Garden drama

Some photos I took in the back yard.

10 ways to photograph food

Thanks to Chow.

Paula Walden jewellery

Ooooh.

Martha's red beaded wreath

I'm thinking about making this.

White on white birthday cake

This was for my cousin's 21st birthday party.

I made cupcakes with pound cake mixture combined with vanilla and lemon zest, then filled the cases with plain white icing. I used large silver cachous from Spotlight for decoration. Then I piled them up onto a silver cakeboard and decorated with a white and silver feather butterfly (also Spotlight.) The marshmallows were partly structural and partly pretty. The cakes were glued lightly together and to the base board with a plain white icing: the marshmallows were also glued in place and served to hold some corners together. I really like the white-on-white thing and this could be really good in a similar vein for Christmas.

Vertical gardens in the heart of London

These are apparently taking off. Walking down Piccadilly, I was surprised and uplifted to see a building with walls made of garden. It was like a huge curtain of moss and plants, so soothing and pleasant to see in a tough grey city. From this article by Joe Swift of The Times:

As well as being a fabulous aesthetic solution, green walls also tick many environmental boxes, too. Plants significantly improve the surrounding air quality, reduce sound pollution, increase biodiversity, insulate buildings and, most importantly, cool our increasingly sweltering cities in the summer. The “urban heat island” effect means that our predominantly concrete, glass and tarmac cities hold on to heat and can be up to 6C hotter than the surrounding countryside. Sure, we’ll need thousands of square metres of green walls to have any reductive effect, but at least we now have the tools.

The Independent's Emma Townshend also has information about the creator, designer and gardener Patrick Blanc.

I think it's a fantastic idea. With the right plant choices, this could go well in subtropical cities like Brisbane: imagine if we could reduce residual heat, glare and improve both air quality and quality of life, just by rethinking urban design? I want a green wall totally made up of Venus flytraps, near a public barbecue area. Down with summer flies!

Scorpion fish

Here's my scorpion fish. FINALLY. You may recall the wooden sweetlip I prepared earlier. The technique for building this fish was exactly the same, except a lot more painstaking and incredibly annoying.
The scorpion fish is also known as the lionfish, or in PNG, the two-toea fish. This is because the fish is on the two-toea coin. Frankly, I've always thought this fish should be on the kina coin, or even the 20-kina nota, because two toea won't even buy you half a Chupa-chup and this fish is far too regal and stately to be so symbolically cheap. Nevertheless, we have named this fish LaToya.
You see these fish out in the slightly deeper sections of coral reefs. The spines on its back are made of a translucent membrane that is extremely poisonous, but beautiful (ain't that always the way?) and slowly moves in the current, giving the fish the appearance of a glowing, shimmering anenome. There are more spines and extensions on its pectoral fins, which means the total water space the fish takes up is much more than its actual body dimensions. It is saying to other fish, "Beware me. I am awesome and I will poison you good. Keep away."
In real life, scorpion fish are not that big. You could fit one into a small esky. This wooden one, though, is just over a metre long and about the same height.
I used the same techniques to paint and decorate the body, before pouring a solid resin over the whole thing. The time-consuming differences were the gluing of gold thread to outline the pectoral spines, the 200 individual sequins and shells and the hundreds and hundreds of colour-matched bugle beads to outline each spine.
I then put two small screws into the back and hung it using a very robust fencing wire. It's not incredibly heavy, thanks to the MDF, but if it falls off the wall it will snap and then I will cry.
This one took me just over a year to create, start to finish, with many breaks. Over the Christmas holidays I finished it off in a solid two-week effort. Very pleased and grateful that I and the fish both emerged in one piece. LaToya and I now share a deep mystical understanding. She hangs over the couch.

Tea cosies

My mum made both these tea cosies. The tall chicken-shaped cosy was my favourite, but I also got a "pretty" one that passed the mother test for afternoon tea. The tall one looks like some sort of conehead alien from Mars Attacks. It needs some googly eyeballs. When you use it, the chicken's hair tassels nearly dangle in the tea. It's awesome.

Red piano bench

My latest home addition. This was an old piano bench that I found at the second-hand shop for about $25. It was covered with a piece of faded cracked leather and the inside had two broken hinges attached to one side, so the cushion was sitting freely on the top. There were quite a few marks and rust stains on the unsealed wood as well.

I took the cushion pad off and used pliers to rip out the old screws and hinges, plus any bits of old nails. Then I sanded and tidied up the body, and spray-painted it a bright gloss red. The wood grain still comes through a little bit, which I like. I re-covered the cushion pad in a cotton dobby fabric from Spotlight: chocolate brown with a white self-patterned design. Then we bought new hinges and attached the cushion to the body, and I also attached a chain on the inside to stop the hinges swinging too far back. All that's left to do is to attach some calico or similar on the inside, to cover up the raw edges of the dobby and to create a nice smooth finish underneath the cushion.

Vintage travel posters

I'm a big fan of this art style. They're so good, they make me want to travel, seventy years later, to a place I've already been to. The overblown colours, the stylised forms, the stereotypes. LOVE IT.


More here.

Japanese barcodes

From the NY Times.

The blog darkroastedblend.com notes one firm’s witty Japanese UPC symbols, or bar codes. With food prices what they are today, could they help calm cash-register rage? (Nah, probably not).

Vintage wooden button neckpiece

In homage to, and in awe of, Sophie Kyron, I made myself this huge neckpiece out of old wooden and plastic buttons. There are a few fabric buttons in there, as well as some metal ones and two old belt buckles. It's made in sections, then wired together to shape the neckpiece, then finally strengthened with strips of glued fabric on the back.

Surprisingly, it's not that heavy: just big and showy.

The buttons are all out of an old rusted tin that belonged to my grandfather. Once cleaned, they look really interesting and unusual. I've already had two compliments from random strangers on the night I wore it out to Piaf.

Am looking forward to wearing it layered under winter vests and coats, once the weather turns.

Sophie Kyron

God, this woman is fabulous. It's as if this is the jewellery that I have been dreaming of my entire life, but no one has ever been able to create it for me. Yesterday at the hairdresser, I was flicking through an edition of Cosmo and there, in the fashion shoot, was a model wearing an amazing necklace. I came home and immediately googled the designer, and am now in love with Sophie Kyron and her gorgeous, eclectic and show-stopping designs.

Tom's Confectionery Warehouse

They are open 24 hours in the week leading up to Easter. If you haven't been, they're on Nudgee Rd, not far from the Sandgate Rd intersection at the airport roundabout.

They have almost every kind of candy and chocolate you could imagine: lots of Lindt and Ernest Hillier, a bit of Jelly Belly, tons of those weird kids' lollies you find at the corner shop, and at Easter, lots and lots of eggs. Prices are good.

A friend and I did a late-night run out there the other night. We ended up with a haul of Easter goodies. A packet of fairy floss, some sherbet candies shaped like little chicks, ducks and rabbits, a chocolate hen. Some PNG coffee from Basil's (a local supplier), an Old Gold rabbit for the neighbours, some lavender-flavoured sprinkles and sparklers for future cupcake excitement.

And for Lord Porkface, a giant 1-kilogram chocolate rabbit. It's about half a metre high and wrapped in plastic shrinkwrap. He knows nothing yet, so unless he suddenly starts reading this blog (highly unlikely) and twigs, it will be his Easter surprise. So nobody say anything to him yet. I love how the rabbit's face is all screwed up, in happiness and Easter joy, or possibly pain or constipation. What a great rabbit design, and one that can be enjoyed on many levels: its chocolatey taste, its bizarre face, its huge size and so on.