Pink Passion

These are the cards I've made over the last week or so. one is for a friend who just announced that she's going to be married in January next year.

The other a get well card for a dear family friend. All the pink hearts (its for 'Her') to remind her to 'Take Heart' and get well soon.


Materials used for both cards include:

a) A4 card stocks - 2

b) 12x12 Pink Scratch Cots by Carolees Creation (cut out to size)

c) Ribbons and ric-racs

d) Buttons

e) Fabric and Paper flowers

f) Felt hearts cut out from Felt.

Its October ...

..and no, i've not run out of creative juices - just yet!

Just not been taking pictures of the stuff i've been experimenting with. Mainly because i usually scrap into the small hours of the night and taking pictures in that kind of light with my digital compact just irks me. Pictures taken at that time of the day are either a)blurred b)weirdly hued c)disasterous altogether.

The solution of course is to wait for daylight to take them pictures. But come daytime, there's just so many other things to deal with first and taking pictures of one's handiwork isn't exactly top on the the 'To-do List' - until of course, the hurly burly of the day is done, the dust has settled and one finally has the hours to one self.

The only bits of paper that shapes quite quickly in a few hours are cards!

The 'Felt' connection ....

Ta Daaahhhhh!!!

For someone who doesn't sew this was what I made on Sunday - felt cupcake keyrings!

Admittedly, I didn't dream up design from scratch. Instructions were chanced upon while trawling through the various scrapbook/craft blogs for ideas (http://www.mookychick.co.uk/diy_ethic/indie_craft_felt_cupcake_keyring.php). That was weeks ago, possibly even a month!

The main reason why I took my time trying out the idea (don't get me wrong, it was a fantastic tutorial!) was due to the fact that I didn't know HOW to 'blanket stitch'. I did learn how to sew various stitches in school once upon a time ago ... but that was at least 25 years ago and sewing isn't exactly on my list of interests.

But somehow ... some inpirations just egg you on, demanding that you experiment. Demanding you venture out of one's comfort zone of techniques and preferences.

That's what those pieces of felt did sitting in my cupboard that I bought a while back with the intention of turning them into 'felt flowers' scrapbook embellishments.'No sewing needed' - so i thought ...' Just glue 'em together ...'

But instead of sticking felt flowers, I surprised myself and SEWN together cupcake keyrings - complete with blanket stitches!!

I guess when inspired, one never truly forgets how to blanket stitch after all ...!!

Waste not, want not ...

Spent the weekend putting together bits of leftover papers from previous card making project. Manage to make meself a mini-card of 6"x4" - All put together in no time at all!!

Materials used included:-

a) Leftover of green and white polka dotted DCWV printed cardstock
b) Leftover of green A4 paper (90gsm)
c) White ribbon
d) 2 Off white buttons
e) Embroidery ribbon flowers
f) 2 mini green brads

First sale ...

Its been suggested many many times whenever I present someone (usually friends or a family members) with one of my home-made cards that I ought to consider selling them. As much as I enjoy the design and actual realisation process of these cards, selling them cards is an entire 'ball game' altogether. Apart from the actual product at hand (in my case cards), one's also got to think of pricing, placing, promotion ...

I know me cards are unique. Differentiated from all the mass produced cards out there ... Handmade with various rich textures making cards one of a kind. As much as people may appreciate creative efforts like these they may not necessarily buy them ... esp. when inflation is rising and economy of the world is in the state of gloom.

Having said that, I made my first sale this week. The apple green polka dotted card was purchased by a friend of mine for RM13.00 (plus.50 postage). What a thrill of it all !My very first sale!

Now i understand why some people thrive on selling handmade things ... to know that products are in demand is a real sense of achievement!

The convenience of it all ...

The new stash of polka dotted papers arrived today. They are as lovely (if not lovelier) as the pictures put up by the local online scrapbook shop.

Am more than thrilled that this 'remote' scrapbook enthusiast (more accurately card-making enthusiast) from Borneo finally has access to 'scrapalicious' papers. Having said that, its amazing how much has changed in such short time too. Not too long ago the few ways of purchasing scrapbook bits were either usually long and tortuous efforts. It was either to:-
a) order from online scrapbook shops in the US (and pay and arm and a leg for shipping charges) b) order online from scrapbook shops listed on ebay - and wait just about FOREVER for scrapbits to arrive, IF they ever arrive that is ...!!
c) Fly - either to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore - the two nearest cities where ALL the scrapbook specialty shops are located but unfortunately do not sell online ...

Now with local online scrapbook shops like scrap-n-crop, as soon as one makes an interbank payment transfer for items ordered, one's scrapbook papers and embellishment are soon at one's door step in a mere few days.

Now that's accessibility and convenience!

Digital loss ...

Its confirmed. Nothing can be done to retrieve data stored on my cranky old laptop (am presently using the new one as i type). I find myself grieving somewhat ... all those pictures (admittedly some weren't very well taen) taken over the years, snippets of precious oh-so-fleeting moments, stored in digital format ... all gone! :P

Then there's all those marvellous digital scrapbook files I downloaded at a price ... it was a sort of experimenting. My trying to figure out what suited me -traditional scrapbook or the digital art form. But with my then cranky ol' computer, the only digital scrapbooking I could do was print out pictures that were minimally edited (used the automatic correction alot!). Did try for a while though to figure out the features of Adobe Photoshop ... but it was all really a stab in the dark kind of effort. The uncertain clicking of buttons, not quite sure what the effects would all be. And with a machine then that froze ever so often (something about not having enough virtual memory) I usually gave up in frustration - never quite seeing the end results of my experimental 'clickings'.

Of course, there are those scrapbook projects in the pipeline. I had either painstakingly pick and chose pictures (using MS Word) and saved them under a certain project title or saved the journaling that went along with the pictures ...

Its all gone now.

Got only myself to blame. This silly goose NEVER bothered to back them up! :P Now with the DVD-RW that comes with this computer I intend to put that feature to FULL use. Digital back-ups is the way to go!

Anyone know of anyone who owns like a CSI type of computer lab...? Am not quite ready to give up quite yet - although the tech-guy here tells me that my hard disc is 'kaput, gone, dead, unsalvageable ....' Am sure with the right kind of equipment the documents on my hard disk (I only want MY DOCUMENTS, the rest can be thrashed) can be retrieved ...