Cushion Making Extravaganza

We are both tired little bunnies today, on Friday night we were lucky enough to have our White on Black Gingham Invaded Cushion Cover was featured on two blogs:
Wonderland
Boing Boing

Our weekend became a cushion making extravaganza as we tried to keep up with demand. As a result we are now sold out of White on Black Gingham Invaded and will not be able to get any more for at least 4 weeks.

Never fear we still have the following colour ways still in stock:
Black on White
Red on Black
Red on White
Baby Blue on White
Baby Pink on White

Now back to sewing more cushion covers:)

- Ky

Halloween Chocolate Making Adventures

Here are the chocolates I made for a Halloween party last weekend.

White chocolate vampire fangs

Milk chocolate skull and crossbones

Milk chocolate space invaders

For anyone interested in making their own chocolate shapes here are some quick instructions.

You will need:
- A double boiler or two bowls (one has to fit inside the other)
- Chocolate (used a white nestles cooking chocolate and Ikea milk chocolate)
- Chocolate colouring for funky colours
- Moulds (either speciality chocolate moulds or silicon ice cube trays)

1. Melt the chocolate using the double boiler. (Hot water in the bottom level and the chocolate in the top. Do not get water in the chocolate or it will go gluggy and gross).

2. If you are using white chocolate, once it is melted you can mix in the colouring.

3. Pour the melted chocolate into the mould.

4. Remove any air bubbles by gently tapping the mould (This is easier with a speciality chocolate mould as they are clear and you can see when there are no more bubbles).

5. Place in the fridge to set.

6. Once set carefully remove the chocolate from the moulds.

7. Eat

Tips:
If you are doing multiple colours (like the vampire fangs) it is a good idea to let each colour set before you add in the next one or they can mix together.

You can find numerous interesting silicon moulds these days. I found the space invaders at a home wares store, the fangs at Borders and the skulls at Mombasa.

-Ky

Treasury Tuesday

If you are a fan of 8-bit art you should check out this awesome treasury that we have been included in this week. Help us say thank you by clicking on the curators name to check out their store. You can also click on the image if you wish to go to the treasury page on Etsy.

Curated by TwiceBitten, who claims to prefer 8-bit over 3D any day of the week:)

Twice Bittens's store is a vintage treasure trove! Where you will find everything from clothing to art to housewares and even some crafting supplies.

- Ky

Full Time Bunny

Today was my first day as a full time Voodoo Rabbit after my forced retirement from the computer games industry. I can't say that I really miss the games industry that much, it could be very stressful at times and it just hasn't been in good shape since the economic crisis hit last year.

To celebrate my impending career change I decided it was finally time to purchase the sewing machine upgrade that I have been promising myself for the last few years. On Saturday Cloud and I popped into the local sewing machine shop and picked this little baby up.

It is a Janome Memory Craft 4900 and my first computerised sewing machine, which takes a bit of getting used to after only using mechanical ones since I was a kid. Case in point, you can crash this one, which I accomplished by swaping from a twin needle to a single needle and forgetting to change the setting. The machine gets confused and has a mini crash during which it will no longer swap from twin needle mode to single needle mode and hense the bobbin timing is no longer correct. Luckily Cloud is the kind of level headed person who reads manuals in this sort of crisis and we were able to reset the machine, disaster averted.

I will be using it to sew up a few items that will appear in the Etsy store in the next week or two.

I will also be shutting down my Not Dark Enough blog site soon, as I now have permission to post all of my sewing exploits here:)

Craft Vault 1

I've been crafting for a number of years now (mainly for friends and family) and have never really showcased my work. Lucky for me my partner is a photographer and has kept a good record of everything for me. I'm finally going to document my achievements and put them up on this blog (or if Cloud says it's 'dark enough' it will go on Voodoo Rabbit).

TY the Tasmanian Tiger is a mascot character who features is a series of computer games made by Krome Studios in Australia. I spent several years working on the franchise, both making the games and marketing. One of the creators of the character was expecting his first child, so I decided to make a baby quilt featuring a x-Stitch of TY as a present for him & his wife.

I created the pattern by taking some character concept art into Adobe Illustrator to trace and colour it. This helped me to constrain the colours to a manageable number. I then took the image into PC Stitch to create the x-stitch pattern.

TY is sewn onto 28 count cloth and finished he was around 15cm x 20cm in size. I bordered him with chocolate bias binding and then added TY as a middle panel for a cot quilt. Baby's parents loved the blanket and didn't want to let her get her hands on it.