It's in the Bag!

Now that it's back to school time, I thought some kawaii bags were in order, so I made a bunch of cute star bags for 1/4 and 1/6 size BJDs.  I got some adorable plastic chain to use for the straps, though some of them will also have really cool anodized aluminum chain.  I used sterling silver jump rings to attach the straps to the bags.  These were super fun to make! 

Wow, I really need to decide on a name for my sweet girl.  

I spent most of yesterday tearing apart the BILLY bookcases in the living room and rearranging everything.  Dags helped me disassemble and reassemble one that MuNKi and I had put together partly upside-down years ago. :-/  Although you could only tell by looking at it from the stairs or loft, it's good to finally have it fixed, LOL!

And now that it's Fall-ish, I've restarted the Harry Potter series AGAIN.  Love, love, LOVE that world!  

I'm still fixing up a shelf for the doll's home.  It's really coming along nicely!  And my use of The Secret for bringing in cash has bagged me another birthday party gig at the dojang.  Huzzah!  Now to sell some star bags! ^_^

Sweets for the Sweet

 

More decoden goodies are in my shop! :)

Random thoughts of the day:

~*~ Did I mention that I'm teaching Martial Arts again?  I missed teaching. :)  I've been doing it for about 2.5 years at the new place.  The 4 of us who do this style tested for blackbelt back in Feb, so now I have 2 different 1st degrees, LOL!  I'm loving this new style, as it's way better for the joints, but still has tons of power (actually, more!)  And I'm still playing soccer.  Hooray for exercise that's so fun it feels like play, not work!

~*~ I adore the Flavia DeLuce series by Alan Bradley.  Excellent stuff! 

Decoden Madness!

OK, so there's this Japanese craft/art called Decoden that I've totally fallen in love with.  Basically, you have all the fun of super-fancy cake decoration, but it LASTS FOREVER!!!! O_O

I've decorated my share of fancy cakes over the years, let me tell you, and it's always a bit disheartening that the things take way less time to eat than they do to create.  With Decoden, you get to do fancy piping (many creatrixes, including myself, use silicone caulk - yep you heard me right!) and then stud it with sweet little cabochons and fancy jewels, sprinkle on some glitter or glass microbeads, and voilà!  To make it even more fun, you can create your own cabochons out of polymer or air-dry clays.  (OMG, Delight paper clay is so aptly named!)  I make it sound easy, and once you get the hang of it, it's not hard, but it can be time-consuming.  Fortunately, it's also really fun!  Oh, and don't even get me started on the joys of "baking" the cookie pieces with chalk pastels.  It's really exciting to see them come to life! :)

Decoden is often used to decorate storage boxes or jars, pencil cases, and cell phone covers.  I've also used the techniques I've learned to make tiny cupcake and pie pendants and magnets.  Fun!

And maybe the best part of all is that Decoden treats are sugar- and calorie-free. ^_^

So here's a tiny sampling of some of the things I've made.  They're already in my shop, and I'll be adding more as soon as I can take pics! :)