Gold and chocolate.

Another rainy day, but it's interesting how rain changes one's mood.

Last Saturday, the rain made me feel sluggish and bored. Today, the light rain refreshed me and I listened out for the occasional splash as the cars below drove past rain puddles.

Rain's my friend today, but sadly it's stopping and clear skies have taken over.

Here's a 1/3 scale chocolate cake, part of the previous bakery order. 

*Gemma's carrying it, which explains why the raspberry looks bigger than it should. 

The little decorations on it - raspberry, white chocolate triangle, mint sprig, a gold flake.

Hope your weekend was fulfilling, and it's a brand new week again! I'm off to work on some miniature apple pendants. :)

Strawberry cake on a saturday morning.

It's Saturday here, the skies look grey. It's been raining so much here!

On a brighter note, I finished a miniature bakery order for my lovely customer! She is going to feed her 1/3 (SD-sized) dolls with them. 

I'll showcase the photos one at a time. :)

Gemma is hoping I'll leave the cake for her, but sorry dear! And she's too tiny for the cake, since she's 1/6 scale. The cake is around 2cm wide.

I will be conducting another workshop in a few hours! We'll be making miniature gingerbread men this time, I can't wait! :)

A mooncake is not like a cake?

That's why I was debating over where I should file these photos in my Flickr, in the Miniature Cakes group or the Miniature sweet pastries. I chose the latter in the end.

So! It's been 2 days past the actual date (12th September) but still, happy Mid-Autumn festival! 中秋节快乐!

 

Miniature traditional mooncakes, with lotus paste and salted egg yolk centre.

I made this batch of miniature mooncakes as a commission order, and they are already en route to the lovely customer. :) Commissions have been keeping me really busy these days, so please pardon my empty shops!

I must say that I'm rather proud of Chinese festivals and their traditional customs. There are a few stories behind Mid-Autumn Festival, and you can read them all here. But basically, there is a woman with a rabbit (Jade Rabbit) living on the moon and she is separated from her husband (Houyi, living on the sun). So every year, on the night of the Mid-autumn festival, they reunite thus the fullness of the moon.

Also, if you peer really closely at the moon, you can make out the shadow of the Jade Rabbit!

Personally though, I think the rabbit came about from companies hoping to commercialise the festival. Bunnies are cute and easier to market. :/

One important custom (to greedy ones like me!) during the festival, is to get your hands on every kind of mooncake out there and polish them off. 

Mooncake fairs would be seen in every shopping mall during the month of August and September, and it'll boast of snowskin mooncakes, traditional, hongkong-style, shanghai-style etc.

 

The miniature yellow and purple mooncakes here are snowskin mooncakes, in the flavours of durian and yam. The latter has a generous filling of bean paste and white chocolate truffle centre.

The mooncakes are made in 1/3 scale, measuring at around 3.3cm in diameter. :)

Sweet hairclips.

I received a request to remake my miniature gingerbread men onto hairclips, and it was a gift from a father to his two young daughters and wife.

It was very sweet when the father requested for hairclips that would be easy for his young girls to wear, and that he knew all of their favourite colours. 

I felt all warm and fuzzy inside when I sent off the package.

To the 3 lucky ladies, hope you enjoy wearing them! :)

I listen to the radio.

So now that we're over the giveaway hype, it's time for me to get down to work. 

And can I be honest with you? It's really tough for me to be self-employed, as much as I love sculpting miniature food, I'm also very easily distracted! Sometimes I wish I had a boss breathing down my neck but nope, there's only me. :)

Here are some miniature burger buns, in 1/3 and 1/6 scale.

That is why I give all my customers deadlines where I have to send out their packages by, and that works as a firm guide for me to plan my sculpting around. That keeps my customers happy and me accomplished. :)

Here's a mooncake master mold I designed in 1/3 scale. It reminded me of the freehand doodling I used to do on lecture notes in school. :) 

On facebook, I was chatting to Stephanie (PetitPlat), also a full-time miniaturist, and we realised we both liked to listen to radio while sculpting. I feel it keeps me focused as both my hands and ears are preoccupied. And now I'm very familiar with all the radio programmes and its djs. :)

What about you, do you multi-task while crafting too?

What sharp eyes you have!

And yes, I'm talking about all 54 of you who participated in The Great Deer Search! EVERYONE got it right! :) The answer is I5, or 5I.

I had so much fun reading through all of the entries! Special mentions go to lupusdarkmoon who pointed out there was a watering can in the clouds and Jenn who spotted TWO deers (you're right!). I was smiling to myself the whole week while the entries came in. :)

And now, we have a winner! :)

It was picked out using a true random number generator, and I numbered the entries from 1 to 54 from earliest to the latest entry.

(please pardon the graphics - I was playing around with the sticker function in my photoediting software.)

Congratulations to The Shoe Bunny! 

How apt it is that you win the Japanese rabbit! :) I will be emailing you for your mailing address shortly, do check your mailbox! 

A big thank you to all 54 of you, this was fun! Definitely planning on my next giveaway whenever a chance to celebrate arises! Till then! :)

{giveaway} A Gift From Hokkaido!

{giveaway has ended - thank you for your participation!}

 Also known as the great deer search. :) (You'll understand later!)

This will be AiClay's first giveaway! I'm excited, I hope you are too! 

This is open to readers regardless of where you're living (Singapore, France, the moon) so please join in the fun!

When I was in Hokkaido, I told myself I wanted to share a part of it with my blog readers. And so I purchased some souvenirs for this giveaway, and made it a point to blog about my trip with photos from time to time.

Let's cut to the chase - the giveaway prize!

A giftbox filled with delicious Japanese snacks and souvenirs! All of the items are bought from Hokkaido during my trip there and are all exclusively made in Japan.

Glico Pocky sticks (strawberry), tiramisu almond chocolates, pistachio nuts.

A Japanese fabric bunny! It comes with a little metal chain which you can hang on your bag. :)

and an adorable ribbon bow on the back of it.

So here's how the giveaway will be conducted!

This is a photo I took of a beautiful lake in Hokkaido.

Here's what I didn't tell you the last time I posted this photo. There is a deer hidden within this photo. It is just barely visible, but definitely can be found if you look closely.

I've split up the photo into grids, and every grid will be labelled accordingly to the alphabets and numbers. For example, the first grid from the top and left, is labelled A1, and the one below is A2, so on and so forth. :) The one to the right of A1 will be B1, C1 etc etc.

(click on photo to enlarge)

So the simple rules of the giveaway.

1. Find the deer! Here's a clue - it's not in the clouds. :p

2. Leave a comment on this entry, telling me which box you think the deer is located in, and an email address I can contact you with.

3. Spread the word to your friends and family to participate!

This giveaway will be open for ONE WEEK, and will close at 2359, GMT+8 on Monday 29 August 2011. 
One lucky winner will be picked from the pool of commenters with the correct answer.
Results of the giveaway and the correct answer will be revealed on Tuesday 30 August. :) Please only comment once so that everyone gets a fair chance! :)

=========================================================================

For this week, I will be leaving the comments to be moderated so that they are hidden from view, and nobody can be copying each other's answers. :)
All shipping costs will be borne by me. This is a give-away, so you would not have to pay a single cent! 

Gingerbread house - the front door and walls

*Note: A Gift from Hokkaido Giveaway - details in the next entry, and a hint at end of post!

I can't even begin to count how many times I've redecorated and replanned the walls of the gingerbread house! Nothing seemed right, but I think I'm finally satisfied with this design. (more like I decided to just move on. :/)

A heart-shaped cookie dipped in sugar, pink and white marshmallows, mint balls and a chocolate door.

As for the walls, I punched out circular windows and surrounded them with chocolate balls dipped in soft white marshmallow.

Note to anyone else attempting this: do cut out windows BEFORE baking to save yourself the agony of cutting through baked clay.

{ Photos from Hokkaido }

Everyday we ate like kings, this was just a tiny section of the colourful spread prepared for us.

The Japanese put much effort into plating every item, and making sure that the colours were vibrant and the dish used was different from each other.

The beautiful flowers all around Hokkaido.

I've never seen this anywhere else - pretty flower cookies at a flower farm we visited. :)

Trying my hand at making my own cotton candy. I admit I preferred playing with the machine than eating the real thing though.

  

A huge mushroom in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn't look out of place in a storybook.

I remember how I got this photo. The tour bus was travelling to a ferry where we were supposed to take a boat trip, and on the way I spied on a cute Japanese bakery. So when the bus finally stopped (about 10minutes away from the bakery), I grabbed JY and told him there was this place I HAD to go.

And sprinted all the way to the bakery to take some photos, buy a croissant and ran all the way back before the tour-group realised we were gone. Phew.

Fields of crops.

Where there are flowers, there will be butterflies.

A random photo of me in some woods. Mainly, I'm just trying to show you my french braid (plait?).

Another beautiful lake, the mountains would all be snow-capped in winter. 

Hint: This is also the photo that inspired me to conduct A Gift from Hokkaido Giveaway!

Next up - Details of A Gift from Hokkaido Giveaway

Stay tuned, it will be open to local and international readers! :)

Miniature cupcake { f l o r a l . p i n k }

In order not to bore you too much, I have decided to group the hundreds of photos of Hokkaido (Japan) and share them in a series of entries.

But first, here's one of my favourite creations in recent months - a miniature cupcake named { f l o r a l . p i n k }.

The name came from its swirl of rose-pink frosting and the dainty white flower decoration.

I admit I was quite in love with this series of photos too, I adore the pairing of rose pink and teal colors.

Plus Ai just looked too cute with the cupcake. 

 This cupcake was later made into a necklace pendant for a dear customer. :)

{ Photos from Hokkaido }

While editing the Hokkaido photos, I realised I have so many that I want to share with you. It was hard to just choose a few, but here are some special ones.

This is Swan Lake. Supposedly, flocks of swans would glide on the lake during winter.

Hokkaido is famous for having the freshest produce, fruits and vegetables. Here are some of the honeydew slices, the flesh was really sweet!

This is a famous highway where the roads steeped up and down at great angles.

The Japanese take their garbage sorting very seriously. Good on them for contributing towards saving Gaia. :)

I was pleasantly surprised to find acorns here, I had thought they would only be seen in wintry Hokkaido. :)

The sunset over Lake Toya, it was a magnificient sight.

Shall end with a photo of me sitting at Swan Lake, bathing my feet in the hot waters dug from beneath the ground. Taking full body or feet saunas is a national exercise in Japanese.

I hope you enjoyed the photos, there is still a lot more about Japan I would share, in the next post! :)

Back from Hokkaido! { raspberry tartlets }

And so I'm back from Hokkaido after nine days, and desperately trying to regain some sculpting discipline so as to get some headway on my commission list. However, my heart seems more intent on getting all the computer-time I've missed on vacation. 

Mind over matter they say. :)

I shall post some photos of Japan in the next entry. For now, I have more photos of Ai with some 1/3 scale raspberry tartlets.

I do wish to be able to bake a tart one day, but for now my oven is still very much a foreign device which keeps asking me questions I can't answer. Anyone else feel that way about their technological gadgets? 

I imagine my first tart to be similar to these in the photo - piling on raspberries, chocolate, and powdered sugar. It's just too pretty and doesn't seem that fussy to deal with.

That's my hand holding the tartlets, all housed in a pretty polkadot box.

Can't wait to share Hokkaido/Tokyo photos with you! Hmm it was a lot hotter over there than I expected, and I saw a parade of naked women almost every day. But that's a story for another entry. :)