Bento Accessories

Little picks for almost anything - I usually make a western style ham, cheese and tomato stack.




ow! my favourite coloured faux grass! If you can't get your hands on bento patties, you can always substitute with cup cake patties. 



Little egg shapers for your boiled eggs! The trick is to pop you boiled egg in while its very hot so it cools in one of the above shapes. 


Mini dressing holders. yes please!









A while ago I mentioned my love for Bento boxes, you can see the post here. But today I wanted to also share my obsession for Bento accessories! After all, what fun would packing a bento be if you didn't get to use cute accessories such as pink faux grass, panda head mini sauce containers, and love heart tipped tooth picks?

Here are a few favourites.


Sandwich shape cutters! 

Alphabet cutters so you can form messages in  things like ham or cheese. 


Onigiri face makers!

Make some characters in your bento!


Nori cutters.


Hello Onigiri-chan!

Leslie











Leslie Hall is one super cool girl. Cool. Confident. AND Crafty! Anyone who sings hip hop in gold Lycra pants teamed with a gem sweater is a friend of mine.



All you craft lovers out there have to watch this video (above) of the lovely Leslie in her craft rap complete with bedazzled jumpers shiny gold leggings and back-up dancers in matching outfits! Hilarious!

Still want to see more? Visit Leslie's Gem Sweater TV or Leslie's 'Beat Dazzler' movie here.

Seen the video's but now want to see her live? Check out her band Leslie and the Ly's homepage. And to read more about Leslie please see her mention on Crafternoon, her myspace, her Fantastic Woman mention, or her Papermag review.





Craftastic!

Fashion Forestry

















I recently touched on the topic of fashion and so I thought now might be a nice time to point out one of Tavi's favourite Blogs. Fashion Forestry is a lovely blog by US fashion design student. There are so many reasons why I am in love with Fashion Forestry...her great style; her creative, colourful and quirky designs; and perhaps the fact that most self portraits feature hats and my mum is a milliner (see mum's website here). Ow if only we could all put this much effort into our daily outfits like Fashion Forestry!
P.S. I remember once when I was at art school I used to set myself weekly fashion themes such as space, the colour yellow, or librarian style. Oh how times were fun back in those days! sigh!

Gift Wrapping

My wrapping for little Scarlet's present.
Some assorted wrapping I have done over the years.
Colourful wrapping spotted at Ariel Booksellers.






The amazing Lena Corwin shows us some divine Christmas Wrapping from her friend Karen.













I love wrapping presents! Each year I begin planning my Christmas Wrapping theme months in advance. For me, it is one of the most exciting parts about Christmas. (Oh and of course the tree decoration and spending time with family and friends).

So...here are a few gift wrapping ideas I have found helpful:

1. I started a ribbon and trims box collecting odd pieces throughout the year. I use the long bits of ribbon to tie around gifts and I make bows and gift tag ties from the mini-me lengths.

2. I love using recycled paper or wallpaper off-cuts for interesting wrapping. I once found 6 rolls of canary yellow floral 1960's wallpaper on ebay and used it to wrap all of my gifts at Christmas. If I see something in a magazine I love, or a cute press release or poster, I make a few colour photocopies of it and use to gift wrap small trinkets like a lipstick or hair bow.

3. I generally save off-cuts of gift wrap and use them as a kind of belly band or feature strip on other gifts to add a nice contrast to the main gift wrap. (see Ariel wrapping picture above) But note - eek! Expect to store a big box of scrap paper for this one!

4. I think bows and corsages on gifts are so cute when formed out of unexpected materials such as pipe cleaners, leaves and crepe paper. I love to include fake flowers or paper doily's purchased from variety stores (see first pic).

5. I always invest in some pretty tape to give attention to detail to the underside of the gift (and to use to attach decoration to the top of the gift). At the moment my favourites are a lemon yellow gingham tape, some metallic coloured tape given to me by my lovely friend Lisa when she moved to NYC (thanks Leesie!) and some MT polka-dot tape.

6. Sometimes I wrap gifts in a pastel coloured tissue paper, then scatter with some glitter or paper confetti and re-wrap in some biodegradable cellophane. Not to be advised if the present opening is taking place at your house! (>_<)

7. I make my gift tags each year from scanning either my custom Christmas card design or my favourite image, scaling it down to gift tag size and step and repeating to print on A4 paper. Either that or I use little cardboard off-cuts or manila tags and stamp the recipients name with these with Kikki K Wooden Alphabet stamps. Time consuming but well worth it!

Now I am so inspired by all the lovely gift wrapping ideas seen on these beautiful blogs I can hardly wait for Summer to start planning my wrapping theme! :)

You can check out some eco wrapping tips here.

Cute little face wrapping seen on Tas-ka.

My Christmas wrapping from 2007.





The lovely Handmade romance made these pretty bows from this inspiration.




Sweet little 'Hello Happy' tags from The Small Object.


And this eco friendly gift wrapped present by this flickr poster.

Ikea's 2008 Christmas wrapping paper collection.


Plastic Bag pom poms from the very clever Creature Comforts.


Lena Corwin shows us a great way to recycle scrap pieces of fabric furoshiki style.


Some Eco-wrapping ideas from Martha Stewart.


Imagine these little corsages individually as little bows upon gifts!





I must say, having some lovely sticky tape is a big help! I stocked up on MT tape when I was in Tokyo last October.


Some lovely gift wrapping ideas from this Japanese wrapping book.














Or failing all this, if it all just gets too much, just leave a little comment below and for a small price I will wrap all of your gifts for you this Christmas! :) Job done!

Love Love
Hello Sandwich
xxx

Tavi and the wonderful 12-year-old world of Style Rookie




















I spot some Yokoo here.













For anyone feeling slightly ill with the thought of nearing dirty thirty like me, look no further than Style Rookie blog (compiled by a super fashionable 12-year-old) to make you feel even worse. Oh but little Tavi is just so adorable and talented that you can't help but just love her!

Style Rookie is full of quotes like this:

In other insomnia ramblings, I am honestly not that big on fashion magazines. Or at least, I hardly ever buy them. I just sneak food into Borders and grab a bunch of Vogues and fancy WE USE HELVETICA AND ALL CAPITAL LETTERS/COST 24 DOLLARS magazines and read them in the corner whilst slurping some GoGurt and walk out without buying anything. That's how you gotta operate in this here "recession," you see. Go cheap or go home!


(Editor's note: ha ha! I love Tavi's 'We use Helvetica and all capital letters / cost 24 dollars' quote! Hilarious!)

And this:
Thank you guys so much for the very helpful comments on my last post. My intention with the no-press promise I've explained before, and by reading the post you'll see that it is not at all a matter of thinking the press is not worthy of my blog. I didn't start this blog to get a head start in the industry or bring a lot of hits to my page, else I would be grasping more opportunities. Because of this, there really isn't any point in me taking press other than wanting to see my name in print, which I really don't have any desire to. I'm happy to contribute to an article creatively, but that's very different. I'm really grateful to be considered as the subject of an article, but I shouldn't feel obligated to say yes to an offer just because others would love to have the opportunity.
I'm 12. This blog is for fun.


Please please please watch this video of little Tavi reflecting on her first year of blogging. Divine!

Love love
Hello Sandwich
xxx