Doing My Part for Charity this National Craft Month

A Shout Out!

Here's a shout out to Patience Brewster, who started this campaign for craft bloggers to reflect on their craft and the importance to them. They're a one-artist company offering lovely unique gifts and ornaments! Do check them out!


Designing, Making, Crafting and Me

I would say making things have always been in my blood. My mum crochets and my late grandma was a seamstress. Since young, I was exposed to the craft of sewing and crocheting. Ironically, I preferred drawing and meddling with other art forms like origami and air-dry clay during my schooling days. It was only after graduating from University did I catch up on the art of sewing, knitting and crocheting. 10 years on, I am now more into the design aspects of making.

I would consider myself a pretty flexible maker who love to explore new art forms and learn new skills. While I predominantly love to play around with textiles, yarns and resins, I am also open to incorporating new techniques and skills like ceramics and woodworking. (which I hope to start learning and experimenting some time this year!)


Celebrating National Craft Month

As some crafters might have already known, March is National Craft Month. While it's fun to make things for myself (and I do have quite a number of projects on hand and in mind), I thought contributing back to the society by crafting for charity would be an even better way to celebrate!

In mid March, I happened to chance upon a community event which I felt I should not miss. The event calls for knitters and crocheters to contribute scarves for the needy in Northern Thailand, where temperatures can drop to single digit (in Celsius) at the highlands during the winter months.

So far I've managed to complete 2 scarves, with a third on the way!

23rd March 2015

And today, we lost a great man. A man, with unparalleled smarts, guts and passion, who went against all odds to help fish this little red dot out of the trench and build it into an affluent global city. Yes, he ruled with an iron fist. But without him and his visions, Singapore will not be what she is today.

And with that, thank you, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Thank you for all that you have selflessly contributed, even during the later years of your life. You will be greatly missed~

Preparing to fly. Preparing to paint.

A little nerve-wrecking, what with the pretty recent news about the eruption of Mount Ontake in Japan. Plus the news of typhoon which will be making landfall on Tokyo later today.. At least the weather seems to look good for the few days after. *Fingers crossed*

XB and I will be flying to Tokyo for a short vacation the coming week. Amidst the research on craft places and mountains to visit, I was contemplating on getting a watercolor travel kit to jumpstart the habit of doing some kind of fast illustration/artwork daily by getting my feet wet during this trip.

I must have not been looking hard enough, but I had a tough time searching online for a local arts supplies shop that sells renowned brands of water color travel kits. 

I tried looking at Art Friend, but couldn't find any at the Clementi branch (I went back to the Bras Basah branch a few days back, and I saw that they had restocked the Daler Rowny full pans kit). "Overjoyed" near Little India MRT station stocks only Pebeo brand, which I am not too sure if it is any good since there is almost zero reviews on it..

Out of exasperation, I almost bought the Akashiya Watercolor Palette Box from Jetpens.com while toying myself with the idea of also getting the Sakura Koi Watercolor set to justify the high shipping cost from the US. 

Eventually, I managed to find a local art store (one with a pretty long history too.. Since 1967..), Straits Art Co., that sells a large array of paints, brushes, papers and canvases. The lady recommended the Van Gogh (from Royal Talens) watercolor pocket box kit for beginners like me. Apparently, this is a student grade watercolor paint higher up on the quality scale as compared to other student grade brands.

Let's see how this goes!

Feeling Under the Weather x A Visit to the 'The Made in Singapore Market'

Hi guys~~ Sorry for this late posting. Had wanted to post this earlier but I was sick for most part of the week thus far and I'm still sounding pretty nasal. (plus there's something I'm not too sure of and it's still too early to check.. if you know what I'm talking about.. =P)

Anyways, Ed (or XB aka the hubby) and I went down to the 'The Made in Singapore Market' last Saturday. Organized by the Makers of Singapore, this 2-day event showcased some of our local independent crafters, including 3D printing designers, rubber stamp carver, ceramic pottery artists, leather crafters, tie makers, letterpressing designers and etc!

The first thing I did when I reached there was to make a visit to Jo's (of Lovesprout) booth. Jo's an avid rubber stamp carver and she's quite an artist too. I got to learn the proper way of carving a rubber stamp first from her during a craft session almost 2 years ago. I learnt a great deal from her and although rubber stamp carving is not my main hobby, it's really therapeutic when I'm at it.

Jo and her booth. You could design and stamp your own tote bag!

Jo was selling some rubber blocks and ink pads; and I was so tempted to get more rubber blocks. But I held back my temptation (just because I still have some in my stash) and got 3 packs of Tsukineko's Soramame ink pad sets instead. Yes, I just couldn't get enough of inks....

Inks that I got

After hanging around Jo's wonderful world of rubber stamp carving and stamping, Ed and I roamed about the different booths, fascinated by some of the works.

Liberty Coffee had a make-shift cafe there too and I wondered why Ed was contemplating so hard whether to get a cuppa. He didn't in the end, but he could have. There were also demonstrations held throughout the day, and we managed to catch the Ceramic Pottery demonstration by Weekend Worker.

The processes charted

Wheel throwing demonstration

Making a vase

Recently, I have an obsession with ceramic/porcelain type of things and I am really interested in learning the art. Earlier this month, I was already planning to take up some classes this coming June but.. we'll see..

Dream Maker on Exhibition!

Hey guys! Remember the cross-stitch project that I've done some time back? It's currently being exhibited at the Criss*Cross exhibition. Went down to the opening last week and I was quite blown away by a few of the artworks there. 

Artworks hanging on the wall

Some of my favorite pieces

Me and my artwork =)

If you are in Singapore and have some free time, do drop by the Old Parliament House. The exhibition opens daily from 10am to 10pm until 12 Jan 2014. More information can be found over at Popin Craft.

Etsy Shop Now Opened!

Hi all!

Finally! My Etsy shop is opened! My handmade buttons and button pins are now for sale there, so hop over and happy shopping!


I'll have 2 new collections for the shop soon(hopefully by end of next month.. yes, 2014!):
- My full collection of the Knots & Braids necklaces collection
- New batch of mini almost-a-cube coin pouches with new fabric choices

Also, I'll be listing some craft grab bags to the shop after Christmas. So have a look out for that too!

Stay posted!

My First at Public Garden and a Thank you Shout Out! .. And some Etsy news.

Hey peeps! Are you missing me already? =P

Had been really busy for the past few weeks participating in community events, attending a friend's wedding at Phuket and preparing for my one and only day at Public Garden (A BIG thanks to Small and Able for the opportunity!).

Our small and humble stall

Would like to thank all who made a trip down to visit our stall as well as those who made a purchase. Really appreciate your support! I've already had my Etsy shop ready, just left some nooks and crannies to sort out before posting some of the goodies there.

To those who have expressed interest in the custom-made necklaces, do email me at rhinestic@gmail.com for more details. Looking forward to working with you guys! I'll also be adding more to the Knots & Braids necklaces collection very soon, so do keep a lookout for my shop!

Have a good night everyone, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Heart and Doubt

Hey peeps, sorry for the missing Daiso post last Saturday. Had been extremely busy for the past 1 week prepping extra materials and doing some deep thinking on elderly-friendly "tools" for 2 community paper craft events that I was involved in as an instructor.

Before everything, when I agreed to be an instructor for the elderly sessions and assistant for the children's sessions, I was looking pretty forward to the sessions. But with sudden change in plans and what felt almost like "backstabbing" from a hiccup, it nearly made me feel that all the effort, time, money and sleepless nights that I forked out was not worth it.

Thank God I have the smiles from the lovely senior citizens as my saving grace.

Anyway, here are some samples that I made for the events. (Note, the base pop up cut out design and iris-folding star design were created by the lady who "sorta hired" me. I just tried to upgrade them a bit. =P)

Sleepless Nights Over Technical Flat Drawings

Have been sleeping really late and waking up really late these past 2 weeks.. Was struggling a bit with the technical flat drawings for my apparel design class. I opted to draw them digitally and had been spending about a night for each garment (front and back). There were 12 garments altogether, so that made up about a few days shy of 2 weeks of sleepless nights.

"2 more garments to go..."

After the consultation this week, I still have to update my tech drawings a little. Then I need to proceed on to my fashion illustrations.. Zzzz..

Ouch =(

Focus on what you are doing or...

You'll end up like me. Burnt myself accidentally while ironing the last piece of clothing. Meh.

Haul from MT Expo Singapore and Print

Went down to the mt expo at Ion Art Gallery yesterday.

Grabbed a copy of their gorgeous flyer with the limited edition tapes

Joined a bunch of people crowding round the crafting table and created these with the free MT tapes.

I was a little bummed to see that the wooden tray of limited edition tapes had been sold out, but I still purchased a couple of their products. I got this mt wrap with white candy prints:

And this cute mt ex kasaneru tape featuring the bear and squirrel:

I also visited Print, a shop just next to the Ion Art Gallery. I got one of the shop exclusive limited edition mt tapes (the one at the top with vintage-style apparel drafting patterns!):

My 2 new mt tapes

And! And! I got this new Kaunis Kauris mug from Marimekko's Oiva dinnerware collection!

Backdated Stuffs: Arts Market + Musuem Love!

Last Saturday (which would be 8 days back), XB and I went down to the Public Garden Arts Market at the National Museum. 

The girls from Hey Kumo had a stall there too! If you are not aware, they now have a physical shop called Small and Able located at: #03-22 Peninsula Shopping Centre. If you ever have a chance to visit Singapore, do give their nifty shop a visit! 

The 2 ladies were too shy to be part of the photo.. ==

Besides the Arts Market, all exhibitions were opened to the public for free that day! I was totally exhilarated because, there were 2 fashion-related exhibitions and an exclusive art exhibition called "Princely Treasures from the House of Liechtenstein".

The first fashion exhibition was about how fashion was like in Singapore from the 50's to the 70's. There were some lovely dresses displayed!

Betty (Mad Men)!

(Warning! All the photos from here onwards were taken using my iPhone 3GS.. So pardon the blurness and graininess...)

I love that middle cheongsum

The other was a fashion collection by our local fashion designer, Ong Shunmugam. Her collection was inspired by all the nostalgic places in Singapore. (No, sadly, no cheongsums by her) I think one of the highlights (other than her inspirations) of this exhibition is her use of vintage fabrics and kimono fabrics for her pieces.

And what princely treasures, you might be wondering. This amazing art exhibition showcases over 90 masterpiece artworks, collected over the past 500 years, owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein. We joined one of the exhibition tour guides (I'm glad we did) and were truly amazed by the ingenuity and complexity of the concepts and techniques behind each painting. 

"He dumped me! T.T" Look at the details on the blue dress!

And somehow, memories from my Russian trip flooded back to me then. We went to a few art museums there, and I was totally awed by their ridiculously intricate decor of the museums and their ridiculously large collection of artworks, some dated way back to the (no kidding) ancient times. 

Busy being a student and some sort of a homemaker... =(

Have not been crafting much this couple of weeks except for perhaps knitting a few more rows on my chevron top.. I thought I would have more time crafting now that I'm focusing on my part time course but I'm so wrong... Most of my time is spent doing the daily housework and preparing for the next lessons. XB said it's okay not to clean the house everyday, but looking at the amount of dirt stuck on the dry wipe every after cleaning kinda deters that thought..

Classes wise, for textile printing, we learnt to replace the mesh over our screenprint frame and burnt another image onto it. We were allowed to bring any image we want, but I went with my own illustration. (Talking about screenprint, I got myself a very affordable screenprint kit that comes with a simple exposure unit! I have yet to try it, but once I do, I'll post it up on my blog!)

Dahlias

Poppies

As for apparel design, we had to finalize on our color scheme before this week's class. I had a hard time trying to find out the pantone color codes until I realized my illustrator has some pantone libraries... For the class itself, we finally began on our design sketches.

Having been more of a sewer than a designer, the idea of designing as much as you can is quite a challenge for me (especially within the 3-hour lesson). I like to put details on my garment, but once I got onto the 10th or so garment, my brain juices were pretty much dried up. And yet, I'm far from done. Looks like I have myself some more homework to do...

Design sketches so far..

And while I'm busy being a student and a homemaker, I've also been doing some thinking on the possibility of my online shop. Still in the thinking/brain-storming stage. Hopefully, I can get to the planning stage soon!

No more Google Reader..

News get to me slow. I didn't know the popular Google Reader will be discontinuing in a few months' time...! (Pardon me.. I'm not a big user of feed readers.. I actually remember fellow bloggers' blog URLs by heart... Even I can't believe myself for saying this, considering I'm a web developer by day.....)

I did, however, notice that my Google Follower panel has been converted to a Google Friend Connect widget. Meaning, you'll need to check your Google+ account to get my blog updates... Not that connecting to Google+ is hard, but most people tend to think anything under Google is for geeks, and thus the fear of falling into the deep unknown abyss filled with binaries. WHICH, I can understand. =)

Good news is there are alternative feed readers out there which do an equally good or even better job than the Google reader. This post by a fellow craft blogger will pretty much iron out your problems in the world of popular feed readers. 

And if you are already on BlogLovin', do follow me here!

Just for laughs: The Wall of (Art) Puns

The digital creative agency that I'm working in has this wall of pun-related artworks done by my fellow colleagues. Love how they have kinda haphazardly stuck their pieces on the wall! Pretty fun to look at if I'm stressed!

And this seems to be a new addition!

Perhaps I can contribute something to the wall one day.. Hahhaha

Some random stuffs...

Just kidding about ciao-ing! Before I really go, I just wanna say a few things.

1. I'm so angry about our uncooperative night skies! Yes, I know. It is not like I can change the weather the way I want it to.. But it's the peak for Gemenids and I couldn't get to see them 2 years straight!!! =( I'm so sad that I could bawl my eyes out! (I'm now secretly hoping and praying that tomorrow night will be clear.. Please give me a glimmer of hope.. *pray*)

2. Les Miserable, the movie, will be opening soon!

3. There will be a new Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo special in January (if everything goes well as planned) 2013! Yamada Ryosuke will be the 4th generation Kindaichi and "Haruhi" will be the 4th generation Miyuki! OK, OK! Her real name is Kawaguchi Haruna. Just that she also acted in Ouran High School Host Club as Haruhi! Haha, love her. Dai-chan is also part of the cast, so this show will definitely be a treat for Hey Say Jump fans. Additionally, Vivian Hsu, Wu Zun and Big Bang's Seungri will be in this special too. Can't wait!

A mini report..

About what's been going on in my life for this past week..

First of all, the Arts Open House on Sunday. Overall, it was a neat experience to be able to finally set up our very own craft booth, sharing the art of paper crafting with the senior citizens. But personally as a crafter and wannabe-artist/designer (LOL), it was a little disappointing that the organizers hadn't taken the time to explain to them what the Open House was about and I felt a little sad to see most of the senior citizens rushing for the free gifts without really appreciating the craft behind (maybe I was wrong).

But that aside, I was elated to meet a number of nice elderly ladies who were truly interested in our craft. I still couldn't get over the fact that I wasn't able to teach one of them the Christmas tree I made. The steps were a little too complicated for me to teach her within such a short span of time and with such a small working space...

Anyway, here are some photos that my beloved photographer took.. Haha!

Our booth with the "chalkboard" table cloth!

Paper folding + paper art.. 

Christmas cards + a random Christmas paper ornament

Christmas paper baubles

The crowd =)

Lovely cupcakes from Bella =)

~.~.~.~.~

Monday was pretty much a housework day for me as I didn't have time to do the laundry and ironing over the weekend. And it was also time to change and wash the bed linen, quilt cover, pillow cases.. yadda yadda.. Haha, stuffs that I was supposed to do over the weekend but I didn't.

Had to work on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I didn't get to do any crafting except knitting a few more rows for the Tenney Park sweater.

As for yesterday (yah, it was yesterday 45 minutes ago), I took leave from work to spend the day with XB as it's his birthday. Had a nice and cheap buffet lunch, and we gotta chill at a cafe nearby. It's a shame that it rained almost the whole day, robbing XB the chance to take any outdoor photos with his new DSLR.

Will be back at work later today. Well, hopefully, I can get some crafting done over this weekend and next Monday! Ciao peeps!

MT Everyday Exhibition

Some MT craze over at the exhibition @ National Library (The exhibition opens daily until this Sunday)!

And I went to catch the premiere screening of Rurouni Kenshin!

And each ticket entitled us to a set of Kenshin poster and fan... Haha. Love!