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!