As I was preparing food one day and was basically doing the same usual stuff of peeling a garlic, getting a few cloves ready to be minced, I ACCIDENTALLY discovered something else which left me utterly surprised!

I knew I had to capture what I saw on my cutting board and with further manipulation (sometimes physically and/or digitally), I’ve uncovered many of garlic’s flattering sides.

Hence join me (and PLEASE get many interested friends to come too!) every week in a new series called “Exposing garlic”, where you will be treated with blooming scenes of garlic, like you’ve never seen before or have never come to expect! This comes with a hope that you will be inspired to look at garlic (food or things in general) in a brand new light.

Just so that you know that I LOVE garlic this much and use it in virtually all my cooking! And no garlic was wasted in the whole process. The non-edible parts remained unharmed while the edible parts were consumed!

By Lauren Milroy.

Was white.

Is now easier to match with the colours of my wardrobe.

The task was accomplished with 3 coats of Dylon Shoe Colour in Magnolia, which I got from a local craft store. The label says it’s for leather, synthetic and canvas. The painting was easy, if not for the shedding of (a few) bristles from the brush that was included.

New advice from Matt Jones, on paper print or t-shirt.

It’s so refreshing to see safety pins play different beading roles. And they perform so well.

I like this assortment of painted pebbles featured on the &home magazine. This instantly calls to mind a pebble a church friend gave me when we were teenagers on which he drew some hair, a BIG smile and pasted 2 TINIEST wiggling eyes. I think he drew himself. Makes me giggle whenever I see it on the shelf.

I also like this painted set. What a great way to remember a fun trip to the seaside!

And I also like this rocky town hall from Natures Canvas.

Mirror-like blackness

Besides “Bean art“, another unique craft at the fair was black ceramics.

The Chinese black ceramic (中国黑陶) dates back to about 5000 B.C. and the Chinese invented this art form 3000 years before china.

Here’s a really quick look at why this handmade blackness is like no other:

• A very important material is the mud, which can only be found at the lower reaches of the Yellow River in China.
• The gloss black surface is neither glazed nor painted but obtained through a special burning technique which carbonizes the mud mold while burning in the kiln. Afterwhich the handmade mud mold must be left to dry for 2 days before a craftsman uses selected sea shells to press onto the mold inch by inch for 4 times in order to achieve a smooth and shiny appearance.
• Under different lightings and from different angles, the metallic luster will reflect light to show off hues of purple, grey or blue. It produces a pleasant sound with a light knock on the ceramic.
• It contains activated charcoal which is known to absorb odor and purify the air from toxins such as formaldehyde, benzene, ammonia, chlorine, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide.

There’s another thing, it’s not easy to mirror this form of black so the inferior pieces in the market today are blacken using…(make a guess?)…paint!

Meet the Chinese food artist, 崔淑敏, the creator of 崔岩豆画 (bean art).

Her adzuki bean drawings undergo a cleaning and preservation process to rid bacteria and to keep the beans from rotting. In China, her bean art received a patent and won several awards, including one from a handicraft design contest.

She was in town for the “Unique Chinese Artifacts and Crafts” fair held in a mall, as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations. I was at the fair last Saturday before it ended yesterday.

…from Amazon
¹ Copco Heart Teakettle
² Le Creuset Stoneware

…from Takashimaya
³ Cups and saucers

…from Etsy
⁴ Lovebirds
⁵ Matryoshka sock doll
⁶ Singing birdie painting

…from Zakka Olive
⁷ Mini-tools ornament

…from me

A knotted piece using a “double connection knot”

As I was about to make my usual cup of tea, I got interested in the box divider…just wanted to see how simple (or precise) it is.

It is simply taking the inner length of the box multiply by 1.74 which is equal to A (variable for the total length of divider); divider is folded into 3 sections where the length of 1st and 3rd sections = 28% of A, middle section = 44% of A; the middle section is then folded into half to form the actual barrier. The height of the divider is 0.1″ shorter than the box’s height. Width is the same as the box.

Nothing like a little distraction for today. (^-^)