Hot The Secret Yumiverse Posts
How To: Normally Trashed Items That Are Actually Garden Gold
If you've got a knack for gardening and an inclination for recycling, then you need to know about these six garden hacks. Some of the trash inside your bathroom and kitchen is actually garden gold, so get your recycling hats on.
How To: Your DIY Bug Repellent Guide to Common Household Pests
Contrary to popular belief, eliminating household pests from your home can be accomplished without completely bombing your living space with a mess of toxic fumes. Whether you have annoying fruit flies in the kitchen, fleas on your beloved pet or silverfish lurking around your bathroom, it is very likely that a DIY, non-toxic and super inexpensive solution exists for your household bug problem.
How To: 6 Easy Recipes for Removing Nasty Stains
What do you do when you accidentally stain your favorite article of clothing with coffee, red wine, or pasta sauce? If you aren't within immediate reach of laundry detergent or commercial stain removers, you can use many common household staples such as baking soda and white vinegar to remove the offending stains right away—sometimes even better than their commercial counterparts.
How To: 7 Unexpected Uses for Epsom Salt
If you've never had a reason to keep some Epsom salt in your home, I'm about to give you seven good ones, some that will surely surprise you.
How To: 9 Common Household Items for Relieving a Sunburn
Too much partying and lounging under the mid-day sun? If your attempt at a toasty caramel tan has instead resulted in a bright red sunburn, you fortunately have many common household items at your disposal to relieve the discomfort and speed up the recovery of your burnt skin.
How To: 7 Extraordinary Uses for Aluminum Foil
It turns out that the silver crinkly material traditionally used for wrapping leftovers and making funny hats to block out messages from extraterrestrial beings is pretty darn useful for a number of other random but handy tasks, such as sharpening your scissors and keeping bugs away from your vegetable garden. What can aluminum foil not do? Seriously.
News: Welcome To Secret Tips from the Yumiverse!
To see all my previous posts, click here! I generally post new Yumi-guides on Wednesdays and Fridays, so stay tuned in!
How To: 9 DIY Home Remedies for Relieving Itchy Mosquito Bites
There are few things peskier in the summer than an unexpected mosquito bite swelling up on your arms and legs. Fortunately, there are many ways to heal your body of its annoying itch, ranging from fruit (lemon slices and banana peels) to common household items (baking soda and apple cider vinegar).
How To: 5 DIY Mosquito Repellent Secrets
Want to avoid getting your blood sucked by annoying little insects without breathing in toxic bug spray? Below are 5 DIY ways to create mosquito repellents with 100 percent all natural ingredients to avoid that annoying summertime itch.
How To: 4 Nifty DIY Toolbox Tricks
Rusty screw that won't go loose? Tiny nails fallen behind work bench? Get acquainted with nifty DIY toolbox tricks to make your home maintenance projects as smooth-sailing as possible when you are dealing with nails, nuts and bolts, and other possibly sharp metal objects.
How To: 5 DIY Ways To Deodorize Stinky Things
Something in your life getting a little stinky? No worries--it happens to the best of us. Whether it is your musty bedroom, stuffy car or four-legged friend, unpleasant odors have a way of infiltrating our daily lives. Below are 5 DIY ways to deodorize bad smells no matter where they are coming from.
How To: Avoid the Negative Energy of Other People
Nothing like one bad apple in human form to put a damper on the rest of your day. Thankfully, you have the power to implement a number of strategies to keep the Negative Nancys and Debbie Downers of the world from completely ruining your good mood and high spirits.
How To: Change Negative Thoughts into Positive Ones
When we are dealing with something as abstract as your thought process, visualization is the best way to improve the way you think your thoughts. So what is the easiest way to change your negative thoughts? Literally imagine flipping them around to its optimistic counterpart. It also helps to imagine them as little monsters, too.
How To: Do a Very Basic Ikebana Flower Arrangement
Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, dates back to over 500 years ago and is still practiced as a highly respected cultural art form in modern-day Japan.
How To: Roll Your Own Sushi
The next time you are craving sushi, how about making it yourself? All you need is some sushi rice (you CAN use leftover white rice, but this would taste better), sheets of nori (seaweed), a sushi rolling mat and your favorite sushi ingredients. Do the classic California roll (avocado, imitation crab meat, cucumber, daikon radish) or go crazy with your own unique sushi invention (tempeh? smoked salmon? shredded kale? Anything goes).
News: We Are All a Little Weird, Life's a Little Weird
Wow, Yumi's artwork in tattoo form! That's one dedicated fan.
Contest Entry: No-Knead Bread
Jim Lahey's no-knead bread is my favorite easy bread recipe. I've written an article about it, with a slight adaptation of Lahey's recipe here. I'd love to see the instructions drawn out Yumi-style!
How To: Make Your Own Homemade Tea
The next time you are in the mood for a hot drink, make your own tea bags to brew at home. Grab your favorite herbs and spices from your garden or your local supermarket. Mix and match your favorite combination, add to an empty tea bag, and steep in hot water. Voilà—instant one-of-a-kind tea and instant brownie points for your DIY street cred.
How To: Feel Awake in the Mornings (Without Caffeine)
For a quick pick-me-up in the morning, a hot cup of coffee is usually enough to wake up even the most groggy of risers—but feeling fully awake in the morning is possible without a single drop of caffeine.
How To: 7 Random Uses for Used Tea Bags
The next time you brew yourself a nice cup of hot tea, don't throw the tea bag away. Old tea bags can be used in many ways ranging from household cleanup to DIY beauty and even gardening.
CONTEST WINNER: How to Peel an Orange in Just One Piece
Thank you to everybody who submitted entries to last week's Secret Tips Of The Yumiverse: DIY Contest!
News: How about...
My idea for a Yumi-fied how-to guide is this: Learn to juggle. I thought for the longest time that I couldn't juggle because of some personal deficiency. That, somehow, a connection between the two halves of my brain and my hands could not be formed and I would never be able to do it. I had watched people do it, I had even bought sets of special juggling balls (regular balls sold in a nice box) but nothing seemed to work. It seemed as though the ability to juggle was a gift possessed by some,...
DIY Contest Entry: Putting Pennies to Good Use
It'd be nice to see what a penny will buy these days. Maybe you could draw something showcasing the many uses still available today for a penny (if any). With gas prices rising, it'd be nice to know you can still get something out of one cent.
News: stuff to do with mouthwash
Yumi, who knew mouthwash was so useful?! I certainly didn't!
Contest entry: rice cooker chicken!
This is one of the very first recipes my mom gave me when I moved out. Being Chinese, she didn't bother giving me a written recipe. It's pretty simple, and an excellent way to use your rice cooker:
Home Remedies for Dogs: Treating Fleas, Bad Breath, & Skunk Smell
They don't refer to them as "man's best friend" for nothing. Your dog can be your best pal and least judgmental confidante, so make sure you take good care of him or her! When the occasion arises (which is hopefully never), follow the three home remedies below for treatment of fleas, bad breath, and skunk smell—you may even save a few pennies in the process.
Contest Idea: How to peel an orange in one piece
Over years of almost-daily orange eating, I have developed a 90% effective workflow for removing the peel from an orange in one piece. While this might not seem important, people who see me do it generally ask about it, so I thought it would be cool if you would illustrate the process for the world. Having a nice hand-drawn set of instructions to frame on my wall would save me time explaining it to people as well.
News: Contest idea for how to draw hands
I'd love to see a YUMI guide for how to draw hands (No matter what I try, my hands always seem to come out looking like fat sausage balloons, way too large for the body they're supposed to be attached to).
How To: 5 Clever Uses for Toothpaste (No Teeth Involved)
Almost every human being on the planet uses toothpaste daily, but typically for just one task—oral hygiene. Keeping your teeth clean is undoubtedly important, but this magical mixture of abrasives, fluoride, and detergents must be useful for more than just scrubbing your chops, right? For instance, it's great at removing scuff marks from shoes!
Yumi Sakugawa :: Illustrator, Artist, Visual Storyteller
yumi sakugawa :: illustrations + comics.
News: Secret Tips From The Yumiverse DIY CONTEST Details (NOW CLOSED)
ENTER: Write the Yumi-awesome-est How-To. WIN: Yumi's original artwork!
How To: The Secret to Keeping Cake Fresh
You just baked a yummy cake, but who can eat it all? If you're lucky, you don't have a gang of family members gobbling up your leftovers—it's just you and one delicious slice a day for the rest of the week. But you don't want your cake getting stale on you. The secret is all in the way you slice it—and a spare apple doesn't hurt, either.
How To: Yumi's Guide to Easter Egg Blowing
Get crafty this Easter weekend with egg blowing, a technique where you poke holes on the ends of raw eggs and blow out all the yolk so that you can use the empty, still-intact eggshells for painting and decorating. Fun for the whole family and all that huffing and puffing just may distract you long enough from over-binging on the giant chocolate bunny and that package of sugary Peeps. Happy Easter!
How To: 5 Simple Ways to Cure Stinky Breath
For general purposes, and in case of unexpected make-out sessions with that person you've been crushing on forever, it always helps to make sure that breath of yours is minty fresh as often as possible. And no, you don't need be yakking on breath mints 24/7 or swigging a bottle of mouthwash hidden under a paper bag. Below are 5 super easy DIY tips and tricks for curing bad breath and keeping it fresh.
How To: 9 Eat-Me Flowers for Haute Cuisine
Flowers can be just as delicious as they are beautiful—as long as you know which flowers to choose and what to use them for. Nasturtium salads, rose jam, chrysanthemum-sprinkled cakes—the possibilities are as endless as the shapes and colors the flowers come in.
How To: 10 Extraordinary Uses for the Ordinary Lemon
Seriously, what can a lemon not do? Other than being your go-to fruit for making lemonade, this versatile citrus can do some household cleanup, deodorize bad smells, alleviate sunburns, and much, much more. Read on and you will never look at a lemon the same way again.
How To: Reduce Your Pain Body
Your "pain body" is a parasitic energy entity that feeds on your negative energy. (From the Intent Blog.)
News: A Meditation for Drinking Tea
Slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future...