Giraffe and Rainbows

Another thank-you card. Giraffe template obtained from an old stained-glass paint template set… cut out from yellow card and spots coloured with felt-tip pen. Rainbow created from strips of differently coloured and textured papers, lined up in order. Sentiment was handwritten, although there was a bit of smudging… whoops. >.< All in all just a cute card. :)

Be fabulous: Drink coffee!

Birthday card for my bestie, who is a coffee (read: Starbucks) fanatic. >.< The flower used for the outside of the card is a cut-out, using the same technique as cut-out snowflakes (Google is really useful here), except I rounded the outside edges instead of making it pointy. To fill up the empty space, I glued rows of fuchsia sequins extending from the tip of each petal - one of my new favourite ways of jazzing up cards.

The 'be fabulous' sentiment is a rub-on that I bought a few years ago in a specialist crafts shop in Singapore (on sale!!). I put it on white cardstock, and completed the sentiment with 'and drink coffee', which was handwritten on a thin strip of kraft paper with black Aqualip pen.

The little coffee cup (ADORABLEEEE) was hand-drawn and cut out of white cardstock, outlined in black Aqualip and coloured in with red Gelly Roll pen. Loose glitter was then glued onto the heart.

The big paper cup inside was again, cut out of white cardstock, the cover from shimmery red paper, while the cardboard holder is an actual Starbucks cup holder I'd saved and decorated with flower punch-outs. I added a little pocket made from patterned tissue paper and cut a mug-shaped card slipped inside with my message. 

Thanks!

Small thank-you cards for a some people I felt indebted to. The banner idea was taken from a cardmaking video (www.kwernerdesign.com) I watched sometime back, a lovely way to add dimension to a card without too much fuss.

The Union Jack card has some mistakes on the flag - I apologise for that! It was created using layers of red and white card on a dark blue base. 

Envelope-book

Envelope-book made for a friend’s birthday. Instructions for envelope-books are very easily found online - this was one created using cloth tape for the spine binding. The front cover design is my own - hand-drawn, outlined and coloured in with glitter glue. :) The quote on the spine is ‘Stretch your mind beyond fantastic, Dreams are made of strong elastic’ (Mary Poppins!)

You're My Anchor

Father’s Day card. My anchor, indeed. :)

Wave pattern painstakingly created using the very tips of a small circle punch to chomp off crescent-shaped pieces off the edge of bright blue cardstock - and a lot of patience. 

Anchor traced onto tracing paper, then outlined with black Aqualip and filled in with glitter glue (which totally warped the paper, but this was solved by waiting for the glue to dry, then flattening it between the pages of a book.)

The little dots are just turquoise dimensional paint. :) 

You're a Winner: Hole in One

Birthday card for my golfer dad. Had quite a bit of trouble with the pulling mechanism… very amateurish work I’m afraid. The cardstock layering used to create the landscape was very difficult to deal with too.

But oh well. He loved it. :)

The golf ball was a large, shimmery white brad dotted with black permanent marker for a dimensional look. All other details, apart from the 'Winner' rub-on, were hand cut/drawn and pasted on. 

Cherry Blossoms New Year

Chinese New Year card made for my darling Grandma who had never received post in her life. :) I was told she was very, very happy. 

Paper cut-out on red cardstock, using a brush design from a downloadable brush-set from DeviantArt… unfortunately I can no longer find the owner of those brush designs to credit her. Screwed up the cut-out a little, but it wasn’t too noticeable. Later outlined in black Aqualip (I told you I loved this pen) and then some cherry blossom details drawn in by hand and coloured using GellyRoll.

Pusheen: Eat Everything!

A little Pusheen hand-made notebook (character does not belong to me!!!!) made for a friend’s birthday gift. It is a near-replication of a GIF of Pusheen. Blue textured card and regular A4 white paper (cut down to size) used. All the details were cut out of different-coloured paper and coloured in/decorated where necessary.

Paper Wreath

Poor student me discovered last year that I could make a Christmas wreath for my dorm door with minimal and very cheap supplies - mainly, an Amazon delivery cardboard box, old issues of my university newspaper, and some tissue paper.

This project was inspired by another blog I found while searching for paper wreaths on Google. This is the blog - it has instructions on the writer's own method, although I made some modifications to my project.

For one, my base is not round as I didn't have a big enough piece of cardboard for that (it was one of those single-book Amazon cardboard sleeves), so I compensated by cutting one inch wide rectangular strips, and making a rough hexagon (six-sided shape) by laying the pieces at roughly 60 degrees to each other and stapling the ends together. Then I folded my newspaper sheets with an accordion fold and proceeded to cut out a lot of leaf shapes (I didn't count them, I just cut more when I ran out). The good thing about using newspaper was that it was so thin, it was easy to cut a lot without too much difficulty.

However, the thinness of the newspaper meant that the tip folding and twisting had to be done a bit more carefully. I didn't bother with glue, I just stapled the leaves onto the hexagonal frame and arranged them to cover up the base- it turns into a circle eventually if you arrange the leaves properly.

The paper flowers are made using the Martha Stewart pom-poms method - Tissue Paper Pom-Poms - it's ridiculously easy and I use it for many decorations. Here, I made several in apple green tissue paper and nestled them in between the leaves randomly, gluing them in place. Then I punched a hole through the cardboard and threaded yarn through it to hang it up.

Unfortunately this wreath was stolen from outside my door at some point during the year. Perhaps someone crashed into my door and wrecked it and was too afraid to own up? :(

Origami Roses

Bouquet of origami roses made from florist wrapping paper, for Mother's Day a few years back. 

The instructions for the rose can be found HERE.

Takes a bit of practice, but after that it's a breeze. :) 

Flowers and Candles

The birthday cake image is from another stamp I saw a long time ago in a craft book, roughly imitated by hand on plain white paper with a black lineart pen, and coloured in with deep red felt-tips before being cut out.

If you noticed, the front of the card is a layered rectangle of bright pink speckled cardstock attached to another pale pink card on the left side which forms the back of the card. This is a pretty good way to use oddly-sized pieces of leftover cardstock that aren't really big enough to be made a card by themselves. I then layered cream cardstock and bright pink corrugated paper and stiff kraft paper by rotation to create interest, before topping it all off with the cake image. The embellishments are punch-outs of flowers and butterflies.

Hope you liked it! :)

Green Makes Me Happy

I made this several years ago - while pressed for time, really, which kind of explains why I maid an envelope-card (so that I could stuff the gift and note in one place). It was a birthday gift for a friend who adores the colour green - surely you can tell! :P

The envelope is handmade from stiff kraft paper, while the embellishments are mostly cut-outs from various places. The flower is from a patterned wrapping paper, the strip of rainbow colours cut off the description sheet of a pack of colourful construction paper (recycle whenever you can! Pretty things are everywhere), and the rest (the tag, the balloons) cut from scrap cardstock. I used thin silver wire (a very soft and pliable craft variety) and leather strip to put it all together.

The adorable little sheep sticker and the 'happy' sticker is from a sticker set I bought in Singapore - I got a whole bunch (about four big sets of stickers I think) for just a few Singapore dollars - bargains are everywhere you care to look. :)

Finally, I added little dots using emerald dimensional paint for interest.

Hope you enjoyed the card!

Craft Shopping

 Look at my beautiful new collection of cardmaking stuff!!!! <3 <3 <3

So. Popular's Bookfest was on again, and how could I not go?? What I certainly didn't expect was the huge crafts section Popular's own brand, Pop Basic, had set up in the exhibition hall... with everything dirt-cheap. 

 The embellishments on the left - felt flowers, an array of green sequins and a set of four ribbons - were three for RM 8. Like seriously. The original prices were about 6 bucks each. There was a lot to choose from, but most of the combination packs had stuff I didn't like so I decided not to buy them even though several bits of them were amazing.

The stickers on the right, a baby set and an animal set were RM 4.90 each with 30% rebate. Awesomeness. I can't wait for someone to have a baby now just so I have an excuse to use them. :D

STAMPS. RM 20 for both sets - an absolute bargain. I also bought the three pigment ink stacks for less than RM 10. The brand is Pretty Colour - sounds pretty dubious so I'm not sure how good the quality is... but they'll do for now. I'll tell you guys how they work out once I get around to using them.

The stamp set on the left is beautiful though, a family/home themed self-cling rubber stamp set. I regret buying the one on the right cause I don't really like it after all - it's all solid blocks and definitely don't stamp as pretty as the images on their blocks suggest. Oh well... I'll figure out some way to use it.

There were a load of stickers at the sale, but most of them weren't big enough to be useful for cardmaking so I skipped them altogether and went straight for the alphabet stickers - 3 for RM 10 if I remember correctly~

They're foam. I haven't tested their adhesive strength yet, but they look pretty good quality and I hope they'll be perfect to use. There were a range of glittery ones, too, but the flaking glitter bits in their packaging put me off them - I make enough messes while crafting without having glitter coating my fingers and work table.

Anyway, the black foam alphabets will be really versatile. I chose two different font types, in case you can't see clearly from the picture - you can draw on them with colour pens (I will definitely try my Gelly Roll and Signo pens on them!) and they'll work on almost any background.

I thought the bright green ones were a good contrast colour if I ever want to mix and match the stickers so I picked them. :D

I haven't bought corrugated card in some time... I've really exhausted my last pack which consisted of deeper, richer colours.

The colours in this pack are lighter and brighter. I'm not really sure how that'll work out with my cards, but I guess we'll see!! Really can't wait to start using this stash!

And, before I forget, look at my new stash of books!!! :D So excited to be reading again~ I've finished Graceling and Girl in Translation already - READ THEM. Graceling had a rather unsatisfying ending, but the concept of the story is highly interesting. It had a lot more potential though, that was left unexplored. 

Girl in Translation... you've just got to read it. 

Well, that's it for now! I will be putting up more card posts very soon!!! <3

Thank you for the Awesome Experience

Hey guys!

I'm still compiling the improvised tools photos, so I guess I'll start off with one of the cards I made some time back (not the first ever card I made, but rather the earliest of the ones I started documenting).

Simple thank you card (I say 'simple', but it probably took me a few hours just to decide what I wanted to do. Too much of a nitpicky perfectionist) made from apple green cardstock and christmas-tree patterned tissue paper. 

The words are handwritten in black Aqualip pen, save for the 'Awesome!' which is from a pack of rub-ons I bought during a craft shop sale in Singapore (it was still expensive! But useful.). The card front is decorated with flower punch-outs (you can see the punch in the picture), as well as tiny butterfly punch-outs. I finished off the cover with scattered dots of light blue/silver glitter glue (RM4.50 from Kinokuniya, I CAN'T FIND IT ANYMORE TT^TT ) so it glittered very prettily in the light. 

The envelope is handmade from stiff kraft paper (RM1.50 for a big roll from Popular bookstore, I really really love the texture) and decorated to match the card. 

Now that I think about it, I will post a video or a tutorial on how to make those envelopes soon. :)

Craft Space

My good-for-everything space, where I do all my work. I don't have a designated craft space/room ( I would so love it if I did, but then again I don't exactly have that much stuff to need an exclusive system to organise everything) so I keep my stuff in boxes and work wherever it's convenient.

Forgive the mess. It generally happens whenever boxfuls of stationery and me trying to make a card come together. (Okay I'll admit it - I'm just a messy person and too lazy to clean up)

I'll be posting pictures of the improvised tools I used to craft, alongside the commercial equivalents sold in craft stores (which are, sadly, awesome but totally beyond my budget. :( )... and updating all the cards I've made and documented up 'til now!