The One About the Playdough

In Joujoux, we place a premium on open-ended playthings – toys and materials that allow children to spend hours tinkering while using their imagination, creativity, and resourcefulness.  While we have nothing against one-purpose-one-design toys, we want our customers (usually parents) to realize that they are getting a lot of entertainment-and-learning mileage with each Joujoux purchase.

Playdough is one of my personal favorite open-ended playthings.  There are so many things to do with a lump of playdough.  Its malleable properties allow children’s fine motor skills to be strengthened as they make balls and coils with it.  Eye-hand coordination and concentration goals are achieved when they poke sticks and branches into it or when they emboss leaves as they engage in preschool printmaking.  Playdough is also one of the first media used when introducing a young child to cutting with scissors. 

The wonderful news is that one need not scour the shelves of toy stores for playdough.  With pantry basics, one can whip up a big batch of playdough in the comfort of your own home using the recipe below:

Playdough recipe:

2.5 cups of warm water

1 ¼ cup of salt

1 ½ tbsp of cream of tartar

4 tbsp of vegetable oil (you can add an additional tablespoon to make a more buttery playdough)

2.5 cups of flour

Mix everything in a pot over low heat.  It will look lumpy and then smooth but, given a few minutes, it will all come together into a beautiful ball of playdough.  When the dough is cooked through and does not stick to your fingers, take it out of the pot and onto a smooth surface.  Easy peasy!

Now the fun part begins!  Place a few drops of food coloring onto the dough and knead the dough until the food coloring spreads evenly throughout the dough.  I made a huge batch so I divided the dough into five parts and colored each ball of dough differently.  I didn’t want the usual rainbow colors and opted for softer tints so…

…I made playdough in the yummiest of colors:  pink, avocado green, lemon yellow, lavender, and teal.

Don’t they look dreamy???

Give it a try!  With materials such as rice grains, branches, leaves, alphabet tiles, buttons, and pebbles to play along with playdough, the creative play possibilities of playdough are endless!

100 Days of Calligraphy: Day 2

Day 2 had me doing the pressure-and-release stroke.  Quite difficult because I had to reduce the pressure on the nib just as I was about to reach the base line.  The upstroke should also be parallel to the downstroke but as you can see in some of the strokes, some upstrokes were either too wide or narrow.

Wednesday Nugget (Or How I'm Overcoming My Fear of Watercolor)

Good things come to those who wait...

Happy hump day, lovelies. :)  Hustle hard.

The One About the Leftie Calligrapher

For someone who’s had nice penmanship since elementary school, engaging in calligraphy seemed quite natural.  So much so that when calligraphy boomed – with workshops left and right – I grabbed the chance to learn by signing up with one of the well-known crafter/calligraphers in the metro a couple of years ago.

Calligraphy, I realized, is rather challenging if you’re left-handed like me.  If I position my hand in a way that I usually write, my calligraphy work smears like crazy.  It did not help that the workshop I took was meh.  The instructor was highly-regarded.  However, it’s one thing to be very good at your craft and another thing to be just as good at teaching others your craft.  Several months ago, I signed up for another workshop of hers and that second session with her solidified my stand to never take any of her classes again.

So anyway, bleeding from that workshop, I took Melissa Esplin’s online calligraphy program.  It was more expensive but I took a leap of faith – to this day, I’m glad I did.  The program begins with the basic strokes until you become comfortable doing letter forms.  I worked at my own pace and uploaded my weekly output for feedback.  I became more comfortable handling a nib and writing with it using my left hand.  You don’t want to see the funny positions I resort to just to be able to write legibly as a leftie.  When the program ended, I got myself these books with the intention of doing more self-study and drills.

As always, life happens and things get in the way even in the best of intentions.  While I was happy starting a line of clothes and playthings, learning calligraphy had to take a backseat in the midst of it all.

Then again, it is true that when you really want something, you don’t find time for it; you MAKE time for it.  I have decided to commit myself to learning calligraphy all over again with a self-imposed 100-Day Calligraphy Challenge.  For a hundred days (and more probably until I become good), I shall engage in pointed pen drills and will be documenting everything in this blog – bad writing, bad strokes, warts and all.  Let’s see if I can uncover the leftie advantage people always say about calligraphy and left-handers.

Today, I end this post with Day 1:  The Full-Pressure Stroke.

Apparently, I'm still struggling with exerting just the right amount of pressure as I press the nib down.  Hence, the uneven strokes.  But hey, it's just the first day.  I'm cutting myself some slack. :)

Meet Quaintrelle

If there's one thing (or two) that creating things has taught me, it is that producing beautiful things does wonders to the soul.  It is calming, it eradicates self-doubt (almost completely), and it makes you believe that everything is possible.  And so after the initial collection of tunic dresses that I produced, I am back with another albeit a smaller collection but still lovely nonetheless.

As I was in process of producing this new collection, I knew I wanted to do it right in terms of the label.  Little Miss Pinay Crafter is my virtual identity and while it was nice to be known by it, it didn't feel right to use it for my clothing line because I make other beautiful things...including in the kitchen.

And so, meet Quaintrelle.  The first collection under the label still has the whole tropical vibe even as we bid summer adieu because, admit it, the summer warmth still envelopes us all.

Plus, the pieces can still be worn year-round, making them your new wardrobe staples. They are all made from soft cotton.

Say hello to these lovelies...

Another good thing I did this time was I created each piece in SMALL, MEDIUM, and LARGE sizes (well, most of it anyway).  Here are the size charts.

Are they calling out to you now?  :)  One last good thing I'm doing for this collection is that, since it's a initial once under the Quaintrelle label, I'm treating all of you lovelies price-wise!  For a limited time, all of the dresses in the collection are priced at PhP 799 each!  What an incredible steal!

 Tunics from the previous collection are on sale too!  PhP 799 each!

Shoot me an email at wickedcrafts2012@gmail.com for orders and inquiries!  Let me end this post by saying that this is just the first installment; a second installment is coming but for petite women.  :)

The One About the Furry Friends

It's been awfully quiet around here.  I remember a conversation I had with a fellow craftpreneur several months ago.  We talked about how keeping one's blog updated would prove to be a crafter's problem once he/she succumbs to the call of entrepreneurship.  As you can see, it has never been truer than now.

I hate the silence!  Let's fix that!

Several months ago -- and blog posts ago -- my husband and I started Joujoux, a line of handmade toys for children.  We are starting small and so far, the response to our handcrafted playthings has been encouraging.  I do all the crafting myself and so while fulfilling orders may take some time, we are grateful that customers have been understanding of our situation and appreciative of the charm of handmade.

A colleague of mine scored an animal cloth book from a garage sale.  Thing is, the animal pieces from the cloth book were no longer included.  And so she approached me for help...and I guess I came to the rescue. :)

I came up with my own versions of the animals, created the patterns and all, and came up with these furry, velcro-backed friends.

And that's how the furry friends found their homes...or rather, how the homes found some furry friends to house.  :)

Should you have customized soft toy requests, let us know here or shoot us an email at joujouxplay@gmail.com.  We'll do the best we can to give you the gift of play. 

The One About Joujoux

When I first started teaching preschool, there weren't a lot of instructional materials available that were of good quality.  I remember the first teaching material I made then was a felt jacket with a letter "J" patch (J for jacket).  I had sewn it using our old sewing machine (it was de-padyak pa!  I still love that oldie, though, and had my mom swear never to dispose of it.) and I punched holes on it so it could be a lacing activity tool.

When I developed a deep love for making beautiful things, I would find myself browsing websites for toy and learning materials projects.  I had a long list of To-Makes which is still long, by the way, but I would always promise myself to getting around to making them.  

It could be the serendipitous marriage of my job as a teacher and my passion for crafting that led to the preference for toys and learning materials that are well-created and of great value.  Toys that are open-ended and provide hours of endless entertainment.  Toys that children love so much that they treasure them until they reach adulthood and pass them onto their offspring.

Hence, the birth a new "baby" for me and my husband -- Joujoux Playthings & Teachables.  Joujoux is French for toys and it is a very lean startup born out of love for well-crafted toys and educational materials.  We are starting off with the felt food sets that were sold last November at the Cebu International School Bazaar but we already have a lost of ideas brewing in mind for the next products.

Manila-based people can finally get their hands on these lovelies on February 28, 2015 at 3rd Mom Pop Up at Fully Booked at Bonifacio High Street.  Apart from the playthings, we'll also have our tunic dresses, kimonos, and a few wrap skirts to sell (our next clothing collection is in production!!!).  The clothes are still under the Little Miss Pinay Crafter label.

And so, here's to love for teaching and the handmade goodness that transpires from it.  Here's to Joujoux, to the old-school kind of entertainment it brings, to its educational value, and to treasured memories that it will bring forth to the young.