Saigyouji Yuyuko! My pictures don't do her justice. For once, I won't complain about the lack of accessories of a Touhou Nendoroid, because Yuyuko comes with a lot of extras. But I know the next one (Cirno) will be somewhat of a letdown again. Can't help it, I want them all nevertheless ^^;

Package pictures:

I always love to take pictures of the blister package since you can see all accessories neatly arranged.

Her hat is huge! Thanks to the thing on the back, it hold better onto her head than e.g. Marisa's hat does.

Awww~ look at that adorable face!

Her two extra expressions: smiling and a serious face.

She's the first Touhou nendo to utilize the jointed stand. People dislike the hole on the back of the nendo that comes along with it but I don't really mind.

Yuyuko is able to sit on her dress if you move her legs to the front. Most of her extras are the ghosts and butterflies which you can place beside her stand. Yuyuko herself comes with two bent arms and two hands holding fans.

I think her clothes come out great in SD.

She has a butterfly holding hand. There are two single butterflies with pegs that fit inside her hand or the two ghost things.

I adore her smiling face. The ghosts and butterflies have two separate stands, that can be attached to the border of Yuyuko's stand.

That was my unpacking report of Good Smile Company's Yuyuko I usually pose a Nendoroid once and put her behind glass. ^^; Can't really get used to playing with a poseable figure, but if I was, she'd be a lot of fun. xD

But theres more! Everything including the vectors in the nice vector format "svg" will be found inside.

Here are all the shirt designs with the associated SVG file to download. By the way - if you click the svg link and your browser displays it, you need to save that page to your computer - do that by pressing Ctrl+S (or Mac+s or whatever your browser/platform wants you to) and save the .svg file. Also, if the SVGs display strangely, don't worry - thats probably because your browser doesn't support svg background colors (e.g. white on white doesn't look too ... visible). But for the Downloads:

Bobber "Riding Oldschool in modern times" Design	Download
gts.kanojo.de Make-a-Wish GTS Design	Download
Helvetica Font Design	Download
Eden of the East "Air King" Design	Download
Akagi "I Ron You Big Time" Design	Download
To Come...	Download
Various Mahjongg-Tile Designs	Download (includes all tiles + text)

By the way - you can also reach this page on http://www.shareshirt.de/!

All the work posted here licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License.

Okay, so first you might ask yourself what you need to build those? It's rather simple, only two things really. Of course the leaf-gold or leaf-silver, the special "transfer" version which sticks a little to one piece of parchment paper and thus can be touched, moved, etc ... very handy. We recommend starting with the silver as it's cheaper for learning and experimenting. You might find it in a nerby art-supply store (boesner.com if you live in the right place ) - if that was a false shot, maybe try asking in shops that build picture-frames and frame your pictures - if it's a shop that crafts the frames themselves they might have some and sell it to you.

The next thing is spray-mount, use 3M permanent spraymount for example. We didn't use the traditional method with that special gold-milk (a strange kind of watery wood-glue thing) as it was hard to get it evenly distributed on thin paper (parchment paper) without making the paper crinkle ... that's where those spraymounts come in handy.

And thats really about it - we used the parchement paper which lies in the package of gold/silver between as a seperator, it worked perfect. So no extra paper too!

Okay, now on to the crafting:

The package of transfer-leaf-gold

Now take on sheet of the parchment paper seperators of the gold/silver package and coat it evenly from ~20-30 cm distance with the spraymount

place the sticky spraymount-coated parchment paper on a table, take the sheet of transfer-silver/gold and slowly lower it above the sticky paper onto it. Once it touched the surface only lower it further, never raise it again, the gold/silver will tear ...

then after a few seconds (10-20) you can pull the transfer-paper off - the gold/silver remains on the parchment paper we coated with spraymount ... still shiny and smooth, almost no crinkles!

and then ... do your usual origami!

Yes, it's true - we this is a small kind of tutorial, but the spraymount / slow lowering technique really took its time to find out. We first tried with that gold-milk, was a no-go. The silver was full of crinkles as the thin paper crinkled (the milk is kinda watery as i said...), so this didn't look nice.  Also all experiments with those kinds of materials tend to be expensive .

What is also missing is a description of the origami done, but this is a whole different story that's better describe on other sites ... our tip: try youtube videos, they're much more comprehensive than those image-kind of instructions ... they tend to get very confusing.

So, what did we do with this? Using the glass-cutting technique described in a earlier post we build some boxes and ... wai - here are the results:

Hope you found this idea inspiring and ... it's not that hard, try yourself! Get Creative!

Cakes, everyone LOVES Cakes.

"Uuuhm, sure, okay" - but hey, everyone does! So we made a few Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Gateau?) Mini-Cakes. For the ones who don't know, this is a German cake, actually, the most german of all Cakes. Coming from a  mountain-region in the south-west it has whipped cream, some more whipped cream on some whipped cream with some whipped cream, cherries, some more whipped cream, a few cherries on top aaaand ... MORE whipped cream.

What we've done with that cake, which is supposedly the one (beeing a lie) in Portal is breaking it down into small Cake-lets, while still in the make they looked like this:

The real magic, smearing everything with even MORE Whipped Cream is only about to start. When the cakelets are ready to leave for the hungry crowd they're rouuughly like this:

Some more work required to get here:

Aaaand, served nicely chilled and super sweet, everyone moans a deep "Mmhhmmmm!"

The recipe isn't ours, just the form-factor, so we probably won't publish the recipe. If you want it nonetheless, please leave a comment with some contact-information, and we'll hand it over .

Have a nice time eating some cake, it really makes life better!

While everyone's busy with V-Day and all: Happy Chinese New Year!

Gong xi fa cai!

We've made two Porings and two Poporings already and this is a wonderful plushie for beginners. Having seen Ragnarok cosplayers run around with Porings at a convention, I was determined to buy one too until they told me the ones they were carrying were self-made. I wanted one myself at first but all Porings I've made so far have been given away and this one also had a home before it was made.  If you want one as well, drop me a comment (or a mail) xD. I love making those and they come in green, dark blue, light blue or orange if pink doesn't suit you ~

From left to right: Pouring, Marin, Drops, Poporing, Poring

You'll find a lot of Poring plush tutorials on the net and I already forgot which inspired me. This is how it works best for me:

What you'll need: pink fluffy fabric, a bit white and black felt, (matching) pink thread. Now you're good to go! Here's the pattern .

Cut out everything. These are the bottom and the top ball pieces.

How the face will look like.

Cut out a 25 (height) x 54 (width) cm piece from your pink fabric, fold once (right sides facing). Between the white dots drawn, draw a curve, not too close to the edge because that's where you'll be sewing next. Do that for the left and right sides. Use pins or don't.

The top one shows how it's supposed to turn out, already turned inside out and stuffed. Start like shown and sew along the edge (just how a tennis ball is made).

I forgot: don't sew *all* along the edge. Leave a little bit open so you can turn it inside out. Stuff it but don't close it yet!

You may close this thing (no need for leaving it open since we'll cut it anyway).

Measure 8 cm from the bottom tip and draw a curve like shown above.

Cut along this line.

Pinning the bottom part onto the body. Don't be too precise because the bottom piece is somewhat too big.
Sewing on the botton is the most annoying part (remember to leave a bit open!). Look how crappy it turned out here Luckily, it won't be too apparent on the finished product.

Turn it inside out, stuff it (take your time until it looks good) and close the body with the ladder stitch. Sew on the top ball with a few stitches so it won't come off. Start inside the ball so you can make the knot on the end of your thread as big as you like. Close the ball afterwards.

All that's left is glueing on the face! Arrange it before you try to glue so you can be sure to like how it turns out.  The mouth is very fragile. Be careful or you have to cut it out again (which is a pain too!).

Pudding!

Brought to you by Hatchune Miku and Churuya.

That most of the work has do be done by hand was a blessing and a curse at the same time. Pulling out a sewing machine out of nowhere and hiding it again would have been too much of a hassle. But sewing by hand takes long and I'm sure my hands hated me back then. Of course I could've bought the plushie since there's an official one out there. Don't like it that much though (it looks so different from the game... ). Buying would've been cheaper but it's also smaller! And we know bigger is (not always) better! It measures 18 cm x 18 cm x 18 cm which sounds small but I assure you it's large enough to rest your head on.

It's a little skew if you look at it from certain angles so my work of craftsmanship is not perfect but I don't want to do it again. ^^"

It also has a hidden pocket if you remove a certain heart pad. It isn't very big but an IKEA lion plush fits in perfectly. Of course the pocket is optional but I thought it would be funny if you could leave home with only the cube (you could use it as a wallet or let it hold your keys! Think of the possibilities!). Whatever.

Here's the pattern !

The internet knows of quite a few people who have made Companion Cube plushies. Just search for it but I haven't found tutorial one that persuaded me to use. They inspired me nevertheless so I'm thankful.

I can't remember how much fabric I've bought. Ask for 25 cm of dark gray, light gray and a little bit of light pink and you should be on the safe side. Try to get a thicker light gray material. I did so by accident but I happened to be lucky. ^_^ I assume you don't want to make the pocket. But take some pink thread if you go shopping, you'll need it for the ornamental seam. Yes my version isn't correct, the lines coming from the center are pink and not light gray. But it was too late when I noticed ^^; Having a sewing machine is highly recommended, try to use it whenever possible.

Cut out everything first. You'll need a while. I decided to make the corner pieces from three smaller ones because it looks better. On each of the longer sides of a small corner piece there's 0.5 cm space you can use for sewing it on another part. Don't fret too much about it if it's a little off, you'll barely notice when it's done.

Prepare the center pieces next. Get the light gray circles and your pink hearts. Pin one onto each circle so it won't slip while you're working. Use the whip stitch (also called satin stitch) and follow the edge of the heart, try to begin and end your stitch on the wrong side of course. With the fluffy fabric I used, you can't see the stitch anymore. I tried to do it with the machine but that was a disaster. =_=

Apply those ornamental seams on your dark gray squares NOW. I did it *after* sewing them together and it was a pain. So do it now! And do it with the machine. Use whatever stitch your sewing machine is capable of and fits best. There's a high probability your machine won't like this because you're adjusting it with weird settings (big stitch-width.. like 2 mm and small stitch interval, at best you don't want it to look like a zigzagstitch). If you notice that it is not sewing forward, use a little force.... I haven't found another way, really u_u. Afterward, sew the center parts on. It's more convenient to do it now as well.

Sew the cube sides together (you're always working on the wrong side, remember?) and leave one edge open. Attention, they're originally arranged like this. You can copy this but I just arranged them randomly. Turn it around and stuff it, take your time stuffing so it's evenly distributed. Now prepare to master the ladder stitch because that's the only stitch you will be using from now to completing this plushie. Close the last edge and all you have to do from now is to use the corner and edge pieces and sew every one of them on.

Done!

Just dropping a note that we're busy making lots of stuff for everyone. Since a lot of our friends know our blog, we'll be posting them after Christmas Eve. Too bad we can't share our ideas with those of you for now who may be desperately looking for the last presents to buy and make but there's always another year (and there are birthdays too!)!

Look forward to it either way!

Thats a special kind of yeast thats harvested from natural yeasts in honey carried in by bees from various sources (yeasts exist all over the world, thats how beer and bread used to work in medieval ages). Its called "Backferment" (no translation found, sorry) and was developed by Hugo Erbe around the beginning of the century.

The making is somehow troublesome and similar to sourdough, you first need a quite fluid base which consists of:

- 150g flour type 405

- 150g freshly ground wholemeal flour

- 300-400g water

- 10g Backferment

and that needs to stand at ~28*C for a day. You should see quite some bubbles rising after that. After that you need yet another base, the breads sponge which is a bit less fluid (300g of any flour, 20-30g of the base and 5g Backferment) and yet again needs to stand a half day to swell and expand. Again bubbles should be clearly visible. The rest is easy, add another 700-800g of any flour, salt, oil and whatnot to your liking knead, let rest for 2 hours (or better: until it starts to collapse slightly again), bake until finished, thats it.

The result was astonishing, a slight, mild taste like sourdough, but not as harsh as real sourdough. It was super fluffy, but IMO with 1/3 freshly ground wholemeal flour it tasted a bit too solid, so 100% type 405 is my recommendation . In any case, Backferment is worth the trouble and produces a bread thats quite different from regular yeast white bread and sourdough bread. Its uniqueness is expressed in a mild, pleasant taste that reminds of sourdough.

For anyone whos eager to try some new breadmaking techniques and play around, Backferment is sure one of the ways to go . Be also sure to check back as we try out specific recipes for great breads. As soon as the look of the is up to a nice standard we'll also post pictures . Bon appetit!