karneval alaaf!

Karneval is a big thing in our family! We celebrate in Cologne where my mother's family is from, and it can mean serious business for some, but lots of fun at our level!!

It's the time of year where I get my thinking cap on to come up with our costumes. I usually like to find a family theme and I don't like to necessarily buy new costumes. The fun thing about "Karneval in Kölle" is that anything goes! Some of the simplest costumes are the best!

In 2010 Karneval Sunday, which is the day the parade comes through our part of town, fell on the same day as Chinese New Year. Having grown up in Hong Kong of course I'm quite familiar with our Chinese Signs and thought it'd be fun if we each went as our Chinese sign - I like a bit of a challenge! So here we are the 5 of us:

Me - the Rooster

Hubby - the Rabbit

Misha - the Dragon

Lara - the Pig

Ilya - the Ox

Now you see some costumes don't take much...but let's zoom in on Ilya's Ox head:

 

Basically it's a warm woolly dark brown hat into which I cut two little holes at the top for the horns. The horns are actually two little nozzles from those suction things you use to "blow" little tot's noses. I painted them white with white-out!

I used the same white out on two big buttons I had and with two smaller black buttons on top that made for the eyes!

The nose is another two smaller brown buttons and the nose ring is an old keychain ring that I just slid through the hat. To give the nose some depth I folded in the front part of the hat and stuffed some cotton inside to pad it out before sewing it by hand.

And voilà a costume - plus one that kept his ears nice and warm on such a cold and snowy day!!

What is your favorite costume?? Do you make or do you buy....

mélimélo matriochka

You may recall from my bio that my hubby is of Russian origin. Russian dolls have kind of become the latest big craze here and you can find them on almost anything and in any style.

I thought it would be fun to make Lara her very own customized "matriochka". I looked for some inspiration on Pinterest for different styles and designs, although I did already have some elements in mind:

- I knew for sure that I wanted to use the fabric that I've used to decorate Lara's room. It's a typical Chinese red peony fabric, which includes also birds and other bright colors (pink, green, yellow, turquoise...) I find the fabric girly enough, but not too pink-girly, and the peonies to me are a strong yet beautiful flower - a bit like our little Lara actually!!

- I also have a weak spot for jeans fabric (see my Christmas stockings here), and I had already tested the combination of the two fabrics in Lara's baby room.

- The rest would be bits & bobs or ribbon & buttons etc...

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I actually used two pieces of dark jeans fabric as the basis to work on. On what would become the front side of the doll I covered the top half with the peony fabric so that it would be the scarf of the doll. Two layers of ribbon in bright red & yellow would define the neckline and cover the seam.

On the matriochka's belly I decided to use a jeans' back pocket, which could potentially hold something secret... To decorate it I delicately cut out one of the pink peonies from a piece of fabric. Since the fabric is very thin I decided to mod-podge it to make it stiffer and not quite so fragile. Then I hand stitched it onto the pocket with red thread.

For the little lady's back side, I decided to play around with the top bit of a pair of jeans, and added some ribbon for a little frilly feminine touch! My stitching isn't that great I must admit....

Now, for the mademoiselle's face....button eyes were a must and she needed rosy cheeks for sure. Again I used more jeans, stone washed this time for the face and some unraveling darker bits for the hair. A little red button mouth looked cute and for the nose I used part of a push button that gives her a shiny little nose!

 

Those who know about my "attention to detail" obsession, will surely not be surprised to know that the fabric I used for the cheeks is actually cut out from a small silk pouch that they put jewelery in in Asia, like below. Pink was a must, which is the color I also chose for the big fat ribbon I made and sewed on to the neckline.

I cut out the shape I wanted for my doll's body from cardboard in order to outline where to pin, pinned both parts together, sewed away, stuffed her with some foam I still had....et voilà, here she is:

And in situ on Lara's bed...

I gave it to Lara for Russian Christmas, and she was thrilled - has been sleeping with her since!! I love how expressive her face is!

Has anyone else ever made a matriochka, or another doll?

mélimélo molas

Now if you read my post about "where I'm from" you'll recall that I was born and raised in Panama. When we lived there my parents started a collection of molas which were always on display in our home. My parent's housewarming gift when I moved into my first apartment in Paris were 6 autographed black and white prints of paintings of the Canal Zone done by Al Sprague, our Canal Zone neighbor and a fantastic artist. So really the art of Panama has followed me since childhood.

So it won't come as a big surprise that I would have chosen to theme our bedroom with this and other Panamanian art...

Now, you may be wondering what exactly is a mola? I like to describe them like drawings I did as a kid where you covered a sheet of paper with lots of colors, and then covered the whole thing up in black (using crayons). Then with a needle you would etch your drawing into the black and the colors would come through from underneath. Now surfing the net I found a site that is dedicated to molas and the "molagirl's" explanation is most probably a bit better than mine. Her website also offers plenty of information on the Kuna Indians who make them and the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama where they live.

Now I've had this project on my radar for a while, and I'm so happy I finally got to it. It all started with a Christmas gift: a new printer! Such a cool gift... did not see that one coming!!

This new baby is a little bit deeper than our previous printer, and so I embarked on a mission to rearrange our desk space. Purging, reorganizing, streamlining, rethinking the space to best suit our needs, and hopefully getting rid of some of the clutter. So by the end of the day, the desk looked like this:

 

I was pretty happy with the result, but it looked like a bare canvas crying out to be played with....and so I did! 

And thanks to our new printer I was able to print out some cool detail photographs of molas 

to embellish some of the elements on our desk.

I chose mola details rather than a full mola as I felt the graphic look would be visually stronger, and I think that was the right choice. I cut the rectangles to fit the front of the drawers - the tricky part being to cut out the U shape slot!

And then thanks to Mod Podge I varnished them onto the drawers for a nice glossy effect. 

I am really quite happy with the end result!

To tie in the two magazine holders in which I'm holding the "To Do" admin and other clutter I haven't yet sorted out,

I cut out two more designs and using the same technique dressed them up too!

And here you have the end result:

Just for fun, I decided to change our computer background to a mola visual, which really gives the whole desk and brand new look!

Quite amazing what a little color, a printer and some glue can do!

Here's one more side by side before & after shots:

If you're interested in seeing what Al Sprague does, you can check out his website here!

I'm curious to know, had you heard about molas before?