My Altered Clocks were Published in Scrap n' Art

I know it was kinda late to announce this.... My 2 altered clocks using mixed media and Graphic 45 Botanical Tea and By the Sea paper collection were published in Scrap n' Art Magazine for this month!!! 

My Introduction to the Graphic 45 Design Team!!!

Tonight is an amazing night for me; it's my official introduction as a design team member for the Graphic 45 Design Team!!! Yeah!!! Finally this truth has sunken into my head... And now I can add Graphic 45 under "I Design For" section...

What truly touches me are the sweet lovely comments left by the fellow g45ers on both the blog and Facebook, which gave me a boost in my confidence and consolation on what had happened recently... Things have been kinda rough in particular in my current persual as a shoe designer, which caught me thinking seriously how I should path my journey... In reality, it's always easier to dream about it than to actually doing it...

While I was in this deep struggle, a very recent incident striked me causing me to have this emotional stir, making me realized what it takes to be a true artist and designer... The feel of seeing my works being duplicated freely to the 3rd party and being claimed by others is never a wonderful feeling, at the very least at the very moment I saw it... Whether it's intentional or unintentional, it just don't make me feel good... I do believe if a person has integrity, on the very basic level, it is of common understanding to give credit to the artist/designer when one intended to duplicate/create works similar to the originator...

As I consulted my friend who is a graphic artist/designer who has been constantly facing issues as such (both big and small), copyright is indeed a very grey matter... I can watermarked all my works, placed strings of statements about distribution rights and copyright, but if one want to copy I can't simply stop them... I had confronted a few, some apologized while some defend strongly... This can be frustrating and definitely not something I would want to take an extra mile to track these people down... All I know and have to constant remind myself to be original and keep the creativity mojo going... 'Cos when such things happen, as an artist/designer, copying can seems to be much easier than to be innovative and creative... This is something it caught onto me... It always puzzled me why each year there's so many designers graduating from design school, there's basically less than 1% of them doing actual designing work, creating original works that represent them... Now I finally understood...

My desire is to create works that will inspire and I aspire to be one...

Graphic 45 Botanical Tea Spring Duet Album Class at The Art Republic

Finally, I manage to find some time to sit down and blog a bit here...

For the past weeks I was busying clearing my craft corner, space-digging to accomodate my Graphic 45 DT package... Took me several days to clear my area and I managed to re-organize quite a number of stuffs... Not very ideal but it has de-cluttered alot... What came next was something all crafters dread most; I injured my right index finger which landed me "handicapped" for a week!!! This explains why I was quite inactive for the recent weeks...

Well, I know this is what my scrapping peeps have been waiting for - the pocket album... It was all done up finally!!! Learn how to create this pocketful album via modified saddle stitching... Happening in June, opening for registration...

The pocket album...

Added some stickles to enhance the embellishments...

The spine; there'll be some stitching involved...

A pocketful of album...

Tags in the pockets...

One of the little "things" inside the album...

Tagging the tags...

Making into the Graphic 45 Design Team!!!

Finally the wait is over... On Monday Graphic 45 announced their new design team for 2014/15... And I saw my name on the list!!! I'm all over the moon!!! Yeah I made it!!! It can't be any happier than this getting into this marvelous amazing team, which is a dream come true...

It has been an amazing year this year to me thus far... Dreams do come true - winning a shoes design competition this January, getting myself a design team position in both Clear Scraps and Graphic 45... And all these come along with a lot of self-believing and hard work... Most importantly it's all about the almighty God who blesses me this much and made these dreams come true... It has all paid off, days of finding inspirations to getting panda eyes to finish up my projects...

I know I've been inactive recently in my blog, Instagram and Facebook as I was really super busy with school and teachings with The Art Republic... Here I'm sharing here a Graphic 45 Couture gift box that I made for my Italian trainer as a farewell gift... I enjoyed his lessons very much and he really gives me good advice... I've been getting requests to make videos on YouTube... It actually took me quite some time to get this started... And I'm glad I did attempt a video for the Graphic 45 final submission... So... I'll be doing a short tutorial in how to create this on my YouTube channel, do keep a look out... ;)

The gift box I'm giving to my Italian trainer...

Close-up view on the embellishments in the front cover...

Here is the inside of the box when I opened up... I wrapped
the gift with some tissue paper and paste a sticker over it... 

The embellishments inside the box..

My Final Submission for the Graphic 45 DT Call

Yes finally, it has been all done up... 3 projects within these 2 weeks and a video describing my 3 projects... Phew!!! Sweat!!! Videoing is more difficult than I expected... It took me the entire morning and afternoon filming and narrating yesterday... Pretty stressful 'cos I kept forgetting what I was going to say... Even I've written down my script, I ended up missing some parts 'cos at that very point I couldn't read my own handwriting... Some parts I stuttered as I tried to figure out what I've written.. Haha... But that's all over and come to think about it, it's quite fun!!

Now it's the waiting period for the final announcement on 21st April... Keeping my fingers cross... And here... TaaaDaaa!!! My final submission video on my YouTube channel... You may want to view the video in full screen in order to see the annotations well...

Here are the more additional details and pictures on the 3 projects I've done for this final submission:

Project 1: Oriental Bird Song Altered Wedding Album Cover
While creating this, something happened... As I was concerned that I couldn't finish the project in time, I actually brought this project to school to complete it... Never did I expected, I accidentally spilled coffee over all my fussy cuts... Before I could react, one of my classmates who knew I'm rushing for this final submission reacted faster than I did... She was like, "Quick!! Save the project first!!" and there she came and "rescued" my fussy cuts... LOL!!!

Seriously the coffee literally soaked itself into my fussy cuts and they were all wet... As much as I'd like to recut them but after a while I decided to flat dry them and use them instead... Besides the strong coffee smell, it does stains my fussy cuts quite well which eliminate the need to distress them with distress ink...

The completed altered album cover...

Close up view...

Inside of the album where I hold my wedding morning highlights DVD...

Project 2: Tropical Travelogue Book Art Display
This project is pretty time consuming, mainly the creating of the word pattern on Photoshop to measuring to folding of each pages... It's a total of 335 pages, as in each individual sheet for this book... Total 670 printed pages... Took me hours to complete this book art before I can start embellishing...

I wrapped the book cover using the matching fabric by Wilmington Prints as fabric serves as a stronger backing over paper... More than just a display art piece, I could use them to display my photos and memorabilia...

The font view...

The back view...

Right side view...

Left side view...

Project 3: Botanical Tea Teapot Wardrobe
Wanted something fun and interesting, I built this clear see-through teapot wardrobe from scratch using the teapot acrylic album and 12X12 sheet from my Clear Scraps design team package... To go with this wardrobe, I handmade a couple of fashion teabags, mainly blouses and dresses with 4 different floral favours...

As a guest for this tea party, you can "shop" for your favourite clothing and "try" it on... Not only that, this little wardrobe gives me the flexibility to display various tea favours in those handmade fashion teabags from time to time when I've guests coming over for tea... Something exclusive and unique...

The teapot wardrobe...

The top view...

The fashion teabags which I handmade them myself...

The back of the wardrobe...

Thanks for viewing and I hope you've enjoyed what I've shared here.. Wishing all the finalists the very best of luck!!!