Festivals, Movie Preview and Teachers' Day

I don't go out often in the night, but you will have to go in the night for these 2 events in order to see the lights, and lots of them!

First time I decided to catch the Night Festival, but it was a bit too crowded.  Never see so many people in our museums before! 

Had 2 servings of the famous Taiwanese 臭豆腐 "smelly tofu" at the Food Street set up in the Gardens By The Bay for the Mid-Autumn (Lantern) Festival, though not everyone appreciates the dish. My father has to keep a distance from the stall and from me when I was eating!  But couldn't help noticing the queue was the longest at this stall and moving reasonably fast too.

More lanterns - Joey and classmates built this lantern with recycled materials for this year competition.

And this was done last year with 2 classmates, which won 2nd place in the Radin Mas Primary School competition.

Yesterday was Golden Village Movie Club 7th Birthday bash with preview screening of "The Maze Runner" at GV Grand. A very exciting show, just the type my boy loves to watch, and I had to grasp his arm in a number of the scenes. Since this is based on the 1st book of the young-adult post-apicalytic science fiction trilogy of the same name by James Dashner, one can expect sequels? 

We worked hard last week for the annual Teachers' Day presents. Now that the children are older, they could manage better on their own, especially my boy, he baked his own cupcakes.

Pointillism and Aother Great Sing-Along!

During A*Live December on Thu, Moses introduced French artist, Georges Seurat, and the technique the latter developed which people called "Pointillism" - using dots of paint instead of using longer brush strokes to create picture. We tried applying watercolours with cotton buds to create dots. Although the dots are pretty big, it was a fun technique; I love it, and just great for non-artist like me!
Traded quite a number of ATCs too: Going clockwise from top left "Christmas" by Selina Yeoh, "Owl Always Love You" by Rita, "Pufferfish" by Bliss (a 6-year old girl), and "Merry Christmas" by Richard Wee. Rita and Richared are retirees. Just to prove ATCs are really for anyone, young and old, and addicitive!

And these I got from my girls: Kristine's Big Butterfly, Lion is Puzzled (it's snowing and the lions don't know what is the white stuff!), Flying Fish and Joey's origami penquin with movable tail. Joey took my hole puncher and brads and started creating origami with movable parts!

I created more gingerbread boys and girls, all with 4 limbs and head movable - a hit in the A*Live trading session.
And for the Dec theme "Merry", I created these scrapbooking style "Joyfully Merry". Embossing dies work really well on these silver-coloured parchment papers.

Love the word "JOY" so much so that I tatted the candy canes, wreaths and snowflakes to sew up these fabric ATCs for the X'mas ATC swap. A lot of mails came in this week too. Here's Kath the Puppeteer's (US) Gingerbread Man. He's rather a big piece with silver icing, and really capable of every movement!


Next are the zodiac signs that landed: Hetty's (Australia) free-motion bobbin work "Aries", Susan Sawatzky's (US) "Aquarius" and Ann Seidel's (Germany) machine-stitched "Capricorn". Oops, I got Aquarius upside down, defying gravity!

3 "E"s - Elephant from Ann Seidel, Emu from Sherry Dreier (US), Eames Chair from Norma Mason (US) and the first X'mas ATC received from Sharon Scothern UK).

What is Eames Chair? I checked out and found this: The Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman (footstool) were released in 1956 after years of development by designers Charles and Ray Eames for the Herman Miller furniture company. It was the first chair the Eames designed for a high-end market. These furnishings are made of molded plywood and leather. The chair is composed of three curved plywood shells.

What's so special about these chairs? Read on... there is a decent used market for these chairs. Some collectors are willing to pay high prices for earlier chairs made with Brazilian Rosewood veneer, which is no longer available due to a worldwide embargo since 1992 (as a highly endangered species). In 2006, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the chair, Herman Miller released models using a sustainable Palisander Rosewood veneer. Prices for original rosewood chairs have recently reached as much as US$7,000 in auction! WOw!

Had a late night yesterday at the Floating Platform @ Marina Bay for the 2010 The Great Singapore Sing-Along. It was a cooling night with the sea breeze after a late afternoon heavy shower, and set against a beautiful backdrop - the Marina Bay Sands which just opened its doors this year. Just like last year Sing-Along, I had a good time singing with thousand others, a mix of old and new songs, Chinese and dialet songs. Although my children didn't seem to know most songs, but they listened, and when had an encore back home, they could sing!

Keepsake and Japanese Doll ATCs and A Great Sing-Along Event

Whenever I received mails, expecially from exchanges, I would try to keep everything, the cards that came along naturally, and even the envelopes. Since I started creating ATCs, I look through what I have and couldn't resist using the envelopes and cards to create the first 9 keepsake ATCs. Do you recognise your mail?

I love Japanese stuff - Japanese food (especially sushi and sashimi), Japanese handicrafts, and these Japanese paper dolls. These dolls are very popular during my school days and I did a number of them then (around 1992 to be precise). I found these in pretty good condition in an album and re-mounted them on to ATC-size cards and tried my hand at stamping again. All the backgrounds were created with rubber stamps and coloured with chalks.

It was a first time for me and my boy to attend a Sing-along event yesterday and sure a big one too, attended by 12,000 people, from very young children to old aunties and uncles. The songs were a good mix from evergreen classics to local xinyao, and from the 1970s oldies to new favourites on the pop chart. Mainly Chinese songs, but there were a few English, Hokkien and Canto pops too. Lyrics were printed on complimentary booklets and also flashed on 2 big screens for all to follow and sing along. A lot of us, including myself, brought along honey water to nourish the throats so that we could sing for the 3 and a half hours long. It was a great time reminiscing and singing old songs I have sang during my student days by the breeze from the sea at the Marina Bay.