Pavilion of Fortune and Floral Bliss

I'm showing all these complete sets of fabric ATCs first. This is the set of alphabet "E" - we have 3 elephants (my tatted one, Ann's one in outline and Mari's African one), emu from Sherry and Eames chair from Norma. In case you are wondering, the word "elefant" on Ann's ATC wasn't a mistake, but the German word for elephant. And if you have missed my earlier post about the Eames chair, you can click on the word to go back to the post to find out what makes this chair so special.

Next is "F" - my tatted from piece, Mari's (on the left) and Sherry's (right) fish.

Then comes "G" - my tatted goose, Mari's giraffe, Sherry's gray goose and Norma's grapes.

Lisa Cottrell (USA) has caught up on her swaps, and these 3 pieces came together - snowman for the X'mas swap, "U" is for Unicorn and "W" is for Wolf.

With the snowman piece in, here's all the X'mas ATCs - my tatted "JOY", Vicky Baker's wreath, Eileen Carkott's snow scene, Sue Cox's snow globe, Sharon Scothern's reindeer and Lisa's snowman.

Lovely collections, right!?!

Now, back to my creations. Another pair of paper dolls "Queen for A Day". I know they weren't too creative, but that's my dream for a Queen - wearing designer's clothes and jewellery, and walking a poodle.

This is my boy's school project - constructing a lantern for the Chinese New Year with recycled materials. Can you spot them ? Toilet rows, egg crate, and in fact, the pink tissue papers which were used to wrap things that came in a box from USA some time back. I didn't throw them as the pink is so sweet, came in useful now. We are calling it the "Pavilion of Fortune"!

I just finished a beginner tatting class last weekend with Christine, Gina, Hazel and Shireen. I was inspired to design a simple floral pattern for them to try. It started off as a simple flower on the left, then the flower got bigger, and became 2 with leaves and vine. Finally, I have Floral Bliss done, dedicated to the girls, in celebration of Spring, and a gift for everyone.

Do You Know Your Alphabets?

Yippee! I finished my G's and H's, and mailed them out too!

Here we go, G is for Goose ...

... and H is for Hedgehog.

(Read on further for more alphabets!)

I also managed to finish these 2 pairs of ATC dolls on the theme "Time/Clocks/Watches".

Do you like Guess watches ? The heart one is so pretty.

Mails were real slow since the week after Christmas, those posted on the last days of Dec took 3 whole weeks to arrive!

First, we have this cute Maori Warrior Doll and a pair of Snow Angels from New Zealand, sent by Amelia Ruscoe. Maori are NZ natives, and they would dress as in the ATC when they are performing Hapa Haka (music and dancing). The snow angels are summoning snow with their trumpets.

Next are the fabric Alphabet ATCs - E is for Elephant, F is for Fish, G is for Giraffe and H is for Hat and Hearts! Did you notice the interesting backgrounds that are so matching in every aspect? That's because Mari (South Africa) dyed her own fabrics!

Here are Sherry Dreier's (USA) F is for Fish and G is for Gray Goose on Green Grass, wow, really a handful of G's done by needle punching!

There are more, but I shall leave them for the next post :)

Blind Contour Drawing, Anyone?

At the ATC session on Thu, Moses introduced us to Blind Contour drawing. I'm not an arts student, and have not heard of this before, so I read up a little bit on it. This is a method of drawing popularized in part by Kimon Nicolaïdes in his book The Natural Way to Draw(1941). Apparently, Blind Contour drawing is a favourite with drawing teachers to develop hand-eye communication, and it's an effective training aid. Contour drawing is essentially outline drawing. Blind contour drawing means drawing the outline of the subject without looking at the paper. The end result is not important, rather what is crucial is to observe the subject carefully. The student, fixing their eyes on the outline of the model or object, draws the contour very slowly in a steady, continuous line without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper. The student may look at the paper to place an internal feature, but once they begin to draw it, they do not glance down.

Sound easy? Perhaps. But it sure took some courage and a lot of persuasion before my little girl dared to draw anything! It sure breaks away from convention, and the result, an abstract drawing:)

The theme for the month was Chinese New Year. I found an used piece of transparent wrapping paper in my stash, cut it up into ATC size and backed with a painted card. Next I traced and cut the boy from cardstock and painted him with water-colours, added a brad through all the layers, and his head, body and legs could move. Here are my cards - "Fun with Fire Crackers"!

Traded 2 of them for these - Rita's stamped card, and Sekina Yeoh's origami bunny.

I was jumping with joy when Cathy Vigor's mail came in finally after a month - it contained the last piece for my Zodiac collection, and also the last piece for my Leaf collection. Cathy actually did a replacement for her first piece of leaf that never came after a long 3 months. Here are the 12 Leaf ATCs ...

... the left one of the last row is Cathy's and the right one is my tatted leaf.

And the Zodiac ATCs in the order of the signs. Awesome set, right! Cathy did the Virgo piece, and I did the Pisces piece.

And an "U" is for Union Jack ATC from Sharon Scothern (UK). The Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack, is the flag of the United Kingdom. I love the lacy effect!

And here are my "U" cards. It's not U for Butterfly, but Ulysses Butterfly. What's that? The Ulysses butterfly, also known as the Blue Mountain Butterfly, or the Blue Mountain Swallowtail is a large swallowtail butterfly, endemic to Australasia, and used as an emblem for Queensland tourism. I designed this little critter and tatted them with Size 40 Olympus threads. I think they didn't turn out too bad.

Wishing Everyone A Sparkling New Year!!

I have been MIA partly because of the holiday seasons, and preparing the children back to school. But mainly, we moved house, now very close to my mother, cos' DH is posted overseas. Hope we will manage fine.

We never have snow here in Singapore, and I have never see real snow, saved for those artificial ones produced with soap foam and in the ice-skiing/skating rings. But since the Dec theme for the ATC dolls is "Snow Angels", I used some snowing background and cut glittering white wings for each doll. Add a snowflake confetti, they look as fine as they could, just that I do not really know what are snow angels. Or rather, I don't really know the different angels apart! I'm curious how my swap partner will interpret the theme! These first pair went to Lynette McNamara in New Zealand.

I received my very first fabric postcard from Miriam Gogarty of Ireland. It is amazing to know the fabric piece, with a postage stamp at the back, actually made its way here across the vast land and sea.

In return, I sent Miriam my last of the tatted Flying Pig ATC.

There should be more to show next week once we settle down in our new place and into our new routine. Ending off with this photo of my new Celestial diamond ring and wishing everyone a sparking new year!

Thank You to All my Swap Partners and Merry Christmas!

Nowadays, I enjoyed painting the background as much as tatting the animal. Here are the T is for tiger fabric ATC cards.

And another set of A and B cards especially for Mari in South Africa.

With Lyn's rainbow card (bottom) in, here's my complete set of R cards.

Gemini card from Karen Swiech (USA) and Libra card from Aynsley McKay (USA) have came in; still waiting for Virgo card to complete all the 12 signs. Love this collection, great theme!

This Christmas is special with these special Christmas fabric ATC received from afar - a beautiful silvery white Christmas from Eileen Carkett (UK) - so dreamy!;

a penquin snow globe (glass beads within a window) from Susan Cox (USA) and a felt wreath from Vicky Baker (Canada) - they came just in time for Christmas!

Thank you to all my swap partners!

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!!!

Pisces Star Done!

For 3 weeks, I have been working on these 12 Pisces ATCs. They are finally done and 11 of them on their way to their destinations. I don't know a lot of the techniques that my swap partners used, so mine are no-frill ones - painted background with water-soluble crayons, tatted lilac flowers and hand-sewn word. I did try something new - applying Mod Podge to the fabrics before I cut out the fish and Pisces signs. Cutting them with the scissors was so much easier, and no fraying at all! A touch of flat sequins gave the cards a sparkle!

Nowaday, whenever I see prints of people to fairy or whatever that look like a human form, I will start thinking how to cut them up and make them movable. These are 3 different ones I attempted: Furniture Man Comes A-Visiting; a 10-headed Indian King, Ravana, from the Indian story of Ramayana; and Butterfly Fairy. All will fold up and fit into the ATC-sized backing cards nicely.

I have received a "D" from Mari Strydom (South Africa) and a "R" from Lyn (USA). These complete another 2 alphabet sets. It's a bingo for "D" with all dogs! Will show the "R" set in my next post.

My tatted dog on the left, Sherry Dreier's dog at the centre and Mari's dog on the right.

Last Friday, DH and myself went to the Singapore Turf Club at Kranji for the first time with a pair of free tickets to the Hibiscus Lounge. It was block-booked, so we were issued with entry tickets to the Owner's Lounge instead. It was an experience watching live horse races in the lounge which has an excellent view of the racetrack, while taking dinner and placing a few bets!

Then on Saturday, I brought my girl for the Singapore Dance Theatre's full-length classical ballet performance - Sleeping Beauty, featuring music by Tchaikovsky and choreography by Marius Petipa. I think this is the first time for us watching a ballet, it is certainly amazing to see how the dancers expressed the story only be body movements, and of course, the mood by the music, without any dialogue.

I'll end with these 2 cards Kristine did for her Shichida teacher and piano teacher.

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!