magboo candy and jewelryDesigner Con 2014
Posted on October 9, 2014
This will be my second year exhibiting at Designer Con at the Pasadena Convention Center. November 8 and 9 is fast approaching and many preparations need to be made! I just need to squeeze this in along with my teaching, custom jewelry work, and design work for Virgil James. Can’t we all have minions?!? I could use some right now. 😉 I just finished the graphics for my ad in the brochure for the convention. I had to make some minor tweeks to swtich the ad to a vertical orientation but I’m satisfied with how it turned out.
The colors are a bit off here because the color model is CMYK which is commonly used for printing. Just imagine that the image isn’t quite so purple and green. 😉
I definitely have some new cast dessert-themed jewelry pieces that I am currently working on that will be debuting at Designer Con. We all love sweets, don’t we? However, since this is Adorable Mayhem there will be a little dark twist on these sweet numbers. I will be posting images when I finally finish casting them.
I always have new felt animal sculptures at every show. I sold out of virtually everything at Comic-Con and have to build up my inventory. My jewelry inventory is pretty well depleted as well. I have some new ideas I plan on testing out with my felt sculptures by incorporating more metal components. I think this will really enhance the look of the sculptures and make them a little more detailed.
Lastly, I’ve been having a wonderful time going back to my illustration roots! There is something so satisfying about the immediacy of painting which offers a much needed break from the tedious nature of jewelry making. I have been creating tiny art on small birch plywood canvases. These illustrations are 4 by 4 inches and I’ve been painting with my favorite medium: gouache. I love the matte finish of gouache and I enjoy the limitation of painting in blocks of color. I plan on offering both original artwork and small giclee prints on cotton rag paper.
Save the date! If you happen to be in the city of Pasadena on November 8 and 9, definitely stop by my booth at Designer Con! Here is a link to the show: http://www.designercon.com/
Japan Crate Japanese Snack Subscription Review and Giveaway!
Posted on September 22, 2014
Oh my goodness! I know It has been a very long while since I have written a blog post! 😦 Work has been busy, which is a very good thing, however, being a team of one means some things get pushed to the back burner. Unfortunately, one of those things is the blog. Many wonderful events have happened since I have last posted here, so I have much to catch up on!
This particular post is about another Japanese snack subscription service called Japan Crate. The company sent me a sample box from their service for me to review and, of course, I am not one to refuse free candy and snacks! One exciting piece of news is that I finally significantly upgraded my laptop! I have an upgraded video graphics card, bigger hard drive…the works! This also means one other fantastic thing…I can finally up my game on video editing and use far superior software! Yay! Oh my, oh my! I have been wanting to do this for quite a long time now. Learning the new software has been a fun challenge, so I look forward to making new and interesting changes to my candy video reviews!
I have reviewed quite a few snack subscription services so far. This is one of the largest, if not the largest box, I have received. The service does cost significantly more than say, OishiiBox, at $25 a month. However, shipping is included and one receives far more product. The majority of snacks in the box are full-sized snack items. Only the Grape Kasugai Gummies was a sample size.
Let’s see what’s in the box!
Popin’ Cookin’ Sushi by Kracie
Nerunerune by Kracie
In each subscription box, Japan Crate incorporates at least one DIY Japanese candy kit. This box contained two DIY kits as you can see from the images above: Nerunerune and Popin’ Cookin’ Sushi.
Sardine Crackers
The above three items are snacks that are in my giveaway! If you are interested in entering the giveaway, details about the giveway will be in the description box for my YouTube video review of Japan Crate. The video will be posted at the end of this blog post.
Hokkaido Potato Chips
Sweet Potato Cough Drops
Strawberry Cake Candy by Hayakawa
Grape Gummy Candy by Kasugai
Pocky Matcha Green Tea
Pocky Matcha Green Tea, unfortunately, was a casualty from my camera fail! I was filming my review and didn’t realize that my memory card ran out of space. The beauty of having an accompanying blog post is that I can make up for any video failures! 🙂 I like many green tea flavored snacks, however, some are more successful than others. I am happy to say that his falls into the realm of successful green tea flavored delicacies! The cookie stick biscuit has a nice, crisp texture and the green tea flavored white chocolate coating is wonderfully creamy. In other words, Pocky Matcha Green Tea was delicious and I definitely recommend it!
Chocolate Cookie
Cookie Chocolate by Kasugai was another video failure. Fortunately, this is the last of my accidental video omissions. This was excellent! This chocolate is certainly in my top favorites from this box! The chocolate was rich and creamy with a subtle sprinkling of fine cookie pieces inside. The proportion of chocolate to cookie was well thought out. This almost reminded me of Nestle’s Crunch because the scale of the cookie pieces is similar to Crunch’s rice crispy bits, however this is far more sophisticated. Cookie Chocolate has a much more rich, darker milk chocolate than Crunch. This was excellent and I definitely recommend Cookie Chocolate!
Apollo Chocolate
Chococones by Meiji
This box contained eleven snacks, most of which were full-sized snacks! If you consider how much you would spend to purchase these from a Japanese Market in the U.S., you would easily spend far more than $25! My favorites from the box were: Chococones, Cookie Chocolate, Kasugai Grape Gummies, Hokkaido Potato Chips and Strawberry Cake Candy.
Now that I have reviewed quite a few Japanese snack subscription services, it seems that there are several that exist out there in the marketplace that can fit your budget or needs. Many of the services include shipping and can be canceled at any time. Some even include small toys in the package if that is of interest to you.
As I mentioned earlier, if you want a service where you receive a lot of Japanese snacks then Japan Crate is a good option. Their website is: www.japancrate.com
If you would like to check out my video review, watch it down below! 🙂
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