See Pamela Anderson watermelon portrait

In keeping with the theme of watermelon portraits that I’ve been in my past few blog articles, today I’m showcasing some carved watermelon celebrity portraits. As I wrote this article I remembered times when I’ve seen a few of these celebrities live. I’ll tell you those stories.

Katya Stefanova Carves Watermelon Celebrity Portraits

Watermelon carving artist Katya Stefanova came to my attention when images of her celebrity portraits showed up in my Facebook feed.  Although she is not a customer/student of mine, I am showcasing her carvings here to show you some examples of how you can carve watermelon portraits. continue reading…

Professional Fruit Artist Aneta Lekas meets Brad Smith and Bianca Kamber of the Bachelor Canada

Recently, Aneta Lekas of Say It With Fruit promoted her fruit carving services at the Toronto Bridal Show. Aneta Lekas is a professional fruit carver in Toronto Canada who is one of my student /customers of my Portrait Carving Course. For her display booth she carved a watermelon portrait of the Bachelor Canada‘s Brad Smith and Bianca Kambera and got the pleasure of meeting the happy couple.

Aneta Lekas Carves Watermelon Portrait of Brad Smith and Bianca Kamber of  The Bachelor Canada. continue reading…

Here’s a little something just for fun where I made my watermelon portrait talk.

To learn more about how to carve watermelon portraits (as well as pumpkin portraits), check out my page about my Pumpkin Carving Portrait Course. continue reading…

Carved pumpkin portrait is the highlight of this birthday fruit display by Deborah Cheeseman

A carved pumpkin portrait make a great centerpiece for birthday fruit carving displays.

One of my student/customers Deborah Cheeseman, who is a professional caterer and fruit carver in Alabama, created a really fun and personalized birthday fruit display for a party honoring her 90 year old aunt.  I loved it and thought you might get a kick out of seeing it, too. It’s fun, happy and free spirited like the 90 year young birthday girl that it was created to honor.

The centerpiece is a pumpkin portrait of Deborah’s Aunt “Baby Rae”. Debbie wrote to me the following: continue reading…

Mother’s Day will be here soon. Flowers have been a long standing popular gift for Mother’s Day.

Making breakfast or brunch for Mom? Individual serving fruit bouquet would be fun.

Are you looking for something more original? If your mom lives near you, you can present her with something a little different. How about making her a flower bouquet made of fruits or vegetables?

Something Small and Sweet for Mother’s Day

An individual serving of fruit arranged in a small bouquet would be fun, especially if you are serving her breakfast in bed. This square garden fruit bouquet is one of the many projects taught in my Vegetable and Fruit Carving 101 Course for Beginners.

What about a melon carved to look like a bunch of flowers? This watermelon that I carved to look like a bunch of curled petal roses is a pattern that will be taught in one of my upcoming video lessons. The release date continue reading…

Happy Birthday Watermelon carving by Mariano Orozco

Recently I published a couple of articles showing Happy Birthday watermelon carvings that look like cakes. Now I’ll show you a few other birthday watermelon carvings that some of my student / customers have created for their loved ones and their customers.

Happy Birthday Watermelon Carving – Bowl

This first watermelon carving was made by one of my student/customers Rose Flores. She sent this photo to me back in June. Rose had been making some carvings for her friends and family before joining my lessons. She really caught on fast.  You can see one of her first rose watermelon carving in a previous blog post. Below, you can see her first paid order for a birthday watermelon carved fruit bowl. continue reading…

These cakes made of fruit give a whole new meaning to the words fruit cake.

In a recent blog post I showed some watermelon cakes similar to the ideas presented in my video lessons Watermelon Cakes #1 and #2.  Now I’ll show you some variations on those ideas. Make sure to read to the end to see some wacky and imaginative fruit cakes.

This first cake made from fruit is about as close to carving fruit as my husband, Frank gets. We wanted to put together a quick cake made of fruit for Franks son’s birthday. My stepson is an Iron Man Triathlete and doesn’t much care for real cake. This was a kind of last minute thing. continue reading…

Carved watermelon rose topped cake taught in Nita’s Watermelon Cakes video instructions.

For diabetics, vegans, people with gluten allergies and for others who simply want a clean healthy alternative to regular cake, cakes made from watermelons are great.  They are pretty, colorful and pleasing to the eye. From a health perspective, watermelon cakes are a  much better choice because they have none of the artery clogging fat, and none of the highly refined white flour and sugar found in regular cakes. Compared to commercially available cakes and cake mixes, watermelon cakes have no artificial colors, flavors, additives or preservatives. Cakes made from watermelons contain only fresh fruit.

Even for people with no dietary restrictions, cakes made from watermelons are an eye-catching unexpected surprise that will delight your guests. continue reading…

Tomorrow, Sunday April 12st, 2013 the Food Network will air a new episode of Giada in Paradise that shows the art of Thai fruit carving on national TV. This show was shot if beautiful Thailand. While there, Giada de Laurentiis visits the Siam Carving Academy in Thailand to try her hand at Thai Fruit Carving. What a treat for the eyes that will be. Giada is gorgeous, Thailand is a beautiful tropical paradise and the stunning art of fruit carving all in one show will quite lovely to watch.

Giada in Paradise show – Giada di Laurentiis learns to carve fruit – Photo courtesy of FoodNetwork.com

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In Thailand, the Songkran Festival signifying  the Thai New Year is celebrated for 3 to 10 days. Songkran comes from the Sanskrit word meaning change or move. It is celebrated as a time for renewal and cleansing, improving attitudes and behaviors and setting new resolutions.

Songkran is also known as the water festival. Some of that traditions of Songkran are quiet, introspective and spiritual. While others are wet and wild! continue reading…

Watermelon rind flower with fruit kabobs by Abby Veira

A few photos of fruit Easter carvings have been sent to my by students and blog readers. I am sharing these photos here. Maybe you will get some ideas that you can use for your Easter carvings.

Actually, when you take away the Easter eggs, these carving ideas can be used any time of the year. continue reading…

This year we hosted a family Easter party complete with carved fruit and veggie Easter Centerpieces. In this post I’ll share some of the fun we had and the carvings I made. You’ll see photos of my Easter Centerpieces and you can see a video of the highlights of our family Easter party.

This Easter, we had a larger than usual turn out. And, we had a super busy week leading up to the party before we even began on all we needed to do for the party. My husband and I had a lot of preparation to do. You know, the continue reading…

Easter is coming up quickly, so here are some pretty Easter ideas for food carvings.

Calla Lilies which bloom in the Spring have long been a symbol of purity and beauty, resurrection and rebirth. Commonly used for Easter celebrations and weddings the calla lily has a simple and beautiful elegance.

I carved the Calla Lilies that you see pictured here from continue reading…

Radish and Turnip flowers by student Allan Jarvis

This blog post features the lovely fruit and vegetable carvings of one of my student/customers, Allan Jarvis. Allan is in Queensland, Australia. In one of Allan’s first emails to me he told me that he was introduced to fruit and vegetable carving many years ago in Thailand but had not done too much until recently. He wrote, “The book I bought in Thailand is great but not enough steps… ” Shortly after, Allan joined our video lessons.

With spring celebrations like Easter, Songkran Festival and the Indian Festival, Holi coming up you might see some ideas here that you can use. continue reading…

Green cocktail – refreshing cucumber, basil, lime martini with fringed cucumber garnish.

Here is a pretty a delicious recipe for a green cocktail with a fringed cucumber garnish. The video below will show you how to make the garnish. It’s delicious and pleasing to look at, too. In an earlier blog post I showed a healthy green smoothie for St. Patrick’s Day. Now it’s time for an adult drink.

If you like martini or gimlet drinks that aren’t too sweet and that aren’t too strong tasting, you’ll love this refreshing green cocktail made with fresh cucumber, basil, and lime juice. It’s a perfect blend of fresh, and tangy with a touch of sweetness. Make it with vodka for a martini or with gin for a gimlet. Either way, it’s great.

I served this green cocktail recently when we had some continue reading…

Here is how to make a healthy green smoothie with a four leaf clover garnish that makes a delicious and pretty St. Patrick’s Day drink. It’s super easy to make.

The honeydew and fresh mint makes a sweet refreshing drink that is such a pretty green color. If you have children in your life, you can invite them to help make it. They’ll have fun cutting the four leaf clovers with a cookie cutter.

While making this video, I made a mistake that required us to reshoot part of the video. As a result, I ended up making two batches which made a very large pitcher full. With only husband and me at home to drink it, we had it for 3 or 4 meals, over a period of two days. I thought my husband would get tired of it. I was surprised continue reading…

Another watermelon cake by Mariano Orozco

In this blog post I ‘d like to share some fruit carving photos of a couple students of my video lessons.

Mariano Orozco of the Shark Shack in Hayward California is a student of all of my lessons. He got his first fruit carving video lesson from me a little over a year ago. He has clearly been practicing and his work gets better and better. Here are some of his photos his watermelon carvings.

Watermelon Cake Fruit Carvings

In these first 2 photos you can see that Mariano took the concepts I teach in my Watermelon Cakes video lessons and ran with them adding his own style. Beautiful aren’t they! continue reading…

Jana Phung carves one of her first watermelon roses

Have you ever wanted to carve watermelon roses?

To a newcomer, fruit carving can seem daunting. Especially when you see lots of photos of carvings by experts and pros.

Carving watermelon roses can be easier than it looks when you get good instructions.

Today, I’ll be showing you watermelons carved with roses by students . In many cases these are their first or second attempts at carving the rose design. Some have carved their rose patterns into watermelons and some have carved cantaloupe, honeydew and other melons. All of these students have learned to carve watermelon roses from my video lessons.

You can see from the first continue reading…

Looking for Pretty Food Ideas for Valentines Day? Some of these are beautiful, one is wacky, one is not so successful. My heart just melted. But I’ll show you how yours will be successful.

For starters, how about bacon roses? That’s right. You will find fruits and vegetables carvings in the shape of roses all over my website. But, I’ll bet you’ve probably never seen roses made from bacon! I wish I could give credit to someone for this original idea but I got this photo from a fellow fruit carver, Carl Jones, who got it from a friend who got it from who knows where. It’s so fun, I had to share it. Take a look. continue reading…

Sugar Dome Fruit Carving Winner on food Network, John Montgomery at The Carve IV with his 5th Place Winning Piece

Food Network recently aired an episode of Sugar Dome that included fruit carving. The fruit carver on the winning team was John Montgomery. Even though John did a great job and won, he can carve even more beautifully than he did on the Sugar Dome fruit carving competition. I’ve got photos to prove it.

The show gives contestants limited time to carve which creates the necessity to hurry, which results in less beautiful carvings than one is capable of. Let me show you how beautifully John can carve.

I met John a couple of years ago at The Carve III carving competition in Holland Michigan where we competed in the People’s Choice competition. We both attended continue reading…