I ♥ NY

Occasion: Birthday

Inspiration:
1. I ♥ NY t-shirts
2. Theme America lols!
3. Matching stuff XD

My friend Josh had a dinner party at one of those Brazillian BBQ restaurants one year and his chosen dress theme was America! He previously had a themed birthday for gangster and in the end decided to back out while half of us had come decked out in our gangster grandeur...

I thought of making one of those I♥NY t-shirts and while thinking about it, decided to make it different (or at least dependant on what I could find in the stores...). Did some research on painting fabrics, acrylic is ok but fabric paint is better!

Ended up buying small bottles of red, black and white paint. I also bought a black singlet top to be different... which costed more than I wanted to pay -_- should have just stuck to the black t-shirt but didn't have time to look in the stores!

When I went home, printed out the I♥NY and painstakingly cut it out onto clear contact paper for wrapping books (ok, it wasn't tha-a-at bad...). The other method is using freezer paper which I didn't have at the time.


I put the shirt over a flat board using bulldog clips, stuck the template on and painted the design on. I used silver paint as the colour's effect on black was quite nice. Did some ironing with the design under a cloth when it dried and it was ready!



There was another guy at the party with the authentic I♥NY t-shirt lol!!

For the card, I made a mini t-shirt. The original idea had the shirt on a clothesline but scrapped that idea due to size. The letters were hand written with a stamp pen (which is why it looks dodgy!) and the heart was made using foam stamp (have to be careful not to press too hard) and them embossed with clear embossing powder!

do red cars go faster?

Occasion: My cousin's birthday

Inspiration

1. red theme
2. fast cars
3. the age old question about red cars


For my cousin's 21st, he had a red themed party... I would say that at least over half the people wore red :) The funny thing is that night I was a party where the colour theme was black and the birthday boy was gonig to dress in white (my friend and I who didn't really check the invite came in red)... what happened was he started a long e-mail thread and by the time I read it, it was one long chain e-mail so I just pulled out the er.. more important details :P

Anyway... being a car fan (my cousin, not me...) I just searched for a car related image and coloured it in nicely :) I printed off the Porsche logo, coloured it in with pearlescent chalks and added a sticker and some nice patterned rub-ons.

Inside is not so interesting but I didn't want it to be so red so just dashed on some chalked circles with a template!

joint party ribbons

Occasion: Birthday

Inspiration:

1. matching cards
2. ribbon
3. effect of stampnig on patterned paper

Made these cards as a pair last year as I was attending a joint birthday party! I remember trying to look for parking and then getting sick the next day, as this was the start of start of Winter! Other than that, it was a nice catch up with the engos :)

Diana


This card is basically just white with a pink edged border, a pink and blue ribbon which ties it to the other card, Happy Birthfay sticker, pearl embellishments, shooting star sticker (it's on a white backing so can only work on white cards) and images stamped onto patterned paper. I think the dots give it an interesting effect, though the butterfly sometimes looks upside-down.

Gilbert


Similar to the previous card... white cardboard and edged in blue ink, same sticker and there's some ribbon too. There is a patterned piece of blue paper covered in two blue ribbons. The top ribbon has a star cutout of the same paper and another ribbon tied into a knot. Knots creat nice effects and are good when you don't have enough ribbon or just find ribbon tying troublesome.

time to create!

Haven't made anything new lately >.< but currently working on some projects...

My friend requested a journal - the material is ready and waiting :P I've just sewn the edges of the material at the moment.


...the only problem about making covered books is if the design underneath is too pretty! I was contemplating making a book cover that was removable but umm... my niece took care of that option... with an orange solution!



I just sorted out my lace samples (by colour) as I was going to give some of it to a fellow volunteer at the museum, she wanted to create her own peg dolls like they used to in the olden days and needed some material to work with. One of the ones on display uses a piece of lace made into a ball gown.

Example of the peg: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=65912&search=peg




I bought two earring sets (from craft expo) and will work on them soon when I figure out how to use the tools I have, my sister bought the tools for me about two years back when Lincraft in the city were having their mega moving sale. The other earrings are a bird on a perch, but you need to add your own earring hook and charm to personalise it.



I also want to start making something with the beads I bought, maybe phone charms?

These are the three different charms I was thinking to make... (1) cat/fish (2) pig (3) duck


These are the bag templates I bought about two years ago *sigh*, I hope that I can make something soon ^^ Bought some fusing a few months ago.


And this book just arrived in the mail ^^ Looks like it's time to attempt some cooking :P

Link's washing

Occasion: Birthday for JK


Inspiration:
1. Zelda games
2. felt
3. the triforce, lol!

Made this card for a highschool friend who really loves his RPGs, especially Zelda! One of his favourites is the game Golden Sun. I once gave him a copy of Zelda/Minish Cap for his birthday as well!

I sort of had the idea of using the felt to make the costume already, but I couldn't think of how to get Link onto the card so in the end I ended up making just the costume. I'd always wanted to buy those cute little craft pegs but as I didn't have any at the time I just used two gold safety pins (which I think are possibly the ones they give you at City2Surf to pin your number on). And that is stuck onto a Happy Birthday ribbon.

[On another note, I ended up buying those little pegs a few months later, I bought a DVD for my friend and needed to wrap it, but without scissors and tape, I ended up tearing tissue paper and clipping it together with the pegs - note: it didn't really work! (I'm not going to buy new scissors and tape lol) ]


The costume is made from:
- green felt
- white foam
- green cardboard
- gold ribbon
- 'L' shape, from a kid's mini beading set, the L actually had two small rings at the top which I pulled off

Accessories

Sword, Boomerang, Boots: All just cut-out from cardboard, although I painted the sword silver



Slingshot: cardboard
Bombs: black paper (from a magazine), bubble stickers, thread
Shield: cardboard and raised with foam stickers

prawn heart

A prawn cracker in the shape of a heart!

....♥

♥....

....♥

And then I ate it! (nom!!)

Graduand --> Graduate

(from Ben)

yay excitement!!! I just graduated from my university course after many long years ^_^ it was actually a night ceremony, if you count 6.30 as night although we are able to collect our graduation gowns 3 hours prior to the ceremony!

I went to get my hair and nails done in the morning, and then rushed down a big lunch (as I wouldn't get food till 8) and ended up getting my gown around 4 while wearing my thongs and dress!

Wandered around for some photos, meeting some of the lovely bunch I spent my uni years with (and on the day they were a.k.a 'other friends'), never quite making it to my faculty's own building!

P.S. Why don't graduation gowns have a mini pocket for phones??


Took a few night photos in the showering rain with my businessy friends bunch and then headed off to pancakes at the rocks for a long awaited munch!

On another note, this is what Sodalis made me as a graduation gift ^_^


Thanks to all those who attended :)

Craft Expo 2011

Yesterday I went to the final day of Craft Expo 2011 with Sodalis. I parked on the opposite end of the buses so I had to be escorted over to the 'other' entrance where she was waiting for me with the tickets which she purchased online.

I had a list of mini workshops/talks I was interested in attending and we ended up only catching one of them, which we ended up leaving halfway through anyway XD because it was related to materials for bag making, an interesting craft but one we aren't ready for yet XD (although I do have many patterns waiting in the craft box that need some attempting, which I would have purchased at Stitches n Craft 2009 -_-)

We wandered around and became caught up in two craft stores, mainly selling stamps, papers, stickers, ink etc. After some crafty (and big) purchases, off we went to the second hall as we heard something about a raffle prize that sounded interesting.

After arriving, we grabbed a ticket each from the dwindling pile and chose some stores to wait out the remaining ten or so minutes. As we looked over onto the stage, we saw a big glass box and realised... the winner didn't get a prize but a chance to go in there and grab things... in front of a crowd!


As the crowd gathered and the MC announced there were three different colours of tickets, well we thought, less chance for us huh! As he slowly announced each part of the winning ticket, we realised that the pool was closing, we both had black D tickets! When he said it started with the number nine... there it was, I had 1/9 chance of holding the winning ticket (number 90 was missing)! *a few seconds pass* And there I was on the stage about to go into the box with a red face -_-

The MC's advice, don't be modest, grab the vouchers and stuff them down your shirt, someone won $250 worth of prizes that way! right... I don't think I'll be doing that even though 99% of the watchers were at least women! I jumped in and the 30 second countdown began, I kicked the papers on the floor, grabbed what I could and ended up with a nice pile (though I could have kicked harder lol :P)

Ended up with about $70 worth of vouchers and also a $5 note!



We went to have our (carb laden) lunch and then took a look at the cross stitch store where S went ahead to purchase some nice patterns :P then we went to start redeeming my vouchers, S went with me which was really nice of her ^^ we also bought some matching earring sets, oriental beads and tried stuffing as many buttons as we could into a jar XD





Now I have approximately 3 bags of lace O_O and wondering how to use it!

Some of my new purchases! ^_^










Needed a drink afterwards.

IOU

I can sometimes be a bit slow with birthday presents (that's sometimes!) so now and again I make IOU cards in addition to the card.

Recipient: likes Doraemon


Matching card


Materials:
-felt
-normal pen

Recipient: likes Soccer



Matching card


Materials
-printed soccer ball
-scrapbook sticker letters

Recipient: not matched to the card







Materials:
-gold string
-postcard
-birthday stamp (Chinese characters)
-letters stamps (IOU)
-wooden pegs

life's a cake, so why not jump in?

Occasion: Birthday

Inspiration
1. Garek looks like a monkey
2. It would be funny if I threw cake at Garek
3. the cute jungle stickers I bought



This is the first card I posted in the mail =D I decided to send this card to my friend because I'd already decided to buy him a set of funny post-its for graduation (as he was going on to do a thesis-or something... elsewhere), but after a bit of a mishap, it ended up being a birthday gift!

Materials:
-Ribbon from the dollar store :P
-Scrapbook paper: Grace Taylor Contempo Collection from Big W
-Happy Birthday sticker (I also used the bits and pieces to stick around the ribbon, you know, the sticker parts such as the hole in the 'a')
-cute monkey sticker

I've started using less ribbon when gift wrapping these days, just in case I think it will be needed on a card XD

Today's purchases

Some of the purchases I made today ^^ (the lame frame is from my phone and also the reason for the general fuzziness of the photos!). They were from the Hot Dollar in Burwood which seems to have converted itself into a store similar to the $2.50 store in Town Hall (Maruyu).

Pudding Moulds

Toothpick decorations for the bento

Cotton cloth with cute patterns

The paper tape I've been hearing about online.

A sample of one of them, the other one was a cream lace pattern

Beads (actually from Riot! Art and Craft)

And I also received this in the mail today, I could have picked up a copy from the store that actually inspired this book (Williams Sonoma) but I didn't in the end >.<... but here it is now!

Cake Pops by Bakerella (Angie Dudley)