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!

Home Is Where The Heart Is, Everything Made With Love

Crafts are going slow for me now that we are coping without a domestic maid in the house.  Even much lesser time on the computer, hence the much lesser posts.  But still, there are bit of bit of swaps to show!

Here's my last piece of fabric birthday ATC for the Stitchin fingers' 2012 Birthday ATC swap.  It's for Maria Silva (Portugal), her birthday falls on the last few days of Dec.

For the Dec ATC-doll swap, I sent a pair of gingerbreads to Marinda Sundwall (USA). 

In return, Marinda did a pair of vintage-style girls in winter.  I like the colours and composition, and the very different style from the cards I have.  

For the Dec fabric flat Christmas angel swap, I received Judaline's snowman angel and Constance's white angel, ...

and Kim's X'mas tree angel.  This is really real big compared to my Christmas angel girl! I just finished sewing her for myself.

For the supposedly Christmas elf button fairy swap, I received a poinsettia button fairy from Kim and a snowflake button fairy from Sue. What creative people around;  amazing works!

For the inchies-onexone swaps, Debbie sent out all the Sep, Oct and Nov swaps together.  It is always a great joy to receive a big package.

Sep swaps: Pair of elephants (paper tote-style) from Polly (UK).  Zentangle, Zetti, Graffiti, Geometric by Polly again. Spiral glitter also by Polly, Edgar Alan Poe by Marjorie Grace (2 inchies), flower tile print with green rhinestone by KW. 

Oct swaps: "Chamber Pot" by Polly (UK).  Universal Love zentangle by KW, Paint splash by Polly, maple leaf sequin by Marjorie Grace (2 inchies).  Japanese lady by Linda Ellis, Chinese word "Xi" Happiness by Debbie House Girl with umbrella by Polly, Flower by Marjorie Grace.

Nov swaps: "Wintertime" by Brooke Guadagno.  Plum pudding from Polly (2 inchies), sweets & gingerbread tree from KW.  Hat & mittens by Polly (UK), hat & stockings (stickers) by Brooke Guadagno.  Believe, Happy "Holly" Days from Brooke Guadagno, Earth from KW, Reindeer from Polly.  Flower from Brooke G (2 inchies), Silver from Polly, Snowflake from KW.  4 very colourful collage with glitter from Polly.

Last Sat, I attended an upcycle workshop in the Queenstown Library.  (Met Richard & Rita there!)  Using whatever provided, I came up with this in the workshop.  I was quite aimless when I started, but it did take shape finally.

This was only a practice for the project we are going to undertake - to do a double page of an old book on the theme "Home is where the Heart is".  It didn't take me too long to decide what to do.  I had to deviate from my original plan to use the children's photos, and instead to use my girls' favourite soft toys.  The girls are so excited and more than just happy with the outcome!  

According to the library, all the altered books will be part of an exhibition in June.

Dec Snowpeople, Christmas Angels and Elves!

The Dec ATC session in Bishan Library was on the theme "Gifts". Lots of ideas for this!  A pity we decided to go China last-minute, and had to miss the ATC session.

Well, the first set I did was a gift box on each ATC, wrapped with metallic and cotton threads (employing what we did in Nov session!), and tied with printed ribbons.

The second set was a mini-book folded from a piece of rubber-stamped paper, and filled with cut-out gifts and quotes on gifts.

The third set was a Shugi-Bukuro ATC, scaled down from an actual one. Japanese would give cash gift (called Oshugi) for occasions like weddings, birthdays and anniversaries, in these special envelope cards, You can put the cash gift into a small paper pocket and insert it into the beautifully decorated envelope, embellished with mizuhiki cords twisted and tied into a decorative knot.

For the movable doll-ATC swap I hosted, Maryann Arnold's (USA) package came with lots of goodies! 4 beautiful gals, ribbons, sparking stars, lots of labels, and a face!

Riitta Rautio (Finland)'s ATCs arrived fast. Riitta did a pair of Finnish girls for me previously (Jul 2011). Glad to meet her in this swap again!

Kimmie Leeco (USA) did very different movable dolls.  Aren't they awesome!?!  

I have swapped with Kayenderes Green (Canada) previously (Jun 2011 and Jun 2012). Again, we did another swap. Kayenderes' works made me see things in a new light, a different way of making up the dolls. 4 flower doll ATCs, a fabric house ATC, ... 

and a beaded wooden needle case which she did herself, in exchange for tatting shuttles I'm sending her.

Flower Doll, Miss Racheline L. (The Petal L Missy Series - 18 of 26) ATCs, 1 die-cut flowers with wrapped string, pair of tatted butterflies ATC "Garden Made of Threads", a pair of tatting shuttles, some tatted flowers and butterflies. 

For the Nov doll-ATC swap, I did snowmen and snowwomen. Made good use of my die-cuts again!

This pair of snowman and snowwoman went to Kayenderes for the Nov swap.

And from Kayenderes, a pair of real cute snow people.

I don't do a lot of button fairies, but this button fairy Christmas elf swap is certainly an interesting one. One is going to Kim Miles (USA) and another to Sue Cox (USA). Sue has swapped a springtime button fairy with me in May 2011.

I managed to finish these Christmas angel fabric flat dolls before I went on the 2-week trip to Taiwan and China in mid-Dec. The dolls were cut from printed cotton.  I added some cut hollies & berries, and sewed on some sequins and tiny tatted poinsettia; the wings were done with ribbons. Quite pleased with my first ever fabric flat dolls! They flied to Kim Miles (USA), Constance Peterson (USA) and Judaline Zozaya (USA).

Will show what my swap partners did for the 2 Christmas swaps soon!

Happy New Year to all!!