Old School Bond

My cousin has a little girl about the same age as my firstborn, Miss E.  They were born two weeks apart, with Miss E being the older one.  The two girls spend a lot of their early growing years together as my cousins make effort to meet up every week so they would bond.  Of course, we all grew up as close cousins as well so we unconciously wanted the same thing for our children.

Here's one taken at the Mid-Autumn festival where the two were delighted to see each other after a long break. 

This was made from papers from Pink Paislee's Old School and Butterfly Garden.  The trims are from Prima, including the wire that I twined and twirl.  The cage, large tag and bird are recycled cardboard from 7 Gypsies' shadow box, cut by the Tim Holtz Sizzix Dies.  I just love sparkly and glittery stuff so I had to paint my chipboard bird with pinkish glitter.   That little "old school" strip was from that little extra bit that always comes with the 12x12 paper.  Recycled it into the title as I thought yes, this is really old school kind of bonding!

Girls have all the fun yes?

Fabric Twist Flower

It's been a while since I posted tutorial, so here's one I made with a strip of leftover fabric.  I cut the side seam off the fabric and decided to turn the gorgeous bright strip into a flower that I could use for layout.

It's super easy so you can attempt this with anything that won't break.

 Step 1 : Take a piece of fabric strip or ribbon.  Fold the starting tip into half, lengthwise to start.  Add a dab of glue before starting to twist around. 

Step 2 :  Loosely twist the strip and start to curl it around the centre, adding glue along the sides as you go along.

 Step 3 : Hold the flower centre to ensure that it is flat as you continue to twist and glue round and round to build the circular shape.

Step 4 : End the remainder last bit by gluing and sticking it down to the entire back as a base.

 Viola! The finished flower should look like this.

If you love gems and pearls, you may stick a pearl or bead to use as a centre to curl around.

Have fun! Do show me your flowers if you make some.



Sweet Christmas

Blessed Christmas to one an all.   I attended an awesome service today so well put together by all the people who had one same goal, to worship Jesus.  Today is Jesus' birthday!  I like to think that all the present exchanges are like little goodie bags in celebration of His birth, the day that we receive the greatest gift of all - eternal life.

Here's a quick gift I had put together after being inspired by an MLS card made by Mich.  This is for the office exchange for a colleague of mine who occasionally snacks.  I wanted her to have a sweet year ahead and thought I'd put together something in an upcycled Snapple bottle which had a beautiful S moulded into the glass. S is for sweets, no?

 

I finished it off with a little cardboard tag, my sentiments in white souffle pen and tied together with a cute snowman ribbon from Michael's.  As for those snowflakes, they were vellum paper punched from the Martha Stewart artic snowflake punch. 

I hope she liked it as much as I did.

Dream box 3

This dream box was made for Joyce, BY's colleague who has two lovely daughters.  As I couldn't find any photos in her facebook, I decided I would make it for her to add on the photos on her own.  The main portion came with a little flip open section with insert cards for her to put photos and journal.

Cute and whimsy style, just like Joyce.

To represent her two cute girls.

The main portion came with a little flip open section with insert cards for her to put photos and journal.

Dreams in a Box 2

Here's another shadow box I made for a "love" theme for family. This was made for Cass as a surprise Christmas gift. I wanted to put together a classic romantic feel that was contemporary art-deco without being too heavy on the elements.

A little ribbon slide from Maya Road holds down a simple strip of ribbon into a two fold classic bow.

A Maya Road laser cut flocked trim makes a nice lattice for the heart trellis paper behind.  Little pearls help to bring out the curl accents.

And finished off with a stamp on a transparency, with a large heart shaped glass pebble.

Frosty the snowman

This close to Christmas I had lots of gifts to prepare and tags to make. Here's three really quick and simple tags I made in 2"-3" in size by pulling out some October Afternoon's 8x8" christmas paper from this and last year's range.

Tag One
This simple 3"x3" tag was made with a little ribbon and paper trim, with stickles glittered over all the snowflakes.  The fussy cuts on the mistletoes decorate the little hand drawn greeting.

Tag Two

This little tag had the snowman stickled in Rock Candy, and the snowflake covered with Zing metallic green embossing.  Again, decorated with hand drawn greeting and the tag slightly distressed.

Tag Three

Tiny tag made 2"x3" with leftovers.  Stickled lime green mistletoe, with a glossy lacqured snowman on distressed paper.

And to show how easy it really is to make these, here's one made by my 5 year old for her teacher.

The Secret Gift Exchange

Our little scrapbook group decided to do a mystery gift exchange this year by picking names and packing a present. We were not to tell anyone and to make a card or tag to accompany it.

This was my card take. On it, there were distress soot stickles and clearing dot embossing and a little lace trim. The tree was made from green cardstock, distressed with green inks, textures by cuttlebug's large script embossing folder, emboss ink and zing pink glitter emboss powder over the raised bit for the snow crusted effect.

Dreams in a box

Christmas is coming and my room is full of scrapbook stuff from the table to the floor and all around.  I've started working on some projects and here is one I'd like to share.

This is made from a Maya Road Trinket Box and filled with Webster Papers.  As I don't have the picture of the recipient, I left a blank space for her to fill in with her favourite photo.

MIA

It's been almost a month since my last post! Sorry that I've been missing in action as I have been really caught up at work and have been shopping online to prepare for my christmas projects!

Here's a card I made last month but did not realise I had not uploaded it.  I love all the fussy cutting on this one and the inside reads "I really envy how you turn back time cos you look nothing but sixteen! Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen!"  (hence all the upstide down numbers )

iAlter iPhone cover

With the passing of Steve Jobs this week, I was surprised to find myself somewhat aggrieved by his passing and yet also inspired by his life.

So I took out my scratched up cover and gave it a once over and started my alterations.

This is the final result, thanks to my love for experiment. Mr Jobs, in tribute to you.

One-Sheet Mini Album Link up!

I was going to post up instructions for the Mini Album that I did for Making Memories, but I did a google and found a tutorial done by Avital  in 2008 and it was a spin version as they used Fabric for cover.  I was quite impressed, so I'm going to do a link up here to  her blog!

Avital's Mini Albums

The difference between hers and mine is that hers has a ribbon while mine has a spine!  If you need me to show you a pix or a sample, let me know, I'll be happy to oblige!

WCMD 2011

My first World Card Making Day was played at Pink Paislee.

Here was my card which I submitted for a #1 Bit of color on Neutral base Challenge and #4 Upcycling Challenge.  I did it in half an hour after being inspired by June.  I have to say, it was fun :)

Can you guess what kind of occasion this card is going to be used for?

Making Memories

Note : This was first featured as Guest Designer Feature on 28 Sept 2011 in Making Memories Blog.

A good friend of mine is getting married very soon and I won't be able to attend his wedding due to work commitment.  I wanted to create a small memento that would be meaningful to him and special to her.  As I love altering items, this is when  I gave a new lease of life to a simple diskette box.  I made a mini album to fit the box, with space in the box to spare for them to keep additional notes or photos.

For this project, I hunted down all the remainder stock of Je T'adore in Singapore and used a total of three 12x12 papers from the Je T'adore paper - Tres Jolie Collage , French Dictionary and Floral Ledger and the brads and accoutrement pack.  Je T'adore is such a gorgeous collection.  The box was covered with French Dictionary trellis pattern paper on the sides,  with Tres Jolie paper in front.  The mini's pages are made from a single sheet of Floral Ledger paper and the covers from Tres Jolie paper.

In any project, a slight alteration can make a big difference in the end results.  I will share a few from this project over here.

1) The box is upcycled from an old diskette box, covered in double sided patterned paper. As the box is transclucent, you can see the pattern inside and the other pattern outside.

  

2) This pair of kissing swallows are from the Je T'adore accoutrement pack. They are originally light pale pink and I covered them in a thin layer of bronze crackle paint.  After the crackle dried, it broke nicely to show the pale pink under the bronze, giving it a bit of the vintage look.

3) Don't be afraid to mix and match. I have here 3 types of roses - a brad, a resin flatback and a paper rose.  See how well they go together?

4) Use words on patterened paper as highlights by boxing them or matting them.  This was from a phrase in the French Dictionary paper.

5) Give dimension to your fussy paper cuttings by painting them with a layer of glitter glue and distressing and curling the edges of the cut.

Hope you enjoyed the tips I shared!

FOLLOW on the right hand side if you want to be notified when the tutorial on how to make the mini album comes up in a few days' time!

Thru Thick & Thin

BY & I have been married for 10 years, so I was trying to sift through my photos for us together.  Thanks to the many computer crashes, we don't have much! So I took one that we took at the start of the year when I got my iphone 4.  The photo had been deliberately made old and retro by an app and I thought it would be perfect for a 10 yr layout.

Combined with my interest in creating "dirty" layout (which had June laughing at me for liking dirty layouts), I did this vintagey, retroey, non fluffy layout.

I'm not a frequent user of rub-ons, but on this one I applied two different types to get the contrasting letters in the same height.  I also managed to get a number of rub-ons on my fingertips... haha!

I like that imperfect look. 

Materials : Papers - DCVW cardstock, K&Co patterned paper; Washi Tape; October Afternoon rub on letters; CatsLifePress stamp; Maya mists; Tattered Angels glimmer screens.

Royal Flower

I made this unusual birthday card for a dear sister friend of mine who is going to celebrate her birthday soon.  As purple is one of her real favourite colors and she requested us not to waste money buying her flowers, the rest of the girls specified for me to make a card with a lil bit of flowers to replace the ones we could not buy with the specific words for the outside of the card.  The card is titled such and has a butterfly because once we are transformed by His grace, like a caterpillar who metamorphasised, we will never be the caterpillar again even if we deserve to be any less. 

Materials : DCVW Card base, Webster Pages Paper, AC thickers, MS Punch, Ranger stickles.

Teacher's Day

In the month of September, Teacher's Day and Children's Day in Singapore has been changed to the first Friday of the month.  Ms E prepared a number of cards for all her teachers and for one special art teacher Joanne we had something different.

My friend KP attended a class and was going to impart some of her learnings to us at one scrapbook session, but as she was caught up in a meeting and could not excuse herself, many of us were left what to do.  Basically, we never got to start the class and never got round to having a lesson.  All of us took our cardboard pieces home and this is how mine turned out to be.

This is my intepretation, sprinkled with what I think teacher Joanne is like. Sweet, electic, different and a little unique.




This is the front of the House.  It's a 3D box, with butterflies soaring away from the house like ideas generating and growing. This "House" holds an electic album of mish mash papers, pockets and sizes. 

 


The mini album inside mirrors a little of the front, and is made in a flip book style



The back of the House is decorated with Ms E's picture and is deliberately finished off with a row of kiddy pearls for that slight childlike finish


To make the album, I added components made by Ms E to personalise the inside with little embellishments, multipocket pages and sparkly stuff.  She was happy and I think teacher Joanne was to.

Materials : Papers - DCVW, K&Co, Kaisercraft, October Afternoon; Embellishments - DCVW, K&Co, Kaisercraft, Making Memories; Ribbon - own; Punches - MS. 

Three cards in August

I did these couple of cards in the month of August, but did not post them until the cards reached the hands of the intended people.  Here are a couple made for a pair of dear sisters whose birthdays fall in August.  The designs were scraplifted from a couple of cards I saw on scrapbook.com and I did my own versioning on them.

Card for Lovely was faux-stitched with sakura souffle pen and embossed with Zing glitter powder.

Similarly, the Card for Fe was also faux-stitched with pen and words written with sakura souffle pen.  This was a little more elaborate with the clouds pre-embossed to give it some texture and the pennants outlined in thin black lines to give it some emphasis.

The month of August also saw the farewell of one of our colleague as he moved to a new appointment.  I made a small card and took a pix before it was filled with words of well wishes written by all my colleagues :) 



A simple cover for a guy



The inside of the card





 Materials : DCVW card base, cardstock and cupcake chipboard embellishment; October Afternoon paper on butterflies; K&Co paper on trims and tag; Stamps from Fiskars, MLS; MS punch.

Mini for Mummy

It's been a long time since my last post as I had been busy and couldn't find time to take photo when it was not raining. Finally I managed to catch some golden sun today after so many days of afternoon rain, so I quickly had this mini album photographed and tonight I get some moments to blog about it.

I had been altering things and making scrap stuff here and there for people and thought I should make something for my mom. So I set about choosing photos (the hardest part as there are so many!) and defining the moments before putting them into this little album. There are never enough pages for books like this, I'd say!

Here are the pictures.  I love this album because, again, it has lots of experimental stuff that I tried and I find that it is like an archive of both memories and progress.  Ms E loves the book because she would take the book and flip almost every night.

I won't show all the pages, but here are some that I would like to show.

 

Materials : Album - Me & My Big Ideas; Papers - Prima Annalee; Stamps - Fiskars, Purple Onion;  Embellishments - Making Memories, K&Co, Joann.com, Tim Holtz, Ribbons, Handmade flowers, Basic Grey, KCK, Glitz Girls.