Sam Hui in Concert, More Scrapbooking Pages and Embroidered ATCs

This was one concert which tickets were selling 10 months before the event. Sam Hui's Live In Concert『许冠杰難忘往日情演唱會』at The MAX Pavilion@Singapore Expo was held last Saturday - the 3rd of Sam's concerts I attended since the first in Mar 2008!

A lot of similarities in the 3 concerts, it was always a family affair - both his sons, Ryan and Scott, and his elder brother, Ricky Hui, would always accompanied him in his concert tours and sang a song or two each.

A lot of photos were flashed - from his younger days till now.

His wife, Rebecca Fleming, made a surprise appearance this time, to everyone's delight, both hands in hands as Sam sang a love ballet.

He still came down stage and was mobbed by eager fans, so much so, armed security officers had to guard the front of the stage towards the later part of the night. Sam had so many songs to his credit, only some of everyone's all-time favourites were repeated in the concerts.

Paying tribute to some of his close colleagues, Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui (below), Roman Tam, among a few more, Sam sang one of each of their songs. They were some of my favourite singers too, a pity they died young.

Everyone could clearly see Sam's transformation, with a noticeable belly in the 2008 concert, to a very much slimmer waistline in Feb this year, and now a well-tone body. To sum it up, as one Hong Kong fan shouted, "Sam, 你好有型 !" (translated from Cantonese "you have great style").

Here's a short clip of the start of the concert - the 2nd song in the clip is L.O.V.E and the 3rd song 《心里日记》is one of my favourites.

After the scrapbooking class, my girls finished up another 2 pages at home, Kristine when she was in Kindergarten Year 2, and photos I took with my girls.

More embroidery works. Can you imagine I have worked thousands of French knots into these ATCs so far?

I'm expecting more fabric ATCs to come in, but here's the first from Satu in Finland. I love the way she used bits of lace to form the wings, and see the small face she sculptured from clay!

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!

Scrapbooking Birthday Party, Bee's Special Tatted Clip, ATC on Parade

Kristine attended her classmate, Charmaine's birthday party at Laine's Papeterie in Wheelock Place last Sunday. The girls were all so excited to do a scrapbook page on their own, with plenty of guidance from the instructor. The shop here has a pretty cosy room, not so much as a party room, but with good working tables and space to comfortably accommodate up to 10 persons to do scrapbooking. The girls had a good time too dodging the camera while munching on finger foods and cake after completing their scrapbook page.

And finally, the girls proudly showing off their work!

I'm definitely more pleased with this specially-designed paper clip for Bee for her birthday, compared to Rafii's one. Some combination of alphabets simply turned out better than others. Expect more tatted alphabets on paper clip to come. One will be a free pattern for Georgia's Online Tatting Class later this year.

It was a fun evening on Wednesday at Bishan National Library. A number of us came with our ATCs and food for pot luck. We makan first, and spent a good bit of time admiring all our works, then had to work fast to put up the exhibition before we were chased out of the library at closing time! Do visit the exhibition "ATC On Parade" if you can. It will be on till 13 Aug 09, and we'll be there on 13 Aug evening for the usual trading session.

My ATCs on exhibit,

5 embellished with tatted motifs, 1 Zentangle-style butterfly,

1 paper-embroidered bear, 1 crocheted angel, 1 paper-cutting rooster.

The first 5 ATCs done by Joey, and the last 4 done by Kristine.
Among the careds are a paper-cutting bunny, paper-embroidered flower, irish folded flower, origami cranes, finger-printed shuttle, paper-pricked flower and bees.

Admiring everyone's ATCs before putting them up (photo by Moses - our organiser)

Another Tatted Gift, Crafting and ATC Sessions

Hopefully, this is the last resignation for the months to come. These are tatted for Rafii. The alphabets are Teri Dusenbury's design, while I came up with the paper clip design.

I was very active in my previous company, organising social activities and craft sessions for the recreation club, as I enjoy learning new crafts or simply to do some projects in a group. 6 years have passed since I join my present company, without such recreational crafting sessions. I'm simply overjoyed when I found a group that meets monthly to do crafts - the KBCC - Knotty Bicsie Crafting Club. I have since joined them for 2 sessions, and my children enjoy tagging along too. Last month, we did watercolour painting, and last weekend, we did scrapbooking (more photos). Not that you will master the skills and techniques within 2 to 3 hours time span, but it's a great exposure and fun getting together in a group. Besides, our host, Betsy, arranged such delicious snacks for us. Thank you, Betsy!

"My Family" (above) was done by Joey.

And this bottom one was done by me during the scrapbooking session.

The other group I now join is doing and trading ATCs. Yep! Found a local group which meet and trade ATCs monthly. In the last session, we met and tried paper piercing on ATC. Not something new to me, but my Kristine did it for the first time, and she really concentrate hard to finish a piece (the middle one on the bottom row)!

Mine was on the extreme left on the 2nd row from the bottom. I subsequently did another one and added tatted flowers to the bear and cut a bird to sit on the bear's head.

The tatted heart on bottom right was tatted by Dorcas for me in a tatting exchange. I mounted it on a co-ordinating card, ribbon and all. Look real sweet!

And I must show these 3 ATCs which I traded. The left one has real plant parts glued on, the middle one is pen drawing, Zentangle-style, and the right one has sequins sewn onto fabric.

The group will be holding an exhibition, ATC Parade, at Bishan Library from 6th to 13th Aug 2009. My 2 girls and myself are participating. We'll be there on 8 Aug and 13 Aug with the others! Looking forward to it, it'll be fun to see what everyone's doing!

Last but not least, I will be drawing 2 winners on 9 Aug for my blog giveaway. You are still not too late to participate if you haven't, just leave a comment in my previous post.

Scrapbooking and More Clay Art

How time flies! The 4 weeks of school holidays have ended and school starts again today. Spent the last weekend with my children doing scrapbooking and clay. Brought the children to a free scrapbooking lesson, and this is what they did together: We still have a lot of photos, so we continued at home. This is what Ivan did himself, showing the musicals they attended:
And Joey came up with this: Kristine also attempted, but she couldn’t manage everything herself, it is not completed yet. But I managed to finish this with QuicKutz cookie-cutters, they made the job of cutting all those alphabets much faster than the other die-cuts.
Well, the girls are crying unfairness and pestering me to get them some clay since my boy did the earlier clay pieces. Finally, I bought them and these were what they did. Ivan and Joey followed books mainly, but Joey was very fast with her hands. Kristine didn’t know how to follow book, she did her pieces from imagination – not too bad at first, love the first few pieces at the left, but she got tired and started making things big on the right (and whatever are those!). I only helped them with the Santa Claus!

Look like Ivan still likes food!

Joey likes animals!

Kristine's creations (a sort-of flower girl, a drawf, oranges, Santa Claus, lollipop, cake and the other 2 whatever they are, I wonder!)