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…

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 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…

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…

In today’s blog post, I am going to show you how using my new transfer pattern paper makes carving designs into melons and pumpkins SOOOO much easier. In my last blog post, I showed you a couple of celebrity portraits I carved in watermelon. I mentioned the transfer pattern paper as being super helpful.

Not only does this transfer pattern paper let you get to the fun part – carving – faster, it gives you a more clear and detailed pattern to follow. You will see what  mean when you take a look at this short video. continue reading…

Why limit watermelon hats to just people?

Well, people will do all sorts of things with carved watermelons. Even wear them!

January 15th is National Hat Day. In honor of that, take a look at these hats made of carved watermelons.

Watermelon hats are so popular with Saskatchewan Roughrider fans that the grocery stores frequently sell out of watermelons in the day or two preceding the games.

The following video shows the story behind the Saskatchewan Roughrider watermelon hats and how you can make continue reading…

I’m going to show you how you can easily create festive Christmas candy platters from hard mint candies. These platters are perfect for serving sweet treats or for giving with cookies as a gift. You can watch the video or read the print in this article, whichever you prefer. You will see far more photos in the video.

Making Christmas candy platters and bowls from peppermint candy is so simple.

I’ll show you how to continue reading…

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.

Whatever your culture or religion, so many of us are celebrating holidays during December. We’re decorating, gathering with friends and family, giving gifts, preparing meals and entertaining.

Here are a few ideas for festive food garnishes and edible centerpieces during December. Some of these ideas can be used year ’round. continue reading…

Decoration with carved squash and pumpkin are not just for Halloween. There are lots of ways to carve pumpkins and hard squashes that make them perfect for other fall festivities. In this article, I’ll show you how some of my students and readers have used carved pumpkins and other squashes for autumn parties. You might get some great ideas that you can put to use for your upcoming autumn celebrations, including Thanksgiving.

White Pumpkins are Great for Wedding and Baby Shower Decorations

Take a took at how Kay Bullard carved some white pumpkins for a baby shower and with wedding themes. continue reading…

Every year around Halloween, I receive quite a few viral emails from people that have lots photos of Ray Villafane’s amazing pumpkin carvings.

Because so many people are wowed by carvings by Ray, I thought I would share those photos with you in this blog post. They really are quite amazing. Further down this article, I’ll show you how you can learn to carve your own 3D pumpkins, taught by Ray himself. And, I’ll show you the easiest way possible to carve some of Ray Villafane’s pumpkin designs from an easy to follow pumpkin tattoo patterns.

Imaginative Pumpkin Carvings by Ray Villafane

continue reading…

A few days I announced my new Pumpkin Carving Portraits video lessons. So far, they are a  big hit.

Think You Can’t Make a Good Pumpkin Carving Portrait?

Some people may look at the pumpkin carving portraits and think,

“Oh, this is too hard. I could never do it.”

You might think,

“Sure, Nita can do it but she is an experienced carver and I’m not.”

If you have an interest in making pumpkin portraits, you CAN do it. If you can trace or follow the dots, you can carve these types of pumpkin portraits.

Take a look at the portrait a first time carver made after learning from my lessons.

continue reading…

Have you ever heard of making music with vegetables? It gives a whole new meaning to “playing with your food”.

You might have if you saw my blog article about vegetable instruments that I posted a while back.

Well now, I just heard about a vegetable orchestra in Vienna. It was brought to my attention by one of my customer / students, Sheetal Patel. It’s another creative way to carve vegetables, another form of food art.

This is not your typical orchestra. Each performance is different because their instruments are different each time. It depends on what vegetables and fruits they find in the marketplace on the day of their performance. They drum, flap, toot, scrape, crinkle and even make string instruments from vegetables. continue reading…

It’s been a crazy busy week!

One of the highlights is that two days ago I made my first live TV appearance. San Diego Living asked me to come and do a segment on fruit decorating. On Monday, July 3rd i spoke to the segment producer and the very next day, I was on TV.  Since it was July 3rd, I showed a couple of red, white and blue 4th of July ideas. I was instructed to keep it very simple so that the hostess, Kristen Mosteller could make something along with me in the short time of the segment. continue reading…

Do you love Chocolate Covered Strawberries? They are super easy to make.

Decorated Chocolate Covered Strawberries in Floral Arrangement

Here are several short videos in this article that will show you  exactly how to make chocolate covered strawberries. You’ll also see how you can easily decorate them and how you can use them in pretty and delicious chocolate covered strawberry fruit arrangements. And if you have leftover chocolate, you can easily and quickly make some chocolate bark candy and other chocolate covered goodies, too.

You may find these yummy fruit arrangements ideas useful for  any upcoming potluck, or party. Chocolate Covered Strawberries arranged into bouquets make welcome hostess gifts, too. For an anniversary or birthday, you could make one strawberry for each continue reading…

Valentines day will be here soon and so I want to share with you some ideas for Valentines Day.

Beet salad with goat cheese with sliced beets cut into the shape of hearts for Valentines Day

In past blog posts, I’ve shown a ideas for Valentines Day that you can use to dress up your Valentines Day dinner. You can make roses carved from root vegetable like beets, turnips, daikon or golden beets. You can dress up your table with pretty napkins folded into heart shapes. You can make delicious fresh roasted beet salad. Or, you can take a shortcut by making a your salad with canned sliced beets cut into the shapes of hearts. Another idea for valentines Day – you can make quick tomato roses to garnish your plates.

In this article you will find links to recipes, photos and videos that continue reading…

Here is another amazing food art that I stumbled across today. It is Chinese Sugar Painting. I’ had never heard of it before but look how beautiful this is.

Roadside Treat Food Art

Chinese Sugar painting sold as a roadside treat

I’ll bet you have to work quickly to have the sugar at just the right temperature.

I find it interesting how an art that requires such skill is sold as a simple roadside treat. continue reading…

Heita with one of his carved vegetable musical instruments

Playable Carved Vegetable Musical Instruments! No Kidding!

This morning, I came across these videos of a fellow playing vegetable musical instruments or various types. It’s amazing. I’ve carved lots of vegetables but this is the first time I’ve seen vegetables carved into playable musical instruments.

This first video will show you several instruments made from vegetables. The next 3 videos will show you how to make your own vegetable musical instruments as well as an ocarina from an egg. I like the egg ocarina because it has a nice clear sound. Following the egg demonstration there are 2 videos showing  two ways to make musical instruments from carrots. continue reading…

Here is a quick and easy way to make really impressive and beautiful red chili flower.

Actually, I’m going to show you 2 styles of carved chili pepper flowers. You can see how I used red chili pepper flowers in a vegetable bouquet centerpiece that I made for Thanksgiving.

The red jalapeno peppers are a good choice for this chili flower garnish because they curl nicely. You can use the same carving techniques with green jalapenos and yellow peppers but those won’t curl quite the way that red chili peppers do.

Easy Carved Chili Flower Technique
Adds WOW to your food presentation. continue reading…

Flowers carved from diakon using carrot flower carving design – carved by Nita Gill

One of the cool things about learning vegetable carving techniques like the carrot flowers taught in Amazing Carving with Jimmy Zhang is that once you learn to carve carrot flowers, you can also use other vegetables to carve a variety of different looking vegetable flowers. continue reading…