Update on Swaps

Received a whole envelope of beautiful creations from the [Inchies-onexone] swaps earlier in the year which I have yet to show. 

July 2013 swaps
Oriental inchies: Crap from Rae Ann Ohlinger, Gold flower sticker from Lisa Cottrell, 3. Lady & fan from Debbie House, 4. Stamped Japanese cherry blossom from Polly. The folded cranes are done by me. 

Owl  inchies: 1. Blue-green owl from Rae Ann, 2. Black owl from Lisa C, 3. Stamped square owl from Debbie H, 4. Light blue owl from Polly. I did the 5th one with a small tatted flower for this exchange. 

Pink inchies: 1. Wrapped string (unsigned), 2. Quarter of flower from Lisa C, 3. Pink envelope, pen from Debbie H, 4. Pink dragonfly from Lisa C.

Inchie on a Twinchie: 1. Pink paint from Rae Ann, 2. Sunflowers from Lisa C.

Mermaid Moo (1 1/8" x 2 3/4"): 1. Mermaid with orange hair from Lisa C, 2. Blue b/g from Rae Ann.

ATC (any theme): 1. B/w flowers from Rae Ann, 2. Bird from Debbie H.

Aug 2013 swaps

Frog inchies: 1. Frog photo (unsigned), 2. Light green frog from Jamie Sander, 3. Blue frogs from Lisa C, 4. Green frog from Brooke G. I folded the last one, an origami frog. I just love to challenge myself to fold them as small as I can! 

Changing Leaves inchies: 1. Orange leaf from Debbie H, 2. Red-orange leaf from Lisa C, 3. Red, yellow leaves from Jamie Sander, 4. Green, yellow, red leaves from Rae Ann.

Inchies (Any Theme): 1. Hats from Brooke G, 2. Green flower from Debbie H, 3. Textures from Polly, 4. Ballet from Lisa C.

[ATC-ArtDolls] Mar 2014 swaps were a Clover dress and a Carousel Horse.

Mine were mailed to Cindy Whiddon (USA) while Laureta sent the following to me.

[NEEDLESnCRAFTS] A Bookmark Exchange 2014 was hosted by Zarina Zainal Anidin (Malaysia). My 2 tatted bookmarks, plus 2 tatted paperclips, went to Diane in the USA. 

Zarina did a bobbin lace and a crochet bookmarks for me, together with a batik card she made and a skein of her hand-dyed thread. 

NDP. Some Kites.

This year, I managed to get tickets to the National Day Parade, by luck!  And better luck to manage to swap 1 of the tickets just the day before, in order to get a pair in the same sector!! It was a long time since I watched the NDP live.

I haven't done inchies for a while since Apr swaps, I'm back with Jul and Aug swaps.  Guess I'm now into origami, a number of them are all folded as I challenge myself to fold them small to fit the 1-inch squares - cranes, frogs and maple leaves.  The pink inchies, mermaid Moos and robot twinchies with the robot head inchies are done with die-cuts.

Notice the minion inchies?  I watched both shows and must admit they are simple and cute. Aren't they?

I didn't stop there.  Our office had a game to decorate kites, and we came up with a minion kite!   We aren't flying them yet, but it should be fun watching our little works up in the sky.

More Swaps Received and Some Little Things The Girls Did

More swaps came in, this time from the Inchies-Onexone group.

Jan 2013 Swaps

B. Valentine's inchies from Polly (2 on the left), Katherine W (2 on the right) and Debbie House's Be Mine (bottom).

C. 2 ATCs - Valentine ATCs - pink heart from Polly and Tink-a-tude from Debbie House.

G. 2 Minature Art Cards (1.5x 2.5) on the Oriental theme from Debbie House (left) and Polly (right).

Feb 2013 Swaps

A. 4 Black & White inchies from Cheryl Russ, Polly, KW, Debbie House.

B. 4 Zentangles inchies with hearts from Debbie House, Polly, Cheryl Russ, Katherine W.

E. 4 Foreign Stamp inchies - 2 from Polly, 2 from Debbie House.

H. 2 Twinchies with an inchies (Sewing theme) - Button from Cheryl Russ, Thimble & thread from Debbie House.

Mar 2013 swaps included 

B. 4 Purrfect Inchies (Cats, Kittens) - 2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

G. 4 Analogous Twinchies Spring Time theme- 2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

Apr 2013 swaps 

D. 4 inchies - Pastel watercolour background with butterfly theme- 2 from Katherine W, 1 each from Polly, and Debbie House.

F. 4 inchies Stamped and Embossed-2 from Debbie House, 2 from Polly.

H. 2 Moos (1 1/8" x 2 3/4") - Any theme: Japanese from Debbie House and Fashionable from Polly.

I. 2 Thrinchies - Any theme: Spring from Jaimie Sander, All Dressed Up from Rae Ann Ohlinger.

H. 4 ATCs - Any theme. Fashion (2 ATCs) from Polly, Birds from Debbie House, Butterflies from Rae Ann.

I'll end off this post with this recycled plastic bottle Joey did - a coin bank with a secret compartment for a little something!  Not her original idea though, but executed all by herself.

And a drawing Kristine did recently.  I think she can draw much, much better than me!

June holidays, despite the haze

Singapore has been occasionally hit by smoke haze from forest fires in nearby Sumatra, Indonesia, brought over by wind.  The haze this year was the worst so far, with the PSI hitting 401 at 12 noon on 21 Jun and persistent PSI readings in the Unhealthy to Hazardous range since 17 Jun. Luckily the haze eased after a week, but everyone is still cautious and stocking up the N95 masks. 

Photo taken from my office window 1 hour after the worst PSI reading on 21 Jun.

I couldn't resist adding this photo for comparison.
This was taken from the same place on a fine day on 10 Jul, 12.20 pm.
The sea and the port could be seen on the horizon.

We couldn't do much during this school holidays as a result. We baked more scones and tried baking some cupcakes.  

At least, we did manage to go for a family outing at Sentosa when DH was back from China, just before the haze got real bad.  We cycled for an hour and had 2 rounds of the Luge & Skyride, followed by a movie "Man of Steel" and a late dinner at Vivocity.  

Utilised a pair of free tickets to the S.E.A. Aquarium and the Typhoon Theatre at the Maritime Experiential Museum on the expiry date itself, almost forgotten due to the haze!

And I tagged along Joey with her school table-tennis team for a cycling outing to the East Coast, followed by a Korean BBQ buffet dinner at Ssikkek in Oriental Plaza.

Back to crafts and swaps.  I received the May "Forest Fantasy" ATCs from Jan Gray (USA). These are the first doll-ATCs Jan's did - "We're all mad here" and "Forest Elf".  Aren't the cards lovely?  I love the colours especially - rich and mystique.  

The NEEDLESnCRAFTS "Summer" Moo exchange has just arrived.  Going clockwise from top-left:  Moo done by Mel, Janet Chan, Rose Jonid, Radha, "Sunshine" from Vivian Ong and the last one by Usha.  Another great swap, thanks to Janet for hosting it! 

The 3rd swap I joined in the Paper_Traders group was the Crackle ATC swap - crackle effect on the background to be precise.  I didn't want to spend on crackle paints, so I used glue with acrylic paints. It wasn't easy or was it that I used the wrong glue?  I only managed to get some crackle effect after trying on the 6th piece.  I even resorted to brushing my silver crackle nail polish to some of the ATCs!  So these are my attempts.

As the theme is free, I made paper-punched bride and groom and tatted a pair of small dimpled hearts for these "Two Loving Hearts" ATCs. 

Summer Moos, Some Scones, Sentosa Luge and Several Chinese Workshops

Janet Chan from the NEEDLESNCRAFTS group organised a Moo swap with "Summer" as the theme. However, they are 1" by 3", which is slimmer and longer than the regular 1 1/8" x 2 3/4" Moo.  I had a harder time filling them up, but I did managed to send in 6 finally.  3 are tatted summer flowers - goldenrod, lupines and paintbrush, and sunflower.  I included an extra ATC for Janet too.

The other 3 are die-cut flip flops on textured background I created with DecoArt Paper Perfect.  I can't think of any better way to create the look of sand with whatever I have at home.  To make them look like the beach, I ended up attaching a couple of the tiniest shells I had picked and kept all these years.         

I used foam for the pair of flip flops I kept for myself, it looks really like the real thing, but I'm afraid they won't stand up to the strain of overseas posting, so the others are cut from cardstock.        

I seldom cook and least to say bake, but can't resist trying out the new oven DH bought.  Ended up baking scones with Kristine, and over 2 rounds in an afternoon, we made 93 cranberry/raisin scones topped with chocolate chips.  Relatively fuss-free and simple enough for 2 baking idiots, who kept reading the recipe and the instruction manual for the oven!  Love the scones just as they turned out.       

I have been playing with my month-old Samsung Galaxy S4 phone, or rather Kristine is playing.  We found an app to create collage pictures, and it's pretty fast and easy to use!  So here's the scones baking ...

and our weekend outing to Sentosa playing the luge and taking the skyride.      

Kristine did an impressive charcoal drawing in class, scoring 95 out of 100.  Looks like her drawing skill is better than mine!

I mentioned a couple of activities I joined at the libraries a couple of months ago.  One was a Chinese Couplets Writing workshop (对联工作坊) conducted by 胡建弟 held on 2 Feb 2013 in the then newly opened Library@Chinatown (唐城坊图书馆).  The talk on how to compose couplets was most interesting, though some parts about certain Chinese dialects were beyond me. Wish they teach this couplets in school!  One thing struck me particularly - the common phase we use and hear for birthday greeting "福如东海，寿比南山“ is actually incomplete and meaningless just based on these 8 words!  The complete and meaningful couplet should be "福如东海常流水，寿比南山不老松“.  

At the end of the talk, each of us were supposed to apply what we have learnt to compose a couplet based on our Chinese name.   My Chinese grades in school was ok though not fantastic, but since leaving school for donkey's years, my writing skill in Chinese has been left to rust.   I almost gave up when most of the other audience were done and I was still rooted to my seat and cracking my brain hard.  I had a lucky break and managed to come up with something eventually. When I was given a pass without any need for alteration, I was so happy that I almost jumped up with joy!!  So, here's the couplet I composed and written out on the spot by an invited calligrapher 王白安.  I took my own small brush there, and requested for a special small piece - A4-size rather than the usual big pieces.

‘Lantern Riddles’ workshop (灯谜工作坊), held on 23 Feb 2013 afternoon, was another event I attended in the same library.  Do you know there is a difference between 灯谜, 字谜 and 谜语？ Now I know.  The speaker 新加坡灯谜协会公关邱建忠 went through all the techniques to crack lantern riddles, and we had quizzes along the way.  Fun but mind boggling.  Again, my speed was slow compared to most of the other participants, I was plain lucky to be the first to answer one question right (out of the tons of questions) and received a book prize. If you want to know more and have a go at lantern riddles, this is one book to look at.

Can you believe that on the same day (23 Feb) but earlier, I actually went for another Chinese paper cutting workshop in Yishun Library?  I was hoping to get more tips to improve my skill, but a bit disappointed with this one.  We just cut the printed motifs and I completed 3 in the 1-hr session.  I also cut the butterfly, but it was during one of the fringe activities that I happened to be there when Kristine was having her Chinese Calligraphy competition.  Looks like Chinese paper cutting is getting more popular now! 

A Bit of Everything for March and April Swaps

I sent this lot to Debbie House (USA) for the Inchies-onexone March and April swaps.

March swaps included 4 Purrfect (Cat) inchies and 4 Analogous Twinchies with spring time theme.  The cats are stamped on and placed over thread ends all knotted together and wrapped over the whole inchie, while the twinchies are done with die-cut.  The following are a duplicate set of all the swaps for my own collection.

April swaps included a set of 4 inchies of pastel watercolour background with tatted butterflies, 4 inchies stamped and embossed, 2 Moos, 2 thrinchies, and 2 ATCs.  I cut and folded some flowers on 1 of the Moos and folded a pair of butterflies for the other - turned out very Japanese-looking because of the papers!

I did more of the movable ATCs after the March ATC session in Bisahn Library.  For the "Up and Away" ATC on the left in the photo below, pull the bottom string to move the balloons up the sky and pull the top string to bring the balloons down.

For the Bookmark exchange on the NEEDLESnCRAFTS group, I received 2 very lovely cross-stitched bookmarks and a tag from Margaret Wong (Malaysia). Margaret has matched the colour and theme of the  backing fabric, tassel and gift to go along with the bookmarks and tag.  Cross-stitch is something I couldn't do well, so they are extra precious to me, thank you, Margaret!

Kristine did another flower arrangement in school, this scored 86 out of 100.  I like the colour combination.

Swaps Received from Inchies-onexone Group

Finally, March, April and May swaps came in!  I have almost forgotten what I have sent in for these swaps - see my March (1), March (2), April and May items submitted.  

March swaps: Debbie House's Pocket ATC (oops, Debbie missed the inchies!) and Stitch in Time ATC.  The feather Simple Fold ATC with inchie has no name - wonder whose work is that?

Debbie House's Animal People ATC (for May swap) and Window ATC (for April swap).

Top 3 cards (March swaps), going from left to right...

Debbie House's paper punch inchies (1st 3 on the top left corner), Polly's paper punch inchies (2nd 3). 

Patricia Ann's Easter inchies (top 2), Polly's Spring inchies (middle top), and Debbie House's Spring inchies (bottom 2).

Candy/gum wrapper rinchies: Patricia Ann's kiss, Marjoeie Grace Sayers' Trident, Debbie House's Halloween and Polly's sweetie.

Mid-row cards - A to P alphabet inchies (March-May):

A, F, K, P - from Debbie House;

B, G, L, O - from Sandra Hanson;

C, D, E, H, I, N - from Marjorie Grace Sayer;

J, M - from Polly.

Last row cards -

Rinchies (choice) for May swap - Nuts from Lynn Lipchak, purr from Debbie House, yellow flower from  Marjorie Grace Sayer and flutterbies from Polly. 

Debbie House's spring flowers moos (April).

Last but not least, Debbie House's sleeping babe betwinchie and Lynn Lipchak's betwinchie cat (April).  


A set of inchies (choice) for May swap seems to be missing :(

Nevertheless, kudos to everyone for the wonderful, colourful, creative works, and Debbie for hosting the swaps!!

Catching Up

I have been real busy with lots of things in hand.  I have quite a bit to catch up and to show.  And this new blogger is giving me problems :(

After the first "Butterflies and Buttons" ATC, I tatted more button flowers to sew 2 more ATCs - 1 for Linda Keller (USA) for the Birthday ATC swap (her birthday falls in May), and another for the month of May for The Linen Shelf's ATC Challenge.

I finally decided to dig out my semi-precious stones to make these bird nest pendants, but personally, I still prefer flowers and butterflies to bird nests.  

  

Nancy Tracy's free pattern for April was a bumble bee. I think white wings would look better, but nevertheless, they are real fast to tat up with just 2 colours.

Here are my April inchies swaps sent to Debbie House (USA), the host.  Besides inchies, there are betwinchies, Moos and an ATC.  

The alphabet inchies are totally done using die-cuts.  I just love to challenge myself to squeeze in the details in the 1-inch square.

The Moos with tatted flowers and betwinchies with roses assembled from punch/die-cut. 

The ATC with windows "Who Are Behind M & R?".

My May inchies swaps are also mailed out to Debbie. 

Continuation of the alphabet inchies, all done with die-cut so far.  

ATC "Playing Pirate" - animal head with human body.

The April doll-ATC swap was Tooty Fruity.  My ATCs with Mr Pear and Miss Grape.  

And dolls received from Mary Flower (USA).  Mary's dolls also look so lovely and colourful.  I'm so happy to be swapping with her finally!!!

Button fairy, Ms Papillon Chic, created for the ATC-ArtDolls April challenge. 

And finally, for the May ATC session in Bishan Library, we did some collage work with painted textured papers, taking inspirations from Eric Carle.  We produced some really awesome works within the half hour!

Here's my piece, and the ATC I swapped with Mdm Au "M is for Mouse".