Up cycle

I had this kokopelli box which I was keeping for the longest time, waiting for the right opportunity to alter it.

The chance came on Evelyn's birthday, when I bought a "gem" encrusted ribbon necklace for her. I had to make a box to send along the gift and espied the kokopelli box in the corner. With black soft velvet lining, it was perfect!

I pulled out my Japanese fabric tape, lace , pearls and set to work. Happily it came to this. Thanks also to the fabric tape, I managed to transform the loose lid box into a flap cover.

My finishing touches was from Martha Stewart's frame, and the tiny veneer from Studio Calico. Tada!

A red packet of well wishes

Today I attended the wedding of my colleague, good friend, fellow scrapper Kee Ping. Other than giving her the traditional red packet of well wish, I was also to bring her a card made by my junior cardmaker ms E. ms E made this for last month's scrapbook challenge when she heard the prize was a stamp. It motivate her to use her Webster Page to make something that could fit on the cover of my Collage Press red packet. (I attached the photo of her card we submitted for the challenge.)

She won.

And so I had to make sure I showcased her card well. And here is my simple base to her romantic card, specially for Ken and KP.

Have a blessed marriage!

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

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?

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? :)









Daddy Daddy

Through the holidays my girls came together to make a card for Daddy for Father's day. Some painting, piecing together the elements and stamping/ coloring were in order. Here's their cute output made from recycled cardboard and paper scraps.

Get well box

Ms E, or my Junior Cardmaker as nicknamed, decided to make a get-well box for my uncle.

My uncle recently fractured his leg when he braked on an expressway (motor way) trying to avoid colliding into a car that suddenly braked. He is now recuperating and ms E asked about him. When she heard that he was at home still not fully well, she said she would like to make him something as it was boring all alone at home. Here's her first altered project, with some assistance from me, made from a wallet box.

Box is layered with g45 flowers fussy cut by her. As she is turning 6 in may, her handwriting is still not too steady. That's partly why the fussy cutting, meant to improve her fine motor skills.

I also included a little sneak of what in the box as she packed some tasty titbits for granduncle Fred. Hope he gets well soon.

New Year Blooms

I tag this as the last project I did in 2011, and the first I have done in 2012.  I was making the bloom brooches in the night for 4 friends who were different from one another.  The tags to put them on were pieced together on the first morning of 2012.

As you can see, it is a fast and easy way to pull together a gift and make it look more complete than just giving it plain.  I find that putting a little consideration and some feeling will bring you a long way in putting together the final product. 

If you have some great ideas for displaying and giving your gifts, do share your idea with me!

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.

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.

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!

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. 

Time in a bottle

I made this for Diana when she first expressed that she needed some butterflies.  I altered this little jar into a little glam object because it's nice to see beautiful items on your desk even as you scrap.  I filled it up with butterflies I punched from scraps I had after layouts.

I cut the tiny clocks from the kaisercraft paper and put a layer of accent on them to give them a slight gloss effect, and decoupaged one to the top of the jar lid..  I also glammed up the butterfly by using my favourite stickles on them.  Then I twisted a tiny piece of green patterned paper into vines and turned some red into tiny red roses to match the red plummage attached to the time piece.

Materials are all Kaisercraft papers.

Dream and soar

Today is my niece Giselle's birthday and I was reminded of  a photo that I took at baby Charis' first birthday. We had lots of balloons and both Elpis and Giselle took a photo together. I had an empty box that held a mini diary I own, and I could not resist altering it into this.

I did not have any Prima flowers on hand when I made this, so I had to handmake my own roses from the remainder paper. I use some Kaisercraft Timeless paper on this, and used the scraps to make the roses and leaves, punch the butterflies; oh and that little mini clockface in the bottom corner? yes that's from scraps too.



 Close up so you can see it's really from scrap Timeless paper. And yes the twirlies too. I had to Helmar 450 everything down. My best friend!

materials : Kaisercraft paper and stamps, Tim holtz tickets, washi masking tape, ribbon, transparency.

Happy Birthday Girl!

Elpis birthday is on 12 May and this year I made her this fun project doll which was a lot more lasting than the paperdolls she usually made (the hands would fall off and be torn!). This one's made from chipboard wood from the Kaisercraft collection and we painted it and all. I didn't use the diecut hair supplied as I wanted more fluidity and movement, so we use the plummage from one of the hair rubberbands and I trimmed and glued it to this doll. She said it reminds her of me...

Happy thoughts!

It's been a while since my last post and I'm feeling happy today. I saw my layout featured on Ed's Sketch! Thank you so much Ed's Sketch, for featuring my layout!

Do give the Sketch a try. I like the challenges.

Meanwhile, here's something fast that I did with Girl's Paperie's charms. I fell in love with the sentiment charms the first time I saw them and had been hoarding them for some special use. One day, I chanced upon an old and ugly bag hang of mine, and viola, BAG HANGS!   I made this for 6 of my rainbow sisters (because there's 7 of us all believing in God's wonderful promises) for Christmas and unexpectedly it won a prize in Scrapoholic's facebook December challenge. 

Here's the photo to share with you. Aren't they just lovely?

Mini Memory Box

Here's a little something I did for a project a couple of weeks back. It's a little altered 3" diskette box left behind by my ex-colleague, who knew I wanted to collect junk for all kinds of purpose - like alteration. So I liked this very much and thought it would sit very well on my cramped work desk and could also contain all the tiny little moments that I laughed about. I made it so I can pull out one like antidote anytime I need to a quick stress relief!

This is how the box with one little sample layout looks like.  I put in one where BbC looked surprised when Ms E "kissed" her with the plastic goose. Look at that expression!

 

Pull down to open up, and flip through the layouts at random!

And a front view of it. I didn't want to alter and cover it like what most scrappers would do, as the best things are not covered but for peeking. It was also to create a peekaboo effect. I fussy cut the MLS papers to trim out two girls that Ms E said best represented the two of them, and trimmed a little fence with my punch to give the whole thing a little depth and dimension (and meadow and flowers and such) . As usual, I touched up everything with a hint of glitter from stickles.

This I think is one of my best projects so far. Enjoy!

Materials : Papers - My Little Shoebox PP, DCVW cardstock; Adhesives - Helmar, Scrapbook adhesive foam square; My Little Shoebox Stamp; Ranger Stickles;Martha Stewart Punch

Last edited to add night shot :