crabtree and evelyn

On Tuesday, Libby, Chloe, and I walked into Crabtree and Evelyn. Seriously. If I had the money, I would buy everything in there. And their packaging is exactly the sort of design I'm really inspired by at the moment, so! Oh the joy! :D

Images © Crabtree and Evelyn. D'oh! :-)

Happy Monday!

Posted late today 'cause I was out picking up graduation regalia! :D

Happy Monday!

Juuust some pretty flowers to help cure Mondayitis.

Miles of Light

Take a look at this project here. A Study in Flora, by Miles of Light, is a recording of dried, lifeless flowers. Isn't it stunning? I'm sure the reason I'm attracted to it is none other than my own dabblings in drying flowers. 

Still. I saw her sun-flower-dyeing tutorial, and I'm hooked. I'm definitely following her blog, Miles of Light. So inspiring. :')

p.s.: I don't know why, but her work reminds me of my favourite new textile designer, Rosemary Milner!

Drying Flowers

Drying flowers for the first time... let's see how this goes!

The first bouquet has roses, gerberas, and some purply pink flowers that I cannot identify. Edit: They are Statice flowers.

I love how this one looks as if they're levitating(!):

The other day, while wandering, I saw a bunch of these gorgeous antique pink roses at a dairy. 

They came home with me, and are now hanging in my closet:

I've hung the pink roses for two days now, and the outer petals are starting to go brown. I had hoped the pink would stay. :-(

Rose Cottage

I know that this is a granny-type cottage, and it's not everyones style... but I love Roses (and Peonies!) and I love this cottage. I'm inspired by just looking at the prettyness. And it greatly reminds me of my Moroccan Rose Body Mist (from The Body Shop). Click here to see the rest of the cottage!

And my room's not that greatly designed or anything, but I've tried to follow a pink-and-white theme. Maybe I'll gather up the courage and post pictures sometime. :)

Here's a good fabric tape tutorial. For prettifying your Christmas presents.

Chocomize

How Chocomize works, is simple. You choose your base chocolate (dark, milk, white), choose your toppings (these vary from gummi bears and sprinkles to—wait for it—beef jerky, salt, and hot curry powder. Totally not kidding.), and order. I created a selection just for fun, and mine was: Dark Chocolate with Orange Peel, Crystallised Rose Petals, Crystallised Violet Petals, Dried Flower Mix, aaaand 23 Karat Gold Flakes. 

I'm almost tempted to order it. My order comes up to NZ$17.10, plus p&h. Pretty cool for Christmas, huh? Sadly, I don't think they ship to NZ. :(

Make Paper Peonies with Martha and Lisa Yuen

I love flowers, and I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Peonies (esp. Mrs. FDR Peonies!) are my most favourite flower. I've never seen any real ones, and recently I was told that they only grow in very cold weather. And with spring arriving soon, this seems to be the Peony season in Auckland—they are used in the Pagani photoshoots, and I've seen fake ones at the Warehouse, Smith+Caugheys, and smaller shops. Also, L'Occitane's new makeup line? Inspired by Peonies. Peony face powder, face colour, lipsticks, and Paeonia fragrance. I was in Peony heaven the last time I was at L'Occitane.

Anyway, Martha's just made my Peony obsession a little bit easier. Here's the how-to on how to make paper Peonies. With Lisa Yuen. This is only Part 1, but Part 2 is on youtube if you're interested. Here's the recipe.

Also, I got two small white Primula plants for my room. The kind I got are different to all the ones I've looked on Google Images. They are so delicate, like a fairy's breath. They cheer me up constantly.

Origami Rose

Just wanted to share and save it here for myself. :)

Edit: How lucky is Jim's daughter?!

Paper Roses

I was given a corkboard/whiteboard recently, and I've been collecting things I like best to put on it. I love roses [yeah I think I might've mentioned it once or twice ... or many times] and I found this little tutorial to make a pretty paper rose. I wonder if I should make them out of the shimmery paper I got from KikkiK ... hmmm ...

Edit @ 10pm: Finished with the inspiration board! I wasn't planning on it, but it has turned out quite pink! I shall upload a photo tomorrow! Now for a movie!

Room things

Um. Like. I totally want to make these!! I found the tutorial here. I do have some pink crepe paper [from the time I bought it to make these, but never made 'em because I didn't get any floral tape or wire ... my bad], but I want to use it to make the pom-poms that I always rave about. Pom-pom link here. Ooooo crepe paper pom-poms!

I also made some pom-poms for my room. They're red, and I'm going to make some gold ones too [I'm waiting for a friend, she wants to do them with me]. Yes, yes, Gryffindor. :P

Also. Today, my mum bought for me, the most loveliest of body mists ... Moroccan Rose from The Body Shop. Rose is one of my most favourite smells [along with lemon ...], and I am totally in love with my new mist. It reminds me of the Tea Rose, a perfume my mum used to wear when I was much younger ... I actually spent so long in the store, debating over whether I should get the Moroccan Rose body butter [but I found it too oily for my liking], the Cherry Blossom mist [too ice-creamy, my mum said ... I agree], or the Sweet Lemon body butter [good smell, but again, oily] ... I guess I was just being a typical indecisive Libra!

Oh yea, that photo is from a series of photos that I took while making my Apple and Rose Ice-Cream. And guess what, I totally forgot that I'd taken the pictures till I had to upload some assignment pictures from my camera today.

{Oooo, my first post on Rashmi's blog! Not including the introduction, of course!}

Some photos ...

... that I've been meaning to put up here for a long time now ... but just hadn't uploaded from my camera!

First up, a sneak peek of my assignment. Here's part of my assignment on the messy bed. Let's play I Spy. Can you find the pom-pom that I made out of the remaining pages from my other assignment? I find it kind of funny that the rolled-up notes [which are kept rolled together by bits of velcro, painstakingly stuck on each and every one!] resemble the roses on the bedsheet. Hmmm.

I'm quite happy how the notes turned out just as I'd imagined. They open up to reveal about 100-200 words that are my thoughts. This was my inspiration, remember?

And, quite late, but a photo of my just-brushed-with-egg-white-and-sugar rose petals. [Isn't the colour stunning?!]:

Recipe for Apple and Rose Ice Cream and Crystallised Rose Petals here.

Currently listening to The Call from Prince Caspian. Love that song! I always listen to it while doing assignments. It calms me down. Here's the youtube:

I know, I know, it has quite a lot of talking at the beginning, but it's the only version that I could find with the actual footage in it. And the other half of the song is in the credits, which they haven't included. Ah well. :)

Flowers

I love flowers. Who doesn't? This week in particular, I was reminded of the silly antics my friends and I used to perform with flowers (when we were really little), as I typed up about 20 pages from a botany book on ... you guessed it, flowers, for an assignment.

First up is the crazy beautiful Gulmohar flower. It grows in India, and I haven't yet seen one Gulmohar tree in New Zealand. Four of its fan-shaped petals are bright red, and one of them pale yellow, spotted and specked with red. How purdy is that?! It has five [no more, no less] calyxes {ooh, trying to sound flashier by using botanical terms ;) }, as seen in the picture:

Now, the trick is to remove the calyxes, peel the red bit off them - it comes off quite easy - so that the green shows through, and stick them on your fingernails. Voila, you're the Onida devil:

Alternatively, you could also pull the anthers off the flower, and use each one as a sword to pull off your opponent's spore-thingy on their anther. Yes, silly, I know. I guess I didn't realise back then that flowers were meant to be looked at, not picked at. Oh well ...

Second was the Conch flower [I just found out it was called that!]. We halved the outer conch, but didn't separate it from the flower. And it made the flower look like a bird (with the two halves its wings). 

Oh yeah, I also remember getting some water, some clear shampoo, and mixing it with random petals. Then I let my "flowery shampoo" stand for about a week. Then I realised that I had to throw it away. It just wasn't working. :P

That's a teensy bit of my childhood right there. Do you remember any of the silly things you did as a child, with flowers? Do share! :)

Edit: Have you used the Flowers application on Orisinal? I did. One day last year, I just sent a bunch of flowers to a bunch of lovely friends. I also downloaded some tracks from Orisinal, they're just so so lovely to hear! Let me know if you want me to post the link to where I got them from!

Apple and Rose Petal Ice Cream

Heya ... today I come with another recipe from Vogue 1996. The other one is right here.

Apple and Rose Petal Ice Cream [900ml]

You will need:

4 pink scented Rose heads/

425ml thick cream/

450g eating apples [we used two Royal Gala and two New Zealand Beauty] peeled, cored, sliced/

2tbsp water/

juice of half a lemon/

150g caster sugar.

The preparation:

- Make sure that the roses weren't sprayed with chemicals.

- Remove the petals from the rose heads.

- Put them in a saucepan with the cream, bring slowly to boil, then remove from heat, cover, and allow to infuse for one hour.

- Strain the cream, pressing the petals firmly to extract all flavour.

- Cook the apples in a covered saucepan over medium heat with the water and lemon juice until soft.

- Blend the apples to a smooth puree, add the sugar and allow to cool.

- Mix the apple puree with the scented cream and place in the freezer for one hour.

- Remove from the freezer and beat for a few seconds with a hand beater until the mixture is slushy.

- Return to the freezer and repeat the process twice more each hour.

- Freeze for a further hour when the ice cream is ready to serve.

- Serve with crystallised rose petals.

Notes:

- The roses I got were a beautiful bright pink colour, but lacked the scent. So I had to put some rose essence in it, and it worked fabulously. You can add about four drops.

- Also, I decided to leave the rose petals in the ice cream. The petals look good in the cream-coloured ice cream, and mm they have a rose petaley flavour that I like.

- And yes I served it with crystallised petals.

Crystallised Petals:

This is a good recipe for crystallised [gah! Blogger won't stop underlining 'crystallised' in red; apparently I'm spelling it wrong!] petals, pretty close to what I did. I used one egg white to cover about 3 rose heads.

I liked this ice cream. It's different to what I've ever had before, and made our kitchen smell of lemons and roses ... mmm, so refreshing! There's still some left in the fridge, and you are welcome to come over and help yourself to some! :)