Ssswirlssss.

I'm back! With another card!

This simple card was requested by a friend for her sis in law, who celebrated her birthday in early November. Told you I love swirls, and am yet to be tired of quilled flowersss hehehe.


The base for the cardstock is cream in colour, and I use peachy red, pink (dark and light pink), brown and with a dash of yellow for the quilling design. This is the first time I use more than 3 colours for a card, but I LOVE the colour combination anyhow.


I'm yet to practice on quilling the words differently, but I'm still loving the SIS look. Perhaps I could improve a bit on the designs in my next cards.


I also add up some pink buttons (of different pink tones) and little pink pearls to the card. The buttons were easy to manage, but the pearls.... ermm.. the end result was always great, but I feel like I always lose my patience everytime I had to deal with them. It's always a very messy affair. And I hate that. *sigh*



I do hope the sister in law loves the card tho. Okay, need to go back doing things I love to do on Thursdays. Aaand I need to finish up some cards and boxes and bookmarks before the deadline next week. Till later then!

Card-Runway (Part 3 - Final part)

Am back!

Before I start on the final part of the Card-Runway Show, there are few things that need to be clarified:

1. For the time being, I only take custom orders for anything related to papers - especially cards (all types), gift boxes, calendars etc. Whether it's only one, or in bulk, I'll try my very best to entertain to your needs.

2. It was an indescribable pleasure to have people acknowledging what you do, and appreciate your work. And everytime I have to part with my cards/craft items, it saddens me. Because only I know how much work and efforts and hearts I've put in one single item that I made. But then, I believe if I love them that much, other people will love them as much too. Hence, this was never about money (but of course, I welcome them too haha). The thing is, I made crafts only for those who are willing to appreciate them. And if you belong to the group, thank you very much, and I really appreciate that.

3. I do have some pre-made cards/ gift boxes/ quilled items in my collection, and been thinking of having one day garage blog sale to discard them. Will tell about it soon, so keep peeking ya! (P/s: might start a blog giveaway too - anyone wants some freebies?)

Okay, having that cleared up, let's go back to the Card-Runway.. the finale is finally here! Btw, like I've mentioned before, these cards were custom made for a friend (or should I start using the word customer?). She's changing job and wanted to give hand-made cards for her colleagues, as her farewell gifts. The first two cards are the final two in the 10 card collection:

Card No 9: Using simple quilling, paper cutting (at one point it looked like some cracked glass haha), and embossing.



Card No 10: Black does go well with anything.



And last but not least, this last card was meant for her boss, who's also joining a new workplace as a judge. Hence, the black and white card.

Card No 11: Please ignore the background mess haha. The trickiest part to do was arranging the tiny pearls.



And that's the end of my Card-Runway show. The process of making them was wonderful albeit the tiredness having to squeeze the creative juices from the brain. I've enjoyed making them, nevertheless. And I do hope you've enjoyed the show too. :)

Card-Runway (Part 2)

Here comes the cards for Card-Runway part 2. In continuation from the previous entry, I present four more cards from the 10+1 collection.

Card 5: One of my rare experiment using pattern papers. It might look easy to do, but it took me a while to arrange the colour combination and the design. I'm a plain paper crafter, so patterns do scare me a bit hehe.



Card 6: An updated version of this card. It's also a continuation from Card no 5.



Card 7: Totally forgot to take a close-up shot of the card. Quilled sunflowers, with an added ribbons and buttons. I also use embossing technique on the card.



Card 8: Start playing with the ribbon. And then I quilled a tree. :) One of my favs coz it's green!



There goes another four in the collection. Will try to post the final part once I can find the time to do so. Enjoy!

Card-Runway (Part 1)

I'm always a sucker for reality tv, be it Us-based, UK-based, Aussie-based or Malaysian-based reality shows, I'm all in. And one of my favs would of course be Project Runways. I've basically watched all of the previous seasons of PR USA, PR Canada, PR Australia, Project Catwalk UK and even PR Philippines hehe. The Runway USA season 6 is back (at the time of this writing, there're still 7 more designers left standing) so I'm totally hooked on that (p/s I have my online video sources).

And since I've been making a lot of cards last couple of weeks, it's an honour to present to you my very own card runway show hehe. It's a collection of 10 + 1 cards, made in request of the lovely Ms Aida, my junior during the uni years, as her farewell gifts for her colleagues.

The runway collection will be divided into 3 parts (4-4-3 combination), just because I wanted to. Hehe. So here goes Part 1 of my card runway show:

Card 1: I started the experiment with paper cutting with quilled butterfly as the highlight.



Card 2: Took one of the flowers from card 1 and turn them into quilled flowers



Card 3: The flowers then evolved into a dozen of quilled sunflowers



Card 4: Some of the flowers blossomed into this:

(I use the technique of paper punching, embossing and stamping)


Not until this project came into being that I realised there is a recurring trend of my cards. Apart from quilling, I just realised that I'm not really into pattern papers, and I'm not really good in using pattern papers for my cards (as can be seen above). However, I did try to use pattern paper on one of the cards.. but that would be in part 2 of my Card Runway project.

See ya then!

The Machoism of a Card

One thing I learned during my early card making days was that it has always been difficult to make cards that look masculine - from the colour choices to the design, it has always been difficult to cater to the masculine feel to a card. There were too many rules to follow - no flowers, nothing exaggerated, pink is a no-no, nothing that looks feminine etc.. Anyways, ask any cardmakers, they would say similar thing - that masculine cards always give them headaches, and sometimes we always ended up making cards that look more feminine than masculine, hehe.

Oh well. I appreciate beauty so naturally I love seeing flowers on my cards, even though in reality I prefer food than flowers (unless they start making some edible flowers haha). I love using girlish pink in my cards, even though in real life pink wasn't even in my fav colour list. I love colours, but usually I use not more than 3 colours in a card.

So of course it's hard to find colours for cards dedicated to men. So my pick usually range from black, brown, grey, green and white. And a bit of red in between. But usually I choose black as the very base of a masculine card, but mix it with some other colours. As for the design, abstract would be a safe bet, but sometimes I do play with elements that doesn't look so feminine in my eyes (like musical instruments, menswear etc).

So when I receive requests to make cards for men, I had to think extra hard so that the receiver would appreciate the cards, instead of being embarrased about it (LOL!)

Last week I made a card for a friend, as she wanted one dedicated to her husband, who happens to be a fighter pilot, and a pianist. So I made this (in similar size to the lucky sweet 6 card):


Here's the zoom in for the roses: (click for rose tutorial here)


The most difficult part of making this card was of course, the roses! As seen in the tutorial, it looked easy to do, but try making 13 of them.. then you'll know what I mean. Everything needs to be properly placed, or else the roses won't look like roses hah! I used the roses to have that softer touch to the black and white card. And as Poa wanted this for her husband, it needs a more romantic look to it, so roses would be nice.. right?


Hope the card still looks masculine enough... :P

(Okay, confession time: Piano has always been my safest bet for a male card. But I can't keep making piano cards that are similar to each other! I never made the same card design twice, and even if I tried to, I always failed, and ended up with slightly different designs)

Just sharing, this was what one of my first piano cards looked like - smaller in size, and much simpler.


It looks okay, but not very practical as the flower was too big for the card, and wouldn't fit in the normal envelope. I guess I improved on that, a bit. :)

Lucky Sweet 6

I've been very busy fulfilling orders from friends lately that I couldn't catch up to updating the blog. I've done most of the needed tasks so here I am, updating again. Never thought that having to squeeze creative juices from the head would tire me so much, but if felt great afterward, so I don't really mind. :)

I made this for a friend's niece that's going to celebrate her birthday this coming weekend. So she asked me to do a jewelery box and a giant card for her niece. And I came up with matching card and box:


I seriously had great fun designing the card, as it was the first time I ever done something that HUGE. And it was also my first time building up a jewelery box from scratch. So regardless of the imperfections, I'm very proud of them. The size of the card is 12.5" x 6.5" and the box's size is 7.5" x 6.5" x 3 3/4" (tall). (Hope I put that right coz I'm not really sure how one should really put down the measurement in words haha).

Here's the detailing for the card:


Some of the card features may seem similar to my previous design, but this time around i play with different tones of colours. The last time I made such flowers, the colours were more matured looking, but here, it's even too girlish for me. But hey, it's for a 6 year old kid, so I'm pretty sure she'd be happy as girls her age love overdosed PINK.


I chose pastel colours for the delicious sweetness of the card, and play around with different quilling designs in the butterflies and the bees. Take a look at this butterfly and guess how many quilled strips were used to complete a butterfly?


As for the box, here's what the outside of the box looks like:


And what's inside:


The niece's name is Wawa so I quilled her name on the inside lid so the box would be personalised, and decorated the alphabets with few quilled sunflowers.

And I made four small boxes instead of making partitions, so Wawa could play around with them and rearrange her jeweleries the way she wanted.


I really hope Wawa would have great joy for this gift, and the card. To Po'a, I'm sure you're such a great aunt and really hope your niece would be one happy kid when she receives this. :)

p/s: Nothing feels better than making someone's day.

Does it matter whether it's black or white?

I'm addicted! - to quilled flowers that is. I've been quilling like crazy lately, and been experimenting with as many flowers as I can do. It was fun, and really addictive. And I lost few kgs too haha as this tend to be the only diet that's working for me since I can only forget about food when I'm crafting hahaha.

Have to admit this is not really my favourite design, but I love the cool, mysterious and modern feeling that this card gives me (maybe not to anyone else though haha).


Anyhow, I love the combination of black and white, because in my book, black and white are my prime colours that I could combine with any other colours and still come out with gorgeous crafts. And I'm loving the wood-textured cardstock and the quilling strips that I made from the construction papers. The quilling strips give some kind of fabric feel to the flowers, and I love that effect to bits!

Like I mentioned before, the papers were a bit difficult to handle, and you need a whole lot of patience when it comes to gluing the rolled strips. And they're more fragile as well. Will try and experiment quilling on different types of papers and we'll see how they turned out. That way we could choose the best papers for the best quilling crafts heh!


The thing about quilling is that you can only appreciate the card once you notice how much work were put in one card. I quilled all the flowers beforehand (and currently have flowers in different shades and tones!) and only added the details once I've decided on what to do with the card.


The leaf below is the result of quilling two strips at one go. I overlapped black strip with white strip and quilled them together. Cool result!


I am yet to start husking (another quilling technique that needs more concentration and time), but that would have to wait since I have a lot more flowers to quill, and 9 more cards to make before next week arrives!

Now off to the cards again.

Birthday card for Didee

I made this last week, for Didee's belated birthday. Didee's a friend I met while doing my Masters, and we clicked instantly on the very first day we've met. I made this in 2 hours, right before our planned lunch date, last week. I promised her a birthday card ages ago haha, but only managed to finally made it on the day of our outing hehe.


The idea came spontaneously, but I always wanted to do flowers-related quilling. Plus, when we were in Vietnam during a short-stint visit organised by the school, we found some quilled cards (which Didee bought and I regrettably didn't) and she adored them very much. So of course I had to make a quilled card as well hehe.

I'm glad she loves this card (and even promote ME on her facebook hahaha), and hope it's going to be a long-lasting friendship.


To Didee, thank you for being a great partner in crime! Love u dear!

p/s: This card was also part of the inspiration for my Little Black Box.