Home Sweet Home Kitchen Rack Hanger

As my crate obsession continues, I just couldn't help getting addicted. How I wish I'm living in a rural country side owning a farm so that I can build more crate houses for my chickens. LOL! I can't get any crazier than this. So in order to fulfill my crate obsession, I'm building this kitchen rack hanger using Graphic 45 Home Sweet Home paper collection together with those wooden utensils from Ikea, as featured on Sunday's Graphic 45 blog post... 

Absolutely love rustic farm feel and I can't help falling in love with Elmer's white glue that creates those lovely crackle effects... Now I can use this Home Sweet Home rack hanger for my kitchen stuffs...

Melancholic Lamentations - A Salvaged Love Bride

Not very long time ago in a far away City, there was once upon a Bride whom had a heavy heart filled with enormous amount of salvaged love; yearning for her Man's love and desire. For her Man had promised to love her till eternity at their wedding night, she patiently awaited for his return...

As she sat by near the window each night, glaring out towards the deep dark sky, the moon was her only everlasting light. Each night passed by, she felt solemn and sorrowed. Yet her love for her Man was so great that she could only salvage in despair. Her Man, had yet to return... 

The glaze of her eyes filled with hope and desires. Her heart, felt burdened and heavy; as if it weighed a few tonnes worth of Silver. Though she felt warm at heart as she waited for the love she had for her Man was so generous, her heart was tearing. Drop by drop, she salvaged...  

She lamented in despair on each drop of love she salvaged. She felt pain; a pain so immensely deep that she could feel pricks of sharps piercing through her heart. Her Man never returns...

"Oh! How long more I would have to wait? For my love has left no more to salvage yet I yearn and desire for your everlasting love..." She withered as nights went past. And goodbye... My love...

As such is life, the Bride died with a grieved heart filled with pain and sorrows in her wedding dress, unable to wait for her Man to return... 

About the Project

The inspiration behind this project is based on an actual real life account - about a wife endlessly trust and await for her husband to return home every night. There's a little social context behind, mainly on the constant vicious cycle in an emotional abuse family. While physical violence in domestic abuse is more evident, the psychological impact and damage for emotional abuse is often more severe and harder to be seen by the outside world. The whole essence of this entire project gears towards an overview inner emotions of a lamenting Bride; a confusional contrary mixed feelings of love, pain and sorrow.

The Scene

A Salvaged Love Bride in this scene was set in a more melancholic setting, denoting the constant love-pain relationship the victim faced living with an emotional abuser. It's more towards a way to "recycle" her love, trapped within a small cubicle unable to leave. Yet on the contrary, her love for her Man was so salvaged that she always trusted and truly believed he would return one day to fulfill the love and desires she yearns for.

Elements within the Scene
A mixture of heart gears and metal embellishments were used for the flaming heart to create some form of salvaging mechanics, just for the sole function of "recycling" the love drops. The Bride's bunch of flowers consists of 9 roses; a meaning of Eternal Love denoting her Man's promise to love her for eternity. Those 2 suitcases represent the separate livelihoods of the Bride and her Man. Though stacked together as "one" union life in a marriage, the actual life between the Bride and her Man is often distinct and one-sided. In order to create a more contrary melancholic mood, various small details such as a solemn black umbrella, a Jane Austin's Pride & Prejudice novel and a stack of newspapers with the perish of the Titanic are added.

List of Supplies:

• Vintage French Ad Collage Sheet 
• Haunted Ship Travel Collage Sheet   
• Little Library Collage Sheet  
• Plastic Skeleton  
• Relic & Artifacts – Flaming Hearts Ex Votos II  
• Gold Mini Rosette Dresden Borders  
• Fuzzy Black Fibers 
• Mixed Silver Filigrees
• Set of Miniature Books  
• Miniature Umbrella Set 
• Word Bands – Observations
• Flower Stamen – Ivory  
• Gilder’s Paste – White 
• Gilder’s Paste – Silver
• Gilder’s Paste – Patina
• Tim Holtz Gothic Stencil
• Bride of Frankenstein Stencil
• Molding Paste
• White Gesso
• Black Gesso
• E6000
• Glue N Seal
• Prima Finnabair’s Vintage Mechanicals (Leaves 2, Small Flowers, Roses) 
• Prima Ingvild Bolme’s Junkyard Findings (Heart Gears) 
• Prima Mulberry Flowers (Rose Buds, Mini Petals) 
• ScrapFX Mini Alphabets
• Shimmerz Paints (Vibez – Egg Noggin’ & Snow Storm, Shimmeringz – Baby’s Breathe, Inklingz – Sheer Bliss, Tarnished Treasure, Freshly Minted, Blingz – Pixie Dust, Texturez – Patina) 
• Own Stash (white tulle, rhinestone crystals, dollies, wooden window box)

Artisan Style ATC Card Tags

In as far as I'm concern, seriously I do not know what the hell am I making at times... When I received my previous Graphic 45 DT pack and saw the Artisan Style collection, there're so many ideas spinning around my head that I loose hold my grip in catching them... This is where it seriously frustrates me 'cos I know there's something at the back of my mind but I couldn't pull it out... And soon I develop this "temporary creative incapacitated syndrome" which hinders me to put my ideas into practice... Seriously hate this moment of dis-coordination between my mind and hands... When this really happens and I tried to create, I'll usually ended up in a series of creative chaos and madness...

Sometimes, I wish I could just cling wrap them to "preserve" these ideas and store them in my fridge... 

It all started with an intention to create some ATCs out of the Artisan 8" x 8" paper pad... As I tried working on it, I realized Hey these are not in the correct sizes!! Then I decided I should probably make them into cards instead... As the more I tried to add stuffs onto it, I noticed they are way too small as cards... I was like "What the Heck?! This is neither here nor there!" This was where it seriously got me irritated and decided to hunt some more stuffs out in hope I can turn them into proper cards... I grabbed some wine cork, split one into half and glue them onto the bottom... And I found that something is missing somewhere and added on some satin ribbons, lace, brass chain, flowers and buttons...

After adding on so much stuffs and when I’m all done, I’ve totally no idea what I had created - it’s not ATC, not even cards, and not really tags… But whatever it is, these are the final outputs from my creative madness and randomness. I decided to just call them ATC card tags… Still don’t think it sounds right, I’m just being random… Feel kind of a cliché? Yes I know… Imagine Style or Style Imagine? But whatever… Oops! 

Let Them Eat Cake

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" - a traditional French translation of "Let them eat cake" is a common attribution to Queen Marie Antoinette. While it’s not on record that this phrase was ever said by her, it has indeed become very popular for modern art as well as for tea parties and bridal showers. As random as I could be, this phrase hit a nerve of mine and decided to do up a wall display plaque for this. This was a project done for Faber-Castell & Graphic 45 blog hop this week and was featured on Graphic 45's blog yesterday...

It was my very first attempt to use gelatos, so before I can really get use to the usage and function, I took it slow for this attempt. Gelatos feel like rich textured watercolour crayons to me. I've seen quite a lot on how the several Faber-Castell mediums are used online, hence I decided to give a try using their whipped spackle and gel medium. Love the smooth texture of whipped spackle and it has a subtle shimmer on it!!!

I hope you've enjoyed the blog hop as much as I did. The various projects done by my fellow DT members as well as Faber-Castell DT are simply amazing!!!

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.