My Cute Little Candy World

A couple of my wildest and sweetest imaginations (with a little childhood fantasy), are nothing real but sleeping in Hansel and Gretel's candy house and immersing in Jack & the Beanstalk’s gigantism metaphor. It's like looking big yet everything is perceived so small in reality. Well, some kind of irregularities here and I think I'm spouting some kind of out-of-space language. You are more than welcome to ignore this insanity here.

Taking inspiration from the 2 fables above (with a little touch of my twisted fantasy), I managed to mount my WIP watercan into a frame and build a box behind. Though it seems like my theory is a little off, I was actually keeping in mind to make the candy land a pretty one while building this up. Soooo... it turned out that my insanity has ended up something whimsical!!! Instead of a beanstalk, I used cotton candy as the bubbly land for the cute little candy house, which is up above this gigantic watering can. You will need to climb up from the floral cloud, up towards the mouth of the watering can, cross the key bridges and walk towards the candy house. A Sugar Godfather awaits you with lots of cotton candy and sweets… 

An assemblage art piece finally all done up, featuring in today's Graphic 45's blogpost!!! I hereby welcome you to enter into into my little candy world...

Back to School Origami Book Corners

It's weekend! For today's Graphic 45 blogpost, I'm sharing something a little simple, with practicality - origami book corners. While bookmarks are quite common, it can be quite interesting to do something a little different. 

Over here I'm showing you how to create these simple book corners that you can even get your kids to get involve. Let them make their very own book corners and I'm sure this will be a good bonding session with your children.

Enjoy! Happy crafting!

Caring Karie and Charming Mel Fairy Tooth Door Shrines

This month is not really a very smooth month for me as I was suddenly held up by a lot of unexpected things recently. My mind was very packed with quite a number of stuffs and have been taken up part of my time which prevent me to keep my projects updated on my blog. I hope I'm able to plan my time well enough. Nonetheless, I managed to find some time to update one of my DT project for Graphic 45, which is featured on yesterday blog post.

The inspiration actually comes from various shrines projects I've been seeing on various social media platform especially on Pinterest. That caught me thinking. Instead of finding stuffs to build the shrine up, I decided to use the various tags to create one. Something toy-like with a little whimsical fairy touch. The original intention was to do up something for my friend's daughter's birthday and this idea of building a fairy tooth door shrine popped up... And here I present, A Caring Karie tooth fairy for my friend's daughter. I've done up a video tutorial for this as well which I had further explained the inspiration behind this project.

I created another fairy tooth door shrine for my other friend's daughter using the sample I used for the tutorial demo in my video. I named this fairy the Charming Mel tooth fairy. The whole idea for this was Frozen inspired. I made the shrine that looks like an ice palace instead, especially build for a girl who has a cool personality. The whole shrine was actually glitter-ized, making it look "icy" and I added a little dish at the bottom for other treasure keeping.

Sugar & Spice for Girls, Snips & Snails for Boys

"What are little boys made of?

What are little boys made of? 

Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails, 

That's what little boys are made of. 

What are little girls made of?

What are little girls made of?  

Sugar and spice and all things nice, 

That's what little girls are made of."

Yes it's a nursery rhyme which some of us probably had sang it before when we were little... And this is what the entire theme is all about in Graphic 45 Precious Memories collection... While gifting can be the most easiest job of all, but thinking of what to gift can be one kind of a headache at times...

Using the rhyme as an inspiration source, I created these little ATC gift boxes for boys and girls for today's Graphic 45 blog post...

Sugar & Spice for girls, Snips & Snails for boys; that's what’s inside these glass vials... Housing them within these little drawers, they are ready to be gifted to any boy or girl... Cute enough to amaze them and small enough for their little hands...

Graphic 45 Design Team Audition 2015

Yes it's the Graphic 45 Design Team Call; one of the most exciting event ever!!! I was very glad to make it into this wonderful team for 2014/15 and I should say my experience with Graphic 45 was truly a heaven one... I love my fellow teammies, the amazing people behind Graphic 45 and truly enjoy the cohesiveness and support we had together as a team... It made me feel like a family... As much I'd like to wish we could never part, I know I'll miss my current team dearly... 

Sieving through my past Graphic 45 projects from my last audition to being on the team till date, I've seen myself grown artistically, evolving into a different creative level; an experience that I'll truly treasure for sure... Though I'm still searching for an identity as a budding artist, I'm very grateful for this wonderful opportunity that have brought me this far... Here again, I'm trying out for another year, in hope I can have this opportunity again to share my works in a brand new different level...

And here is my entry, featuring some of my favourite projects...

Project #1 - Come Away with Me Stacked Suitcases

This was one of the biggest projects till date; building all these suitcases from scratch and took me almost a week to complete everything... Wasn't an easy job but due to my obsessions on stacked suitcases, I wanted it so much that I just went crazy to build this mini version...  

More details about this project can be found here... 

I guess I can never had enough suitcases, these little matchbox suitcases are just part of my addiction that I had to create a tutorial...

Project #2 - A Snowman's Baggage & Christmas Suitcase

In sequel to my matchbox suitcases, I did these suitcases for last Christmas... It's a sudden inspiration coming from Disney's movie Frozen and my niece, after hearing her singing the snowman song to my dad... 

More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #3 - Botanical Tea Violin Display Stand

I tend to keep things and when I found my violin, I felt old... Those were the days; bringing me memories... Each time I dug things, there'll be something that caught me and I'll always get inspired somehow... Nevertheless, making this stand for my violin was a result from digging old things... Spring cleaning don't sound that scary after all... It became one of my inspiration sources...

 More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #4 - A Christmas Kaleidoscope

This was one such recycling project that I put in extra effort to conduct some research in making functional kaleidoscope... I've seen quite a number of tutorials online but not all are able to attain favourable results... I tried and made several attempts before finally make this into a tutorial...

More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #5 - Come Away with Me Altered Postbox

I'm always a big fan of Nicola Battilana and love minis and little things... I altered this post box piggy bank and revamped into a vintage one with failing parcels and mini mailbags... Away from the traditional red postbox, I decided to make it blue to match the paper collection... 

More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #6 - Time to Celebrate Patina Box

This was one of my Graphic 45 newsletter assignments using the 5" x 5" mixed media box... I was tasked to alter the box with stenciling and stamping technique on the exterior of the box only, strictly no papers but only in the interior of the box... This challenging assignment had actually pushed me one step further, putting my creative brain cells into a new level.. And finally I came up with this Patina look which a tutorial is available...

More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #7 - Precious Memories Baby Boy Patina Keepsake Box

For this Winter CHA, I revisited my Patina tutorial and create a pastel blue version of Patina together with Precious Memories paper collection... This keepsake was especially made for a friend of mine who is currently residing in Chicago and just had a baby boy last December...

More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #8 - Typographic Grunge Altered Bookend

This wooden bookend was built by my youngest sister as part of her school project and has been kept in one of the drawers for more than 10 years... We managed to discover this one day when I was doing some spring cleaning at home... Again, another "digging" inspiration, I altered this bookend for her using a great amount of Graphic 45 staples and other metal embellishments I had in my stash...

More details about this project can be found here... 

Project #9 - A Thanksgiving Card

I made this card during the last Thanksgiving; my very virgin attempt on the Big Shot machine... Owning a Big Shot was never at the top of my mind despite I crafted a lot... It's because of the various dies given to us as part of our DT package, this indeed had changed my mind... 

I had penned down my maiden voyage with this virgin trial here...

Project #10 - Time to Celebrate Birthday Pop-Up Card

Never once in my life I attempted to make such a big card... This was my first attempt... Stands at A4 in size when close, this card will pop into a bouquet of flowers when open... This birthday card is especially handmade for a 98 year old granny...

More details about this project can be found here...

Though I managed to get into the DT last year, my Graphic 45 teaching opportunity at The Art Republic (AR) ended shortly... Very sadly, due to the rental hike they are unable to sustain the business and was forced to close shop... Here are the final 2 projects I had taught before AR close shop...

Project #11 - Botanical Tea Spring Duet Album

An album full of pockets and all pages are hand-bound together using modified saddle stitch which I put in an extra effort to explore and modify the stitches just for this album...

More details about this project can be found here...

Project #12 - Wanderlust Mixed Media Shadow Box

My very last class project for The Art Republic using Come Away with Me paper collection and 8" x 8" matchbox staple... This project was inspired by the 90s sitcom Friends' Central Perk fictitious coffee shop, just that there's no coffee served but more towards a travel shop...

More details about this project can be found here...

Thank you so much for viewing this entry of mine and I hope my projects have been an inspiration... I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Charee, Joanna, Aimee, Diane, Jeff and all people from the Graphic 45 family for providing me a great year in the DT... I hope to work with this amazing team again very soon...

Last but not the least, I hereby wish all applicants Good Luck for this audition... 

Thank You!!!