Visit To Tastemade Studio in Santa Monica

As you may know, my daughter, Rachel has her own YouTube channel called Kawaii Sweet World:  Kawaii in Japanese means "cute". She shares her passion of baking and crafting on this channel.

About a year ago, she was asked to be a partner with Tastemade, a company that focuses on food videography. Recently, she was invited to film some of her videos down in their studios located in Santa Monica. Here's some pictures from our trip.

The studio has 4 primary kitchens/areas. Below is the bar set.

The kitchen below is called the Contemporary kitchen - love it! 

Rachel checking overhead camera.

The kitchen below is their Brooklyn kitchen...

At the studio, they have an amazing chart artist. I loved these pieces...

  

Rachel also made some videos with another popular channel that came from Japan: Mosogourmet. They call it a "co-lab"...two channels create one video together.

Normally, it's the mother that makes the videos on the Mosogourmet channel - but this was the first time their daughter, Fusa, was on tape.

Rachel and Fusa were making cookies together. The one challenge was the language barrier as the entire family only spoke Japanese.

During the filming, the guys were sitting back watching...

In the Brooklyn kitchen, Rachel filmed making mini Hello Kitty parfaits.

Another video Rachel made with Fusa was making clay charms...

During our visit, Tastemade was also hosting a BBQ contest...

 It was very cool to sample all the food!

Rachel met two of the company founders...

Rachel with her Tastemade manger, Steven, company founder, Steven Kydd and Fusa.

Rachel with company founder, Larry Fitzgibbon

It was such a fun trip...I'm so proud of my daughter! She took lots of footage and the videos from this trip, will take awhile for her to edit into videos!

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Published in Somerset Holidays & Celebrations 2013

I'm so excited to have two articles published in the upcoming issue of Somerset Holidays & Celebrations 2013 .I've never been published in this magazine before!

I made projects for Christmas and Valentine's Day...see below.

 I turned matchboxes into mini shadow box ornaments.

 For Valentine's Day, I created a couple of fabric wall hangings.

 My good friend, Niely, is also in this issue with her adorable clay birds!

We also just got back from LA this weekend, where my daughter, Rachel, was filming some YouTube videos at the Tastemade studios...

I'll have more pictures to share in my next post...but we had a blast and I'm so proud of my daughter!

Have a great week everyone!

Mini Book Made From #1 Coin Envelope

My good friend, Lois, gave me a box of #1 coin envelopes. I decided to make a quick project and turn one of those small envelopes into a mini book/pendant.

Here's some of the steps I took to create it. These are what the envelopes look like. They're 3 1/2" x 2 1/4".

I cut off the flap at the top and folded the envelope in half.

Then I cut some scrapbook paper slightly smaller than the envelope and folded them in half. 

Then I sewed them to the center of the envelope.

With the open envelope ends, I made pockets to hold little tags. Below is the tag from the front cover pocket.

This is the tag that's inserted in the back cover pocket.

And here are all my inside pages embellished....

That's it, I hope it inspires you to create one of these mini books with your leftover scraps/embellishments. (excuse the bright orange nails, it shows much brighter on camera!)

I also have to share with you these adorable "foot loose" tags my sister Diana made.

They're so adorable - love them all!

Next weekend we're off to Santa Monica. Tastemade (a foodie YouTube channel) invited my daughter to film at their studios - so excited!

Hope you had a great weekend!