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!

Doodles o' Doodles!

I remember those days when I was still a student, one of my favourite past times (besides making cards & book hunting) was to doodle. My notebooks were full of doodlings - and don't let me start on the kinds of doodlings that I did back then hahaha..

So on one sweet day last week, I had this crazy idea while browsing the net, and started to cut 12 pieces of cards, and doodled them. Haha. The initial plan was to make a calendar, and I did turn them into a 2010 calendar... but I went a wee bit crazy with the doodlings and ithey ended up looking like some 5 year old's drawings hahaha. Oh well, I did the doodlings and the colouring while watching Iron Chef at 1.00 in the morning. And I did fall asleep sometime in between and then woke up and continued doodling and then fell asleep again haha..

Who cares anyway. I'm still sharing the horrifying results though hahaha.

So here come my very own 2010 desk calendar!


I made a box to keep the 12 calendars in tact, and the box also serves as the stand (will show you later). The colourful wrapper is leftover from other crafts that I did, and even though it went against the whole doodling concept of the calendar, I used it anyhow, coz the wrapper's been there like ages soI had to do something bout it.

And here's the 12-month calendar:


Now for individual month, let's start with January (umbrella ella ella)


February (not sure whether the yellow thing is a bird, chicken or monkey hahaha)


March (HAHAHAHAHA on the birds)


April (I thought this bit is ok-looking)


May (the markers went haywire)



June (don't really like the colour combination)


July (a bit simple)


August (the trees were probably from Mars hahaha)


September (it's a long way home huh)


October (those were not the colours of the rainbows, but who cares! :P)


November (abstract)


December (those are mutant butterflies - ahahaha, am really bad at doodling butterflies :P)


And this is how the desk calendar looks like:


And that's the end of the doodling calendar. I know I doodled pretty badly haha, but am still proud of the calendar, and will proudly use it the whole of next year, InsyaAllah.

You probably love doodling too (who doesn't!), so give it a try and just. let. go. It's a good stress reliever for me, and I had fun drawing and colouring and sleeping in between. It feels like a kid again. :)

p/s would probably start on professional-looking calendars later.

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. :)

Mango's Game

This is a delicious news.

Mangosteenskins is having a giveaway!


Mango has always been one of my favourite Malaysian crafters, and I've been a loyal reader since last year. She's one great lady with LOTS of artistic talents, and fabulously famous for her handcarved eraser stamps (which are really REALLY beautiful!). I think she has 2 amazing eyes - for such detailed jobs haha. I've always wanted one of her stamps, but I think she has enough on her hands to handle right now. She's been featured few times in local magazines and newspaper(s) - which is like a dream for crafters alike :P

The great news is that she's having eraser stamps giveaway at her blog! And of course I'm joining the bandwagon! And you should too!

Mango,

If I were given a choice, it would be an honour to have this to be handcarved by you:

رِحْلِة الأَلْف مِيل تَبْدَأ بِخَطْوَة

It's Arabic Calligraphy! The saying is an Arabic proverb. I'll tell you the meaning if I win ok! Hahahahaha.

It's more about the fun of participating than winning, I guess. So dear readers, JOIN IN THE FUN NOW and read the details of her giveaway in her blog HERE.

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.

FOUND! : Craft Punch

Craft lovers in Malaysia, you'd love this news!

I love collecting craft punches, but always thought that they're a bit pricey in Malaysia. Someone on ebay even sold this same brand at RM15.00! Even the usual size punch would cost me around RM9.00 - RM15.00.

But then, last week I found these:


And they're sold at RM5.00 each! Isn't that cheap?! Unfortunately, they're only selling two designs, so I took both. I've been collecting leaves punches, so the leaf design is just perfect to be added to my collection. The punches can be found in 3 colours - pink, yellow and blue.

Can't wait to use them!

Found at: Daiso Japan, 2nd Floor, The Curve, Mutiara Damansara.
Sold at: RM5.00 each (everything in the store worth RM5.00 each)

Hurry up, while stocks last!

Little Black Box

So okay, it's not that little. In fact, it's the biggest-sized box out of all the boxes on the rack haha. This is not my first time trying to alter a simple box, I've done shoe boxes before, but this is my first completed project, and the most put-efforts project I've ever done.


It took me half a day to complete this project. By this I meant I skipped lunch, and had late dinner for this project (It's true!). I took a break for about 15 minutes every few hours or so though. Like most of my other craft projects, I never had any specific design in mind. I decided on the colours beforehand, and the rest of the ideas normally come during the process itself. Which is why it took me longer time than usual to complete this one simple black box. Plus, the quilling was a bit harder to handle, since I used different sets of papers for the design. Instead of of using the normal A4 coloured papers like I used to, I've started to use environment-friendly construction papers (that are meant for craft projects). The papers were in different texture, so the result was quite different from what I expected. Nonetheless, I HEART the colours, and the outcome. So I'm going to stick with the papers for quite sometimes. :)



I don't know what to do with the box yet, and have no idea on whether to use the box for myself, or send it out as a gift, or sell it for those interested haha. But I guess I would keep this for a while, because I know how special this black box is, since the day I spent making it -was on my birthday! October the 3rd! Haha. Way to used up your birthday, huh!


Oh well, not sure bout anyone else, but I hardly spend my birthdays with others but myself. It's my day, after all, so I believe I should spend it the way I wanted to. And yes, I prefer quiet birthdays. :)



Now my main priority has just shifted (finally finished my dissertation yeay!), so maybe I should start taking orders again. Anyone?


Till later then, toodles!