Buxom Garden Fairies Trio; From the Little Garden

Few years back, I bought a bag of mini wooden sconces thinking perhaps I may use them for some of my miniature work. As usual, there's always a grand scheme of plan at the back of my mind hardly get executed for whatever reasons. Many years has passed, it's only very recently I managed to recall I still this bag of unused mini wooden sconces. Well, it's always not good to hoard, and I feel it's time to use them. 

And here I am, using them for this month Ephemoire's project with a video tutorial. Bringing you these cute little buxom fairies!!! Aren't they whimsically cute?

Each of these little buxom fairies has their very own colour to represent themselves, as indicated by the various rose colours attached to them, as if each of them is in charged of the colours they are assigned to. They are like the guardians of the little garden they're in, ready to prune and sow the seeds within their little garden in order to be fruitful. Oh! How fun and delightful they are? 

Here is the video process in how I create them... 

A little close-ups of these lovely buxom fairies. I'd suppose they'd need extra wings, hence the bigger ones behind them so that they can flutter and dance as they sing.  

I hope these little buxom fairies have made your day and have given a little inspirations. Below is an extensive list of supplies I used for this project with links to where to get them if you're interested in getting them:

• Ephemoire digital images (French vintage ephemera overlay, Marie Antoinette style buxom ladies)
• Finnabair Art Basics heavy gesso in white (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Finnabair muscial notes acrylic clear stamps
• Ranger multi medium in gloss (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink in brushed corduroy (Amazon, Blitsy, Scrapbook.com)
• Knotted wood edger chalk ink
• Docrafts acrylic paint in Linen
• Graphic 45 Botanical Tea rubber stamp
• StazOn midi in spiced chai
• Dusty Attic mini flourishes
• Acetate sheets
• Wood fillers
• Own stash (mini wooden sconces, floral stamens, green foliage, miniature roses, toothpicks)

My Canvas Corp 4" x 4" Canvas Art

One of the requirements for being part of Canvas Corp Crew is to do up a 4" x 4" canvas that best represent yourself. It was a rather busy week for me last week, however I manage to get my canvas all done up! Can't wait to share it around and here I am sharing this today! Yeah!!!

It was indeed my very first time doing such a small canvas art. Though I felt I might not have enough to work around with, I managed to come up with a composition that's within the context I'd want to express. Using various Tattered Angel's mixed media products as well as Finnbair's old mechanicals, this is what I came up with. As the canvas itself requires no priming, you can pretty much work straight to it. I die cut out a few florals from some of the papers within 7gypsies Architextures 8.5" x 11" Mix and Match Book using Tim Holtz' Tattered Floral Bigz Die, distressed the edges and layered over the canvas to create some texture before all the misting and painting comes it. 

Those pretty lace I wrapped around the canvas is from 7gypsies which unfortunately it's a retired item. To give it a little rustic and ragged look, I misted some bandages with Tattered Angel Cork glimmer mist to go over the lace, and secured it with some Prima jute straw.

Not wanting to spare the empty space at the back of the canvas, I decided to do up a miniature Art Room within. That cute little frame is from my paperclay try outs using one of my Martha Stewart silicon moulds, which is of a good size to fit within. 

Nonetheless, it was a rather fun process to do up such a small mixed media canvas work. I'm pretty please with the final composition though I was a little concern about the small space given. Below is a list of supplies I used for this project with some links to various sources should anyone of you are interested to get them:

• Canvas Corp 4" x 4" Canvas
• 7gypsies Lace Trimmings
• 7gypsies Architextures 8" x 8" Paper Pad
• 7gypsies Architextures Parchment Rub Ons - Inspire
• 7gypsies Architextures 8.5" x 11" Mix and Match Book -Bee
• Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists (Cork, Vintage Pink)
• Tattered Angels High Impact Paint (Antique Gold)
• Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Bigz Die (Scrapbook.com, Sizzix)
• Tim Holtz Tiny Tattered Florals Thinlits (Amazon. Scrapbook.com, Sizzix)
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink in brushed corduroy (Amazon, Blitsy, Scrapbook.com)
• Tim Holtz Idea-ology Mini Plaquettes
• Martha Stewart Frame and Flourish Silicon Moulds
• Copper Metallic Papers (Cardstock Warehouse, CutCardStock)
• Prima Marketing Finnabair Mechanicals
• Prima Marketing straw jute
• Creative Paperclay
• Own stash (miniature red roses, tiny glass bottle, brass key, green foliage, golden studs and sequins)

I hope this has been an inspiration in how to work within small canvas spaces. I shall see you all very soon with a tutorial.

Dressing Up Tools with Washi Tapes

I've this pair of pink Cutter Bee scissors which I bought as my very first pair of scissors when I was at the U.S. in 2011 (7 years ago! That seems like a long long time ago!). I clearly remembered I bought it at Target in Union City, San Francisco. It was on discount and I bought it at quite a good deal. Before I bought the other precision scissors, this pair is the only pair I own for fussy cutting and it has cut tons of designs that assisted me in many projects. 

Though I used other precision scissors interchangeably, this pair however was hardly used ever since the rubber from the handles kinda came off, making the grip uneasy to feel on hand. I was pulling out my drawer of washi tapes yesterday morning and instantly I thought this would probably a good idea to put these washi tapes into good use. Without hesitating, I went ahead and started to "dress up" my Cutter Bee. And this is how it ended up. Nicely dressed up and it seems I've a new pair of scissors!!! Yeah!!!

I was really enjoying dressing up my Cutter Bee that I felt like dressing up my other tools as well. Looking at my other Graphic 45 and Tim Holtz washi tapes in my drawer, I knew it wasn't the end of this fun session. I ended up dressing up my other precision scissors and Sharpie pen. They look so cool and I'm loving it!!!

Well, sometimes we just have tools on hand that we bought initially that we just simply can't bear to throw them away especially they're still functional. I still have my very first paper trimmer with me when I first started crafting which is more than a decade old and I'm still very much prefer to use that old trimmer of mine despite I've a better and newer trimmer which I bought as a backup. Though it doesn't seems feasible to dress up my trimmer like what I did for my Cutter Bee, I still find a great sense of satisfaction that I manage to revive a pair of scissors that I might consider throwing 'cos of the worn handles. 

Beautiful Magic Wishes Treat Bags

 "Wishes are the magic in your heart that cause beautiful things to happen..."

What a sweet sentiment that will make your heart flutter! Everyone loves to make wishes and wish for some beautiful magic to happen. It's a natural kind of hope humans have instinctively which make us wanting to wish for beautiful things to happen; somehow or rather.

Wishes do come true when you really hope for it and wanted it so much to happen. Things do happen and sometimes way beyond you could ever imagine. For the past year or so, some amazing things did happened in my life! One important event was the day I found myself added into the LORD's Church which led me to discover a lot of wonderful people around the world; a universal church that's so true and pure that transcends all humans' doctrines and creeds. It was also through a wish I had since young that I had finally found reconciliation with the ONE & ONLY true God that creates this universe, after decades of searching.

Beautiful sunset at one of the villages in Bacolod I visited. 

I was trying to "pinch" the sun away! 😄

In last September, I was on this unique privilege to be on a mission trip with some of brethren within my congregation to the Philippines. It was through this trip I got to see the beauty behind the LORD's Church and why we are so spiritually bonded via Christ regardless of our social status, background, culture, ethnicity and language. The young and old, men and women all gather together because of one unifying reason. It was because of this reason, we encourage and edify one another to grow. 

I personally had a wonderful experience via this mission trip which I learn so much about the LORD's Church and got to appreciate even more the beauty behind this Truth that binds us together no matter where we are. Prior in coming back to Singapore, I decided to buy some goodies from the Philippines and gifted them to some of the brethren within my local congregation. I packed them inside these brown paper bags where I stamped this sentiment from Tim Holtz Good Thoughts onto the front, and secured the bags with some jute twine.

Disclaimer: No nicotine was packed within.
It's actually a combination of the names of a lovely couple Nicodemus and Christine.

To ended off the packaging interestingly, I punched some small little round tags to get them to untie the magic here! Pretty much sums up on the message that's printed in the front.

Spellbinders Club Kits (Certainly with Offers & Deals)

Just not very long ago, I started to make some cards. Not because I'm into cardmaking, mainly is because of wanting to attempt smaller projects by using the various club kits I bought from Spellbinders. And making cards is probably one of the easiest projects. I started off by getting a few  kits without subscribing to try out the dies. And here are the cards I've made so far using the club kits I had purchased previously, which are still available for purchase as past club kits.

Click HERE for more details about this project.
Purchase this die set Here

Click HERE for more details about this project.
Purchase this die set Here

Oh well, I should say their monthly dies are too pretty to own that I decided to subscribe to one of their value clubs. I went for their Die Hard club. For my very 1st month, I'm enjoying a 15% OFF to join the club!!! This makes me a happy camper and can't wait to receive my kit for this month!!! 😃

The code is valid for first time subscribers for the very 1st month, and this offer is just too good not to share. Click on the image above to find out more. Remember to enter Code: CLUB15 to enjoy the offer for the 1st month. It's as good as it lasts, till further notice.

If you love to get some other lovely dies of theirs, I'm also extending a 10% OFF OFFER to all my readers as their affiliate. To redeem your offer for your next purchase, enter code: SBSAVE10 during checkout. Alright, before you head over to Spellbinders to redeem your offer, here are some fine prints that you may want to take note:

Save 10% OFF your next purchase. Must use provided coupon code at time of purchase. If code is not used at time of purchase then order will be ineligible for discounted rate. Offer good only on products purchased at www.spellbinderspaperarts.com. Offer is one time use; individual consumer use only; not for distribution; Clearance is excluded, excludes tax & shipping; not valid on any previous web, phone or retail purchases; cannot be redeemed for cash; cannot be combined with any other offer; void where prohibited. Offer expires 12/31/2018.

Enjoy shopping!!! And I shall be back really soon for new projects and tutorials. Therefore, do stay tune...

A Little Luxe of Laces, Trims and Blings...

I'm super excited to announce that I'll be working with Lucy from Tresors de Luxe and some wonderful designers within the community to share our creative talents towards laces, trims and other embellishments. I've been following Lucy's products for many years and she actually went into hiatus for quite some time before she came back with a DT call, which I applied and was invited to join as the final addition to the team, making us a perfect 10! 

And here I present all of us in this perfect 10 design team! I see familiar faces as well! Oh well, I've yet to create projects that're lacey-ful so this will be something I'm super excited about 'cos it will be a genre I've yet to explore. Since I'm looking forward to build up my YouTube channel, this will be a good opportunity for me to move beyond my comfort zone and explore another creative aspect of mine. One other good (not so good for me) piece of news is that my channel is now free from advertisements due to the new requirement set in place which I didn't manage to hit in time. Therefore, this won't be much of an eyesore for some of you while watching my videos, at least for this year. 

Moving forward, while I believe some are lamenting over losing some advertising income, I'm actually working hard to build up my channel. I may not be as frequent as some other YouTubers as I'm trying to work out my schedule with a creative plan that I could follow so that I can control my time well. Right now, with a new day job that I'm trying to adapt to, my timings can get really mess up. Therefore, please be patient with me as well while I'm trying to figure things out which is going to take some time. Do remember to subscribe HERE for more updates in the future. 

I shall see you all very soon again for a video tutorial!! Cheers!!!

   

Under the Canopy of Love; It's Good to be the Queen

For this month of love, I've done up a love canopy using Tim Holtz luminary die and several cliparts from Ephemorie Bee and Beekeeping Apiary collection. Though I was pretty late for this Valentine, love is not restricted to only February 14th. It should be forever. And this brought me to recall one of my lecturers from UWA as I studied microbiology during my college years. She once passed a very irony remark about Herpes. She said, "Love is not forever, but Herpes is forever." The class burst into laughter while she remained her poker's face and warned us to lower down our volume.

Alright, not here for a microbiology lesson. But the remark made by my lecturer was indeed too ironically funny that deeply etched into my mind, including some of my other classmates as well. It's simply too amusing not to mention about her whenever we talked about her and her Herpes remark. Oh well, not to give you a very wrong idea about love and it's connection to Herpes, I shall sanctify it by going into the story behind this project.  

Every lady wants to feel like a queen, protected under the love of her man. And that's the idea behind this little project for this month of Love. Specifically on the queen bee concept, I decided to use some honeycombs for the canopy of love. Honey is sweet and so is love. So that's practically the idea behind.

I used one of the whimsical fairy digi stamps from Traci as the main focus of this project. Clearly, it's such a lovely fairy pair! Images of honeycombs, bee frame and crown are resized to what I want based on the measurement of the luminary diecuts prior to printing. I coloured the images with watercolour pencils and then trimmed off the honeycombs to fit around the pillars of the diecut.

Notice the lovely fairy pair are seated on a bed of pollen. These are some yellow sponges in my stash and those little "stones" surrounding the "pollen" are actually from Prima's A Victorian Christmas embellishment. I just tore the sprays apart and surrounded them, including the pinnacle of the canopy. I just love adding some natural elements to my project! And that's why despite I've diecut the luminary with kraft paper, I just want to add some brown paint over to give some woody feel. Then surround the corners with some underbrush and foliage.  

The Queen's crown

Here is a short video walk through I made for this project, with a little story telling as well. I wish I'd had more time to do up an extensive video, however it has been quite a busy and short month for me that I deeply regret not to plan my time well enough. Nonetheless, I do hope this has been inspiring enough for this month of love. More pictures below, as well as a list of supplies I used for this project at the bottom of this entry together with links to where to get them.

I shall be back in March for more project ideas and tutorials. So do stay with me!

List of supplies used for this project:

• Ephemorie Bees & Beekeeping Apiary collection
• Tim Holtz Luminary Bigz XL die (Amazon, Scrapbook.com, Sizzix)
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink in brushed corduroy (Amazon, Blitsy, Scrapbook.com)
• Tim Holtz Distressed stain in tarnished brass (Amazon, Scrapbook.com)
• Prima Marketing A Victorian Christmas embellishment
• Prima Marketing straw jute
• Watercolour pencils
• Kraft cardstock
• Own stash (underbrush and foliage, honeycomb chippies, brown and gold paint)

Heartfelt Farewell Gifts to my Customers

It wasn't easy to say goodbye especially to people whom you've been seeing them regularly for the past 2 years. Today is my very last day in a cafe where I worked for, a place where I relearned a lot things and found new friends there. Most of them are my regular customers whom I've been serving them since day one I started work there.

There's so much memories created there and certainly these lovely customers indeed have made my workplace a better place to work in. To show my appreciation and gratitude towards them, I decided to do up something for them. At the same time, I'm submitting these projects for Heartfelt Creations Design Team Call. While I'm not expecting that much that I'll be able to make it to the semi-final round, I'm hoping I'm able to create some inspirations via this means. 

It's also my very first time using Heartfelt Creations products (of which most of them are generously loaned to me by one of my crafty friends, Pauline who owns loads of Heartfelt products) and realized how heartfelt these products are. They synced in so well in what I want to express, in particularly for the Coffee Talk collection as making coffee has always been part of bonding process with my customers. It's also through coffee I learned about the science and art of making a good cup of coffee. All thanks to Weranga, one of my customers who encouraged me to take up some courses to hoard my skills. To bid them goodbye certainly will bring tears to my heart. I'll surely miss them dearly. 😢  

I wrapped some teabags with some brown paper and secured them with some jute twine. These tea pouches came with tags that I die-cut them out using the Luggage and Tag dies (HCD1-745) and stamped with "a gift for you" using the Balloon and Bicycle stamp set (HCPC-3599). I made the sleeve with walnut cream cardstock using the Eyelet Oval die (HCD1-776). Because these are not coffee, I only added on some cup and spoon embellishments using the Coffee Talk stamp and die set (HCPC-3709 & HCD1-782).

What's coming next is the main focus of the farewell gift - coffee. Coffee is where all friendships are made. Neither would I be able to make coffee for my customers anymore, nor would I know when will our paths cross again, what I can do is to gift them some coffee beans; beans that I used to make their daily coffee. Well, instead of placing those beans in a bottle, I placed them into these mini suitcases and decided to pack them with some interesting idea that will "perk" my customers up a little.

Without me further explaining, as pictures do speak a thousand words. Introducing Heavenly Scent; stress coping coffee beans!! What I stated within this little "product insert" are true accordingly to scientific studies, but what comes after are some puns and kind warnings! Oh well, these are meant to be some sort of novelty gimmick to entertain my customers a little. 

The gimmicky product insert...

These are matchbox size suitcases which I die cut them out from Tim Holtz' matchbox Bigz die (which unfortunately has been retired) using kraft cardstock. Prior to assembly, I stamped the surfaces with coffee beans using The Perfect Blend stamp set (HCPC-3712) and coloured the beans using watercolour pencils. At the back of the drawer, I stamped some Latte Art (HCPC-3711). To provide some "packaging" to these Heavenly Scent beans, I made these mini paper bags as well using The Perfect Blend stamps. 

I penned down my heartfelt messages for my customers on ATC cards and everything I made went into a bigger paper bag, which ended off with a huge message "Thank you for making my world a better place" using My World stamp (HCPC-3663) right at the front.

Alas, as I gifted them away to my customers, I hope I've more time to talk to them prior to my leaving. However, this wasn't possible as I couldn't manage to catch some of them in time and have to go. I left my crafting identity within and hope they are able to find me online. Well, should our paths cross again, we will meet again in time to come.