A Bit of Everything for March and April Swaps

I sent this lot to Debbie House (USA) for the Inchies-onexone March and April swaps.

March swaps included 4 Purrfect (Cat) inchies and 4 Analogous Twinchies with spring time theme.  The cats are stamped on and placed over thread ends all knotted together and wrapped over the whole inchie, while the twinchies are done with die-cut.  The following are a duplicate set of all the swaps for my own collection.

April swaps included a set of 4 inchies of pastel watercolour background with tatted butterflies, 4 inchies stamped and embossed, 2 Moos, 2 thrinchies, and 2 ATCs.  I cut and folded some flowers on 1 of the Moos and folded a pair of butterflies for the other - turned out very Japanese-looking because of the papers!

I did more of the movable ATCs after the March ATC session in Bisahn Library.  For the "Up and Away" ATC on the left in the photo below, pull the bottom string to move the balloons up the sky and pull the top string to bring the balloons down.

For the Bookmark exchange on the NEEDLESnCRAFTS group, I received 2 very lovely cross-stitched bookmarks and a tag from Margaret Wong (Malaysia). Margaret has matched the colour and theme of the  backing fabric, tassel and gift to go along with the bookmarks and tag.  Cross-stitch is something I couldn't do well, so they are extra precious to me, thank you, Margaret!

Kristine did another flower arrangement in school, this scored 86 out of 100.  I like the colour combination.

Fluttering Butterflies, Colourful Blooms, All Tatted

Joey need some little gifts for her 10 senior school table-tennis team players who are graduating this year.  I tatted for her a whole lot of flowers and butterflies with magnetic bead centre.  They are not very strong to hold paper to metal surface, but look quite good though on their own to brighten up any place and will certainly work as a needle minder. 

I really did a lot of tatting this past month, not just the flowers and butterflies, but also  bookmarks.  They are for a bookmark exchange on the NEEDLESnCRAFTS group.  I sent mine to Maria Silva in Portugal.

  

For last Thu ATC session in Bishan Library, we did drawing using the carbon paper way, but with crayon instead of usual carbon paper.  I never really like working with crayons, I can't stand getting bits of crayons all over my hands!

The theme for the ATCs we swapped was "Everyday".  I used the paper bags of the peppermint and licorice tea I drink to do tea-bag folding, and cut the black outline of the tea cup.  Background embossed with embossing folder and painted with watercolours.

(Going clockwise from top right) Swapped ATCs from Maggie "Cubism", "Rabbit, Circus, Circus" from Rita, "Smile - Bow B" from Moses, "An Apple "Everyday" Keeps the Doctor Away" from Jennifer Lum and "Teh-C ("Siew Tai")" from Richard.  I especially like the way the clown holds the rabbit on his palms - the composition and add-on to the background clown look just perfect.

Kristine is having her floral arrangement lessons in school again.  This scored 83/100.

Gemicans And Adventures!

March theme for our ATC session in Bishan Library was "Bling Bling".  I browsed through all the jewellery brochures I have kept and came up with a new "Bling Bling" race - the Gemicans.  I'm not sure if I should be admiring the paper dolls or the gems, but one thing I'm sure is there will be more Gemicans to come!

Traded 3 of them for the following.  From left to right - ATC from Moses (B/W Bling Bling), Vicki (Imagine) and Sor Huan (Do You Know Me?).

Umintsuru has earlier asked for suggestions on the arrangement of 2 dozen tatted roses. On the spur of the moment, I came up with the arrangement based on the Chinese word "乐", meaning happy.  You can see the actual arrangement on her blog ...

and a very sweet pair of tatted earrings came as a gift!  Thank you, Umintsuru!!

Last Sunday, my sister brought her boys to Forest Adventure at the Bedok Reservoir Park.  I joined her with my youngest girl.  The children went for the Kids Course, a 1-hour tree top course comprising 16 stages. I was gamed for the Grand Course, which has 34 obstacles including 4 zip lines over the Bedok Reservoir and a giant tarzan swing.  Not too difficult but it did take 2 whole hours to complete the actual course excluding the safety briefing. 

 

I'm game for more adventures!

Kristine working her way through ...

Last but not least, I wanted to show the birthday card my girl did for me.  I'm quite impressed with the construction of the card - there are 5 folds to the 12" x 12" paper, a tag on the front, a hinged disc and an ATC on the inside.  So sweet, Kristine! 

"Snakes" through 2013

MaryAnn Arnold organised a Chinese New Year - Year of the Snake swap.  I sent in 6.

All, except one below, were done in red packet style and a paper coin included in each of the red packet-ATC.  I love to think out of the box and create ATCs with a difference!

Received the swap back last week - from top left going clockwise: ATCs from MaryAnn, Belinda Shields, Jennifer Johnson, Marlone Ketterman, Anna Secrest and Cat Riley. Really hard to choose a favourite; thank you to all for a fun swap!  I'm already looking forwards to the next CNY swap!

For the Bowl of Hearts swap, 3 more fabric hearts came from Cathy Vigor (USA), Sonya Anderson (USA) and Jenny C Burns (UK).  Can't wait for the last one from Lorri to come to take a photo of all the hearts together!

I have not been doing art doll lately, just 1 to Maureen for the Jan swap.  He is Ravana, the 10-headed King from the epic Ramayana, cut from 3 postcards to make up for all the movable limbs. 

For our monthly ATC sessions in Bishan Library, we made some movable cards in the January session.  The object will move when the string is pulled.  However, it can only move in a straight line.  I did one (the left-most ATC with red background) using brad, so that it can move in a circular line. 

Traded another movable ATC with Rita (the blue and peach birds).  The quilled card 吉 is done by Mdm Au, "Love Songs" (the black birds) by M. Chong and the Valentine Day card on foam by a young Indian girl, Nachu.

Valentine's Day Goodies

I did quite a bit for Valentine's Day this year.  It started with a Valentine-button fairy ATC swap I hosted at artisttradingcards.  Received a number of fabulous ATCs from ...

Pamela H Crosby (USA),

MaryAnn Arnold (USA),

Teresa Hoffman (USA),

Savannah LeCornu (USA),

Andrea Vaughan (UK),

Terry Owenby (USA),

Lavinia Nowosielski (USA),

and myself.

Thank you to all for participating, and all the gifts that came! They are all so colourful and playful :) Apart from Katt's ATCs which I have not received, I have sent out the swap to the rest.  

Over at SurfaceDesign, someone suggested a "Bowl of Hearts" trade.  A lovely idea!  I designed some tatted hearts with buttons. I just can't decide which was better, so they ended up all slightly different! 

So far, I have received from Jan Ziebol/USA (the 2 red hearts on the top row plus the heart card) and from Lesley Hurrell/UK (the bottom pink heart).

I tatted and sewed more hearts, but this time with a loop of  ribbon to hang the hearts for my ex-colleagues (heart from left to right, top to bottom row - for Katherine, Lay Cheng, Jeanette, Sharon and Foong San). 

For Inchies-onexone Jan and Feb swaps, I finished more hearts on inchies - origami style and zentangle style!  This set as sent to Debbie House: 

and this set for myself.  Tried my hands at Chinese painting following a book.  I love the tiny Chinese red seal I made in China. The 3 Chinese painting are done on miniature art card (1.5" by 2.5") and mounted on black ATC blank. 

The 2 squares in the centre are twinchies (2" by 2") with an inchie (1" by 1") on a sewing theme, done with die-cuts.  Do they look simple?  But it did take quite a bit of time and effort to row them out and assemble them.

I sewed a tiniest pincushion earlier.  Very cute, right!  Just nice to go into the tin, together with my shuttle and some threads. 

One last heart ATCs photo, with a quote by Robert Fulghum.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!