thepointysister

It's all in the packaging

What could possibly be in these cute little packages?

Why, two little Aranzi Aronzo kitty cats of course! These two lovely ladies will be in the mail tomorrow headed for two deserving cat lovers.

The packaging comes from one of my new Japanese craft books - a real treasure called 'Fold! Fold! Fold! Present Box!' (ISBN427775337X).

It's inspiring enough to make you want to start fold! fold! folding! Or maybe click! click! clicking! your way to yesasia where they have a FREE worldwide shipping promotion.

More eeny weeny goodness

Japanese craft book ISBN4569622798

I have been coveting this book for ages and was so pleased to finally get my hands on a copy. It has patterns for making 25 teeny tiny (and we're talking seriously weeny) creatures so naturally I am completely obsessed with it. The photos are just a treat as you can see. My fave is the teeny tiny dung beetle pushing a huge ball of poo. You'll be pleased to know that patterns for both beetle and poo ball are included in the book.

Panda

On my aforementioned excursion to Kinokuniya I had the great joy of finding this small hardcover Aranzi Aronzo book that gives instructions on how to make tiny felt mascots such as Rabbit, Kappa, and Panda "easily as well as amusingly." Indeed, they look like they'd be easy to whip up but I had a surprisingly difficult time. I think that this could be put down to the quality of the felt, the quality of the light, and my relative inexperience at working with truly tiny pandas.

Incredibly, the end result is exactly what Aranzi Aronzo promises! "Cute, strange, cool, silly, a little bit horrible, stupid and comfortable."

Blue bird of friendliness

Pattern from Japanese craft book ISBN4056041792 (again).

This one took me a while to finish, might have had something to do with the fact that the head took four attempts before I got it remotely right. If I was truly committed it probably should have been five because he wound up a little saggy in parts. The hardest part was sewing his tiny little legs onto his tiny little body. Funniest part was that in the process of sticking his little footsies onto his teeny legs I managed to superglue a large piece of yellow felt onto Richard's brand new mobile phone - oops!

Strange head aside, this little guy just got cuter and cuter with every embellishment. By the time I was finished I could barely stand to look at him any more cause he was just so tiny and... well... adorable. I sat him up on the mantelpiece and every time I walked past I would spontaneously hunch my shoulders, squint my eyes and smile with all my teeth showing. I suppose it's just as well that he's gone to live with my canary mad friend Helen.

Fullhearted wrapping

I come from a family where gift giving and receiving is very important - in fact, it's unwritten (until now)  lore that (a) gifts should be timely given and thoughtfully selected (b) gift wrap and card choice is just as important as the gift itself and (c) wrapped gift and card package should be as gorgeous as humanly possible.

Sadly my family (especially my sisters) put me to shame, particularly when it comes to point (c). In fact, over the past few years I've pretty much given up on producing a present that looks nice. On the occasions when I've splurged on really gorgeous gift wrap the present always ends up looking terrible because of my appalling wrapping skills. If that sort of thing wasn't particularly important to me it would be fine, but the reality is that I truly appreciate and value a well wrapped gift, but to date have been incapable of producing one myself. It's a terrible predicament - but one that I now have the tools to break out of!

Let me present Japanese craft book ISBN453720088X, 'Fullhearted wrapping'.

I had the glorious fortune to be able to spend more than an hour in Kinokuniya the other day [sigh] and when I came across this one I just knew that it would be coming home with me.  So many craft books are exciting on first inspection only to disappoint when you start to look more closely but this one is the opposite. It covers basic through to advanced and fancy wrapping skills, plus how to make great envelopes, bags and other cool packages. It also has great diagrams, beautiful pictures and heaps of inspiring ideas.

There's one that I saw last night that I especially like. I call it the gift pillow: Cut two squares of wrapping paper, seal together three sides of the paper with double-sided tape to form a little bag or pouch. Pop your present inside and seal up the last side. Then, take a hole punch and make holes at regular intervals around the  perimeter of the paper. Finish it off by threading some beautiful ribbon, cord or yarn through the holes. Isn't that a great idea!

I already wrapped one small gift for a fellow crafter and was very pleased with the outcome. Sadly though my beautiful fullhearted wrapping got all mucked up while I was trying to shove it into the padded post bag earlier today. Phooey! Handmade contents of package to be revealed later in the week after it makes it to it's destination.

It's my birthday tomorrow so with any luck I'll be doing some fullhearted unwrapping!

The Daddy Jessie doll

This doll was the first project I started from Japanese craft book ISBN4056041792 (also known as Nuigurumi Style). It's an awesome book and pretty much everyone has it, for good reason. Almost all the patterns in this book rate off the scale in terms of cuteness. In hindsight I'm quite confused about why I chose this project to start with - it was very fiddly and time consuming, and the doll, well... of course I love her to bits but she's just not quite as kawaii as the other projects in the book. Having said that I really like how the embroidery turned out. The doggy on the front is our lovable and completely insane poodle called Bert.

I tentatively handed over the doll over to Ella this morning. She was thrilled to pieces and instantly named her Daddy!!! Richard and I exchanged bemused faces before gently suggesting that she looked a bit like Jessie from Toy Story 2. She took the bait and the name was changed, thus avoiding all sorts of potential embarassing situations.

As predicted, Jessie was hoiked around the place all day leaving me wincing and cringing every time she fell off the the swing into the dirt, or was gently placed face down perilously close to a puddle of tomato sauce! Eventually I wrestled her from Ella for long enough to take some photos. At least now I have a record of her being pristine, and still in one piece. I suspect she will not remain in this state for very long.

A meaningful snail

This little fellow was truly created at a snail's pace but the good news is that he is finished in time to give to a good friend who is visiting us tomorrow from Switzerland. It's a gift that is supposed to hold some significance about the meaning of 'home' but it's late and I can't quite articulate what that significance might be. Just trust me that it's really really meaningful :)

The meaningful and mute snail was constructed from a pattern in Japanese craft book ISBN4056041792. I did try a couple of different mouths but but none of them appealed to me, especially the maniacal grin pictured in the pattern. My sister Tabby thinks that he looks a bit grumpy but she clearly never saw his demeanour before I gave him a necklace to bring out his feminine side. Grumpy or not, I reckon he's cute! I hope his loveability translates nicely into German.