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. ❤

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.

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? :)









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!

Treasure 2012

Being still in 2012 and starting a Chinese New Year, we went around paying respects to our families on both sides (husband and mine).  While waiting for the other sisters to arrive, hubby took a photo of me with the girls.  It's my first one, if I'm not wrong.  If it's not, it's my favourite.  I decided to put into a layout and remind myself of all the coming milestones they will have and to remember to look out for them.

BbC started her playgroup this week and it was a up/down week for her and us as she attended the 2 hour playgroup daily.  I spent a lot of time with her as I took the whole week off.  Thankful for the week off as ms E also fell ill on Monday afternoon so I was around to nurse her.  Now both are recovering and I am sleepy... back to work next week.

Still, have a Happy Chinese New Year all! It's still within the 15 days ! :)

Materials : Paper - DCVW, Bazill kraft, MME kraft; Flowers - Prima & K&Co; Leaves - Prima; Alphabet Thickers; Maya stamp, pin, button ; Pink Paislee mask; buttons

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.

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.

Memories in a book

I did this as I wanted to gift something to my wonderful sister-in-law Caroline and also partly as a challenge to myself to produce a mini that would be both experimental in the use of materials and mediums. Made 99% from Kaisercraft's range of products, I did this over a few nights and was very happy with the end results.  Do let me know what you think.





Made in the style of travel tabs and journal books.





Paints, blending, stamping, stickles, dimensional paints, handrawing, punching





Painted edges, punched decorative edges, hand-drawn and glitterised rainbow





Flap and folder page.





Hidden pockets all open.





 Photo layering of colored on black/white, finished with clear crackle paint, burnished with Dimensional paint on the edges, and rubbed with rock candy stickles, and popped with pop dots. I wanted the make the photo have a magical feel that Disney always wanted to give.




 Stamping with crackle paint.


 
How it looks, upright. Tabs and all.

Made by love

I always wanted to do "just one more" for the two girls. When I saw how this photo turn out, I could not help but feel that they were made by love. Of course, love that the papa mama had for each other. And with that love, we produced them.

With this layout, I was inspired the moment I saw the Kaisercraft Le Chateau papers. It was also no coincidence that I fell in love with the stamps and felt that there were so much possibilties in the birdcage and chandeliers (though one sang of day, the other made you think of nightfall). I did stamping, misting, layering and basically made it all my own.

It's so clear!

Because today is Good Friday, I thought it'd be nice to post something good. This is my very first step-by-step tutorial and I thought I'd share it with you on Good Friday.

How to use your favourite stamps to make transparency/ print screens/ whatchumaecallits for your projects or to match your paper. aka DIY transparency.

First you prepare the tools you need. Here I have a transparency cut to the size I want (5"x7"), a bottle of Ranger's Alcohol inks, Staz On bronze metallic ink pad, and Kaisercraft's La Chateau stamps on a couple of clean paper. READY?

Next, drip a few drops of alcohol inks on the "top" and "bottom" of the transparency.

After that, you can either soften it by spritzing with rubbing alcohol, daubing, or like me, I mix the ink drops and rubbing alcohol in a mister to spritz.

This is how it should look like after daubing or spritzing. If you want the color to be intense, wait for it to dry. If not, you can flip it facing down to do stamping on the other side.

Take the stamp of your choice, and stamp on the top part to create a pattern. You need not reink, but to stamp continuous so that some are bright some are faded. And repeat the same for the bottom.

And when you're done, tada! It should look like this.

Have fun stamping!

See the Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

Today I really felt like going for a long holiday. Maybe because I had been looking at my ever evolving list of To-do at work, so images of the sea/ shade of ruffling palms, and the smell of salt drifted into mind. Need not be too far away but just some quiet time with the girls at the sea would be good.

So I dug out this layout I did a couple of months back that I nearly threw away when I thought it was too complicated.

Well, I am glad I did not. Or rather, glad that June asked me not to.

Misting, stamping with the mask, sewing, paper tearing, staining, ruffling; I think I tried it all on this layout.

I did machine stitching on the alphas so they would stay down. I also corner punched the E so it would be rounded like the rest of the layout. Torn paper strip below the flags to perk it up, like it was flying and fluttering, and to give it a rough flagpole look.