Unqique jewelry is an icing on your cupcake...I mean outfit! Interview with Dandelyne's designer

I love cupcakes (everyone knows about it), and I also love shopping (well, I am just an ordinary girl).  I always try to find pieces that fit my personal style, my body type and my personality and somehow original.  I don't usually shop online, except for shopping for jewelries though.  I am addicted to Etsy and have been using Etsy a lot for unique pieces to match my personality and style=)

Months ago, I found this amazing jewelry shop from Australia on Etsy - Dandelyne is a very unique place to get unique and original, and personalized jewelries for yourself, your family, and friends.  I am so honored to have a chance to have an interview time with the maker and the creator behind all things Dandelyne, Sonia Lyne (I like to call her Son) and spread out her amazing works to share with my readers.

Son has been addicted to embroidery since she was young. Her designs can be described as colourful, whimsical and sweet. Each piece truly celebrates many facets of life; family, friends, colour, simplicity and fun. Combining a love for embroidery and all things mini, the goal is always to always deliver on quality, love and originality.

Her signature design and best seller is the miniature embroidery hoops . They are designed by Son and laser cut in Melbourne (Son's home). Son and her hubby spend many nights sanding, drilling and constructing each hoop. The unique miniature hoops are used to frame her designs and are made into necklaces, brooches and key rings. There come with two sizes:  4cm and 5.5cm. They are also now available in DIY kits. Personalized designs and portraits are also highly valued and requested. She loves the challenge of working out how to best  illuminate each person and pet in a way that is truly unique. I ordered mine for my wedding anniversary; it's a TALK OF THE TOWN necklace!  I got so many compliments on it. 

Enough introduction, let's get to know Son more:

Mrs. G (aka Me): When did you find out you love sewing?
Son:  I remember when my love for embroidery, fabric and sewing began. I attended a small rural school of approx. 70 children. I was in year 2, and on a Friday afternoon the boys would head to the oval for“boy stuff” and the girls would head to the library for embroidery classes with Mrs Mulrooney. This makes me giggle now, but I do have the fondest memories of this time. I remember piercing the fabric with my needle and creating my very first running stitch. I was instantly taken by it. It was from this point that I began my love affair with all things stitchy and crafty. There was no stopping me from this point.

Me:  How did you make the jump from hobby to a business?
Son:  I knew when I starting embroidering I wanted to turn it into something that I could sustain forever. It began as a hobby but I knew in my heart, and I was determined, to make it into a business.  It has been a year and a half and now feel like I am running a business.

Me:  Do you still enjoy sewing as your hobby, or is it more like business, another word, work, to you now?
Son:  I sure do! I have had a few career changes in my time and after having my third boy I made a conscious decision to pursue a path that would make me smile all over. I enjoy sewing, and making, in a variety of mediums but many, such as making clothes, are areas I only want to dabble in from time to time. The difference with embroidery is that I want to do it 24/7. If I didn't have to eat and sleep I can only imagine how much I could get done :-D.

Me: Where do you get your inspiration from for your works?
Son:  My inspiration comes from anything that is colourful, whimsical and sweet. I really like to stitch about the moments ,and areas, in my life that truly make me happy. I feel that the possibilities are endless and Dandelyne could go off on so many tangents. My goal is to embroider the world.

Me: Could you share with us what is your favorite piece of work you have done so far?
Son: My favourite piece so far would have to be the first piece I did, which was our family portrait. We have it placed near our front door and it always reminds of how Dandelyne began. Most recently I stitched a custom portrait for a customer that I absolutely loved doing. It was a full embroidered design of her beautiful Whippet. It is very different to my normal style but, a style in which I hope to play with a lot more in the future.

Me:  How do you manage your 5 "marbles" or I should say 5 boys, your mutilpe hobbies and your business at the same time? (Son is a Melbourne based girl , with 5 beautiful boys in her life … one big (hubby), 3 small and 1 furry.)
Son: Managing working from home, family life and play is definitely tricky. I find being organised is essential. There are times when things clash and I need to evaluate what is important in that moment. Generally I am super organised and I utilise the time I have when my youngest is sleeping , during the day, to really delve into Dandelyne. Many nights are spent sewing too. Mornings, afternoons and most weekends are out of bounds for Dandelyne. This is family time. Stitching does tend to sneak into weekends when the boys are having some quiet time.

Me: This question is definitely for my own curiousity, do you take cupcakes over cake?
Son: Cupcakes win hands down. It's like your eating little pieces of artwork and the best part … you can never stop at one ^_^.

Check out Son's etsy shop today:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/dandelyne
Her jewelries will definitely brighten up your outfit!!! and shop for some unqie gifts for your family and friends, it will make them smile=)

Mini Cupcake in a Jar

Happy 2013!  We just got our first order in 2013; I am  beyond excited to make some more decorative cupcakes for my customers. 

Over the Christmas, I made some mini cupcake in a jar as a gift for my family and friends.  They are so cute!  On top of their cutenesses, they are easy to transport, so convenient to eat and also make a great gift or party favor (*hint*).  I am  taking orders for making cupcake in a jar, so let me know what flavors you want and what theme colors/theme of your party, I will design them  to match your party.

Free Cupcake Pineapple Pop!

This week is National Cupcake Week in the U.K.  What's a better way to celebrate this special week with a free chocolate covered cupcake pineapple pop from Edible Arrangements.  I love receving edible arrangments more than flowers because they could last a little bits longer in my tummy!  They just came out with a new arrangment, which is a chocolate covered cupcake pineapple pop arrangement.  They are absolutely cute to look at and good to eat, genius idea!

From now to September 21, go to Edible Arrangmentments' facebook page to sign up to be on their mailing list, you will get a free cupcake pineapple pop at your local Edible Arrangments store (refer to the details below).  I have signed up to get mine already, what are you waiting for!?

DON'T NUT, DONUTS!

My friend made some donuts and cinnamon rolls for her little nieces' birthday couple months ago.  When she told me she is going to make cinnamon rolls, I told her to add bacon in your cinnamon rolls.  She and everyone else thought I was nut at first, but she still "bought" my idea.  And suprisingly, they turned out great and unique and everyone loved them.  Her recipes of making the cinnamon-bacon rolls and donuts are super easy -

Cinnamon-Bacon Rolls -

1 roll of ready to bake cinnamon rolls
1 round cake pan
1 pack of bacons

1. Open the ready to bake cinnamon rolls and put one slice of bacon and roll the rolls.
2. Place the rolls in a round cake pan (I suggest using round cake pan because it is the perfect way to keep the round shape of the cinnamon rolls).
3. Bake as directed and then done!

Donuts -

1 pack of store bought biscuits
Vegetable oil for frying
A big and a small round cookie cutters

1. Open the store bought biscuits and use your round cookies cutters to cut them in a donut shape.
2. Heat the vegetable oil, once it's heated.  Put your donut dought in the oil until golden brown on both sides.
3. Decorate your donut with powder sugar or with an easy donut glaze (click here).

And find these cuper cute donuts on the website.  They are from a bakery in Japan.  How cute!

Mr. G and I went to a tattoo, car and music event, Ink and Iron at the historical and beautiful Queen Mary in Long Beach during the weekend.  We go to this event every year and every year we had so much fun of checking out different tattoo booths, antique rides, beautiful pimp up girls, wonderful concerts and just enjoying our time on the historical Queen Mary and the ocean view.  I highly recommend this event to everyone if you have not been to one in the past.  It's good to check it out at least once in your life time=)

Beside all the fun stuffs I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of different booths selling vintage dresses, swimwears, hair accessories, shoes, and cute accessories.  I spotted a cupcake mini wallet at one of the booths, and of course wanted to take it home.  My husband spoiled me by paying it for me when he saw how much I love the wallet =)  The wallet is so cute and it's the perfect size to put in my mini purse.

The mini wallet is made by an American company, called Fluff.  If you are interested in buying one, you might be able to find it from Tilly's.  I just checked out their website, they also have another cupcake mini wallet (an old school tattoo style).  Besides these two styles, they also have one with a pimp up girl holding a cupcake compact makeup mirror and a coin purse.  Check out the pictures below.

PS.  Talking about the old school tattoo.  I would like to share my works I did last year for a tattoo artist in Orange, CA.  Click here to see more pictures.

A Sweet Treat - Parisian Macaron Purse

She is pretty, cheerful and sweet; she is the princess among all desserts.  However, she is beyond challenge to master.  Who this "she" I am talking about?!  No others, but the prettiest dessert on earth - Parisian Macarons she is!

A macaron (French pronunciation: [makaˈʁɔ̃]) is a sweet meringue-based confectionery made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food coloring. The macaron is commonly filled with ganache, buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies. Its name is derived from the Italian word maccarone or maccherone. The confectionery is characterised by its smooth, domed top, ruffled circumference (referred to as the "foot"), and flat base. It is mildly moist and easily melts in the mouth.

Macarons can be found in a wide variety of flavors that range from the traditional (raspberry, chocolate) to the new (marmite, green matcha tea). The fillings can range from jams to ganache to butter. Since the English word macaroon can also refer to the coconut macaroon, many have adopted the French spelling of macaron to distinguish the two items in the English language. However, this has caused confusion over the correct spelling. Some recipes exclude the use of macaroon to refer to this French confection while others think that they are synonymous.
(Picture and information from Google Image and Wikipedia)

 I tried to make this pretty lady couple times.  First time, I got few good looking one out of two batches.  Decided to try again after a few weeks and was wishing to get this time right.  FAILED!  Based on two failure attempts, I concluded measurements and reliable recipe are extremely important to make this pretty dessert. I am not ready to have my third attempt yet until I got fully recovered from my failtures (if you have a great recipe, please DO share with me=)). 

Even though I am not yet successfully to master this desert, but I could easily "own" one.  I found these very cute macaron coin purse from Site NYC.  They come with different colors in a decorative cigaratte lavendar colored container or you could choose your favorite color(s) and purchase them individually.  According to their website, they will make a "the perfect gift for your friend who stood an hour in line at Ladurée."  (AGREE!) 

If you want to try your crafty hands to make some macaron coin purse for yourself and someone you love, Joannie L from Craft Passion was nice enough to share a turtoraial post (with step by step pictures), click here to find out more.

DIY Picture Flower Pot

We had a great Mother's Day celebration with my husband's family the past weekend.  Besides my own mother and my grand mother (too bad these two very important women are not with me in the States this year), another very special woman I appreciate the most is my husband's mother.  My husband and I concluded - the best mother and mother-in-law we could ever ask for!  And how funny is that my husband was telling me when he was looking for a serious relationship; he always wanted to look for someone just like his mom.  And not for long he found me and my personality is just like his mom.

I always love to hand make something speical for the people I love and treasure the most for their special day.  Sure, we could always spent some money to buy a nice gift and a beautiful bouquet from the mall or at the store.  But in my stubborn mind, I truely want these people to know how important and special they are and how much I love them by making them something they won't see it at the store; and hopefully, they will remember the gift forever.

Last year, my mother-in-law left an old picture album on their dining table.  I causally flipped through it and found a lot of great and valuable pictures of my husband.  I snapped some pictures by using my iPhone and I knew that right away one of these days, these lovely pictures will become handy for me to make some great art works or crafts.  When Mother's Day was approaching, I was thinking to make my mother-in-law something nice to appreciate her love, care and support to my husband and I the entire time; what better than something she could eat, something she could laugh about and something she could add to her office desk?  So here the idea was arised - a pot full of memories and "Cupcake in a Tube"!

I editted the pictures to make them looked brigher and sharper before printing them out from a color printer.  Then I stick the paper on a thicker paper and cut them out.  Next, if you have some left over gift tags from Christmas, you could add them behind the pictures to make a little talking bubbles.  If not, you could always buy a paper puncher from any craft store and make your own talking bubbles.  If you don't like the talking bubbles idea, just simply leave the picture alone.  I added the bubbles because I wanted to add some humors (my husband and I are both very goofy and funny persons, and that is totally our style *laugh*).  Now they are ready to put on a lollipop stick (could be purchased from your local craft store).

Then, I went to the craft store to get a flower pot and some ribbons for decorating.  As soon as I saw this turquoise colored pot; I knew that I didn't need to look any further=p.  The turquoise color reminded me of my husband and my wedding ceremony (deep brown and turquoise were our themed colors).  I wanted to make my pot chic and still girly.  So I picked up a roll of skinny black with white polka dot ribbon and a turquoise colored ribbon to make my pot modern and chic=)  I also designed the "We L<3ve You" label by using a design program; and cut it with my cutting machine.  Now,  everything is ready, and I could use my glue gun to glue everything on the pot. 

There are multi different ways to put in the pot for securing your "photo" flowers.  I have a great and inexpensive way to put your "photo" flowers/cake pops/cake in a tube, pretty much anything on a stick format - go to your local 99 cent store to get a pack of elbow macaroni and filled in the pot (cheap and easy!).  Of course, you could always buy a styrofoam and cut it to fit in the pot; however, I found my way to be faster, cheaper and easier=)

The day before heading to my in-laws' house, I made our new product - cake in a tube to put in the pot (cake is pound cake with strawberry and whipped cream in between)!  I decorated the plastic container with the ribbons I bought from the store to tight the pot and everything else together.  And I wanted to give my mother-in-law a little surprise when she eats the cake. I cut the strawberry into a heart shape and put on top of each "cake tube"<3.  This gift idea is not only good for mother's day.  You could use it for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, or any other special occassions you could think of.

A Sweet Anniversary

A friend of mine and one of my loyal customers just celebrated she and her husband's 2-year wedding anniversary last week. I am so happy for them and I wanted to make something sweet for them to show that how much I care about her in person and her business to me.  She is such a freindly person and on top of it; she is very creative and organized too.  Becase of these gifts, she decided to open her own wedding planning business, On the Dot Event Planning. I am sure she could help the bride (and the groom) to take away a lot of stressful moments for preparing their perfect wedding.

I know she likes pink (that's the theme color at her wedding) and girly stuffs, so I designed and created a white cake pops and oreo cake pops dipped in pink candy melt (they are a heart shape cake pops) and dark chocolate as their anniversary gift.  Want to see how they celebrated their anniversary, please check out her blog, here.

Note:  If you are interested in ordering cake pops, please contact me for inforamtion=)

Happy Birthday, Kayson!

Over the weekend, I made some cupcake pops for my best friend, Ashley's son. I planned to make him little something for his birthday for a while.  I know he likes candies and everything sweet. Ashley told me that every time he went to Starbucks with her, he was telling her how much he wanted the cake pop from the Starbucks.  Based on these two clues, cupcake pops and a jar fulled of Easter's M&Ms will make his birthday even sweeter.

I am glad to see his smil-y face when he received the gift. Even better, I got to see him ate them and enjoyed them; that's priceless.  He is one of the coolest kids I ever met.  He is so beautiful inside and out, I wish he would never change.  Happy birthday to you again, Kayson; Carmen and Chris (he kept asking me where my "boyfriend" [aka my husband] is) love you!

PS.  If you want to send something sweet and special to someone you love, contact us today.  We could craft and design some beautiful cupcake pops or cake pops/balls for you and the one you love=)

Love is in the Air

2/14, tomorrow is Valentine's day.  All the TVs, radio station, newspaper, magazines...are all over about this holiday, but how many of us know where this holiday came from, when, where and who are we celebrating for?!  Here is a website I found online: click about the history of Valentine's Day (If you are interested, go check it out).

This week is a busy week for me - There is a big deadline coming up at my full-time day work and couple Valentine's Day cupcake orders, of course, my birthday and my mother-in-law's birthday are also coming up this week too.  O well, I guess sometimes busy means productive, right?! 

 I am such a bad wife - my husband complained about how I make cupcakes for others all the time, but never for him.  Finally, Valentine's Day is a PERFECT reason for me to not to make up excuses for not making him anything, so I made some AWESOME horchata cupcakes decorated with everything that remind me of him JUST FOR MY HUSBAND!  As many of you know that I have a very art-sy husband; he is very into music.  He is a lead singer and a guitarist in a punk rock cover band, called the Knockoffs.  When I was thinking about what I should make for him, immediately I think about guitar pick and his guitar.  Except for music, he is also very into tattoo arts too.  So I just made a heart shape with frame inspired by the tattoo on his chest. 

 

The inspiration of the other two cupcake toppers - I always like the beautiful and colorful hand painted skulls from the Día de Muertos (Day of Dead), every time when I am looking at these skulls; it reminds me of "Love till death do us part" (that's what love and marriage about=)).

The last but not the least cupcake topper - Even my husband is a social smoker (only smokes when he is drinking on the weekend).  But smokes are smokes, and they are bad for you.  I LOVE him and I want him to live healthier and longer.  So I made this topper with a very special note on it.  

In return, I have received a lovely cupcake necklace from Tiffany & Co from my husband as a "Balentine's" gift (Birthday + Valentine's)!  OMG!  I could not ask for more than a better husband in my life and my next life.










To my dear husband,


I know I am not a perfect wife (I could be better)!  Sometimes, ur texts and some stuffs u said to me really touched my heart.  When you told me when u had a hard day at work, as soon as you saw me at home; u feel MUCH BETTER!  That really touched my heart and make me have a very complicated facial expression (smile and dropping happy tear drops)


Thanks for everything, Mr. G!  I love you more than you know.


XOXO,