Dress Form and Bookmark Swaps and Teachers' Day Presents

Another one "busy" weekend attending workshops in libraries - Watercolour Painting, Chinese Knotting and Finger Painting!

 

Met an ex-colleague too!

It has been some months I have not done any paper doll.  The ATC-ArtDoll group went inactive, but it's back now with Cindy Whiddon (USA) hosting Aug swaps.  I painted Detective Conan for the Famous Detective swap, and decorated my first ever altered dress form.  I folded the origami roses again, but much smaller this time. The whole dress form is about 6 inches tall. Both went to Cindy.

My altered dress form from Jan Gray (USA) came in a pair!  Thank you, Jan!

I just managed to finish 1 set for my own album.

Oh yes, remember the Stitchmap's Summer Bookmark swap?  I received 2 cross-stitched and one hand-embroidered bookmarkers.  Aren't they a treasure!?!  The bird house from Hollie Poley, the pansies from Kriss Svidro and the feather-stitched from Lyn Gaskill.

Finally, Teachers' Day presents! This time round, the children did them mostly on their own - flowers and cards done by the girls and the scones baked by Ivan. I bought them the materials and ingredients, and helped out here and there on the last night.

My First Paper Postcard Swap. Lots of Origami.

I joined a postcard swap - collage word.  First time I did postcards (6" x 4") with paper medium. I cut the word "BLOSSOMING" from a Korean magezine and mounted the alphabets into a bloom.  The watercoloured background had the words "flower . bud . bloom . blossom" translated into 29 languages. 

All the participants came up with the unique concepts and interesting pieces - some with great quotes, some with pretty wordscapes.  I received from Cathy Calamas (USA) - "Finding My Wow".  The 2nd piece from Bev Baird hasn't arrive and may have gone astray :(

Joined another 2 ATC swaps at Paper Traders.  1 is "Map Mania".  Of the 4 I sent, the taxi in "Discover S'pore" can move up and down by pulling the string, The blocks of flats and and people can "pop up" in the bottom right card, while the girl will wobble in the other 2 cards.  

As usual, I'm keeping a set of cards for myself.

The other swap is "Wings and Things".  I wanted to use my new die-cuts (the little boy and little girl), so I ended up with butterflies fairy boys and girls!  I spent a whole day rolling them out, assembling and gluing them - real tedious.  Then I found these flat origami roses which I adore and folded 18 of them straight. 

Tatted another 18 tiny butterflies for a little surprise at the back of the ATCs.

Incidentally, Joey also spent a whole night folding these origami animals as a response to a article for a school project. 

Guess I'll just post the photos of my humble collection of thimbles. When someone from a group was talking about collecting thimbles recently, I found mine sitting nicely in a glass container in a forgotten corner.  I do have more thimbles than these - plastic ones, leather ones, metal ones - meant for working purpose, whereas these 6 are purely just for collection.  Don't ask me where I bought them as they are more than 10 years old, probably closer to 20 years. Oh yes, the windmill does move!

NDP. Some Kites.

This year, I managed to get tickets to the National Day Parade, by luck!  And better luck to manage to swap 1 of the tickets just the day before, in order to get a pair in the same sector!! It was a long time since I watched the NDP live.

I haven't done inchies for a while since Apr swaps, I'm back with Jul and Aug swaps.  Guess I'm now into origami, a number of them are all folded as I challenge myself to fold them small to fit the 1-inch squares - cranes, frogs and maple leaves.  The pink inchies, mermaid Moos and robot twinchies with the robot head inchies are done with die-cuts.

Notice the minion inchies?  I watched both shows and must admit they are simple and cute. Aren't they?

I didn't stop there.  Our office had a game to decorate kites, and we came up with a minion kite!   We aren't flying them yet, but it should be fun watching our little works up in the sky.

My Weekends

What do I do during weekends, besides some housework  and some cooking?

A gathering and a little feast ... at Ju Shin Jung, on one Sat.  This was the first time we were here.  Overall, it was good in term of service and food, but my children and I decided that we enjoyed the food better at Ssikkek Korean Grill BBQ (Oriental Plaza and Bras Basah). As Ju Shin Jung was just opposite Haw Par Villa at West Coast, we took a walk up the little hill, but it was too hot an afternoon for us to cover the whole place.  Nothing much has changed there as far as my memory served me - it's like something out of twilight zone, albeit a Eastern one; and a near-forgotten theme park so much so I thought it has closed down!  

I spent 2 plus hours at the library on another Sat afternoon trying out acrylic painting.  I don't really paint on my own, so it was a great time painting in a group.  Mixing the primary colours and white only, and dabbing the acrylic paint on a 16" by 12" canvas, it was fast filling up the space but getting the trees to pop up was hard.  The whole painting came alive with a quick touch up by our instructor!

Paper_Traders' swap on Crackle ATCs received from Beckie Holso "Times Past", Pam Prosser "Water Reflection", Connie Holso "Remember" and Melissa B Wilson "Chicago & Alton".  Wow, see those crackles!  Thanks gals, the swaps here are so interesting and everyone produced such great works.  In fact, I feel a bit pressurised trying to match up!

I joined another bookmark swap this year - Stitchmap's Summer Bookmark Swap.  I sent in tatted bookmarks naturally, with an extra lucky clover for our hostess, Gayle Morris.

I put to good use what I learnt - recycle plastic bottles.  I rounded all the corners and added a carrier rope I saved from paper carrier bag. It's a neat little container for some home-baked scones!

More Swaps Received and Some Little Things The Girls Did

More swaps came in, this time from the Inchies-Onexone group.

Jan 2013 Swaps

B. Valentine's inchies from Polly (2 on the left), Katherine W (2 on the right) and Debbie House's Be Mine (bottom).

C. 2 ATCs - Valentine ATCs - pink heart from Polly and Tink-a-tude from Debbie House.

G. 2 Minature Art Cards (1.5x 2.5) on the Oriental theme from Debbie House (left) and Polly (right).

Feb 2013 Swaps

A. 4 Black & White inchies from Cheryl Russ, Polly, KW, Debbie House.

B. 4 Zentangles inchies with hearts from Debbie House, Polly, Cheryl Russ, Katherine W.

E. 4 Foreign Stamp inchies - 2 from Polly, 2 from Debbie House.

H. 2 Twinchies with an inchies (Sewing theme) - Button from Cheryl Russ, Thimble & thread from Debbie House.

Mar 2013 swaps included 

B. 4 Purrfect Inchies (Cats, Kittens) - 2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

G. 4 Analogous Twinchies Spring Time theme- 2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

Apr 2013 swaps 

D. 4 inchies - Pastel watercolour background with butterfly theme- 2 from Katherine W, 1 each from Polly, and Debbie House.

F. 4 inchies Stamped and Embossed-2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

H. 2 Moos (1 1/8" x 2 3/4") - Any theme: Japanese from Debbie House and Fashionable from Polly.

I. 2 Thrinchies - Any theme: Spring from Jaimie Sander, All Dressed Up from Rae Ann Ohlinger.

H. 4 ATCs - Any theme. Fashion (2 ATCs) from Polly, Birds from Debbie House, Butterflies from Rae Ann.

I'll end off this post with this recycled plastic bottle Joey did - a coin bank with a secret compartment for a little something!  Not her original idea though, but executed all by herself.

And a drawing Kristine did recently.  I think she can draw much, much better than me!

Weekend Workshops. Great Swaps Received.

I had a great weekend last week, attending 2 workshops in our public libraries - a Seal Engraving Workshop on 13 Jul 13 (Sat) at the Queenstown Library, and a Chinese Painting Workshop on 14 Jul 14 (Sun) at the Bukit Merah Library.

We had a hand-on session to carve our own seal stone during the 2-hour workshop.  It was not that difficult to carve, yet just not easy either.  I have not seen such fanciful and colourful seal stones with carving on all faces which our instructor brought along!  Really an eye-opener and a good experience!  BTW, we didn't do that well on our own, we had had the instructor help to touch up all our carvings. 

The Chinese Painting Workshop was easier to handle, though I'm not used to painting without any sketch!  And just don't expect too much for 2 hours and in a big group like this.

DH bought an automatic mechanical Tissot Le Lode T41.1.183.33 watch for me 2 weeks ago when he was back.  I have not worn a watch for a number of years, it feels really heavy, or is it because of all the mechanism inside? 

The mails just came in, bringing the ATCs from the Intuitive Watercolour Technique swap hosted by Beckie Holso (USA). Going clockwise from top left are cards from Connie Holso, Letha Richardson, Beckie Holso and Pam Prosser. 

And the Gypsy Deco Book Swap, also hosted by Beckie. Beckie has done such a great job assembling the book.  Just the right purple for the background too, don't you think so?

Thanks gals and Beckie for 2 great swaps! 

ATC @ Bishan Library Jul 2013

With Moses away in Bandung, I took over the co-ordination of the ATC sessions in Bishan Library.  Hope our regulars and new-comers will give all the support to continue our monthly get-together!

For July, Mdm Au, our quilling guru, invited her friends, Victor, Souw Ngo, Catherine and Susan, to show us some recycling crafts with plastics.  After a lot of cutting and some struggling, it was so magical the moment the plastic drink bottles transformed into pretty containers.  And plastic carrier bags were similarly turned into awesome flowers!

It was a bit disappointing though that only a few managed to draw the ATCs using the intuitive watercolour technique.  I came up with 6 .... 

and another unfinished one which Pei Ling loves so much that she wanted it as it was - unfinished!

Here are the first bottle (1.5 l) I did at the library and a second one (500 ml) I did back at home.  Also in the photo are the intuitive watercolour ATC "One Lonely Fish" I traded with Melissa, and a tape transfer piece "Safari" I traded with Pei Ling.  

We'll take a break in Aug (due to public holidays) and meet again on 12 Sep (Thu), 6.30 pm.  Theme: Colour Wheel.  Have fun creating anything based on the colour wheel!