A few themed stages...

Here are a few designs that we did on a simple budget...
A "Beautiful Mind" theme with images of famous inventors used to create a montage on the wall. Atoms were made using foam & skewers and hung from the ceiling.

Here's a valentine one created with paper hearts stuck on fishing wire and hung from the ceiling. Also (hard to see) hearts were glued on wooden sticks and stuck into flower pots with florist foam inside. These were placed around the stage.

more to come soon...

-charli

Deenie's Ring Pillow

martha stewart has a lot to answer for. i spied a cute ringbearers pillow on her website and wanted to make one. also inspired by a talented etsy seller, here's how i made "Deenie's Ring Pillow" one fine afternoon...

Materials:

1. one piece of A4 paper to cut out the template

2. 21cm x 21cm thick twill-like fabric and scrap fabric

3. hobby fill

4. ribbon - 10mm ribbed ribbon - about 20cm length

Step 1. CUT out a 21cm x 21cm template from the

paper. Then cut out two pieces of fabric.

Step 2. DESIGN. Then on one of the two squares of fabric and mark on the good side the middle of the square where you would

put the ribbon (with a pin or thread you can cut off later). i cut out 3 leaf-like shapes and hand sewed these on and then sewed

circles over the leaves (i pinned some circle templates to sew around). to get the thick embroidered look - my needle had about 3 strings of thread doubled over (so there's 6 threads going through).

Step 3. SEW. Machine sew the 2 squares of fabric together -

ensure the wrong sides of the fabric are f

acing each other and you sew about 1.5cm from the edge. You can see i semi-overlocked my edges to prevent fraying. leave about 2.5cm from one corner so you can turn the pillow inside out.

Step 4. FINISH. Turn the pillow inside out. Fill with hobby fill to about medium thickness. seal the hole - i weaved my needle

in and out of both sides in a sideways fashion. the final touch is to sew the ribbon onto the pillow. where you marked the middle of the pillow, place the middle of ur ribbon and sew through the ribbon and pillow to the bottom of the pillow then back again - making the width of the thread in the bottom of the pillow as small as possible. do this about 2 times to secure the ribbon. you can now tie a knot in the ribbon and do a bow!

Deenie

sushi salad

This summer, I discovered a simple and quick way to get the flavours of my favourite food sushi with only a fraction of the time, preparation or skill! I've called it a sushi salad. It's delicious and so healthy - enjoy!

Ingredients

2 cups japanese rice

1 packet instant sushi rice seasoning mix

(or use sushi rice vinegar and sugar)

1 carrot

half cucumber

half avocado

1 spring onion

1 cup baby spinach leaves

1 cup shiso leaves

500g smoked salmon

1 cup toasted nori strips

wasabi (paste/powder)

soy sauce

japanese pickled ginger

optional: toasted sesame seeds (you can purchase japanese rice seasoning from asian food stores)

Method:

1) Cook rice according to packet instructions. Mix in packet of sushi rice seasoning to taste. Set rice aside to cool.

2) Prepare salad ingredients: finely chop carrots, cucumber, spring onion and place in a large salad bowl with baby spinach leaves. Peel and cut avocado into square sized chunks and add to salad.

3) Shred smoked salmon and add with your sushi rice to the salad: mix together well.

4) Sprinkle generously with shredded toasted nori strips. If you can't find pre-cut nori strips, you could toast and finely slice up square sushi nori sheets.

5) Prepare wasabi paste or mix up wasabi powder according to taste and mix with soy sauce for dipping. Have the japanese pickled ginger on the side as another condiment or you can mix it into your salad to make things even simpler. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds or Japanese seasoning mix if you have some for extra flavour.

How to eat:

Sushi rice is sticky so you can enjoy this salad with chopsticks. I like to assemble a small 'sushi ball' with my chopsticks by dipping a piece of salad into the wasabi/soy sauce mix and then fashioning a collection of salad/salmon around a ball of sushi rice before consuming it. Alternative options for salad ingredients could include tinned salmon, corn kernals, teriyaki chicken strips, shredded roast chicken, beancurd/tofu, beanshoots...and the list goes on!

Itadaki masu!

Kay

paper cuts

Here's a really creative site to download,cut,fold your own paper models.

Don't use normal printing paper...you'll probably better off printing them on a heavier stock paper or card stock.

Best of all, with the financal crisis, you could make these for free to add some colour and cuteness to your desk.

Another website to check out is http://www.readymech.com/ . I havent tried these yet but apparently they take only 10-15 minutes to build.

-charli

creative process

I thought i'll go quickly thru the process of designing a poster. This poster design i'm doing is for a hip hop event. These are the 3 ideas i went thru

The client decided to stick with the hiphop urban feel with imagery of cityscapes and grungy feel (my specialty!!)

Using illustrator, I created some vectors from photos of cityscapes.

Next, I use Photoshop to remove the background of a hip hop girl for the poster using the pen tool and creating a new path so that's it's a clean cut. I hate the magic wand!!

Finally, I put everything together in Illustrator and play around with layouts and composition
Done! - charli