Category: Videos

Plush You! 2013 is opening tonight, Friday, October 13th, from 5 pm – 9m, at Schmancy in Seattle, Washington. The show features over 55 artists from all over the world! I submitted three pieces last year  and had so much fun checking out all the other plushies. I realized that I never compiled all the little video snippets I took from 2012, so I did that just now in order to prompt you to check out the show this year if you are in the area. If you go, let me know how it is!  

I have one copy of an awesome new cookbook to giveaway! Are you ready? It’s my buddy Natalie Slater’s Bake And Destroy: Good Food for Bad Vegans. I’ve seen her on TV as a judge on Cupcake Wars, so I think that means she’s pretty legit. I’m totally not vegan, but I guess I am a curious and somewhat guilty omnivore. I also have vegan friends, so it will be nice to have some tasty recipes in my back pocket for get-togethers. I had already pre-ordered this book before Natalie contacted me to check out a free copy, but when someone asks if you’ll post a recipe for Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes … YOU SAY YES. What Natalie may not know… is that … I AM THE WORST BAKER EVER. But I always give it my best! I’m optimistically terrible. And what I like about the recipes as I’m flipping through them is that a lot of them fit on one page. This tricks amateurs like me into thinking that the recipes will be really easy, which I like very much, and it keeps me optimistic. Some morsels that catch my eye are: Totchos (tater tot nachos), Spaghetti Cake with Grandma Sharon’s Hater-Proof Sauce, and Whole Wheat Choco-Coconut Donuts! PLUS, the photography is gorgeous AND there are bad-ass illustrations by the one and only Betty Turbo. And now for your viewing pleasure: Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes. (My cooking confessions and video summary are below the recipe.) ********** Makes 12 cupcakes Ingredients CUPCAKES: ½ cup (113 g) mashed overripe banana 1 ¼ cups (156 g) all-purpose flour ¼ teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ½ teaspoon salt ¾ cup (150 g) sugar 1/3  cup (80 ml) canola oil 2⁄3 cup (160 ml) rice or soy milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ½ teaspoon almond extract ½ cup (60 g) chopped, toasted walnuts VEGAN MAPLE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING: 2 cups (250 g) confectioners’ sugar 6 tablespoons (85 g) nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening 6 tablespoons (85 g) vegan margarine 2 tablespoons (40 g) pure maple syrup ½ teaspoon maple flavoring Pinch of salt Directions Preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C) and line a twelve-cup muffin pan with paper liners. Throw your mashed banana in a blender or just smash it with a fork. Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar into a large bowl and mix well. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, rice milk, vanilla, almond extract and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Small lumps are fine. Finally, add the walnuts, folding gently. Fill the liners two-thirds full. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and let cool completely before frosting. To make the vegan maple buttercream frosting, beat all the ingredients together in a bowl until they’re light and fluffy. […]

I sold out of the initial run of corn dogs from Renegade Craft Fair, but now I’ve made them available for custom ordering on Etsy, which means, you get to choose between mustard or ketchup, bite, or no bite! If y’all think of other customizations you might want, just lemme know! I’m thinking of also turning him into an actual puppy dog or puppy corndog character with ears and a face! Also, I thought it would be cool to get a behind-the-scenes look at the stop-motion corn dog video that my buddy Justin made. Checkitout!  

So, I am kind of realizing I don’t have THAT much STUFF for my tables at Renegade. I went over to my parents’ house tonight, so my mom could help me sew clothing labels onto things, and the number of scarves I have is… paltry. Well, okay, I have a lot of non-scarf items, just not a lot of scarf items…. Soooooo I started making a pickle scarf!! We’ll see if I have time to finish it. Anyhoo, here are some sneaks that I’ve been posting on Instagram! Also, don’t forget to check out this super-cute stop-motion animation featuring one of my new crocheted corn dogs!

Check out the neat stop-motion promo video my buddy Justin made, starring: a corn dog pen cozy!!! It’s a cautionary tale about why you shouldn’t leave your corn dog pen cozy unattended….  Music by my always-favorite Twink, the Toy Piano Band. Can’t wait to debut these little guys at Renegade Craft Fair this weekend!

I actually posted to I Eat Yucky Stuff today! Get a load of this Korean mugwort sandwich pastry! He reminded me a lot of the moldy bread plush by My Paper Crane, which was admittedly a huge factor in my purchase. Here’s me eating it and also talking a lot about mugwort, which is something that probably neither me nor you expected today.   I think this was a really good activity to pair with the fact that I had my teeth cleaned at the dentist today. Prepping a squeaky clean canvas for my mugwort adventures! Chomp chomp!

I hope you guys get to have fun adventures this weekend! Last weekend, Hairy and I drove down to Big Sur. Big Sur is neat cuz it’s like a bunch of different environments all smashed together…. grassland, forest, and beach. I am not really a nature/camping kinda gal, because I hate sweating, bugs, and getting dirty, but I’m game to hang out in nature for an hour or two. I made a video of our journey, so you can come with us on our hike! So this is basically the outfit I consider my sporty/hiking outfit. I tried on a bunch of my shorts, and it’s like … my thighs are SO JUICY that they don’t really fit in any shorts!? WTH? Where do juicy gals buy their shorts?! These red ones are from Victoria’s Secret. My very sporty muscle shirt is from Urban Outfitters. I told Hairy that in this outfit, nobody would invite me deer-hunting, which, is a good thing anyway.  Pfeiffer Beach is really beautiful, but if you watch the video, you will see why the sign says, “VERY WINDY. NO REFUNDS.” Ok, bye! Go somewhere outside this weekend and smell some fresh air and inhale some tiny bugs and stuff. Love you guys!

Here’s a tiny snippet of what we did today: took a ferry from Auckland to Waikehe Island, went on a tiny hike….and then it started to rain! Classic me: I complain if I’m hot, I complain if it’s windy, and I complain if it rains!

So you may remember me always blogging about how I need to organize my craft room. When I have crochet deadline after crochet deadline, picking up my mess always takes a back seat! And I still do need to finish my 2012 bookkeeping (which I’m doing now!), but I REALLY had to set aside time to deal with my craft room because I was asked to be video-interviewed in there yesterday! (I’m not sure yet if I’m supposed to keep the interview a surprise…) If you “like” my Facebook page, you would already have seen little snippets of me picking up the place, but I was also taking video from time to time, and I sped it up, so you can sort of see what took place within the span of 4 minutes (but it was in reality like 2 days). My craft space has been featured in various blogs, and I always just shoved piles of yarn in my bedroom to take photos and then put it all back. What really intimidated me was doing it RIGHT. I wanted to separate out the yarn to giveaway or sell (happening after aforementioned bookkeeping!), and approach everything in an organized fashion. So everything is sorted through now, but it’s also living in bags and boxes in Hairy’s man cave…. and it’s A LOT. So here’s the video. Enjoy!

Okay, there’s a lot going on right now, but, sometimes you need to relieve your stress by creating a horrible animation loop of you and Manda, in your mom’s Lexus SUV, wearing her fancy coats, and getting KFC and cheezballs. I know you are like, “What. The. Eff.” It’s kind of an inside joke. Now you’re in the inside!

Check out this cute video introducing Sephora’s Hello Kitty Tokyo Pop collection! The cute Sanrio clothing is by JapanLA Clothing! What’s extra cool is that adorable Maria of Locketship is wearing a vanilla ice cream scoop hair clip from my shop!

Thank you so much to everybody who came to visit my booth at Renegade Craft Fair! I super appreciate all the support, and it was the first time in a long time that I actually sold out of certain items. Woo hoo! Here are some photos and one (crappy, as usual!) video, so you guys can check it out. I had a lot of fun building a gingerbread house-themed booth with my mom. I designed and built the PVC structure, my mom sewed the felt covers, she and I both painted and glittered the styrofoam candies, and Hairy drilled holes into the tables to mount my canopies, and he also wrapped the PVC in candy cane ribbon. You can click on most of the photos to see them bigger if you like!

I know a lot of people who say, “I can’t nap.” They can’t fall asleep, or they sleep too long, or they feel gross coming out the nap and never recover. If I couldn’t nap, or if I refused to nap, I would DIE. I feel like I’m still paying my dues, work-wise, and I still work a million hours a day. On deadline days, this leaves little time to sleep. Last night, I slept from about 7:30am to 8:30am because I had a 9:30am meeting outside of the house. I had a deadline to finish a project and send it via UPS (4pm) anyway, so I was ok with this. But at about 1pm, I really needed a nap. So off I napped on the couch, from 1pm-2pm. Then, more work! Then I had a long-overdue crafty/pizza/chickflick hangout with Vivs. Then, I think I had a 45 minute nap around midnight. Then I was back up for more work. I feel pretty good, but I also had two cups of strong tea! VROOM VROOM! Ok, clearly this is not a lifestyle, this is not good for you, and I wouldn’t do it everyday, (plus don’t tell your mom cuz she’ll yell at you) but I’m thankful I can function this way, because I really needed those extra hours of work. Thank you, body! On a similar theme, here is a short video of Bibi snoring. I love how you can see her nose parts go in and out. She used to snore all the time as a puppy, and ten times more loudly. It used to worry me, but I looked up online that Shar Pei puppies may snore a lot when they are young, and then as their face parts grow out a bit, the snoring lessens, which was true for Bibi’s case. I find her snoring very comforting, though!

Here’s the video I made from clips Manda and I took on our iPhones at the pumpkin patch. My original plan was to get this uploaded to promote my Halloween and pumpkin-themed accessories, but you know, life happens, and I didn’t have time to get to it. It’s a little late now to order your Halloween goodies, yet it’s not quite Halloween, but I’m going to be house-sitting for Halloween without access to my good computer, so here’s the video now! PHEW! I am also having weird issues with iMovie not letting me save my file at full quality, so it’s at medium quality : /. I gotta work on my video quality issues, but I have no idea what I am doing. Anyway, I hope you think it’s fun! I thought I was going to put together a 30 second video, but I had so much fun remembering our day at the pumpkin patch, that it turned into a 2 minutes video. I chose “On Top of the World” by Imagine Dragons because I heard it for the first time that day in Manda’s car.  

BABY vs. GUMMY BEAR I HAD to share this video with you guys. The end just cracked me up big time! Thanks to Jessy, one of my trusty crochet elves! We will ensure that future gummy bears are not encrusted with baby goo 😛

Sometimes I forget to blog about Bibi. I figure you guys get sick of seeing pictures of her sleeping all the time (haha!) but she’s actually quite active and therefore hard to get a good picture of most times. Here are a few Bibi photos from my Instagram, as well as a short video of the two of us sharing one of her favorite treats: a banana. I can’t peel a banana or a hard-boiled egg without her running over, expecting a bite. We don’t normally feed our dogs people-food, but there are a few treats that Bibi knows I will for sure share!

    It’s been a while since I’ve been able to give myself a mani! Our internet has been really awful the past few days, so I decided to take a break and get some paint on these nails. A few of you may know that I used to be extremely faithful to Orly’s “Blue Collar” as my go-to candy blue nail polish. But I feel like the formula has changed, and the polish dries too dark now to be my favorite. It has been a long journey to find something to replace it, but that journey is over! Meet Barry M‘s “Turquoise!” In sunlight, the polish is much lighter in the bottle, and I was afraid it would be TOO light, but it’s actually perfect and covers in 2 coats.       I’ve also been wanting to try gluing googly eyes on my nails for a little while, but I’ve never gotten the chance…UNTIL NOW!   I never paid much attention to googly eyes before, but I was surprised by how many different sizes there are available at Michael’s! I decided to go with the 5mm. On Twitter, I asked if I could just super glue these suckers on to my nails, but then I was told about NAIL GLUE. OF COURSE THERE IS NAIL GLUE. I used 2 coats of Barry M Turquoise and then dabbed some nail glue on my nail. The bottle says you’re supposed to glue directly to the nail, so I don’t know how well this will work on top of polish.  Then I carefully placed the googly eyes. You actually have some time to move around and arrange the eyeballs, so don’t freak out too much. Then I busted out some nail art pens to draw the mouth and some polka dots and hearts. The Sally Hansen nail art pens are more spendy than I’d like, but they make drawing on your nails so darn easy! I finished off my other nails with some Deborah Lippmann “Happy Birthday” and this other glitter from an indie nail polish company that I didn’t really end up liking. Pardon my strange Jimmy Dean E.T. fingers and horrible cuticles. I have come to terms with not being a hand model for some time now. Also, I am really the complete opposite of ambidextrous, so the heart on my right hand appears to have a leak on the bottom, plus my polka dots have shadows that I could chalk  up to camera blur but I won’t. If you decide to glue eyes onto your nails, may I suggest making sure that BOTH thumbs get a face, because it’s really fun to watch the googly eyes google when you type on your smart phone. Here’s a short stupid video I made of the googly eyes in action. Happy Friday!  

Last Saturday, Manda and I had a shopping day for my office/craft room. It was exploding and needed some TLC. Manda is SUPER into organizing stuff, so I took advantage of her OCD for my own benefit! While flitting from place to place, we also stopped by the BlaBlaBooth in the mall. Not only is it a photobooth, but it also records video of you! I had no idea it also recorded SOUND! But the sound isn’t very good and we aren’t saying much. P.s. On this day, we decided to both wear overalls…and for some reason it made me think that other people thought we worked as clowns for parties or something….!

Sooo one of the secret projects I worked on a little bit ago was for my friends Nara and Liz (Miss Kika). They just got engaged! Nara did a ton of careful planning to make their special day super duper extra specialtacular. He asked me to turn his engagement ring box into a cupcake. Fun, right?? And he also asked all their friends to contribute small video clips to be shown to Liz as part of the whole thing. It’s super sweet. You can’t miss this. Check out the most awesome engagement video ever! Here’s some poorly lit photos of the cupcake I made! There’s stuffing on the top for extra poofiness. Even if you are not about to propose to somebody, I think that making cozies for your ring boxes is a cool way to use them as display pieces and sweeten up your jewelry or makeup tables! I intend to make more in a few varieties and take more inspiration photos for you guys :). Right now, I am at my parents’ house, stealing ring boxes from my mom, since any rings I buy don’t usually come in a fancy box 😛 p.s. OH YEAH! Here is the sketch that Nara sent me as a reference!

I am sooooooo excited to tell you guys that I have many items for sale now at Kat Von D’s Wonderland Gallery in L.A., right next to her tattoo shop High Voltage. You can grab yourself some scarves, mitts, hats, brooches, hair clips, tons of stuff! Shop online or visit in person if you are in SoCal! You’ll even find the elusive Sushi Scarf there! There’s more in the shop than there is on the site. The story behind this is that I know Marya, the gallery director at Wonderland, from when she was the Photo Director at Inked Magazine and put me in the “Inked People” section a few years ago. She has always been super sweet and super supportive of my work, and she also came to my book reading in L.A. where we met for the first time! I asked if she could take some fun snaps of my goodies in the shop.   AAAAAAAAND in other fun news, RELATED news, oddly, you can now view my pin-up makeover with DeliciousDames!. So Annie, part of my former sales team for Yummy You! Clothing, asked me last year if I was interested in participating in some pin-up makeovers that her friend Revecka was doing for her website. I am always game for trying new things (even though being on video terrifies me as I hate watching myself and think I look like an alien!), so I said yes! As it turned out, Revecka’s husband Khoi was doing the filming that day, and he is also a tattoo artist at High Voltage. So Revecka and Marya actually know each other. Small world! I showed up to the makeover without doing my makeup or hair. Note: I am One of Those Girls who does not leave the house without eyeliner and eyebrows. No way no how. But usually when you show up to a photoshoot, you should do so with a clean face. I then learned we would be filming interviews “before” the makeover. Cue my panic!! I viewed this panic as part of the experience. A huge part of the Delicious Dames philosophy is embracing your own beauty and accepting all forms of beauty. This is a hard journey for many of us! But it was a really fun day after all. The Delicious Dames team is awesome, Revecka, stylist/art director/hostess, Jennifer Corona, MUAH, Shannon Brooke, photographer. They are all good friends, and you can really tell that they love each other and love what they do. p.s. For those wondering, yes, we had to stuff tissue paper into the 2nd outfit 😛

That looks photoshopped, right?! Best jumping photo ever! Except for worst outfit ever! I finally made some time to go thru hundreds of photos and to also cobble together a video. Some introductory information: my family had two goals for this trip, 1) to see the Taj Mahal, 2) to stay at the Lake Palace Hotel. The latter is my dad’s request, as the hotel is featured in a James Bond movie, Octopussy! The cities we visited were Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, a stop in the village Shahpura, and then Udaipur. We didn’t really spend any time in modern cities. We visited a LOT of forts. I ate a LOT of curry. Pink hair and tattoos were quite the spectacle there, and locals often asked to take a picture with this weirdo, much to our tour guide’s chagrin, since he was keeping a tight schedule. We were in India for 10 days and drove from city to city in a van. While driving through what we’d think of as a freeway, you often had to be careful of people, cows, and other animals crossing. You use the horn a lot in India, as a way of alerting someone you are passing, as a way of alerting people who are trying to pass you, pretty much just for anything and everything. The people were generally very nice, especially the children, and old men would laugh at the sight of me. In Delhi and Agra, there were lots of wild dogs everywhere, having sun tans, making babies. They were cute. I wanted to adopt all of them. It was good times! I’m putting the photos behind a cut, because there are a lot. Enjoy!

  I got a really fun shipment in the other day: new biz cards, hang tags, and Thank You labels!!!!! I know this is probably exciting to only a few people, but I just get a kick out of always refreshing and fidgeting with my branding stuff. I made a little video to show you guys the goods! p.s. the music in the video is from Twink’s new album, Itsy Bits & Bubbles. Check it out!!!!

Here are a few photos and a little video from when Hairy and I were at Disneyland in November. I think the highlight was finding out why we should never go on the Tea Cups again. Just kidding. I guess the highlight was getting to go on Star Tours for the first time since it was re-vamped. We even rode it twice! We went to the Wookie planet and also the planet that Jar Jar Binks lived on. There were hardly any lines for any of the rides that day! Luckies!!

Tiffany and Daniel invited us to party that they and their friends were throwing on the S. S. Jeremiah O’Brien on Saturday night. We got there REALLY late, because Hairy had to work at the gallery, and Manda and I still had to put together some kind of costume to wear, sewing on buttons and cutting out collars at the last minute. Everything turned out fine, and we had so much fun trying to take a million pictures during the last hour of the party! Costumes: success! Except, for some reason, my nylons were REALLY SHINY. Here are my fav photos: Tiff made her own mermaid costume! I’m sad Hairy didn’t get the bottom of her costume with the mermaid tail! That’s us trying to mimic some mannequins at F21 we saw earlier that day! Outfits: (we tried to buy pieces that would be usable even after Halloween) $5 sailor hats from some shop online that we sewed golden bows and buttons to. Dresses: H&M, and we added gold buttons from JoAnn Fabrics Coats: Converse All Star from Target Collars: pieces of fabric cut out about 5 minutes before we left the house Here’s a video of us exploring the ship! And I’ll put the rest of the photos behind a cut!