Lots of Activities! Dotee Doll, Scrapbooking, Embroidery and Orchestra

Received my first ever Dotee Doll from Lisa Ahmad. The doll is such a beauty - I love her figure and blue hair. Sweet smile too, oh, thank you, Lisa! Love the way you sign your doll too :)

Brought my 2 girls for a scrapbooking class again last Friday. Each of them did 1 page. This first one was done by Kristine.

And this 2nd one done by Joey.

Cos' I chanced upon this book, The Art of Embroidered Flowers by Gilda Baron, I'm so inspired to sew. So I have been sewing, lots of surface embriodery on fabric ATCs. And I'm love water-soluable crayons, feel like a real artist painting on the fabric (cos' I never can paint)!

How do they look against the photos in the book?

These are all I managed so far, pretty time-consuming, but really satisfying! Some of them are works in the process :)

To wrap this blog entry up, I attended this Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) last night at the Esplanade Concert Hall. This was their debut visit to Singapore. The ICO is critically acclaimed by Ireland's Sunday Tribune as "the best orchestra in the country (Ireland) by far". The ICO was joined by leading Irish accordionist, Dermot Dunne - first time I saw and heard music played from an accordion. The orchestra was made by of string instruments - volin, viola, cello and double bass. Not that I know much about classical music and all these instruments, but I sure enjoyed the night with the mix of celebrated classics and virtuoso pieces from Vivaldi, Mozart and Astor Piazzolla. Personally, I felt that "The Shanghai Set - A Medley of Irish tunes" topped them all!

Mayday Concert, ATCs, My Little Winnings

I was given a pair of complimentary tickets to the Best World Lifestyle (BWL)'s 20th Anniversary Mayday (五月天) concert for last Sat, so I just popped down to the Singapore Indoor Stadium to take a look. I went without much expectation, after all, this was a company event (the company specialises in the marketing of skincare, health supplements and lifestyle products), and the concert would be just part of the night. And honestly, I have not even heard any Mayday song previously!
Surprising, it was an interesting gathering, an eye-opener, with representatives from 13 countries, among them were people from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc.; all dressed up in their cultural national costumes and head gears, all so colourful, glittering and sparkling! After all the speeches, success stories (so inspirational!), awards and oh, the launch of World Learner Cultural Immersion Program - the company started the World Learner Student Exchange Scholarship with a 1 million yuan (S$205,300) donation, and next month, the first batch of 23 Sichuan children, affected by the devastating earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, will be visiting Singapore on a two-week trip. This was in the newspapers earlier, and my boy's school will be one of the hosting schools they will be visiting.

Finally, the Mayday concert! As usual, all the young girls, fans of the young Taiwanese band, got so excited and delighted! I'm ok with the songs, but the music was a bit too loud for comfort, and we left at the start of the encore, to catch the new Circle Line MRT before the main crowd were out.

We had the monthly ATC session at Bishan Library on Thu. Due to the publicity, it was a good turnout, children too, since it is the mid-year school holidays. As Singapore will be hosting the Youth Olympic Games this coming Aug, the YOG was selected as the theme for the month. We have worked some ATCs based on the 26 sports in the YOG using finger printing.

Clockwise from top-left: Football done by Richard; Cycling (finger-printing) by my girl, Joey; Rowing, Sailing, Aquatics (finger-printing) I did; and Gymnastics by Pei Ling.

These are the 2 latest ATCs I traded with Kristine. She needle-felted the hearts and the background while I sewed up the edges for her.

I just have a soft spot for all kitties! Kristine drew this with marker pens.

These elephants were folded by Rita, and the photo (Singapore Lights) taken by Pei Ling

I was delighted to receive Mary Strong's fabric ATCs - Butterfly Girl and Forest Bird - love the colour combinations, and the peacock and butterfly are my other favourite subjects.

Finally, here's a giveaway I won a little while ago, but received these lovely items recently - Lime Time and Peachy Keen Soapy Pop from Kiss My Style, and also an eye pillow filled with my favourite dried lavender buds. Love the scents! A little too pretty to use though, especially the soaps!

When I reached home today, a box was sitting right there waiting for me! Here are the goodies from the bag in the box! This is one of the three generous giveaways from Gina, the Tatting Goddess! Wow! Thank you, Gina!

Alan Tam/Hacken Lee Concert and ATC In The News

Alan Tam and Hacken Lee put up a fantastic concert on 29 May Sat at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. I have watched their 2004 Hong Kong concert on DVD, but nothing beat seeing them in person and listening to them live on stage. Literally like magic coming alive, the pair packed the 3 solid hours with lots of their best Cantonese songs, witty and humerous talks, and numerous glitzy costumes! Make me real tempted to want to fly to Hong Kong for their next concert!

Managed to finish up quite a bit of ATCs these 2 weeks, both fabric ones and art dolls. I did more bullion knot embroidery and also tried cast-on stitch flowers. The effect of the cast-on stitch is like the Josephine knot in tatting, just that the cast-on stitch is sewed directly on the fabric. Since I have so many tatting cotton threads, I used them for all these flowers rather than embroidery floss.

Cute bullion knot bunnies - just got to try sewing them!

These 2 ATCs, I used water-soluble crayons and hand-sewed the outline, with a layer of batting on the back. Added a special touch with a tatted bee. Oh, I just love this block-tatted bee designed by Martha Ess, goes so well with flowers!

These are the 2 ATC Alphabet dolls are going to Lynette for the ATC- ArtDoll May Swap, with embossed alphabet background, alphabet dress and her initials on it.

My faerie godmother going to Cindy - used my QuicKutz to emboss the dress, otherwise, everything were hand-cut and layered.

Received this faerie godmother from Marlene, looked like the body and fan are stamped and heavily-embossed with gold powder.

And these ATC Alphabet Dolls were from Dana, with my initals on the cards. We had the same idea, Dana!

I did more of my ATC Alphabet dolls!

We were featured in the local newspapers (The Sunday Times, 30 May 2010)! Here's Moses and the article on ATC and the live trading sessions at the Bishan Library. Kristine and myself were mentioned :) Click on the link to go to the bigger version of the news article.

Finally, I wanted to show off Kristine's latest Chinese calligrahpy works done in school. I'm quite proud of what she can do, cos' I can't do it myself! That's what I like about school with Chinese background - this is just part of those compulsory things students have to learn of the Chinese culture.