to be here :)

As you can see from our first picture, our other designs were far more abstract. They look neat but were a little too sweet.

To Amy, Tracy, Emily, Michelle, Elysia, and my sister, thanks for an awesome evening! As always, we need to do this more often! 

It's a Boy!

Now I'm sure you've all been waiting with baited breath to find out what I made during our Sunday of crafting back in November. Here it is!

Worth the wait? Okay, probably not but my last post had been getting a little long and I had wanted to save some crafts to post this year.

One of the residents in my program is pregnant and so I made a card for her baby shower (which I assume she will be having...I'm actually not sure...). She's not due for months but I had this idea floating around in my head at the time and I wanted to catch that inspiration. Overall, the design is very simple but I like the whimsy of it.

While wandering through Dollarama one day, I caved in and bought these sticker letter sets. At last I actually use them.

I thought about just using pen to draw in the strings but I thought, 'What the heck! Let's go all out and actually tie a string to each balloon.' A tad tricky but do-able. 

I've got another friend who is also pregnant but with a girl this time. Time to start on another card!

It's Not Blurry - It's Fuzzy!

Trying to squeeze in some final days of 2014 crafting in. My cousins came over to visit and my sister and I decided to teach them the wonders of needle felting. Check it out!

My cousin Brianna is a speedy crafter - she cranked out two figures in 3 hours. Here's what she used as a reference:

Photo: handmadebybrynne.etsy.com

Hers turned out a lot more - in her own words - "extreme". :P

Brianna: "It needs to stop drinking coffee."

Brianna: "Best model ever! Great from all angles :)"

She decided to capitalize on her love of big eyes for her second creation.

Brianna: "Should have been pink but it's still fabulous!"

My cousin Henrika worked at a slower pace but put a lot of detail into her work.

Henrika: "I got lazy with the head. I will try better next time...when I'm not lazy."

My sister and I decided to underscore the fact that crafting and gaming are totally compatible. There isn't a gamer out there who doesn't know who these two are:

What's your problem?!

I don't need this...