Kokeshi key chains

Each kokeshi doll is about 3 to 4cm in height. Very small and therefore takes patience to do. I made 30 and they sold well. I love each of them as each has a character. 

The 4 sisters' Japanese home

These kokeshi dolls are only 3cm in height. I have made this little house showing different parts of the house.  

This is the dinning room. 

This is the study room

This is the bathroom. If you notice, The bath tub is rather big. It is like that. Almost like a pond, right?  

This is the bedroom. 

The entire house. 

Hope you will enjoy looking at it. I love this very much. 

Little Anna in her garden

Here I have used a mixed medium to construct a garden scene. Little Anna is on the garden bench about to read a book. Behind her are two little bread birds. They are out too to enjoy the cool day.    

Near the little teapot is  little cup. I wish I had a better picture to show you. Sorry about this. I made the teapot and cup using bread too. They were so tiny that I had quite a tough time. A small object although does not require much details takes an equal of time to complete to making large objects. The large objects require details but you don't need to strain your eyes. By the time I finished making the birds and the set of teapot and cup, I nearly went blind. Ha! Ha! Ha! I did not do the piece of cake. I do have some of my own but since I bought some from a shop, I thought to use it to save time and my eyes.       

I have put Little Anna in a casing. Just in case you are wondering what that object is behind the sofa, tangling down, it is a lamp. 

The Bread Mice Celebration

The entire set up of the mice in their home is encased to protect it from dust.

The four mice are celebrating Christmas, eating and drinking happily.

Here we have one mouse on the sofa wondering if he should eat the sweet bread roll or keep it for the next season. Ha! Ha! Ha! On the floor next to the sofa is another mouse. He is having a nice time drinking and eating all the sweet Christmas stuff on the large plate. Near the ladder is our lucky mouse. He lying down and chomping on his Christmas pudding. How lucky he is. They are all in front of the fire place, so warm and cosy.  

There, you can see our lucky mouse really enjoying himself.

And here, you can see the studious mouse. Most properly, he is trying to find a book on after Christmas diet. Ha ! Ha! Ha! Perhaps he has his fill already.  

The Four Bread Mice in good mood of celebration.

Little Sue's Dinning Room.

This is a dinning room with the cat sitting on the soft pillow. I had added details to the dinning room, giving it a character. Every object is personally made except the big table and the chair where the two little birds are. 

Making small things require patience and good eye sight. I guess that by the time I completed this, I couldn't see anything far. Ha Ha Ha

I love to add books. They somehow give the place a character. Don't you think so?

Perhaps you would like to know how long did I take to do this. Well..........perhaps 1 week? Bread figurines need time to dry and to make sure they dry properly, it takes a  week. So while waiting for them to dry, I prepare the table, the pillow and other things. 

You can see that I have added wall paper to the case. This is to make it into a room, yeap just like little Sue's bedroom. 

The Unique Quality of Bread Dolls

Good evening everyone. I hope that you have a pleasant day today. My day was relatively easy. I just realize that maybe not many of you know about the  Bread Dolls  that I made. Some of you might even think that I am using polymer clay. These dolls are actually bread dolls and they are not the ones that you see on the internet where you can eat them. No, you can't eat them. If you do, you might get a bad tummy ache. Let me share with you the unique quality of these bread dolls.

The Unique Quality of the Bread Dolls 
a. They don't cracked when you accidentally drop them.
b. They are organic and thus environmental friendly.
c. They are ever-lasting.
d. When well conditioned, they are not attacked by bugs.     
e. They are not baked. They are air dried.
f. To keep them clean, there are 2 ways : 
    i)   keep them in an acrylic box
    ii)  use a damp toothbrush and brush them. The dampness will not soften the dolls nor 
         destroy them. The toothbrush will remove fine dust and after brushing, you will see 
         the dolls 'refreshed' and 'rejuvenated.'   

Miss Prim. She is just about 5cm in height. 

I hope you  have understood. If there are any questions that you would like to ask, please feel free to ask me. I will try my best to answer you.

Bye............have a pleasant weekend. 

Little Sue the bread doll in her miniature bedroom

Hi everyone, today I would like to show you Little Sue's bedroom. She has decorated her own bedroom following her taste. She loves reading and having books on the floor is a strong indicator of her love for books, don't you think so? 

This is her miniature bed which looks big. The bed is about 10cm in size. It took me quite a while to make this bed with lace and mattress and pillows as well as a blanket. But I love doing it. 

 

Here in this photo you will see Little Sue cleary in her bedroom. The penguin and the flowers are also made of bread. It was also enjoyable doing the book shelf. Had to do it a second time after setting the whole thing up to get it perfect. In creating things like this, there is no compromise of workmanship. A slight mistake although well camouflage will still show so the best that one can do is do it with patience. Never rush through your work. This entire bedroom set is encased in a collective display acrylic box to protect it from dust. .    

The side view of the bedroom with a cat. Sorry that the photo isn't too clear. Little Sue loves cat.

In this photo you can see the whole set up easier. Behind  Little Sue is a stand lamp for her to read her books. Little Sue invites you to read too. Reading opens a whole new world. 

Bread dolls

Hi everyone,

It looks like I have disappeared for a long time. Well, time just flew. I have always meant to update my blog and it was always yes, I will do it but never came to it till now. I have been really busy. Busy with housework, children, old parents and school work. And of course busy making stuffs that I would like to share with you.

On the 25 and 26 May,2013, I joined a Art and Craft market at the De Garden. We were there from 2pm to 10pm. My, oh my, it was really tiring but because I had stuffs to sell and to show, I decided to sell some. Response was not that good. Reason? Well, I can give thousand and one reasons but it would not be fair to say anything. I can only say that perhaps my heart did not want my stuffs to be sold and thus the bad response. Ha Ha Ha. Anyway, it would be a long time before I would join a Flea market. It is both tiring and hot and such a long day............Whew........ !

 3cm Kokeshi dolls

This one is mounted

These are wedding couples 

My Puff the magic dragon which was sold. My favourite. 

This adorable guy is still with me. If anyone would like to adopt him, he is only RM30.00.

All these dolls are made from bread. They do not break easily and neither do they get moldy. Their colours are long lasting and vibrant. However, they can't be eaten as colours and liquor have been added to preserve  them.  

Menu Board

Long before I welcome the snake year, I was already all frazzled and worried. I was worried about not being able to put food on the table. You see, I have an old and invalid father and a mother, although 79 is still a spunky old lady but she walks like a penguin due to her arthritic legs and two girls. My husband is studying and working in another town so he is only home during the weekends so he is unable to help in in the daily chores and doing the work of two is no easy task. How to make sure that I can put home cooked food on the table so that all will eat something cooked at home rather than eating out? I fell into despair and compounded by the fact that my elder girl is sitting for her final government exam (SPM) I grew even more desperate. For me, home cooked food is really very important. Alas, I resolved to cater food which was the least of my desire. 

Then one day as I was again browsing through the net, I came upon this wonderful board organizer. I can't remember what the lady used it for. The idea came from a lady, sharing her idea in her blog and I felt it was really wonderful. it helps me to plan the menu for the entire week. I need not think of what to cook and how to cook. I have this menu board to help me.

Every Saturday, I will sit down and plan what I want to eat for the entire week. On Sunday, I will do a full scale marketing and then cook for 6 days, taking a break on Saturday. With menu board, everyone gets to know what will they have each day. I admit that cooking 6 dishes in one go is rather tiring but it certainly helps in the busy long week. 

I need not worry of what to eat.
I am assured that my parents and two girls have good nutritious meals. 
(I got to admit that some may find it not agreeable to eat food kept in the fridge for so long but it doesn't matter because it certainly lessen stress and hassle looking for what to eat.)  
I can take a breather in between runs, no need to worry about cooking and buying and this and that.

Dear friends and readers, I hope that my 'idea' will also help you to organize your struggle each day.

I sat down and quickly made my own menu board. 

My menu board. I bought the clips for RM2.90 that nobody wanted. They were in an old dirty and dusty plastic bag. I made the paper doll myself.

  

See, Saturday is closed. Yeah, 'kitchen close'.

Have a closer look at the paper doll. 

The menu board is hung in the kitchen. I love it. 

Corner Bookmarks

A corner bookmark for a friend's daughter. A very FAT froggie. 

A wise old owl as a corner bookmark

A smiling teddy for a corner bookmark

A mean sly shark for my own use. Ha Ha Ha

A pretty girl for a bookmark

I was browsing the net the other day when I came across corner bookmarks. All of a sudden, I became obsessed doing corner bookmarks and giving them away to everyone. All kinds of ideas filled my head and thus I went far into the night drawing and putting together the things to make corner bookmarks. I drew the frog, the owl and the shark. They are my favourite because I could shape them in the way I want.

This is a kirigami doll bookmark. I love the 'cloth'. The whole piece of paper kimono largely depends on the piece of paper. A paper doll will simply look gorgeous if the paper is beautiful. I gave this away too.   

These are fridge magnets - all made from flour. The strawberry is simply delicious right? I gave it away to a friend's birthday. 

This is a miniature garden where a chibi doll is. I made it for a friend's retirement. She loves gardening.  

These dolls are made from flour. They are about 5 cm tall. I did not use polymer clay nor any other types of clay sold in the market. The kneading of the flour to the forming of the dolls are all handmade.

The good thing about using flour is the dolls do not break when you accidentedly drop them and they remain as beautiful for a long time if properly kept. However, you must be careful. You must paint it properly with either transparent nail varnish or transparent liquor. If you don't, you will find your dolls being eaten by worms. I found out the hard way. I found worms eating the doll's hair. Gosh.... I nearly burst into tears. All my hard work.....

It takes quite a bit of time molding the dolls. One doll will take roughly an hour to be made: head, hair, dress and the likes and the whole process to get it ready and properly for display or to be given away takes two weeks. Yeap! one small doll takes an awful amount of time to be made.

And I have little adjustments to make. Sometimes the flour dough dries up quickly and sometimes if not quickly used can turn moldy. The finished kneaded dough   can either be too soft or too hard or too dry or too wet. So after I have kneaded the flour, I need to adjust to the consistency of the flour as I made the dolls. I don't have the exact recipe for it. It is different every time. But I can vouch that indeed it is therapeutic on days when you can't go out and you feel gloomy. These dolls do indeed liven your spirit up.    

I hope you will enjoy watching this short video.

These are origami dolls but I have pasted them on Popsicle sticks to make them into bookmarks. They are wonderful gifts. Before the start of the year, 2013, I gave some to my working peers. They serve as beautiful book markers for teachers' thick record books.