Birthday Card

Made a Zentangle inspired card for my friend Glenda's 60th birthday.

I wrote in the card that in her 60 years of life, there have been good and bad times, happy and sad moments. So see every patch of this quilt as a part out of your life.

Chocolate Candy Workshop

Have you ever attended a chocolate candy workshop? That's what I did Sunday and it was so fun and yummy!!! There were five of us. We were welcomed by Corrie in her home with tea and the most delicious chocolate candy.

Now these chocolates are all handmade.

Let's start ........

Before we started she explained how chocolate is made. To make chocolate candy, the chocolate needs to be tempered. Tempering is a process where the chocolate is melted to 88 degrees F and held at that temperature while it is stirred. This will melt the cocoa butter crystals that have formed in it to make it rich, creamy, shiny and easier to work with. The chocolate may be mixed at that point with fillings, such as nuts, creams or caramel. It is placed into molds where it is allowed to cool and harden. Couverture chocolate is mostly  used for this.

As you can see on the picture there were three type of chocolate to choose from, milk, dark and white.The tiny cups were already made by Corrie, so were the fillings (this is another workshop) We only had to fill and decorate them.
 

 

These two have a cream filling. Two other fillings we could choose from were chocolate and nut/caramel.

We made decorations.

Besides the tiny chocolate cups, we were given three pieces of candy: caramel, chocolate fudge and marzepan. We dipped them into the chocolate for a coating and decorated them.

The red cups you see where filled with a mixture of nuts and handmade fudge pieces. We added chocolate to it, stirred and dropped spoonfuls on the baking paper and they became clusters. Adding sprinkles as a finishing touch.

Aren't they YUMMY looking?????

Last but not least we made another candy. Just dropped a spoonful of chocolate on the baking paper, shaked the paper a bit and it became an oval or round candy. Drizzled some circles over it and made the web pattern by using a wooden toothpick dragging from the center to the outside edge. For the flower design drag the toothpick from the edge to center.

Ready to be taken home........

and.......

......hey..where did all the chocolate go????......

Clear Emboss Resist

Another stamp workshop last night. The technique we learned was clear emboss resist, which I had done before but it is still fun to attend and enjoy stamping together. This was the result:

The flower was stamped with  frost white ink from Color Box and clear embossed on vellum (parchment). The coloring was done on the back side with colored pencils.

Instructions about this technique can be found here on Britta Swiderski 's site.
Instead of using Versamark which Britta used in her tutorial, we used frost white from Color Box.

Swirly Curly Gift Box

Jasmina wanted to make a little giftbox yesterday and she decorated it with coiled paperstrips.

I found this in a book I have from The Kids' Craft-It Series:  "Cut-n-Paste It".

I found a similar project here.

Bull

My next Zentangle attempt got kind of carried away. I couldn't stop and it covers almost a whole A4 sheet. I'm not content with it but will show it anyway. Jasmina called it a bull.....

Zentangle

My latest Zentangle. I got inspired by a stamp from Terry Medaris.

Craft Fair/Handwerkbeurs

 The craft fair (handwerkbeurs) in Zwolle opened its doors again last weekend. Last year Jasmina and I went there for the first time and we had a ball attending workshops and looking at all these fabulous crafts. It makes you want to buy; but I've learnt not to be an impulse buyer so I did alright.

First project: a heart

 

Then quilting:

Here Jasmina learned paper piecing. We both made a label.

Paper piecing is a way of sewing through the lines on paper to do detailed block designs without any cutting of template pieces.

 

 

 

We had to finish them home.......

 The finished  result.

Textile Art

Next we made a small wall hanging using different fibers and tyvek.

Jasmina's creation

Mine.

And last...dry felting

Jasmina made a little mouse.

Isn't he cute?

We have been so busy that time slipped by. Before we knew it was closing time, so no time to shoot some pictures of the fair but the two below.