Great Updates: A Personal Exhibition, Fruit Carving Tutorial and Shopping Time

What is new in the studio?

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I am proud to announce that I am scheduled for a personal exhibition at Sakhalin Art Museum in December 2014 - January 2015. I will present soap carving art works and fruit carving displays. I team up with my friend who is a painter and a craftwoman to do installations involving her paintings and crafts, my ikebana skills and our vision for art.

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The other great news, I have written a book.

This is a tutorial on making fruit carving models and displays for children. This book is a collection of my best selling fruit ideas invented for Baby Showers and children's birthdays, and it covers 3 year creative work experience of mine. There are lot of step-by-step pictures and detailed comments about the process in the tutorial.
The English text was fine-tuned by my friend Kathleen Richardson from Corning New York, USA, so reading the book will bring you a pleasure.
Buy this book in the Shop page.



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Visit my Etsy Shop for cute post cards based on my fruit carving displays and paintings. You can use the cards as invitations to Baby Shower or a party. You will find Halloween cards, Valentine's cards and simply cute cards in the shop. The cards can be framed and used as a decoration.




One of my favorite post cards is "Let's Hang Out" card with two animals at disco. The card looks good in both rotations, regular and turned upside down.




Regular rotation of the card

 

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Books and Guides To Fruit Business

Do you want to do fruit carving for living but you don't know what to start with?

Do you think to turn your hobby into interesting and creative job and wonder how much money you can earn?

In this post I introduce books, which help you to start fuit carving business. These books answer most of the questions you may have on the field. 

Your Ultimate Guide to a Profitable Fruit Bouquet Business

This is e-book (downloadable file) guiding you to fruit bouquet business. This guide covers major questions about fruit business and can be used in fruit carving business too. The e-book gives clear instructions on the basics of arranging fruit bouquets, on getting started in the business, advertising and selling fruit creations.

You will learn about the following:

• what tools, supplies and equipment you wil need
• how to make fruit bouquets, how to wrap them and deliver
• what cerificates you will need
• start-up costs and expected incomes
• how to culculate a right price for fruit bouquets
• how to administrate your fruit business
• how to find clients and promote your business
• how to sell fruit bouquets online and offline

Time to time I look through this guide.

Dear Preston: Doing Business With Our Hearts. 

A practical and friendly guide to running your own creative servce business.

Prestom Bailey, the author and a famouse florist and event planner form New York with 30 years experience in the event industry, shares his thoughts about making creative business. Preston answers different and sometimes difficult questions about our artistic job:

• Am I good enough to make a creative business
• How to cope with low self-worth and envy to your succesful colleauges
• How to put a price on your creativity
• How to find new clients
• How to make your clients say "WOW"
• How to deal with difficult clients
• How to cope with stress and rejection from clients
• How do not lose business to cheap competitors
• How to survive 'slow time' in your business
• How to pick your first employee
• How to present your creative business and what you offer

No secret that artistic people take things emotionally. When you meet difficulties in your creative job don't think you are the only person who faced a specific problem. After reading the book I got that no matter where you live, in a big city like New York or in a remote Russian island, human nature is the same everywhere. Preston gives advices which really work. I myself passed through the situations he writes about. Now I understand I did my way right.

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The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving

'The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving: Elegant Garnishes for All Occasions' is a book I ordered from Amazon. I recieved it in the last days of 2012 and that became a christmas present for me :) I bought this book because its cover looked so promissing.  This post  is a review of the book.

The Decorative art of Japanese Food Carving by Hiroshi Nagashima

"Japanese Food Carving" book is printed on glossy paper. It is a pleasure to hold it in your hands. 

I found lot of attractive photographs of garnishes and dishes, most of them are taken in macro mode. Definitely this book is a great sample of food photographing art.

Authors use a black background for food serving (black plates, ceramics) what makes food look excellent.

food served in black plate and garnished in japanese style

The book provides step-by-step photos on making garnishes, comments to the steps and large photos of comleted dishes. So you can learn not only 'how to make', but how to implement the garnishes in a dish.

After reading this book you understand that food garnishing is an integral part of Japanese dishes.

Daikon garnish integrated in a dish

'The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving' book gave me ideas on using the japanese garnishes in European cuisine (including Russian). I highly recommend to read the descriptions to the pictures (I mean not just watching photos), you will discover interesting things. At the end of the book you will find recipes of all dishes presented in its pages. 

This is a an excelent book, I am happy with the purchase.

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Christmas Soap Carving Ornaments - DIY

Cute Christmas soap ornamnets

Soap carving for Christmas

I got this idea of Christmas soap carving ornaments after reading Soap Carving books of Miho Morita.
Mrs.Miho Morita (http://fruitscarving.wordpress.com) is a famous carving teacher and tutorial book writer in Japan. We have met at Carving Contest Event held in Tokyo in 2011. I took a lesson from Miho-sensei and it was a great impulse for me.

Miho Morita's style is elegant and looks like a lacework carved in melons. She also does cute carvings in soap like soap cakes, flowers and jewelry.
In 2012 Miho-san published a new book on soap carving. I was lucky to get all the books, the first (2009) and the second (2012).

Soap Carving Tutorials by Miho Morita

These books are high quality printed with bright and beautiful photographs of the soap carvings in the beginning and photo tutorials afterward. It is written in Japanese, but understandible pictures make it easy.

What I like about the books is that tutorials have brief schemes showing possible mistakes, so you can awoid them. This made me feeling my teacher is always close by me to help :)

The books gave me a new vision for soap carving art. They are inviting to soap carving and crafting, I am sure they will be interesting for people with basic and advanced carving skills.

You can order the books in Amazon Japan. They have English page and provide international shipping.
Soap Carving, Blue 2009
Soap Carving, Pink 2012

Soap carving books by Miho Morita,  blue (2009) and pink (2012)

Inside the book

Inside the book,
photographs of cute carvings and How-To photo tutorials afterward

Christmas Soap Carving Ornaments

click photo for a bigger size

Though Miho Morita teaches to use a thai knife only with a little help of cutters, I used my Triangle tools for making the soap ornaments. So you will enjoy the soap carving in any case with having tools or not.

Palmolive and Nivea soap bars are good for soap carving

Instruction:
I used Nivea ans Palmolive soaps for the crafts.

Glue soap details with water. Foam a soap surface using a wet cotton bud, attach the details and let them fix.

Santa Boot

1. Slice a red soap bar.

2-3. Cut it in a shape of a boot using a thai knife.

4. Slice a white soap bar.

5. Give it a 'cloud' shape.

6. Make a hole in the boot with a toothpick, insert a thread. After that glue the white details in both sides of the boot.

Christmas Flower

1. Use a red soap slice. Make a hole in the center with a smal U-knife.

2. Make a same hole in the white soap slice. Insert the white detail in the red.

3-4. Make holes around the central one and replace them with the white details.

5-6. Use a goffer U-knife for shaping the flower and cut it out.

Christmas soap ornaments in Wonder Tree

Palmolive soap bar for Christmas tree 

Christmas Tree

1. Slice a green soap bar.

2. Use small and big U-knives and thai knife for the craft.

3. Cut the soap to point to make a tree top.

4-10. Use smal and big U-knives for modeling the tree.

How to carve Christmas tree in soap

how to make Christmas tree in soap

Soap is a nice material to play with. I am sure you will enjoy it :)

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DVD Tutorials on Fruit Carving Art

Finally I recieved the DVD I ordered on Amazon. One dvd by James Parker, one from Chef Ray Duey and three dvd tutorials by Pam Maneeratana.

Of course the very first one I started watching was James Parker because he is my hero. Undoubtedly he is a  perfect showman and good entreprenuer. I like his way of promoting the art of fruit and vegetable carving. "Basic Fruit & Vegetable Carving" is more than just a tutorial. This is a professional movie about the whole process of making edible arrangements from buying fruits to eating the centerpieces. 

Recommended!
Accurate centerpieces, skilled master, high quality movie at the good price.
Makes impression "Every one can do that".

Chef Ray teaches simple centerpieces as well as the advanced melon carving techniques. I have learned some new things from his tutorial "Fruit & Vegetable Sculpting". But one thing I don't like about the movie is that the  author carves in hurry. Chef Ray cuts quickly and often ruines the pattern. This is the only 'minus'. In total the dvd tutorial is an INFORMATIVE course with a HUGE number of centerpices, GOOD VALUE, a must to watch!

Pam Maneeratana shows fruit carving techniques in details. Explains much, carves slowly to let us understand the idea and the trick. Good tutorials for EAGER fruit carvers. Pam is a perfect teacher!

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