Almost 2012 Quilled Snowflake

Less than 30 mins 'til New Years 2012 as I am typing this. Have a happy, happy new year to you and yours!

Here's a quilled snowflake for you!

New Year's Eve!

Another year is coming to an end. What are you looking forward to in the upcoming year? I hope to get into better shape, grow as an artist, and have a more positive outlook on life. To learn from regrets and also to be able to look past that--be free of old worries. I normally do not care to mark the new year as a starting point for a new approach to certain aspects in life because it is, in fact, a regular day in life, but this year I am attracted to the motivational trick it plays with my head when everyone else is hyped. Let's hope I come through in the end!

It is no surprise to me anymore that I prioritize everything else before the blog. I would love to get better at integrating this into my regular routine. How do all of you bloggers do it?! Would love to bum some of the energy off of you! Tonight I feel a bit more drawn to blogging, but I don't know why. Maybe I saw Dec 31 and felt the need to get in one last entry for the year. Who knows...

So tonight I want to show you one of the few items I made for the Christmas season 2011:

What I have here is a quilled snowflake card. The sentiment was wet embossed and glitter was dusted on the snowflake itself. Below is a closer look.

Best wishes to all of you out there!

YUM!

Been baking a lot. Busy being a piggy. :)

Pecan blondies

 Green tea sugar cookies

 Chocolate chip walnut cookies

Elegant Wedding Card

Just the colors, I feel, make this card almost regal. The background paper pattern is actually flocked and it comes from the paper pack DCWV La Crème Mat Stack and the gold paper on the bottom is DCWV The Metallic Stack. It's a really simple-to-make yet eye catching card to give to someone. Ya gotta love that!

Enjoy!

Cousin's Wedding

Back in August, I attended my cousin's wedding. As with any Chinese celebratory events, white is not an acceptable color. Despite that tradition, I do like the pureness of white and its roots in American culture so I don't really hold back especially when I know that the couple themselves aren't tradition. In this case, my cousin was marrying a Jewish man. When you're willing to branch out in that way, traditions are loosely followed. Therefore, I made a card with "inappropriate" colors but then followed through to disguise the card by creating an envelope that isn't predominantly white. This pleases my aunt and uncle because they will not see anything but the exterior...hopefully...

"Father's" Day Card

Happy November!

My friend, Jen, and I just started a 1 month membership to New York Sports Club. We went to a yoga class and it made me realize how little flexibility I have. It was both relaxing and a HUGE challenge for me. Then we tried a cardio kickboxing course. I don't know how we made it through! I hope this soreness goes away soon!

So I was going through cards that I made this year and found a card that I gave to my bf for "father's" day...yes, many months ago. This is a fully embossed card. The reason why it is in quotes is because we don't actually have kids, but we treat our cats like kids. They are what makes him happy when he comes home from work. You may or may not get it (because he didn't at first).

The front is to show a little critter walking and making a mess and then continuing on their way.

Here is the inside of the card. Our female cat, Cookie, walks around like she owns everything and then begs for kibble. She literally says, "meow meow," to demand kibble.

 The envelope has paw marks as well. This is to mimic their love for crawling into tight spaces, boxes, bags, etc. It would be absolutely suiting for them to crawl inside of this envelope if it was the size of a Trader Joe's paper bag.

Whether you understand/like it or not, I hope you can see that sometimes simple cards get the message across and you don't need to go all out to show someone you appreciate them.

All Blue

This was made back in April. It was a first for me in making a going away basket for my daycare director of many years and also making a sympathy card for my friend's mom who passed away. I have to say that I had no idea what I was doing and as both of them were to be given the same day, I decided to save a little creative energy and came up with this:

As you can see, this should be a breeze to make as all you need are the same materials. What you need a patterned paper to sit underneath blue vellum paper to create the look. Simple tie the ribbon around the two sheets, then apply your sentiment. I used Martha Stewart's foil pack and a rub on sticker.

Below is the basket that I came up with:

Happy Halloween all! Stay safe, warm, and get lots of treats!

Wedding Invite Proposal #6 Chinese Wedding

Out of all of the ones I came up with, I think this is the most traditionally appealing to the Chinese. Traditional Chinese families love using gold and red colors in everything possible for celebratory events. These bold colors are usually not favored by younger generations and may come across many dilemmas in attempting to integrate more classy color schemes while at the same time pleasing older generations.

This is a tri-fold style card. A belly band holds everything together.

The thick belly band was embossed with gold.

This is the open card with the belly band off.

The inside also has a gold embossed flower as a letterhead.

I believe this was the last of the proposed invites, so I leave you with the actual invites that were sent out (English). They were designed and letterpressed by my awesome friend, Colleen!

...and this was the RSVP we sent back (Left: Brian & Jenny; Right: Eileen & Dimma):

<333

Wedding Invite Proposal #5

Well it seems as though I have forgotten to post some of the other ideas I had back in March. Of course these were just very rough ideas. The reason I thought this one was very versatile was because this style would've made the bilingual invite easy to get out.

You may have seen this scallop style card on many other artists' sites, but this has a spin in it. The way the ribbon is holding the middle card in place, allows it to be flipped. What that means is that you have extra space on the back of the top layer and you also have the open space of the attached back part. It would be exposed once you lift it allowing for more room to write in chinese/english or whatever language you would like on there. An eyelet on both the backing card and the movable card allows for room for the ribbon to both keep the card from falling off and give you enough room to flip it.

Last October...

Congrats to Jenny & Brian who are now on their honeymoon! It was such a joy to witness their special day! Now that I am retired from helping with their wedding, I can reminisce on the contributions to the crafty aspects of their wedding. Before I do that though, I realized that I've been neglecting many things that are still in my files from the last year (I have developed my own filing system to keep track of the number of cards I have made to date and I also love to see how I've grown over time). I will work on updating those older items before I move into present day.

Here is a quick card I made a year ago.

It's a girlie card. It helps a lot to keep a stash of nicely decorated papers because it makes the process of making a card that much faster. The top portion was punched on the bottom before getting a design Versamark stamped and applying a layer of Perfect Pearls. From there, you will need to tie a bow from ribbon, adhere a fabric flower and a rhinestone center...and there you have it, you're done in a blink of an eye!

For Jenny's Bridal Shower

Looks like I am averaging one post a month. Not exactly what I would've liked. We've moved again. This time to Queens. We're far from being settled, but I feel that I should be doing a better job of updating the blog as I am still attempting to craft in this mess. :D

Last Saturday I went to a Jenny's bridal shower. I had a really good time and met some cool girls. I got a chance to play with fondant for the first time during a mini-cake purse decorating session which was pretty exciting! It requires much more skill than people appreciate in passing!

Since I have an opportunity now, I want to update pics of the note card and thank you cards I made for her:

*This card became a note card due to an error made in haste...I decorated the whole thing only to realize that it was a bit too large for the card I had on hand and also didn't have the time to make a new blank card! Silly me!

*The following two photos are of the thank you cards that I made. I had to make small envelopes to fit this custom size as well.

*Tied them with ribbon.

*After putting them into separate ziplock bags, I filled the glass picture vase I bought on the side.

That completes the gift! Looking forward to her wedding in 3 weeks!

First Attempt at Banner Card

Making this card felt like making 3 cards! Once you have the idea down, it's a breeze though since you're just duplicating everything however many times you need it. I was thinking I'd play around with textures and applied flock to the letters, but in hindsight I feel that the color withdrew from it. I winded up choosing a brighter ribbon to go on top. Also, I originally used the same background color, but I stupidly measured the incorrect size and ran out of the color! I admit, this one in the picture is not as nice as I would have liked it to be but I won't lie, I was TIIIIRED of playing with it and gave up. I'm not proud of that, but this is the best that I can do with the time that I have.

Why do I care about time you might wonder? Well we are MOVING once AGAIN! This time we're moving to Astoria which is in Queens. I have got to say that I am not looking forward to this process. Wish me luck!

Temporarily Taking a Break...

...as all of our friends dedicate time into putting together Jenny and Brian's wedding invitations. I'll upload pictures soon. :)