Positive, Negative

Happy New Year everyone! It's 2014! Aren't you all excited?

Here's another project. It's a collection of 3.75" x 4.25" cards in a box. I'm fairly new to Cricut which was a gift from a friend that had been in storage for a couple of years before I got around to using it. Ha! Anyway, one of the best things about it is that I can use both the positive and the negative pieces from the cut to get two objects in one go, and this is what happened.

I can't tell you about the papers I used, though. I'm not good at tracking the paper brands I use.

Crocheted Flowers

The crocheted flower on this card is glued over a hand-cut butterfly shape I copied from the green one on the first row here. Not an exact shape, but I like how it turned out. :)

Funny how things change, though. I used to read Sweet Dreams pocketbooks during Home Ec class, and my embroidery and crochet projects were done by my mother. Well, I may start them for a bit, then she would finish them. I was that bad about these domestic-y things. I still am in a lot of ways. And what do I do now? I hand-stitch on paper and make crocheted flowers for my cards and scrapbook pages.

A few weeks ago, I was practising my crocheting skills (because there happened to be a crochet hook and a ball of string I both use for completely different reasons) which is just alright as it is, but there's one thing about it that I despise a lot: counting. I started this because I saw a card with crocheted flower and I thought, that looks so nice! At first, I didn't count my chains so I ended up with a variety of .... er... designs, if you can call it that. Shoved them into a drawer and forgot all about it. Then after a couple of months, I'd really wanted some of those on my niece's 7th birthday album that I'm working on so I decided to have a go at it again and... breathe.... count! Yay! I got to kindergarten, at last! So, below are a few of the flowers I did.

Now, don't expect anything more complicated than this. This is as complicated as I could get. :)

If you know me and you know my attitude towards crocheting, you'd think I would just buy ready-made stuff to remedy my want. But the thing is, I'm easily bored about these things, and I've known that since I was a kid. Therefore, I know that if I buy a package of them and wouldn't be able to use them in one go, I know that I won't use the leftovers anymore in other projects. Besides, I really, really don't want lots of unused things in my stash. I have an extremely small space and I don't want to cram it. It's already crammed as it is.

Same thing with alpha stickers or rub-ons. It's either I cut the letters out if I want dimension, or print what I want to say from the computer, or just write it by hand. It's more economical and besides, what do I do with the leftover Zs? If you prefer the stickers or rub-ons or stamps, it's ok because they are alright too. This is just a personal choice. I don't mind those extra time doing them because it's fun. It's creative fun!

June Update: Mulberry Paper

I love mulberry paper. It's thin. It's textured. And can be adhered very, very easily if a bit messy. But that's ok! I make sure that the surface to be adhered to is painted with white acrylic first so the softness of the color shows. These utility and patient card boxes for a dentist/friend are wrapped in light yellow and lavender mulberry paper, which are similar to her clinic's color scheme.

I tried cutting out paper flowers out of them too, and it turned out gorgeous. I love it. I think I'm going to experiment on different shapes and layers of flowers and butterflies in various colors. These are a couple of thank you cards for my friends, Linda and Katja, who are two of the most generous people I know. Love you, ladies! I'll send them out when I could get out. :)

Those -Ber Months...

These are the recent projects I did:

A birthday album for my dear cousin. It was her 7th birthday last January 25. I took many of the photos here, and as you can see on the second photo, I didn't have any difficulty with that one. They posed themselves!



These are minibooks and cards for classmates who helped and contributed their time and resources to make our reunion held on August 3, 2008 a success:



This is for a client she gave as a gift:


These are for my friend, Ela, who asked me to make these huge boxes for organizing stuff on top of her closet. There's a smaller box for what-nots on her table, 2 pencil holders and a notepad. The red pencil holder is to match another notepad I did for her earlier.

Oh, Valentine!

A friend of mine saw the 'extended' origami album I posted awhile back and wanted me to do something for his wife for Valentine's Day, "para sweet", he said. I really enjoyed doing this because it is my second time doing something red. I found out that it takes practice, at least for me, to get used to working with a particular color. The first were greens, then pinks and now, reds. I wonder what my next color to get used to would be?

And speaking of getting used to colors, I haven't tried oranges or violets yet until this card came along. Maybe I could start practising this combination. This is also for a friend to be given to her loved one. I had to blurry the pic because I didn't ask permission to post their photo online (ssshhhhhh!!!).

Cards and Key Chain Albums

Vintage Cards

Well, make that vintage-looking cards. I tried doing these trio of cards because I enjoyed doing vintage collage after my friend, Chris Palmer, introduced me to it. And because I never did well with collage back in high school, this is exciting to me. Oh, and the materials? Well, they're still from the bag-full of ephemera from Chris' stash. It's on 4" x 4" chipboard and on the back is a blank tag for message.

Key Chain Albums

I was inspired by, first, the key chains I saw and bought from Divisoria with no project in mind. And then, I saw Tricia Morris' project on TV Weekly on Stampbord Mini-Albums. Now, I don't have access to Stampbord and I'm not a rubber stamper. Well, not yet anyway. So, I used 2" x 2" Master Board (yes, that one we do watercolor paintings on for our plates back in college) for covers; wrapped with scrapbook papers and the accordion interior was done using Canson's Mi-Tientes big-cut papers.

December Projects

Last month, a friend of mine asked me to make her an origami album but requested that it be longer so we can include a lot of photos. The look on my friend's face was enough for me to be proud of what I did. And from what I heard, the friend appreciated it very, very much. I'm glad.

Also last month, I went to Christmas party and this is my gift... well, it was a belated Christmas exchange gift, gift-giving that I know nothing about when I attended the party last month. And so when I picked her name, I told her I'll just give it to her next time. This is what I came up with and gave it to her yesterday. I hope she uses them.

I will be making another scrapbook for my cousin who celebrated her 7th birthday last Sunday. As with her sister's, I will make the album myself. My little cousin asked her mother to tell my aunt to tell my mother to tell me (whew!) that she would love a scrapbook like the one I did for her sister. I guess, she's a little bit shy telling me what she really wants. :)