who put a quarter in this kid?

This is hilarity. I did not know babies are THIS vocal. Via Capucha

A slugish weekend

I was not as productive as I wanted/needed to be this weekend. I have been overwhelmingly tired and slugish and with this perfect sunny hot weather, it seemed like a waste. However, I'm not one to ignore my body's messages and so I took a long nap yesterday in the summer heat with the window cracked open. It must be the heat, on top of over exhaustion but I did manage to make some sweet additions to the shop.

I finally created an Earrings section to Muntedkowhai where I added new pieces that are not only darling but kind to your wallet:

Juneau Earrings with Czech glass flower bead

Juneau Earrings with brass drops

Juneau Earrings with gold plated chains and fresh water pearls.

My favourite is the brass drop pair of earrings. You may have noticed that I've been making alot of wedding pieces without listing them. That is because I have a bridal trunk show at Lille Boutique this First Friday at on Burnside. Here are the details:

Lille Boutique will be hosting an artist's reception for the group show “Modern Bride.” The exhibition will showcase a selection of photos from award winning local wedding photographers Aisha Harley, Rebekah Johnson, Bryan Wolf and Jamie Bosworth. Harley and Bosworth have both had the distinct honor of being voted best wedding photographer by Oregon Bride Magazine in the past three years. Rebekah Johnson is a graduate of PNCA whose work has been featured extensively in Portland Bride and Groom. Bryan Wolf is a custom printer, teacher, member of the Portland Grid Project, and a board member of Photolucida, a national non-profit photography organization. In addition to the photo exhibition, there will also be a trunk show of handmade jewelry by Puiyi Tiffany Pang, who makes crocheted lace motif accessories under the label Muntedkowhai. Pang uses delicate details like vintage buttons and original motifs to create exclusive one-of-a-kind pieces that are an amalgamation of old world charm and modern subtle sensuality. Lille Boutique carries high-end lingerie and swimwear, with an emphasis on independent designers and natural fibers. This free event will be open to the general public, and complimentary refreshments will be served. Lille is located at 1007 E. Burnside St. on the north corner of 10th Ave.



Here are two new wedding pieces I made this weekend:

... and because there is only so many whites and dusty pearl colour pieces one person can take, so I made these colour injection pieces:

Mrs French told me to

so I did. You should listen to Mrs French as well. She knows what is good for you. Good for your footsies! Here are some of my favourites:





You have till Sunday, you hear, Sunday to get an awesome discount on everything at Habitat shoes by putting in this discount code: BLISS25

Botany Downs Necklace

Sweet and simple. Coming to Muntedkowhai soooooon.

Mari Andrews

via Taf

Mari Andrews is a woman after my own heart. This is inspiration galore.

Some new Muntedkowhai favourites

Littlebits recreate museum quality historical clothing by hand. These dresses are gorgeous. As a little girl, all I wanted to do was prance around in colonial clothing! I mean, I would Love love love to have a dress like this but I would not know where I would wear this to! (Getting my car oil changed?)



Despite getting a series of fungi contamination in our cell cutures, these mold embroidary wall art from Elinart makes me more happy than frustrated. They are so neat and laden with contrasting textures, I love it!


Chocolatefrog makes these insanely original bowls. In her own words: "It’s made by free machine embroidering on soluble fabric, which dissolves away to leave just the stitching. This ‘soluble lace’ is then moulded into shape while damp; the stitching is specially designed so that it will form a round bowl without tucks or pleats. When dry it’s sprayed with clear acrylic varnish for extra stiffness and protection."


Something about the jade green and ship charm makes Acrosstheway's Voyages necklace very darling!

pou dou dou

I was putting my winter clothes away (YAY!!) and taking my spring/summer clothes out when I saw a top I bought in HK and totally fell in love with. There are alot of neat stores in HK that sells Japanese clothes that I can't get here. I looked at the label of the top and it said POU DOU DOU. I googled Pou Dou Dou and this is what I found:

Gorgeous huh. The Japanese amazes me with their soft paletes and zen textures. I loves it. Pou dou dou has a website and an online store. However, since my 5 years of Japanese does not do me any shopping justice, I did not have the time to figure out if they ship internationally and what all those Japanese on the form says. So if you like Pou Dou Dou and know Japanese, I envy you oh so much!!

10 years

Yesterday, I met up with a high school friend of mine whom I had not seen in 12 years, nor really kept in contact with. We caught up on 12 years of news and she reminded me that this year, is our 10 year reunion. 10 years since I've been out of that jailhouse called high school!! I would love to go attend the reunion but since it is in Auckland, NZ, it is not possible for me. Plus with facebook around, who needs to see what queen mcsnobby or princess i'm too cool for you, is up to. I can look at all their pictures and see what kind of brain draining quizzes they have taken. Oh no I sound bitter! Well, that's probably because I am. I went to an all girls private school that pride themselves on having a smaller class, around 20 girls per grade. This meant hell, pure heightened gossip hell. With such a small class, there was not enough room for different cliques. There was just COOL and UNCOOL. Your beloved fit in so right with the latter. I was uncool to the bone. Oh yeah.
After talking with Lynely, I giggled in my mind as to the things we all remember. Some minute, some not so and others that you never thought you remembered.

Here are some of mine:

Mrs Ray, our science teacher with her tartan skirts and always showing us her hologram brooch.
The smell of our woollen skirts when it got wet from the rain, in a bus with 40 of us.
Mrs Christensen, our French teacher who always wore crazy tights. One of the most memorable one had clocks all over it. She was insane because she would tear any pages that had white out on it. Fiiiiiierce.
Hating wearing those straw hats with a navy ribbon (now oh so popular). We had to wear them to and from school and church.
Having to wear an olive ribbon in our hair if we tied it up.


many many more


Remember all those years made me realize what a shy child I was! I would let people walk all over me and never spoke up about anything.It also made me realize the friendships I made in high school were purely out of convinience and most often hardly out of a real connection.

The Canon Rebel Funds SALE

I went to Fry's Electronics this weekend. Fry's is a guy's temple, it is an insanely huge warehouse of all things electronics and I am certain that most people that leave Frys feel a tinge of guilt but a whole lot of excitement for the new toy they just purchased. This is me included! I bought the Canon Rebel for my product photography!!! It was insane, it is a lot of money!!! I'm still getting to know my camera, it is more powerful than what I know to do with! There is alot of manual reading and playing around ahead. I was able to go and take a photograph of this blue rose in the garden:

Since, I spent so much money, I totally need to make the money back to cover the cost of my lovely new toy!! Thus, Muntedkowhai is having a "The Canon Rebel Funds Sale"! All necklaces in this section is $30 and the sale ends when the necklaces are all sold! Here are two examples to entice you, spread the word!

Mission Bay Necklace


The Bell house

Juneau Earrings

Earrings are actually quite fun to make! I should make more. Just dropping in quickly to let you know that these are now available at Muntedkowhai. You shouldn't be online! It's sunny and a 3 day weekend, get out there!

Miniature NZ and Seattle

This website allows you to create your own tilt shift photographs using your existing photographs. Here are two that I did:

Rippon festival. Camping site in Wanaka, New Zealand.

Fruit stall in Seattle

It's so much fun! Using the tilt shift feature brings a different feeling to these photos. Click here to give it a try.

Are you sick of wedding pieces yet? I'm not!

There is something very soothing about making wedding pieces:




As you can see, I've been falling in love with the power of draping chains lately. There is something utterly sensual about free falling chains.

Muntedkowhai wants to be a Rebel

I want this. I'm beginning to realise I can't really have other people take photos of my pieces every single time I make a new one (quite too often!). I should just buckle down and buy one for my product photographs. After some research, it seems Canon Rebel is the camera that would best fit my needs and financial budget. If you have used this camera or any ones that you would recommends for close up and product photography, please let me know!

Why we meet who we meet

Do you ever wonder sometimes, why someone was placed in your path? It may be insignificant or it may be earth shattering but I'm a firm believer of the Pangloss theory from Candide: Everything happens for a reason and for the better in the end. When I was in Seattle the other week, this young oncologist sat next to me. We started to talk and became fast friends, went to different seminars together and even had lunch with our co workers. I had noticed that he had a wedding band on which was all fine and dandy until... he switched from smart nice guy to sick sad guy who was putting the moves on me at a conference. It made me terribly sad, to think of his wife all the way in NY and he is here, wanting to give me a massage. I don't care if he has a terrible wife or a good wife, a change in relationship is inevitable but how you deal with it, is a true judge of character. I think, meeting him was for a reason: it made me appreciate my boyfriend AND made me realise how I treated my previous boyfriends, were wrong. It has always been my thought that if you wanted to cheat or just cheat, there is something wrong. I perfectly knew that with my past boyfriends. I didn't truly love them, I cared for them. I always told myself that as long as I knew that I won't be with my bfs for long, I could cheat on them. I'm not kidding myself. I did not even think of them. They did not need to know. All they need to know is that I will break up with them. Now looking back, I can see how selfish that was, even though I did break up with them. I should have broken up with them before I did anything but alas, such is the learning curve. For this said alot of my character, I wanted to have my cake AND eat it too.

So, I am thankful I met you Mr Doctor, I saw my old self and realise that I was wrong.

Darling

Another addition for the Bridal shows coming up. The darling coral coloured button has stolen my heart. I actually want to keep this....

Going to the chapel and we're, going to get

MUNTED

I made this necklace, as part of my one-of-a-kind wedding pieces for the Brooklyn Pop Up wedding chapel. I'm so excited to announce that Muntedkowhai will be participating in The Brooklyn Pop Up Wedding Chapel held at the 303Grand space. The event is planned by the none other, The Wedding Library: NYC's #1 wedding planner and go to sources for all things wedding! If you're in the area, you should definitely come and give some Munted love AND if you're going to be wed or want something free, grab someone or your fiance and enter to win a free wedding with an incredible honeymoon! All details are available here. The entire event is spanned over the entire month of June.

I took a photo of this piece in the drawer display! Cute eh! I'm really excited to use it at my next craft show

Gibson Necklace

I just added the Gibson to the shop. Designed to look like an Edwardian pocketwatch, the Gibson is intriguing in its use of draping chains and fresh plum colours.

Monday

Thank you to Sarasophia who nominated Muntedkowhai for all things
awesome! I love checking in on Sarasophia's life so much with her cute bubbas and hilarity lined postings! I absolutely love it when I get to read new blogs and also when new readers comment on my blog. Sometimes I get stuck in reading blogs of the same circle that, it is refreshing to step outside of our bubbles to see what is out there. I'm so glad you found me!


According to the instructions
I am supposed to list 7 reasons
why I am awesome and then pass along the award
to 7 other deserving blogs.

1. I have sturdy hands and am pretty good at tumor surgeries.

2. I'm pretty good with directions, even without GPS.

3. I can cuss in several different languages. *totally awesome*

4. I've eaten a Macdonalds family meal in one sitting. (Thats 2 big macs, 2 cheese burgers, 4 medium fries and 4 cokes.... I could not finish the last two cokes)

5. I cherish family and family values.

6. I am open minded, even if it is about things I am opposed to, I still hear you out. (Religioin, politics etc)



7. I've touched Jennifer Love Hewitts hands before, with permission of course!



Here are the following blogs I so much enjoy reading:

Blog Goggles
Bluemoss
Knack
Oh, hello friend
Taf
Hello Lindello

I'm super happy because this weekend I found the PERRRRFECT jeans! I usually HATE hate hate wearing jeans because:
1) Too long
2) Too tight at the waist
3) Too baggy on legs

but I went and tried on some jeans at Levis yesterday and found the perfect wash AND fit. For the record, I adore Levis mid rise straight leg jeans. It is great.

I spent the entire Sunday working on my webpage and worked out some kinks but now I just have to do the tedious task of listing my pieces and should have it live by next weekend??? I'm so excited!!!

OOOOO it's such a purty Monday that I'm kinda bitter I have to spend it inside a building!

Every day should be a Saturday like this:

Brunch at Mississippi station:

Pork Pull Sandwich in the sunshine

Followed by rummaging at the Rebuilding center, a Portland favourite, mecca of all things fixtures, doors, windows, cabinets etc for reuse:

I bought these two old drawers for 4 dollars. I'm going to use them for my jewelry display for craft shows. I had the idea to use them for displays as the handles make it easy for moving in and out of car, plus it acts as a lovely frame itself.

Hippo place, a time warp place where orgies of charming door knobs, iron wrought detailings, lights and anything antique embellishments for your home improvement needs:

Even a Mettler science weigh!!!
Unfortunately, yes!

Around the corner and down the way was Scraps, a lovely resource for teachers and budget crafters alike:

I bought these linen and fabric pieces for $2

End the day with a jug of sun brewed tea, add ice after brewing:

And also, make a new piece: