Lily kusudama made of tea envelops :-D

If you happen to have colleagues who drink a lot of tea, then naturally you get a lot of empty tea envelops. And true to my creative nature: I turned some of those tea envelops into a few pieces of origami art work :-D

My best work at the moment is this kusudama made of lily's, glued together to get the ball shape.

And because the envelops contained cinnamon-flavored tea, my kusudama comes with a nice smell too :-)

Lucky Stars

A couple years ago, I went shopping for some Christmas presents. I went into this boutique that sells bijou and stuff. I don't exactly remember what I bought that day, but I do remember I got a package of paper strips to fold lucky stars as a bonus with the purchase. Of course I started to fold once I got home and the result can be seen on the picture on the right. :-)

Unfortunately the package contained just enough paper to put a bottom in the glass bottle these lucky stars are now stored in. I hope to find the same paper one day so I can fill it up to the edge :-)

Chrysanthemum Icosahedron Kusudama

If I ever happen to play the game hangman and I would use the name of this piece of art, I am most certain no one would guess it correctly. Except for the ones who read my blog or are into origami as well. :-)

A beautiful, but difficult name for a ball that looks like it consist of a lot of two-sided arrows. But together, the 30 arrow-like units make this lovely ball. And best part: no glue needed to keep the units together :-D

Oh, and it's really easy to fold and assemble. So no excuses here about 'too difficult' whatsoever to avoid getting started with it :-p

Oxi Model

When I finished this Oxi model, I thought I did a great job. Just similar to the one in the folding instructions. As it turned out, my eyes have deceived me while folding the Oxi model. Somehow I miscounted the number of cubes so instead of a combination of 6 cubes and 4 cubes, my model has 5 cubes all around. But that doesn't make my creation less spectacular. :-)

Five Intersecting Tetrahedra

Sometimes you come across an object on the internet that makes you want to have it yourself. My reaction when I first saw the Five Intersecting Tetrahedra: Wanna wanna wanna!! Second reaction: how on earth am I gonna make one???

Thanks to this helpful tutorial and this video on YouTube I managed to assemble a F.I.T. :-D

It took me two hours to cut and fold the paper in the 30 units needed to make one and about two frustrating weeks to figure out how the triangles should be weaved in each other. The first two triangles are easy to weave, the third and forth triangles proved to be the challenges. The fifth and last triangle is a piece of cake once you've got the other four in correct place.

But I've done it! Without cheating by using glue! After the first F.I.T., I've made two more of the same seize (I used paper seize 15x15 cm). And because of my love for all things that are small, I made a F.I.T. using paper seize 5x5 cm. This one I did have to glue or else the triangles would fall apart. Looking at the mini F.I.T. I'm still amazed I pulled that off... :-)

First try Banh Cuon!

Does the dish not look delicious?? It's almost good enough to be serve in a restaurant! And best part is: I made it myself!! :-D

The first time I've made it and it didn't turn out that bad if I may say.
Actually, this is the result of the second try on the same day. As it happened, I've been spending all morning trying to make the steamed version with pre-mixed batter. But every scoop of batter kept sticking to the cloth (which was not of the right material by the way) and I couldn't get the cloth taut over the pan to start with. Also, the solid substantial I scraped off the cloth (it should come off like a paper thin crepe, instead I got some sticky, flexible ball of dough) didn't smell like the ones my mom makes (most probably because of the tapioca starch that's in the mix) so no more pre-mixed bater for me.

After a quick emergency call to my mom to get her recipe for the batter and some extra tips, I put aside the pan-turned-steamer and used a non-stick frying pan instead. And look at the result!
Buried under all the supplements one can hardly tell the rolls are made by an inexperienced cook! :-D
I only forgot to sprinkle the dish with some fried onion.. :-s

For those who wants to know what's in and should be in the dish:
- ricepaper rolls filled with minced meat, chopped onion and wood ear mushroom, seasoned with salt and freshly grind pepper;
- sliced Vietnamese ham (cha lua)
- sliced deep fried tofu;
- a mixture of steamed bean sprouts, Thai basil leaves and sliced cucumber;
- fried onion, which I forgot;
- fish sauce to bind all the different tastes.

A plain plate with only the rolls

Micr-o-rigami

Some like it big, some like it small. Me? I prefer micro :-D

The tinier, the cuter! And the more difficult to fold. It takes quite some skill to pull off something like this. Which, more or less, I have (yep, no sign of modesty here :-p)

These are the smallest cranes I have ever made. It's not folded very neatly, but you can still recognize the shape of the crane :-). I've put them on a 10 euro cent coin so you can amaze yourself with the seize of them. :-)

Thinking about the frustrations while trying not to fumble the tiny miny piece of paper I don't think I will expand this family of micro cranes anytime soon... :-s

Electra Icosidodecahedron

Electra Icosi- what?? That's exactly my reaction when I saw the name of this piece of art. Luckily this modular origami ball is much easier to fold than to pronounce. It only takes some time to assemble it. Especially when you make two of them, one smaller than the other.

There are 30 units needed to complete one ball. I used paper seize 4 x 4 cm for the outer pink ball and a seize 2 x 2 cm for the inner yellow ball. Inside the yellow Electra there are some red beads on a thread. I thought that would make a nice contrast with the yellow. And it would, had I made the Electra's a bit larger so you could actually see the beads :-)

Piroshki with mini frankfurters

I always forget to take pictures of the results of my attempts. And when I do remember, most of the food has vanished in our bellies. I made at least 2 dozen of these mini Piroshki and this is all that's left for the snapshot. :-s Which is, come to think about it, absolutely not a bad sign :-)

After I made a lemon-cheesecake I had some yoghurt left. Instead of consuming it plain as it is, I searched on the internet for recipes with yoghurt as an ingredient. I came upon this snack. I think the yoghurt works really well in this recipe: never had I worked with such supple dough. And the piroshki didn't turn into little bricks when cooled down, as has been my experience with other dough-recipes. :-)

You can make the filling as you like, but because it was my first attempt, I didn't want to spoil some minced meat should the dough go bad. Instead I used mini-frankfurters to keep the savoury taste. By the way: they tasted real good, especially fresh out of the oven! :-D

Here's the recipe I used:

Dough

- 300 gr. flour

- 5 ts milk

- 125 ml yoghurt

- 1 egg

- 4 tb vegetable oil

- 1 packet baking powder

- pinch of salt

- beaten egg to glaze

Mix everything in a bowl until you got a smooth dough-mixture. If it's too sticky, gradually add some more flour.

Peridot crystal balls

No, these are not frogspawn, as my sister calls it. It may look the same, but surely that's all they have in common :-)

These are peridot crystal balls. At least, that's what they're called on the site I've found the recipe.

It looked too cool not to try it myself and luckily I had all the ingredients needed for this dessert.

In case you're wondering why I went through all this trouble just to make two balls: there were more of them, but when I remembered to take a picture, only these two were left :-)

Unfortunately the taste was not quite as spectacular as the appearance (look at the bright green color!!) It actually tasted kinda weird. But that can also be because I left out the coconut milk and because I'm not a big fan of the heart of yellow split bean paste.

But I will definitely make it again one day! Think about the surprised faces when serving this dessert to others! :-D

And another tasty looking picture :-D