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…

Aneta Lekas carving fruit at the Riu Mambo in the Dominican Republic

How does a medical office assistant end up with a vegetable and fruit carving business, get a chance to showcase her skills at a famous Riu hotel in the Dominican Republic and possibly on a television show? 

This inspiring story is about one of my vegetable and fruit carving students/customers, Aneta Lekas. If you follow my blog, you may recall that I featured Aneta’s vegetable and fruit arrangements  in a previous post. I recently received more beautiful photos of her latest vegetable and fruit carvings, plus some exciting news that I wanted to share with you. I think you will find her story truly uplifting. continue reading…

I have many customer/students who have fruit decoration businesses offering their fruit platter arrangements. Aneta Lakas is one of them.

A couple of days ago, Aneta sent me an email with some of her photos.

Aneta Lekas

Here is what she said in her email:

Hi Nita,
Thank you for your lessons. I have been carving for some time now. However, since I got your lessons I get more ideas and it is easier to carve when you learn some techniques. It is more fun now.
Here are some of my carvings after your lessons.

Aneta Lekas
Melon Carving and Fruit Platter Arrangements
www.fruitplattercansayit.blogspot.com “

Aneta, I am so glad to hear that you are having more fun making your fruit platter arrangements, now!

You can see the fun that Aneta has been having in these photos of her fruit platter arrangements. 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…

The first time that I carved flowers from vegetables was just before Thanksgiving. I assembled this bouquet and brought it to my mother-in-law’s home where about 25 of us were gathering for Thanksgiving dinner.

My first vegetable bouquet - used at Thanksgiving

I was excited to bring them to use as a centerpiece but Wow, I never expected such an enthusiastic response. I got so many compliments even from the men who usually don’t care about this sort of thing. The children were enchanted, too. One Uncle kept insisting that I should be on the Rachael Ray show.

If you look close, you can see that these are not the most perfect flowers ever carved. After all, it was my first time carving. But if I can do it and get all those ooohs and aahhhhs, so can you. continue reading…