Little Milk Carton Gift Boxes

Ever since I become a legitimate Christian, celebrating Christmas as Jesus being the reason for the season no longer hold any water within the Christian faith. I'm so glad to know there isn't such a stipulated "biblical" day to observe in order to be a Christian because such a "religious day" can be taken way too out of context. 

If you take a deeper look and do some research into the history, you'll be surprised to know it's actually derived from pagan roots and a holiday created by men. And for some, it only serves as the most depressing period of the year. Instead I'd much prefer to celebrate this day as a day of long tradition; a day of family gathering together to know everything from Charles Dickson to Christmas trees, or how St. Nick and Santa Claus came about! And why Santa wears red has an interesting origin. Check this out:

   

While almost everyone was busy shopping for Christmas gifts and decorations, as well as sharing holiday recipes on various social media platforms, it was perhaps one of the years I appeared not doing much about this Christmas. Maybe helping out my youngest sister to gift-wrap all the presents she had bought for her friends and colleagues. As usual, a little busy moment for this holiday season.

Although Christmas has just passed, it doesn't means gifting has to stop here. Rather I'd very much prefer to gift based on the heart to give and not restricted to such occasion(s). Hence, looking at the pile of Graphic 45 St. Nick paper collection lying around my crafting area, I decided to do some gifting using this collection together with the milk carton etched die I just bought from Spellbinders. Not something extravagant, but a little act of gifting makes your heart more fonder to gift. In actual fact, I just want to utilize my existing stash to create something. I just have too much! Guess as a crafter/artist, it always seems it's never enough to stock things up for whatever reasons.  

Therefore, I made these 8 little cute milk carton gifts for some of my friends and sisters-in-Christ from the Church. The 12" x 12" patterns and solids paper pad came in very handy for this project. It's probably one good idea to maximize your patterns and solids papers. 

These cute little milk cartons measured at about 3.75" tall, handy enough to be grabbed single-handedly. Puns aside, these milk cartons are just way too adorable. 

It took me some time to figure out what I should do to embellish these milk cartons. That was where I searched into my wafer dies library and found this Spellbinders Fleur de Elegance die set that has a little regal oval frame I could use. Using the gold metallic sheets I've in my stash, I die-cut 8 of them out. The effects it give on metallic paper is really amazing. It just gives a very special touch to the entire frame! Plus it goes really well with the papers I've selected. 

Each of them are thoughtfully named using the alphas from the stickers sheet along with this paper collection, and named them accordingly to the individuals I'm gifting. Thinking adding a little greens will be nicer, I decided to make some holy using the mini holiday green thinlits and placed them onto the labels. Since they're milk cartons to begin with, a little golden bell in front will perhaps jingle a little when the cartons are being shaken. Everything looked well and good, and I'm ready to gift (with some already been gifted)!

A full list of supplies I used for this project can be found listed below with links to various places I get most of my supplies from. This will be my very last post for this year and I hope to see you guys really soon with more tutorials and videos next year. Meanwhile, have a very good weekend ahead and Happy New Year!!!

List of Supplies:

• Graphic 45 St. Nicholas 12" x 12" Patterns & Solids (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Graphic 45 St. Nicholas Stickers Sheet
• Bazzill Basic Walnut Cream Cardstock (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Tim Holtz Distressed Ink in Brushed Corduroy (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Tim Holtz Mini Holiday Green Thinlits
• Tim Holtz Kraft Stock Metallic 8" x 8" Gold & Silver Cardstock (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Spellbinders Shapeabilities Milk Carton Etched Dies (Amazon, Scrapbook.com, Spellbinders)
• Spellbinders Nestabilities Fleur de Elegance Etched Dies (Amazon, Spellbinders)
• Tiny Golden Jingle Bells
• Own Stash (jute trims, seam bindings, gold trims, vintage binder clips)

A Blessed Thank You Card

I've recently bought some club kits from Spellbinders after viewing some interesting project ideas on Facebook. Without much hesitation, I bought the September club kit that came with this very beautiful large lace dies after getting inspired at that moment. 

As usual, I won't have much of the ideas in what I want to do when the dies finally reached me. And this explains why sometimes I'll be a little slow in using them. Considered that one of our fellow brethren from the U.S. was coming to edifying us via the Gospel meeting last month in November, I decided to volunteer to do up a Thank You card for him to show our appreciation in his earnest effort in serving the LORD. This was where I got to play with the large dies I bought.  

Looking into my stash, I still have these rather old collections (Engrave and Printery) from Prima Marketing that I haven't been using them that much. Hence, I decided to do up a masculine Victorian card that displays mainly scripted texts and damasks, which coincidentally goes really very well with the flourish etched dies I bought together with the September club kit. 

A heartfelt message was printed onto premium paper and was mounted at the back of the card. To give some dimension and sparkles, I finished off the card with some jewels around the diecuts, both front and back of the card.

Though the September club kits are no longer available to purchase at membership pricing, the large die set is still available for purchase here. If you are interested in joining the Spellbinders Club Membership, they are having a 15% off for the 1st month when you sign up. Offer will end this year end (till 31st December 2017). Unfortunately, most of the December club kits are sold out for now, however worry not as very soon they will be launching the January club kits very soon before the end of this year. When the kits are launched for purchase, you will be able to enjoy the discount.

A list of supplies used for this project can be found below. Click onto the links to purchase the various Spellbinders dies and supplies if you are interested to get. 

List of Supplies:

• Spellbinders D-Lites Flourishes Etched Dies
• Spellbinders Classic Lace Die Set (Large Die of the Month)
• Prima Marketing Engraver & Printery Paper Collection
• Golden Chenille Stem
• Doodlebug Bumblebee Assorted Jewels
• Conqueror 100gsm High Quality Wove Finish Paper
• Wood Veneer Letterings (own stash)

Creating with Canvas Corp Brands

Yes it has been quite a while I'm announcing something new and finalized. After finally getting myself settling down, I'm proud to announce that I'll be working with Canvas Corp Brands as their Creative Crew for next year, offering extensive product usage and online tutorials/classes.

It's a good come back to rejoin the community and I intend to do this for as long as I could and will be actively searching around to work with various companies. I hope I'm able to offer more useful techniques to all people alike, whether you are just a hobbyist or someone going through some adversity that need some creative outlet to cope.

Do stay with me. 

Cheers!!!

A Special Box of Memorabilia

First of all, for people who has been faithfully following my various entries in my blog even till this point of time... Thank You, sincerely from the bottom of my heart. I know it has been a long long time ago I last posted on my blog. I'm terrible sorry and equally guilty for unable to update as soon as I could. Nonetheless, I've finally made a serious effort to come back despite all my procrastination and those busy hours.

Before I start introducing my latest project (not exactly new because this was completed on late July. Oops!!!), I'd like to share a small fraction of my current life story that forms part of this project. There has been turmoils in my life that I'd have to put my various crafting projects and teaching plan on hold. Such a halt actually ended up close to a 2 years hiatus. Seems long, yet I felt as if I had been living for almost a century. Indeed, a lot of things happened, with some still feel like a never-ending event. Not to dwell into the details of the issues I'm facing, perhaps going straight to what led me to do up this project will be more meaningful.

A couple of you have probably read some of my life events that I had recorded down in my past entries. To begin as an introduction (to most whom don't really know), I was a "Christian" for the past 13 years and seriously, I thought I was really one though not a very pious one. As life wasn't very promising for me during those period of difficulties, I decided to renew my faith with Christ. The journey begun somewhere between last Winter and beginning of this Summer, I found myself starting to develop an immersing interest towards the Bible, on how historical facts and evidences coincides so well with the Bible. And since then I embarked into a remarkable journey in Searching for the Truth that led me to know the One True God and become a Christian legitimately. 

Currently, I'm serving and worshiping the LORD at my local Church of Christ and got to know this amazing sister-in-Christ Baby Tan who is one of the earlier Christians who planted the seeds in Singapore. Without her, my local congregation would not have started. It was my greatest honour and pleasure to be invited to do up a memorabilia for her as a special gift on her 90th Birthday this July. Without much of me saying further, here is the finished project... 

It's a big 12" x 12" box, which I altered it using the shadow box from Graphic 45. Because I want to make it last, I tore down the outer structure of the box and rebuilt it using some muslin fabric to reinforce the edges before layering some Melange tissue paper from Tim Holtz. The entire deconstruction and reconstruction took me a day to process before any mixed media and decorative work could be done.

I learned from various members within the Church that sis Baby Tan loves purple, flowers and butterflies. And this really narrows down to the colour choice and theme for this project. Without much thinking, immediately I know which paper collection to reach out to - Sweet Sentiments and Botanical Tea from Graphic 45. 

I deliberately chose one of her younger days photos and created a vintage layout for her at the front of the box. As I had done up a notable amount of stenciling, stamping and painting work on the entire box, I tried not to over-embellished the layout and kept it really simple with her picture as the main focal point. 

At the back of the box, I further embellished it using this "inspiration" wordlet from ScrapFX over an ornate flourish frame I found in my stash which I had bought it many years back. This is probably one of my favourite portions of this project.

This is where all the treasures are, all kept safely inside the box. As you pull the drawer, you will be greeted with 2 albums and a scroll.

At the base of the drawer inside, I covered the entire surface with this very sweet floral paper from Graphic 45 Sweet Sentiment paper collection. And I fussy cut the main thematic "Sweet Sentiments" scroll image out and placed it at the center which blend in quite well with the entire theme and purpose for this project.

These are the two albums I did; one hand-stitched photo album and one tag album with all the hand-written messages. 

I had handwritten some Bible verses and had use a couple of them throughout the albums' covers. Some were nicely contributed by our preachers in our Church. 

The scroll is actually a written biography of sis Baby by our late brother-in-Christ Ira Rice. I was reading it for several times on the night I was formatting the font and text after extracting this article out from a book. Her story really inspires me greatly and certainly put me to awe. She's one seriously petite godly woman who truly belongs to the LORD.

And so that's me presenting this special box of memorabilia to sis Baby during her 90th Birthday celebration on 30th July this year in the Church building.

We managed to take a short video of this project, filmed by Rachel Poo (our fellow sister-in-Christ) and here is the orientation video.

List of Supplies used for this project:

• Graphic 45 Botanical Tea and Sweet Sentiments Paper Collections
• Graphic 45 Staples (12" x 12" Shadow Box, Ivory Regular Tag Album)
• Tim Holtz Melange Tissue Wrap
• Decorative Chipboards (Scrapiniec Park Avenue Layers Sign Frames 1 & 2, ScrapFX Mini Alphabets, Inspiration midi, Dusty Attic Mini ABC Upper, Blue Fern Studios Layered Frame, Twiddleybitz Ornate Flourish Frame)
• Finnabair Art Basics (clear gesso, heavy gesso in white, modeling paste)
• Clearsnap Smooch Pearlized Ink Accents (cherry chocolate)
• Daler Rowney System 3 Acrylic Paint (pale gold no. 708)
• Martha Stewart Craft Paint (hailstorm)
• StazOn Midi (spiced chai)
• Prima Marketing Flourish Stencil
• Assorted May Arts Ribbon
• Petaloo Flowers
• Own Stash (golden fleur dresden, crochet lace, scripts & wood bark clear stamps, chipboards, purple glitter, purple & cream cardstock, pearl accents, faux pearl strings, eyelets, yarns) 

Tim Holtz Winner's Badge

Alright, allow me to be a show-off for today. I'm crazily proud (please let me boost a bit as I'm on cloud nine) to win Tim Holtz' December tag challenge just in nick of time before he ends his 12 tags of the year series. 

#OMG! Look at the badge given by Mario above👆, it's finally one thing I can show off at the side bar 👈 on this awesome blog of mine!

I Won Something from Tim Holtz!!

Happy 2017 Everyone!!!

I wish I had some artwork to share for today but I think it'd be great to announce some good news!! Something good as a start for 2017!!!

I WON Tim Holtz's 12 tags of 2016 for the DECEMBER tag challenge!!!

👆 Can't help to conceal my happiness but I need to shout this out LOUD!!! 👆

I heard about Tim's 12 tags of the year about a year ago and I took upon as a new form of challenge by participating only last year for 2 months (January and February) and I stopped in between before I came back last December. Alright it's my 3rd try and I won! I wanna feel proud and braggy about this for the beginning of this new year!!! Can't believe my tag was chosen by Tim's team!!! Can you see myself floating on cloud nine now?!? 

Though it's something worth rejoicing, it also saddens me that Tim is ending his 12 tags of the year challenge for good. Awww!!!! However, I'm very much looking forward for more creative techniques from him for 2017 and can't wait to participate!!!

To end this post, and before I'm off to email Mario on my prize pack, I wish everyone the merriest 2017 ahead and may everyday be a cute day for you! Of course for me, I'm ready in the mode to create more creative and cute projects for 2017! It would be a cute year ahead!!