Sweet Angles

I found paradise yesterday. Yes, I found Magnolia pattern paper somewhere in Singapore!!! Woo hoo... it was an unexpected discovery. Joyce and I were so excited that we decided to do a Magnolia challenge from late yesterday night till this morning around 2 am?

This is the result of my challenge!

What's Magnolia, without the iconic Magnolia girls. I used watercolour crayon for that part, instead of copic markers. I'm still a noob at colouring, especially so for the Magnolia girls. As they do not have any picture to follow, I have huge difficulty. This project has increased my temptation to sign up for the Magnolia stamp classes @ Artist De Junior @ Velocity. Maybe... Maybe... My Christmas present to myself. I backed the girl up with a Prima window. I like the way it turned out.

And now's the part on decorating each corners. Did a Prima mask with distress ink, doily lace one on top of each other to create dimension, recycled a backing from Prima flowers, tags from MME (on 40% @ Papermarket and Laines)...

Cut flowers from Webster pages, mixed them with Prima flowers (usual trick)...

Metal butterfly from some handmade jewelry shop and its really cheap...That's the thing about scrapbooking. Well, you can really scrap from anything. You need not lament that the items sold in scrapbooking shops are expensive as you can always go out to non scrapbooking shops to hunt for stuff. And you will be surprised with how much non-scrappy stuff you can get and eventually they just fall perfectly in place with your layout!

Webster flowers with Prima centres...

Webster pages lace where I folded two layers, again for dimension purposes... and not to forget the fake stitches. As the background is rather whitewashed, the faked stitches in black ink really brings out the whole layout. This is something I always liked to teach the students in START classes.

I might try to work on a similar one with HOME as a theme for one of the UK magazine. My dateline is 16 Dec. Hopefully it would turned out nice and I can be invited to be their guest designer... Cool...

Materials Used: Magnolia pattern paper, Tim Holtz paper stack, Prima flowers and embellishment, Webster pages, Magnolia stamps, Webster ribbons, Martha Stewart Doily lace punch, Prima brick and corner masks.

Altered Pencil Holder

This project motivation comes from my mum. She has collected lots of these toilet rolls and has been asking me to scrap it to a pencil holder. When I repeatedly ignored her request, she started making them by herself which was totally not scrappy at all.

I started by sealing the base of the holder using a chipboard, so that it is thick enough to withstand the weight of whatever you want to place in it. The trick here is to use a sanding block to sand off the extra bits of chipboard that did not blend into the sides.

The whole holder was then covered with gesso and 7 Gypsies Song Bird tissue paper. After it was dried, it was then sealed with gloss medium. After the gloss medium, I cut some flowers from the 7 Gypsies pattern paper, and sealed then again using gloss medium. The repeated coats of gloss medium gives the holder a sturdier look. Patience is the key. You need to wait for the gesso to dry then apply the gloss medium.

After the main body is complete, what's left it's the exciting part of embellishing the whole thing. Decided to keep it simple, using 7 Gypsies trims on the top and bottom (to cover the ugly connections), Tim Holtz sentiments and of course Prima flowers. The butterfly and the wordings were embossed using Aged Gold, my favourite embossing powder for the year!

Since my mum has lots of these toilet rolls, I'm intending to recycle them and make them into these pencil holders as Christmas gifts for my daughter's teachers. I wonder if it looks too cheapskate?

Materials Used: Recycle toilet rolls, 7 Gypsies Life is Good, 7 Gypsies Ribbons, 7 Gypsies Tissue Paper Song Bird Collage, Prima Flowers, Stamp Anonymous, Tim Holtz Philosophy tags.

Canvas Painting

It's been a tough time at work for the last two weeks. There were things that I cannot reconcile with, hence scrapping has taken a back seat.

Amidst the stress and frustrations, decided to go for something beyond scrapping. The most basic form of art, the fundamentals of art... Drawing and Painting! There is this nice place, Arteastiq @ Mandarin Gallery that provides canvas painting, with brushes, canvas and a free drink for $48. There are different promotions for different days, for example, Monday's Romantic Blue Date where you get a 1 for 1 deal (for couples only); Tuesday's True Friendship Day, etc etc. You can check out their website www.arteastiq.com for further details.

As for me, I am never a good student in art. Remember the days where art was a compulsory and examinable subject in school, I practically got criticized by my teacher for every single lesson. So with apprehension and skepticism,  I decided to give it a try.

The sketch...

And the final piece.

I was lucky that Joyce was with me. Towards the end, I was rushing to finish the background and had difficulty with the fine details. The more nervous I get, the worst it was. I kept painting out of line. Of course, at this moment, Joyce the heroine came to the rescue! If you look carefully, there are many areas for improvement. However, after this experience, I do look forward to my next painting session. Hopefully the wait wouldn't be too long.  

Happy Times Painting

This is a simple layout for my good friend Karen, who is also Chloe’s godmother. She’s starting work today and wanted to give this as a 开工大吉gift.

I’ve got the inspiration from a magazine. Besides using our good old traditional ink for stamping, we can also use our paints to stamp! The best part about it, it looks as if we’ve painted the patterns. Reality is…we stamped it!

Other than paint stamping, I also tried to do a beehive template painting. I tried to punch holes on a transparency and paint over it to create the beehive look. But, I obviously failed. As I always tell my students, there is no right or wrong in scrapbooking, I covered it up with papers and embellishments.

Materials Used: DCWV Mariposa Paper Stacks, Prima Embellishment, Thickers

Merry Christmas Altered Frame

Merry, Merry Christmas. Merry, Merry Christmas. Christmas is here!! Over the weekend, I wanted to create something for Christmas and managed to get the tree from Kaiser Craft.

Painted the wooden frame with white acrylic frame and distress it as the edges with vintage photo. Then, seal it with gloss gel medium. I love the gel medium. Basically, it helps you to seal everything! And if I’m not wrong, after sealing, non-acid free stuff will then become acid free. How nice.

I’ve painted the Kaiser Craft tree using the vintage photo crackle paint. I like how the brown turned out on the tree branches, and how it shows the occasional cracks. However, I didn’t like the tearing of the paper. The tree is too big to be placed in the hole created. I thought if it fitted nicely, it would have been better.

Snow was created using glossy accent mixed with white utee. This was a technique I learnt two years ago from a class. With the exception that it’s a bit messy, I love this technique as it creates lovely snow. You can use it on cards, layouts or anything you like. Just remember, if you want it to stick well, put more glossy accent instead of the utee. However, if you like it to drop off occasionally from your project, put more utee instead. Simple!

Butterflies, on Staz On ink and glue only on the centre to give it more dimension. A common trick I always like to use.

Finally, just to give everything a more blended look, I sprayed some walnut gold and coffee shop glimmer mist. I kind of regret the use of these colours. Perhaps, something blue might be more suitable for the winter theme?

Materials used: Ikea wooden frame, Kaiser Craft Wooden embellishment, 7 Gypsies pattern papers, Webster Pages (Christmas Collection), Prima flower and bird nest embellishments, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.