Whiz

I think all crafters have husbands who think they are genius whizzes. Mine is no exception. With a last minute prompt near noon that we had to attend a family party in the evening, we scooted home with gifts, took our lunch, put my youngest to bed and I was left with the last and most important thing to do before going. Wrap the gifts.

With only an hour or so to spare, I didn't really have much of any time. So I whipped out my OA papers and got to work. So I did manage to wrap up all the gifts, and here's a small sampler of what I managed to capture before we burst out of the house.

In days like this, I laud inventions like glitter gel pen. It saved me from a whole lot of work in an emergency like this!

Till the next lot to wrap. Have you done yours?

New addition

Happily, we were called upon to attend a first month celebration for our new born nephew. Tristan turned a full month old on 2 Dec and we were going to drop by to pass him a gift.

I bought him a pair of cute owl shoes and a spiffy boy sweater from H&M (forgot to take photos) and thought maybe he needs more than that. Made him a box (& forgot to take photos again) and then made him a mini first year milestone album.

I did remember to take a photo of the mini :)

Goodbye school

After the concert, we wanted the girls to have a break before they started new school next year. As 30 Nov was their last day, we arranged for them to give "Thank You tags" to their teachers for all the love they had received throughout the year.

We incorporated the girls' painting into the tags as background and bling them up to be hung as decor.

For BbC's teachers

For Ms E's teacher

All the frills that defines ms E.

And the roses, crystals and blings.

BbC is more eclectic, with a mishmash of bright little things.

and heavy on textures, and shapes and touch.

Thanksgiving

It's the time of the year to keep crafting for thanksgiving and gratitude. And for the kids, it's making thank you cards for teachers.

Today it's bbC's turn to start the process as she will be leaving the current preschool in two weeks time, to change to a new preschool next year.

Here's a sneak of work in progress as I work with her to put together her items.

And what ms E was making last week? It's been completed and filled with her friends notes and addresses, as it is also her final year in preschool before she steps into primary school in 2013.

Myself, I've been crafting as well. A quick thank you card exchange in a course I was attending, & my recipient is a male classmate.

Maybe it's time to think about crafting and thanking someone today too. Start yours :)

Shared Time

The thing with being a working mum is that "me" time can be easily usurped by our kids. In this case, it's my crafting time.

I have been sharing my crafting time with Ms E, as she wants to make a farewell book for her friends and teachers to sign off.

Naturally, kids take a lot longer to craft, especially my 6 going 7 crafter. So here's the sneak peek of Work in Progress.

Kyle Birthday Card by E

Ms E had a good friend in school named Kyle. He had a birthday today and she wanted to make sure he had her address in it as well, as this is their final year in Kindy together.



She pulled out some supplies and declared to me that "Kyle's favorite color is green". After she dictated the stuff she wanted, I helped her trim the Bella Blvd paper and she pasted it down and chose her fonts. Thanks to the generous rak from TinkerB Mich, she had these nice fonts to match her card.


Finally, the card is finished with cute sprinkles and gem dots. Cuteness! ❤

Spending time

The best way to spend time with your children is to do things together.

For my girls, it's simple crafting, playing, baking that they enjoy with me. Baking especially because they get to lick the batter & meringue!

Ms E recently had an eyelid op and had been home alone with me for a couple of days. I did not want to resort to tv, so we crafted together. Taught her how to get inspiration from others creations and here are cards we made together.

I always feel her choices are different from mine even though we selected from the same pile. Do you think so?

Follow your heart

My workplace neighbor, Nalini, applied and received a promotion in another part of our organization. Her real desire is to assist people, and so armed with her degree in Social Assistance, she has gone over to do exactly that.

She had real reluctance to leave us behind since she had more than 8 wonderful years sitting in the same place with many new people. To encourage her, I made this as her farewell gift : follow your heart.

This is meant to be something she could display propped on her desk, when she needs encouragement or misses us. Follow Your Heart was exactly what she is doing, and I am sure she will be more satisfied.

It's all done up in purple because this is her favorite color. ❤

Want a future

The talented DorcasYHJ held a facebook group challenge on her Moments Recorded, asking for entries following the guidelines of 1) 4 patterned papers , 2) 3 brands and this was what I came up with.

I pulled out a piece of paper from my Prima ledger pack and recognised this as something from Pixie Glen (which incidentally I did a project with and I taught a class with it as well). I dug through my scraps bag and pulled out a K&Co, Kaisercraft, October afternoon and Pink Paislee to go with this layout.  I also pulled out my distress inks and mask and did a first cut in an hour in the night.  When I snapped the photo of the first cut, I realised that it did not have enough depth. In the morning, I worked on deepening the masked effects.

I think it quite paid off since I think this turned out to be a really striking layout.  I did not spend a lot of time putting it together but the longest time of inactivity was actually on the titling and journalling.  I spent a good 10-20 minutes staring at the layout! hahahhaa.... I need to work on my titling skill.

Rest

My rainbow sister Lily's birthday falls on the end of September.  Lily loves purple, and I made a purple card for her last year.  But I did not want to make a purple card for her this year so I thought a little about it. 

Our pastor always speaks to us regarding the finished work of Christ, and always reminds us to be in a position of resting in His promises.  Lily too is a christian, so I naturally wanted her to "rest".   Lily is a busy bee and so I thought what better to depict rest than a chair.

I stamped this houndstooth armchair in deep purple and had it embossed , fussy cut and popped on a yellow green background.  It is a little lime in color but I could not get an accurate tinge on the iphone. My cam could not be repaired so I am depending on my 4S until I have decided which camera or whether I need a new camera at all...

I embossed a piece of vellum, stained it lightly with purple chalk pigment, then misted a piece of lace to match.  I was quite pleased with the effect! Then I put in my signature bling by the pearls to finish up the bow, and tiny crystals to "stud" the vellum frame to complete the look.  The happy birthday tag is handwritten on washi tape, on a white cardstock piece.  

Of course, I had to stamp a crown to complete the royalty look!

Gorgeous , ain't it?

Materials : Card base - DCVW, Emboss plate - Cricut, MT washi tape.

Teacher Notes

Here's a quick one on a project done by both girls and myself, with me making one notebook and assisting them on the rest.  Through this project I realised that my "junior cardmaker" Ms E, as she is affectionately known, has her own personal style.  And it is distinctively different from mine.

Here are the notebooks.

 The top two are made by her.  Can you see her style ?  What she has chosen to make and the way she embellished is similar to what she did here.  That was some time early quarter of this year.  The words were added by me and she went "Mum, why did you add them here!".  I wonder where she would have added them, and in what way.

These two, the one on the left was me assisting my younger girl, BbC / Charis.  She loves purple so she picked out the washi tape and basically dictated what she wanted hers to look like.  The one on the right, I made that cos well, we did not have much time left till teacher's day.

So when I put them to photograph I realised that there was two distinct styles featured here.  And well, that made me kinda happy.

Materials : Studuo 112 notebooks, Paper - October Afternoon, DCVW, Tim Holtz Sizzix diecuts, washi tape

National Day Challenge

The thing with using blog app is that sometimes the format doesn't come online as I want it to, or it just doesn't post when the connection doesn't allow.  It does contribute to me being a frustrated blogger, but not a frustrated scrapper. 

Still, having a smart phone is the best, because it allows me to go Pinterest and Facebook... both of which I spend a lot of time on when I am not able to do scrapping.

Here's something I absolutely need to do on desktop,  which is Print Screen.


This collage of 9 layouts is taken off my Facebook where I ran a challenge in the scrapbook group that I teach.  The theme was National Day and a rough sketch was given as a guide.  Mine was fairly close to the sketch so you can look at theirs and see how creatively they have utilised the sketch to come out with a number of configurations :)

For this layout I again utilised my typewriter, which I will introduce one day after I give it a through clean up. Instead of using it to type words or journalling like usual use, I used it to make the background you see on that little scallop ledging that the photos stand on.  It says "I LOVE SINGAPORE" in red, and I typed it on white textured cardstock for that slightly uneven ink feed.  I then punched it out with the MS ledger edge punch and finished the corner to give that rounded look.

I realised I like masking, and used my inks and mask to give some color and depth to my Pink Paislee Nantucket paper (for some reason I love the line sketched flowers design) and finished off the edges with thin pink Washi Tape.

Materials :Pink Paislee - background paper and mask,, Cardstock - Bazill, DCVW, Stamp - doily from MME, Trims and cardstock orchid from Papermarket, washi tape and dewdrops.

Greetings and Farewell

My colleague who speaks a lot, is leaving our department soon. As his birthday also came around, I made this for him so he could have something he can remember, and still use.

It's a 3" bottle cap, filled with bits of goodness, well wishes and love. I also used birds because it's going to be a lot more quieter once he leaves...

Tweet! Tweet!

It was a bird week for me.

This week was my boss' special day & I made a really quick alteration for a keychain birdhouse to gift her. Washi taped the birdhouse with a decorative smaller washi around the bottom border.


The same week, two new tiny birds hatched into my nature surrounded workplace. Seeing them was a great perk to the week as their nest was located just outside our dining hall at my workplace.  The cute birdies have since flown away... never seen them back at the nest since :)

Can you see the tiny pair of eyes?

Birthday doubles

My two besties birthday just passed and since we all know each other, I made a matching but slightly different card for both of them.

I have like 5 assorted boxes of DCVWcard base on standby for those days where I need to make cards in a jiffy. These are really handy and I pulled these two from the Josephine collection.

My two besties birthday came around again and we had a great celebration at a Jap restaurant, all 7 of us. I had the privilege of making their cards again this year & I decided to make it alike but different. Like them.

Here I used Japanese fabric tape and washi tape for the cards. Coupled with paper trims, Webster cardstock alphabets and of course topped with my favorite stickles and gems.


I used some faber castell watercolor pencils on the cupcake but coloring is unusual for me. I think if I want to continue doing so, I'd need to buy better color pencils.

House Warm



Whistle Bird Key Chain roosting to warm the little hook up house.



Yesterday I went to attend a housewarming of an ex-colleague, Bee Yee (or Bee which was her nick), who had been my mentor when I first joined my current organisation.  Of course, my entire department had been invited as well.  I didn't want to give her a standard goodwill red packet although that money would have been useful (since when money wasnt'?). 

Anyway, so I connived with my nice boss Pei Ling and my lovely neighbor Nalini  to get Bee a gift.  Something that I think she would enjoy more than a little red packet, or a fake crystal fruit punch bowl with a ladle and 9 matching cups (Yes, that was the de facto house warming gift in the 80s~!).  Bee in my memory loved to snack.  And more than snacking, she loved Jelly Belly jelly beans.

 

I made a super quick trip on Friday evening to the nearest Cocoa Trees and snapped up a 50 flavour variety box, a mini dispenser and 3 pocket dispenser worth of beans.  Three pocket dispenser because I figured one for her pocket, one in her bag and one in the office drawer in case she left home without it hahaha...



Typewritten : For all the colorful moments in your life (just like jellybean!)

I made a bee clear embossed tag, stained it with rainbow colors and typed the message on my Hanima Regal typewriter. Happy colors yes?


.Since it was shared by 3 persons, I made 3 mini card tags to paste each of the 3 pocket dispenser. Within each tag was a best wish from each of us. 



  



 The message is hidden within. 

As for that bird house on top? That was the first thing I gave her when I stepped in.  I altered it with Tim Holtz tissue tape, and covered it with a thin layer of protective matt medium.  It's cuteness isn't it? :)









Tag! you're it!

When you're desperate to craft and need to attend a party, what do you do?  You make tags.

I haven't crafted with ms E for quite some time so here's one we both did together.  Simple emboss stamping, and inking over with sponge and distress ink. Plus one stamped and fussy cut flower, we were good to go for a party!

Little Black Mini

We're talking about the paper kind :)



BbC and the Little Black Mini



July has been an unexpectedly busy month because my Indonesian live-in helper ran away.  She received some news that her son was sick and decided to run away to the embassy, leaving bbC at school.  I did manage to get her an airticket home, amidst a lot of tears and apologies from her and she texted me goodbye when she left. This hapless employer (me) zealously took over work and household, fell sick and then before I could recover, my BbC also fell sick! BbC, who was closest to my helper, fell ill  cos

• helper gone.
• abandoned in school 
• had to shift to a totally new full day school 

because of change of arrangements and fell very ill.  So me, while being sick, still took over the household, took some childcare leave to stay home and nurse her to recovery during these 3 days.  Thankfully I have a very understanding employer...

Anyway, so I was arranging my desktop when I spotted the above photo and realised I never got round to blogging this mini.  It was one of those "I thought I already did but hey I didn't" slip up.  I did this for an album swap I organised in April.  It was for a scrapbooker who was also a fantastic tattoo artist and a biker chick.  Chic too.  So I made this for her since she now has a new cool baby.  I used a lot of black cardstock and white acrylic paint stamping as I was inspired by the black white ensemble I always saw her son wearing.  Here's all the tim holtz, spritzed up by Washi tape color, and some distress ink edged stamping pop up.

and here is one sample page.  For some reason I didn't take photos of the entire album and I didn't prop it up to take like usual. So pardon the weird background as the lighting was good for the black album.

I see you noticed the stitching!   Yes every page was stitched, and the album was stitched together as well.  I thought it would form a nice part of the accent and help to delineate the space .  Each page also had a little tab that was stuck on a repositinable washi tape so it could be attached to any note or photo or just moved around.  I especially love those little date washi that I stuck around so milestones could be recorded.  I had a page for mom, one for dad and many pages for the amazing everyday.

p/s : those cute semi colon are from catslifepress ... I had been eyeing them for the longest time.. cute!

Walk a mile

In the month of Independance day, we think of red, white and blue.  Although I'm here in Singapore I don't celebrate USA's independance day, but I do love those color combi.  I find myself crafting a lot more with these colors in the month of July, probably because they look so uplifting.  Which then brings to mind this little alteration I did for ms E's shoes.  As you can see... she peeled them when she was super bored waiting for us in Children Church one day.  So... they were GHASTLY.. gross.... I had to save them quick so I made a bow, stuck on a rosettte and hey they are now good to go 

 ♥