The creative cats

I hardly join giveaways, but I think these three deserved special mentions, and lots of LOVE from everyone!

(Everyone seems to be on giveaway mood lately in Malaysian craft scene haha)

There's always a little something that I learned from my encounters with online craft communities. Each blog that I silently read always encourages me to learn something new, something fresh, and mostly, something to ponder. One of the very first thing I learned on being a good crafter was the need to have distinctive style of your own. A style that carries you name with it, so people would be able to associate the uniqueness of your craft, even at first glance. A friend once said to me: there are many copycats around, but the creative cats are the ones that shine the most. And these three crafters are examples of those shiny creative cats (with bling2 accessories hahaha)

Picture Perfect Giveaway

Azilah of Cupcake Crafts & Handmade Cards has decided to share this Gorgeous tri-shutter card!

When I first found Azilah's blog, I knew that I've fallen in love at first sight. I adore her vintage cards to the nth degree, and envy her photography skills too. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE her colour choices and her perfect ways of combining textures and patterns on her cards. She has that distinctive vintage + retro + a bit of English style that I love to my heart's content! You have no idea how many times I'd secretly went through her blog entries and drooled over her designs hehe. And her photos... are superb! We should meet one day dear, so I could learn a trick or two from you on how to improve my camera skills hehe.

Sending Love Your Way Giveaway

Lin of Lin Handmade Greeting Cards is giving this fluffy bear card away for her November giveaway!

Lin is one of the pioneer Malaysian paper-craft blogs that I found online - and she even have some loyal customers dated even years back (which shows how trustworthy she is). When I just started craft-blogging, she had already established herself as a true card maker. When I had the opportunity to meet her personally, my respect grew, and so did my admiration over her crafts. I could never have the patience like she has, and the neatness of her cards humbled me to improve how I made mine. And the best part, she's like The giveaway queen right now, having organise giveaways every month hehe! :D

Design with Nature Giveaway

Last but not least, Asma' of Simple Rhyme decides to share this hand-bound books with 2 lucky winners!



Asma' of Simple Rhyme holds a special mention. She is one of the earliest Malaysian quillers I've met and I've been following her quilling blog ever since she started one. She has her own distinctive quilling style that I admire (more like envy haha), and has been quilling for years (even longer than I do!). She's neat, and clearly has more patience than I do too heh! Recently she made my jaw dropped with her awesome hand-bound books. I took one look at mine, and then hers, and immediately knew that I had to hide mine away - my poor books would feel VERY insecure standing next to hers hahaha.

I sincerely thought that these three lovely blogs need all the love they can get. So why wait? Go pay these creative cats a visit, and fall in love okay! (and while you're there, don't forget to join their giveaways as well. :P)

Capturing rainbows

Remember ages back when I said I'm on another photo album project? Well, here it is. Yes, finally.

It's blue, and I think the album was meant for new born piccas or something - since they put the baby picture on the front. I'll change the front photo later once I've decided what to do with the album.

I've done similar design on another project before, but back then, I only use black, white and shades of pink. This time around, I used plentiful of colours, so the album was meant for some fun photos.The design is also a wink to Simple Rhyme's whimsical lollipops. See, I told you how much I love 'em! (The truth is, I made this right after our Get Together haha).

I guess the albums are really addictive, and I found myself wanting to buy more of them! And it does not help that I saw an A3 size album of similar design was on sale. How can I NOT buy them?! I will surely end up having more albums than photos. Hehe.



Just don't get bored ok! :P

That girlish thing.

What would you do when you're itching to quill, but found out that you've lost your favourite quilling tool? Well, that happened to me recently, and I'm yet to find the replacement. *sigh* Yes, I do have other quilling needles, but it just.. felt.. different. :(

So, after not quilling for quite a while, I decided to warm up a bit and do simple designs first. I haven't made flowers in quite a while, and I suddenly had this crave for something girlish, and feminine. [insert roll eyes] Since I can't find any quilling tool in sight then, I quilled this design using..... pencil! Thee hee hee. It's kind of nice for a change, but it gets a bit difficult as compared to quilling using the usual tool.

I hardly use any punch-out paper for my design, but couldn't hep but add a dash to the memo pad. It's a nice border. (But do mind the uneven cut of the border for I cut them at around midnight, and didn't use any ruler haha.)


As for the quilling tool, I thought of making one, but am yet to find the right time for it.

Feature 1

Miyyah@Kertas was featured in The Star newspaper yesterday!

It was just few paragraphs, but enough to make me, the kids (and their parents haha) excited. It's kind of fun and thrilling to see yourself in the news, for the first time. :P

Click HERE for the full article, which could also be found online.

I decided to give STAR Kids Fair a try, just because it has been a long dream of mine to be surrounded by screaming children. Haha. Kidding! It's just a fun way to entertain and challenge myself, and a great way for me to give back to the community.

So yes, I'll be handling quilling slots for children on 27th November (from 1-2 pm) & 28th November (from 12 - 1 pm) 2010  at KL Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur. This project is brought together by ParenThots and Arts and Craft Guild. Come and join us there! Don't forget to bring your kids along, and if you don't have any, bring your nephews or nieces, or any other kids you could find on street! See ya!

FULL REPORT: The Thrilling Quilling Get Together v1.0

Years before I started this blog, I hardly knew any paper crafter, and always wished that I could at least find someone who'd be able to share my paper-craze. Yup, it's kind of difficult to explain to people the needs of buying more paper and glue and scissors and ribbons, even though I have piles of them at home. I then started googling online for Malaysian craft communities, and found this one little forum called Lovescrap. It was my first online craft forum, and I was beyond excited to be able to make friends with fellow crafters. Then I decided to start a blog, simply to share what I love to do - crafting (and lengthy writing hehe).

Two and a half years later, Malaysian online craft community has really expanded quite well. You can find plenty of blogs and online shops selling hand-made crafts, and being able to get to know people of the same passion was great. However, to be able to meet other Malaysian quillers and slowly spread the love for quilling was even a greater feeling. It's exciting to see more Malaysian craft blogs are dedicated to quilling, and that craft stores in Malaysia have started to pile up quilling materials (albeit rather limited). So, when we decided to hold a little get-together dedicated to quilling, everybody was pretty excited. It was a pretty short notice (2 weeks), but we managed to gather almost 15 names (but later trimmed down to 11 due to various reasons).



Since we were worried about the unpredictability of Malaysian weather, we decided to hold the event indoor instead and went to a fast food joint. We picked the farthest spot, but comfy enough to accommodate 11 of us. We bought few drinks at the counter (some brought own food - sandwiches, wedges, muffins etc), and started dumping all the materials on the table. I was half worried that the fast-food manager/ staff would come running towards us, and shooed us away hehe. Surprisingly, they didn't (except from few exchanging glances as they were curious to see what we were doing) so overall it was great not to have any interruption.

We basically started our session at around 10.30 am and ended it almost 4.5 hours later! (I wish we could go on longer, but perhaps next time). It was such a joy to see hundreds of colourful paper strips lying on the table. Some brought cards but Saza needed to be given proper acknowledgement for being THE MOST prepared one - she brought a box of already folded cards with different colours together with some drool-worthy ribbons! We began the session by drooling over each other's craft tool (heh!), then I shared the alternate loop technique with everyone (hence, all the butterflies in the cards!). To think about it, it was the only technique that I managed to share, since we ended up exploring on our own!



I was really having a blast with everyone. There is nothing better (at least to me) than being with people who understand my addiction in crafting, the excitement to talk about them the whole day, getting excited over little things like gluing papers on cards and spotting beautiful ribbons. Meeting them was like meeting your long-lost buddies, since we clicked almost instantly. We were crazy about the same things, and where else would I find people who chose strips of paper over food and drinks?!. We didn't even bother about peeking eyes, or stretched necks from other tables - glancing at a bunch of giggling girls with thousands of colourful little paper strips on the tables.We laughed at each others' jokes, getting excited when someone used gorgeous colour combinations, getting thrilled when someone discovered new designs and techniques and feeling satisfied looking at those simple little cards that we made, spread on the table.

(The children were so excited and asked lots of questions about our cards!)

I learned a lot from them. Whether they're the first timers, or seasoned quillers, there's always something fresh and new that I learned, and getting inspired by. I was inspired by Lin's detailing when she quill and Asma's neatness. I absolutely loved the gorgeous colour combinations by Nirwana, Nisa and Fid. I was a bit jealous to see how fast Tania made her cards (she made 3 beautiful ones!), and the way Molly quill her flowers. Everybody loves Saza's romantic heart card and I particularly thought Lin's (there were 2 Lins) purple card matches her beautiful outfit (I love your scarf hehe). And Ayin's first bookmark? It was soooo cute and tells little cute story (love the navy ship so much!).

I guess it's true what people say - time went very fast when you're doing something you love. It felt like I didn't really want to leave, and there are so many other things that we could share and discuss. Nevertheless, we ended our get-together with a promise of doing another, with better preparation time, and at a better place. I left KLCC with a pretty huge grin on my face, and only realised that I was REALLY HUNGRY when my stomach groaned while I was driving home.

p/s: Feel free to browse through the rest of the photos (and pictures of the individual cards) taken during the get together HERE.

QUILLING GET-TOGETHER v1.0!

Wheeee! I'm a wee bit nervous about this project, but I'm really looking forward to it. As most of you have noticed, I haven't blog lately, and had to put quilling in the backseat for a while due to some personal reasons. My apologies for those affected with this decision. :(

However, I'm still quilling though, even if the project is too small and nothing to brag about. Quilling is like my doses that I have to take frequently, and to get it out of my system is of course, totally impossible.

HOW THE PROJECT STARTED
It all started when I got totally jealous of Simple Rhyme's whimsical lollipops hehe (envy her for her continuous quillings!), and has this crazy idea of doing a get-together with fellow quilling enthusiasts.  I would love to spread the quilling bug to everyone, and at the same time pushing myself to quill again. Hence, Quilling Get-Together v1.0 is officially brought onto the table.

IT'S FREE!
Since this is a non-profit get-together, we won't ask for money, but would love if you could donate a little (in form of food, drinks, cards, ribbons etc). You need to bring your own quilling tools/ stationery set (if you don't have any, just bring yourself). Nevertheless, limited quilling tools for sale will be available on that day.

WHAT WE'RE GOING TO DO
A day of quilling may not be enough, but I'm trying very hard to accomodate everyone - whether you're a first-timer, or an expert quiller. So we would start the day by going through the basic first - from tips and tricks of choosing the papers, the colour combination, the right quilling tool, the glue etc, to the sharing of basic quilling shapes and what you can do with them. Once you've gotten the hang of it, then we could do some little quilling projects together. You may also bring your own quilling projects to do and share.

THE OFFICIAL INVITATION
Hence, I would like to invite everyone to join our little get-together for a day of quilling fun. The details are as follows:

Date: 3rd of October 2010 (Sunday)
Venue: KLCC Park, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Time: 10.00 am

If you're interested in joining the get-together, feel free to join our discussion HERE, and write down your name to the list. You will be contacted for further details.