gotta love a good baking session.
lovely wynnie volunteered to make all the baked goods for cherry's wedding - i.e. wedding cake and cookies. in the end, not sure making the wedding cake was the brightest idea the three of us have ever had, since wynnie had to leave a week before the wedding for US of A.
lots of trauma and cake farting ensued, and i'm fairly sure i'll never recover from the cake-sitting incident of 2013.

disregarding that, i had a fantastic time playing apprentice for the cookie decorating session.
lots of fun :)

cake was heavily inspired by this pin and the cookies by this pin

 

for more hoho wedding baking goodness: part 1 | part 2a | part 2b

donna. 

hoho wedding successfully accomplished (kind of)!
who knew there were so many errands to run! but i'm kind of glad I got the chance to DIY some things for the wedding.

completely jacked this idea for the ring pillow, at cherry's request
and pretty happy with how it turned out ^^
finally figured out that successful embroidery on felt actually requires embroidery thread. surprise!
this was pretty easy to do since i have a stash of felt and ribbon in my fabric drawer and a pillow from which i pull stuffing out off for random things. the only thing i had to buy was the embroidery thread.
i liked the hand-sewing, but i think a 15x15cm pillow is about my limit for hand-sewing :P

 

donna.

today was hui's 26th birthday and because she is so busy, she could only slot us into sunday brunch

so we ended up at cafe-ish (in surry hills) on this beautiful sunday afternoon

and it was great :)

 

 

 

 

hui and the snackbox i made her <3

 

hui finally figuring out that michelle is a good actor

this card i drew while jenny and michelle distracted hui with random conversation about...stuff

 

and because this photo looks so inappropriate...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUI YIH <3



donna.

made a pseudo resolution this year to try my best to give handmade presents.
so i fail as a friend, because i've known janice since...2007? and i don't i've ever given her a pressie. this year, i promised janice that i would paint her a nude, but of course! i lie!
ended up spending the evening two nights before sketching and painting this image that i completely completely jacked from blanca gomez
just sketched it in my a4 visual art diary and then painted using acrylics that i've had for years now...i think i ended up using blue, white, red and a tiny tiny bit of yellow?
i think i actually prefer it as a sketch, but oh well! sorry janice :(
and then i put it all into a frame with a white border because i thought it would look more pro than a ripped page from a notepad...

and then i had leftover paint and i knew i wanted to make the card as well so i ended up with this

happy birthday again!

donna.

forgive me if i sound a little too proud of myself but come on! two new year resolutions by the end of january! whootwhoot~

i've been meaning to renovate my room for...awhile now (read: a few years)
and i finally, finally got around to doing it with the help of my mum and miss cherry hoho
it's been so long that the ideas surrounding my bedroom have evolved from painting clouds on the wall to a tangerine/turquoise theme to the grey/yellow theme that i finally settled on

the project took three days, beginning friday when mum and i went down to the local bunnings and spent almost $200 on paint materials
we ended up leaving with (what was essentially) 4L light grey, 2L dark grey, 1L yellow and 1L chalkboard paint. plus a bajillion brushes and rollers and 33048209 rolls of painter's masking tape (three...)

day 1 was spent moving furniture into other parts of the house, attempting and failing to sand down the existing paint splatters on my wall and painting two coats of the base colour.
i slept at 3am that night on the basement couch.

day 2 i woke up around noon, and we yumchaed with cherry at carlingford before returning to my mess
the majority of day 2 was spent taping and painting stripes as well as getting high on chalkboard paint fumes. yummy~
we were epically nerdy when we attempted to line up the stripes, making sure we had at least two data points for each strip of masking tape and when that wasn't possible, we ended up ~eyeballing our data.
cherry left around 11pm and i continued painting the trimming etc etc,
i slept at 3am last night, on the basement couch.

then today, was spent moving everything back into my bedroom and reconfiguring everything.
and now we're done.
and tonight i will sleep at 10, and it will be in my bed, enclosed in new surroundings.
so excited~

donna.

yay. after knowing about cherry's engagement for a month, i finally got it together and made her a wedding binder (instead of just getting one from kikki k)

basically just used leftover fabric from my fabric cupboard (yeah, i know, i have a fabric cupboard) and basketweaved it to make the cover instead of just giving her the mint green fabric binder i got from officeworks
even though the mint green is also pretty

i also included some dividers (with colour printed tags for the different sections) and plastic pockets. then i was supposed to print out templates from russell&hazel but i got lazy and gave it to her before i got around to it (lol, best bridesmaid ever!)

super fun to continue my sewing bug but suffice to say, my embroidery skills are pretty atrocious but hey! handmade written all over it

love you and congrats (again...) cherrybug.

donna.

sometimes i can be truly terrible when it comes to my diy projects...
this one in particular has taken me nearly 3 years...(sigh)

i remember back in 2009, when i was just getting to know janice and i made her get me quilt materials for my 21st birthday...
and now here we are, january 2012 and all (and i'm almost 24 -.-)!

the construction of this quilt can be broken down into two stages.

oo1; in june 2011 (2 years after receiving my lovely present), i finally got around to cutting the fabric into squares. and then promptly sewed two rows until i broke my sewing machine and gave up.
oo2; then yesterday, after much badgering from my mum and listing finish my 21st birthday quilt as numero 2 on my 2012 resolutions: I FINALLY FINISHED IT AT 2AM (with a bit of help from mum). 

AND I LOVE IT.
IT'S SOOOOOO PRETTY AND WARM.
there's little mistakes everywhere (okay, maybe not little but...whatever) and it's like oh hey! handmade!
so now that it's done, of course i had to run around taking photos with it :D


YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

donna.