Box-y creations

It's 2010.  And this is only the second entry for the year.  Admittedly, experimenting and creating paper bits have  been on the back burners since ...

It all began with having unreliable house help which lead to a lot more headache than conveniences.  Needless to say, I've learnt since to cope on my own - which leaves me not much time to indulge myself in paper bits.  The situation at home have improved somewhat since.  I now have fairly reliable, constant help at least three times a week to help with the housework.  I still have to deal with a fair bit especially now with the on-going renovations, but with the help that comes in and the domestic bots that I've imported, things are a little less hectic.

Before

So this is my creation for year.  I had a box transformed.  And I found myself not only enjoying the entire creation process but realising how much I've missed my precious bits of paper.

 After

January 2010: Birthday roses

Hello!

Happy New Year!

Made this card earlier this month.  It was a birthday card sent along with some roses (being the birthday invidual's favourite flowers).  Rose petals were made out of large punched out circles from card-stock like paper (left over scrap bits) and carefully arranged and glued to create that layered petal-ed look.  Admittedly they ended up looking more like poppies than anything else!  (I suppose I've got to go back to drawing board to fine tune design).

The card design was relatively simple - happily used some rather large bits of scrap bits sitting around in my collection bin to make red petal along with the 'black' card-stock base and gold colour stickers (that i collected upon the most recent visit to a museum in Singapore) :)

Season's Greetings (2009)

Hello!

Admittedly a few entries a year doesn't really constitute blogging but blame it on bad time management issues.  Mine, that is.  I have however managed to create a few pages.  The others - mostly cards, I create and I send them off without taking pictures of them first!  :P  My bad, really.

So here are a couple of  scrapbook cards that I made a couple months back. One for Caleb - my nephew that just turned one. The other for my sister who had her birthday soon after.  One colouful and playful.  The other along more sophisticated black and silver theme.

Really glad I got the SLR camera - the pictures it takes are simply world's apart from digital compacts.  Reall pleased I can finally add some decent looking (non-blurred) pictures to scrapbook pages.

I have been quite busy making CHristmas cards recently.  Abit late.  But better late than never!  But my bad, in my rush to send the cards out,   I just realised I didn't take pictures of the 3-D christmas cards i made this year.  :p   I do however have a few of the felt embellished cards which i've not sent out yet ....

I've also made a couple of polka dotted Birthday cards which I remembered to take pictures off.  The fold of the card - which I thought was quite interested was inspired by one of the cards featured in Scrap and Stamp's 'Just Cards Extravaganza' magazine I bought recently. Quite please to report that we now have a fairly good selection of Scrapbook and Cards magazine sold at our local news agent.  Yay. 

A long lull ...a condensed update!

My bad. I've not been updating this particular blog of mine. Attentions have shifted to aphromophising tales of Tuffy. Must say I've been religiously updating Tuffy's Tales rather than keeping up with my bits of paper.

Having said that that doesn't mean I've left my wonderous paper bits lying about idle collecting dust. I have been creating ... though not as much as I used to but at least I've flexed some of my paper creation juices.

An ol' friend seeing how I've altered one of my shoe boxes wanted an altered box big enough to store her recipes written on cards that were of the usual photo size. Not sure what the exact dimensions were but I had a fair idea what kind of paper size she was talking about. She gave me a free hand on design, theme, colour scheme.

I thought long and hard ... initially, my thoughts feel to altering another shoe box but I couldn't quite find a shoe box that was hardy enough and Crocs only sold ONE particular type of shoe that came with fairly robust shoebox which I had worked with previously BUT unfortunately they no longer carried the stock in my part of the world. :p

I did know though that IKEA carried quite a good selection of boxes and so IKEA it was. A short plane trip (no, it was not specifically to shop for boxes ...!) later to Singapore and viola! I found a plain black box that I thought would fit friend's requirements of recipe storage. My bad, I thought I took photos of finished altered black box but I realised I didn't. So one's simply got to use their imagination - think along the themes of black and white leopard prints accented with striking red swirls!

Other altered items includes:

1) My recipe book that once looked like this.

Before

After Alteration

2) Bright red photo album - which no one in the family seem to appreciate

Before After

3) A couple of birthday cards and a huge welcome card for the 'new-est' niece!

Acquisitions

Had the opportunity to mosey down to Singapore recently and the first visit after business was done was make a bee line to the infamous scrapbook shop (which K has been raving on about in her blogs) at Plaza Singapura. So bags on tow (didn't want to waste any time making trip back to hotel and dumping heavy stuff) I hunted for that precious gem of scrapper's paradise. Lo and behold tucked in a remote corner of the 3 rd floor of the mall is 'Made with Love' ... I swore I could almost see the shiny aura emanating from the shop ...





No counting in online shopping, deprived budding scrappers such as myself with no opportunity to physically shop where am geographically residing, any opportunity to visit to specialty scrapbook shop - big or small is a exhilirating andrenaline pumping experience. For a change, I could actually touch and feel the beauty of these wondrous bits of paper (to think one actually ignored all the 50% sales going on the various jewellery shops!!) instead of admiring them in in flat two dimensional pictures.





It was teeming with people that day - something about it being bargain week or something. Usually crowds just puts a damper on yours truly's shopping enthusiasm but this time was different, since specialty scrapbook shops are not the usual run of the mill departmental stores that house anything and everything under the sun - minus scrapbook embellishments, accessories, accents etc.





That resolution to NOT acquire anymore bits of paper and rein in my paper hoarding (admittedly I still have a tidy stash sitting in my drawers) simply vanished the minute I stepped into the store. Inspite of 'falling off the wagon' and agonizingly struggled to NOT buy everything my fingers touched (the possibilities, choices are mind bogglingly endless!) ... I dare say I did well in terms of finding a compromise - to buy, yet not buy in a mindless frenzy and hoard for the sake of scarcity.

And so, this latest bits of paper acquisition consists of adhesives (which I once wished I had) that cannot be found in my part of the world, lace paper (lace! whatever will they think of next?!), thickers - (now I finally know what THICKERS are!) and a couple mini paper booklets of scalloped edged and animals (future project still swirling in the mind works), giant brads (boy, I didn't think they make 'em that size!), and a book of journally cards.

Easter Brights II & Recycled Tags

These are the second batch of Easter Brights that were completed over the weekend. Same materials used... and almost similar layouts. I got a little bored of laying them in straight line one of my cards (the last one) has its layout purposely skewed (see light green and pink version of Easter Brights).

What got me excited during all that cutting and adhering of bits of papers was the recycling of clothes tag. I initially binned them - though the thought did occur while in the act of binning them that they were 'such 'good quality' cards ...pity ...'

That was when I changed my mind and salvaged them.

The thought that I could turn them into something one could use - a book mark perhaps ... that's something one can never have too many of got me inspired.

Below are a couple of pictures of the alteration that took place on the salvaged clothes tags ... like Cinderella they were transformed! Yeah, complete with frills too!

Before alteration ....

Viola! After Alteration ...!

Easter Brights

As promised. Pictures of the first completed batch of this year's Easter cards. Interestingly enough, because cards were designed around the 'center floral' pieces (cut outs from scrapbook DCWV (?) paper) , the colours that matched were from shades of pastels which had a certain 'touch of spring'.

Materials used :-
a) card stock like papers for base of cards
b) A4 matching coloured paper to line the insides of cards
c) variety of matching ribbons, some tied into bows
d) buttons
e) scapbook paper from DCWV (?)
f) bits of wrapping paper