2011 September | Perpetual Tea Party

When Life Gives You Lemons

29 September 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

I’ve noticed the suspicious water glistening along the edge of kitchen wall since the day before (though I did wonder if it might just be kitties splashing their drinking water) but when I heard what sounded like water dripping onto quite large pool of water (sound design skills come in handy around the house more often than one might imagine! I used my audio detective skills to monitor our kids safety all the time, for one.) I said to Todd “You might have to move all your meetings for the day…”. Anyhow, the maintenance guy came in promptly, and upon discovering that the large portion of the wall will have to be demolished, we decided to pack up and head out for the day. Serendipitously, it was a beautiful day so beach day it was!

I think that sandy hands and feet are so happy!

Japanese Vintage Sewing Kit

27 September 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

When my sister was visiting from Japan for a few days, she brought us a whole bunch of fabulous souvenirs but the most amazing item is this little vintage sewing kit. It was my mom’s which my grandmom had kept, apparently. It’s from the 50′s. It wasn’t anything special then, a normal one everyone had for home economics class at school. Well, it’s plenty special now! I haven’t seen much of vintage sewing notions from Japan, so I was super excited!

Making Earrings with WigJig

25 September 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

I made a pair of earrings! Which is something I haven’t done in a long time primarily because I don’t wear these things anymore due to little kids with grabby hands. Regardless, I really enjoy making earrings — I think I shall get back into it.

For the above pair, I couldn’t find suitable ear-wires in my stash (they all looked too manufactured next to the steel dangly “hoops” which I made from steel wire) and in moment of enlightenment (:D) I excavated WigJig from back of my tool drawer. Seriously, it hasn’t seen day light in like 5+ years. I think that it fell out of common use in jewelry making because it tends to produce really tacky wire jewelry for most part, but I suddenly remembered that it’s still useful for making consistent jewelry components!

Recycle Candle Making

17 September 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

Candle making is something I’ve dabbled in long time ago but ultimately decided it wasn’t cost effective to make in small quantity. Fast forward about a month ago, we kept running out of candles (we light them a lot since kids love lanterns and candles as much as Todd and I) because Ikea keeps being sold out of tea-lights (and they have the best quality for the price tea-lights!). And anyhow, we don’t even like Ikea anymore so this errand hasn’t even been fun for us. Also, while tea-lights are cheapest to light, I kept feeling that those little tins having to be thrown out is wasteful, and I’m conscious of the metal wicks in these thing being a potential health hazard.

When I was contemplating this issue, I remembered seeing unwanted candles and candle making supplies being sold for very very cheap at various recycle shops around town…which would basically cut the cost issue in candle making. So when we had the chance, we headed over to SCRAP and got 2 big bags full of of unused beeswax bars and broken but unused white tapers for $0.25 per pound! Votive molds are really cheap at $0.59 per mold so I decided to start there since it would be most useful around the house. Only investment was in the wick, I got one without the metal core (made from cotton and paper!) which cost me $6 for a very large spool (enough for me to make hundreds of little candles!).

I already had pots I’ve gotten just for making soaps and such so off I went on candle making adventure.This batch is made from all the miscellaneous stuff that would have otherwise ended up in trash. Ashland picked out all the ones to put in this pot, I think he made a pretty assortment!

The content of the pot turned into the purple candle. The yellow one is previous batch. They are scented with essential oil and fragrance oil, topped with some herbs and shimmery mica powder…because well, they might as well be fun to make and fun light!

I experimented making dribbly looking ones. These ones smell like white tea.

…And I rolled some into taper candles.

The only innovation here is that I used wick that is much bigger than one usually used for votives because I knew that the wax I would be recycling would most likely be slower burning than wax typically blended for votive candles. The wick for tapers are recycled from broken taper candles.

Autumn is Here!

13 September 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

It seems autumn has snuck up on us! Though I listened to the breeze about a week ago and thought how it “sounded” autumnal…like the leaves were drier or something.