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.
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)
