Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Contented

Went out today and got a few stuff for myself.

Honestly speaking, all of them are related to scrapbooking in some sense:

- Satin photo paper! (Yes, I love the soft texture oh-so-much... I don't really adore glossy photo paper, I know, call me weird, it's like how people prefer diamonds to pearls but I prefer pearls to diamonds heh)

- Creating Keepsakes Jan 09 issue

- Scrapbook Etc Jan 09 issue

- 2GB Memory card (I max-ed out my 1GB memory card and after countless times of attempting to delete some precious photographs, I finally got myself to get a new memory card... now I don't have to worry about max-ing the the space now, well, at least for the time being :P)

- Printing ink. The colour ink on my printer is running low, so, a new ink cartridge to the rescue!

Of course, I am contented with my purchases today. :P

On the scrapping front, I just managed to upload and scan in a layout I did about 2 weeks ago and I just submitted that into my LSS's mid-monthly challenge. The RAK for the winner is the yummylicious Qtea Jan kit. Just thinking about it left me salivating over it... of course, the chances of me winning the challenge could be an impossible feat! There are so many talented scrappers in Singapore and I couldn't be more than glad to see a deserving party get that awesome prize. :)

I will upload the layout over here when I feel less lazier. 2009 is coming! I wanted to sound excited and all, but afterall, that implies that the school year is going to start as well... the top on my new year's resolution is to not spend so much time on scrapbooking and instead focus on my studies, of course! Then again, this is yet another impossible feat to achieve... I guess maybe I should just give up.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Xmas gifts

As a scrapbooker, handmade gifts are never lacking all year round, especially Christmas. Afterall, tis the season for giving!

I made some notebooks for some of my besties to embrace the new school year dawning upon us in 2009. :( How I wish school holidays would last all-year-round. :( Sigh, all good things must come to an end.

Before these lovelies were given away, I took quite a few pictures of them and edited them in Photoshop, which explains the weird yellowish hue (I thought it was really nifty :D) on quite a few pictures as I was still messing around with layers and opacity.

Xmas Gift Notebooks by you.
Close-up 1 by you.
Close-up 2 by you.

Xmas 4 by you.
Xmas 5 by you.
Xmas 6 by you.

Last but not least, there's always the receiving part.
Here's my family got:

Xmas 7 by you.

(This is probably my favourite picture out of the lot) :P
A sweet little candycane with some exquisite tea bags. :)

Giveaway on Lou's blog!

As I chanced upon a thread on Twopeas' message board about a giveaway, I knew I cannot give it up. As a student/teenager who doesn't holds any jobs/income, it can be rather hard to keep up with this hobby, and I do not want to keep asking my parents for $ whenever I need to buy any scrapbooking supplies. Thus, giveaways are always a good way for me to gain new scrapbooking supplies. :)

For anybody who's interested in getting $150 worth of Cosmo Cricket product, here is this link to Lou's giveaway post: http://lifeaslou.blogsome.com/2008/12/20/christmas-mini-album-pages-6-7-plus-150-give-a-way/. I have been an avid fan of Cosmo Cricket and while I do hope to win this giveaway, I hope that this giveaway would also be given to someone else who's more deserving as me! :) So here goes, you just have to leave a comment over there to stand a chance to win the giveaway. Simple right? :) So pop over to her blog right now! :)

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas!

Here in Singapore, it's already 25th December, therefore it's already Christmas over here. For the northern hemisphere of the globe, Merry Christmas in advance!

Haven't been scrapbooking much lately. Been catching up with friends, going out with family, so on and so forth, therefore leaving myself with limited time for scrapping. The holidays and festive season has done nothing to kill my scrapping inspiration though, probably I am overwhelmed with some new guilty pleasures lately... (shhh)

The flea market trip was a complete failure. I made $0 sales at all, yes, nothing was sold at all. Perhaps my target audience was not exactly in the crowd over at the flea market. My items are catered for teenagers while most of the crowd there are middle-aged citizens with their young kids. At times of recession, I understand that one must tighten their purse, although I didn't expect much sales, I was hoping to at least get at least 10 or 20 bucks out of it...

However, yesterday, while on the way counting down to Christmas, I took a little break from being the resident geek at home and didn't touch my computer at all (Aw D:) I plucked up a whole lot of courage (maybe not that much) to open that drawer of doom. Why the name "Drawer of doom"? Cause everytime I open that drawer, a mess of papers, tools, and a lot of other junk would mysteriously appear in the middle of nowhere. That kinda sounds like Pandora's Box, doesn't it, without all the evil creatures and stuff? Maybe I should rename my Drawer of doom to Pandora's Box. Then again, my name ain't Pandora. ;)

Okay, enough of all the craptalk. :)

Here's a mini project I did using one of Pink Paislee Blog's tutorials. :)

PaperRing by you.

Um, here's the front view. Not the best paper ring made ever, and I doubt anyone would wear paper on their fingers out. (I didn't wear it out, but I wore it at home the whole day. :D Yes, that's how narcissistic I am)

PaperRing2 by you.

The side view.

These 2 are probably my best photographs this month. If you think these photographs are very amateur-ish, yes, they really are. I didn't read any tutorials on getting the "perfect photograph" nor receive any training. The best training I had was probably hearing from my dad how to operate the camera. The photographs are post-processed in Photoshop of course, I couldn't stand all my photographs being free of processing and then being posted online. Who would want to see a photograph that's so grainy and has terrible quality? So, I tweaked around the images a little. A little bit of messing around with the layers and contrast make a photograph look vaguely decent. Yes, that's the magic of Photoshop. ;)

What's the next thing to do on my to-do-list?
To create new notebooks for the upcoming school year of 2009 :)

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Not inspired :(

I practically abandoned all of my current projects.

My fatal attack point in scrapbooking is probably photos. I think I have never really done any other layouts that actually have more than 1 photo. As much as scrapbooking is about preserving as many memories as you can, I always feel that 1 photo is enough when they fail to tell the story, and the only reason why I use 1 photo only on my layouts despite my contradicting words just now is because I think having too many photos can crash the whole layout. :(

I'm currently working on a super-multiple-photo-layout (probably about 8 photos in one layout - it will be a record set for me if I really did finish this) and I hope I will not abandon this project. Then afain, right now, it only lacks the title and photos. I will probably print them out in snapshot size. :)

Oh and just for trivia purposes, one of my favourite scrapbook layout base are probably die-cut papers. I just love how delicate and pretty they are that regular 12x12 square PP are unable to bring me. Thus, don't be surprised if you see much more die-cut-layouts compared to normal PP size layout as I really really love die-cut papers! :) Needless to say, this current layout I am working on has a die-cut-PP base too... and a lot of other sassafras lass goodies!

Christmas certainly haven't slowed down my scrapbooking's pace. The only thing that's slowing my scrapbooking pace is probably preparations for my first flea market booth. However, I tried to incorporate scrapbooking into the preparations too! I made gift bags and price tags (yes! :D) out of the older PPs that I no longer had use for :)

Here's a sneak :)
Flea 3 by you.
This is probably not the best picture ever but this is the only decent picture I got as I took this at 3am in the morning when the sunlight certainly isn't shining in!

That's all for now, and sorry for not updating this scrapblog for a rather long peroid of time, as I haven't been really up to some scrapbooking business these days :(

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Another birthday layout..

Of course it's a joyous occasion to scrap your birthday... and others' too. But narcisstic me seriously did too much birthday layouts for myself and none for others.

Must.stop.being.so.narcisstic.
Must.stop.being.so.selfish.
Must.create.more.layouts.about.others.

Anyhowdy, long story cut short.
I created a birthday layout (photoless) for myself during late September to celebrate my upcoming birthday this year, and yet now again, I created ANOTHER birthday layout for myself, but the subject in photo was yours truly when I was 1 showcasing the magnificent gifts (maybe not-so-magnificent now that I have grown up :P, but I still appreciate the gifts that my parents bought for me, it's still here! But it's quite dusty haha) I received on my 1st birthday celebration after I have popped into this crazy world.

Pink is my favourite color and was present on both birthday layouts (Dig for it in my Flickr...)
Another reason I did this layout was for a challenge over at my LSS's forum (http://madewithlove.com.sg/forum)

The challenge was to scrap a memorable event (yes, yours truly's 1st birthday celebration was a grand event with loads of gifts... and certainly memorable though I was too young to remember it... now that just totally reminds me of the power of photographs and scrapbook layouts - once we get old and senile, we can just open our scrapbooks and reminisce on past memories) and also to de-hoard your stash! Meaning, you have to painfully open that package of embellishments you have kept for months/years or cut that beautiful patterned pattern lying around on your scrap desk for ages and use them on this layout. Painful, indeed, but it was worth it!

After all the crap talk, I will just let the picture do the talking. After all, pictures are worth a thousand words. :)

Remember 2409
*Click on image to enlarge!*

Any comments would be extremely appreciated! I don't intend to win since so many talented and fabulous scrappers have also submitted their layouts for this challenge, so I guess I just have to say bye-bye to that yummy RAK put up. :(

Oh well, results would be announced by tomorrow or latest this week, so fingers crossed!

xoxo.
S

Friday, November 28, 2008

Brewing...

I am currently in the midst of some new creations. One's so girly.. (Scenic Route's Sonoma line, pink and yellow muted hues, floral...), and another's so boy-ish (Cosmo Cricket's Mr Campy line, marshmellow, blues, browns, torn and tattered edges)

Here's some sneak peeks!

Sneak peek 1 (the girly one!):
Brewinggg... Sonoma by you.
I'm currently stuck at this layout. I tried looking around sketch blogs, magazines and various scrapbooking inspiration sources and I can't seem to put my hand on where should I put the photos at and which embellishments I should put! Sad, huh?

Sneak peek 2 (the boyish one!):
Brewinggg... Mr Campy by you.
I started off this layout much earlier so I am almost done with it. What's left is only the stitching... I was thinking of a slightly more eccentric kind of stitching, either zigzag or artisan label brackets... I have to reach out for the embroidery floss and needle!

xoxo.
S

Thursday, November 27, 2008

NEW BG Release: Bittersweet!

Was cruising around 2Peas' message board as usual, and I saw this long thread with almost 20 replies saying "YUMMY BG NEW RELEASE..." and I was having this mental note to myself "They are not talking about Wassail are they...?"

Boy, was I wrong, I clicked on that fateful thread and it brought me to some serious eye candy.

Behold, the mighty new collection from BasicGrey (probably considered as their Valentine's line)

Bittersweet


One look at the papers itself on the internet, I was already inspired to create something and a vision suddenly splashed into my mind on what I was going to create with those absolutely gorgeous papers. That has never really happened to me before. The papers literally speak to me. The colour combination of whites, pinks and browns are probably one of the best colour combinations on earth (especially for me, pink and white are listed as two of my favourite colours along with the shimmer of silver and the glamour of gold)

This ships mid-December to stores and I'm so gonna grab it once it comes on! All of you should too, before scrapping-desperados like me grab everything off the shelves, and you guys will live to regret it, ferrr sure! :P

Like how I wrote my reply on the message board thread itself, BG's really ingenious in creating a name for their collections.

Bitter, for I am going to spend my hard-earned allowance/money on to these masterpieces.
Sweet, for I am going to indulge myself into these masterpieces.

I could feel the bittersweet-ness building up inside me already...
xoxo.
S

Newest creationsss!

Decided to post up this newest creation of mine which I didn't even realised I had already scanned in, just that I didn't upload it anywhere. :)

My very very very first attempt at stitching! I didn't even stitch on fabric before that. I just sort of fiddled around with the needle and the embroidery floss on this layout, so yeah, I'm sorry if my stitching looks really bad.

Well, after I had finished stitching up the layout, I read up a few tutorials on stitching and I found out I indeed messed around with my stitching. My stitching isn't... well 'authentic' if you would call it.

But well, I would consider it the "Shermin stitch" then! I can't seem to stitch the authentic ways they show on tutorials no matter I tried, so maybe I will continue with this non authentic stitching style of mine... :P

15qzxqg
*Click on the image to enlarge it!*

Another layout I did. :)

Supplies list:
Alphas: AC Thickers
Patterned papers: Sassafras Lass, Creative Imaginations
Chipboard: Pink Paislee
Sticker: Creative Imaginations
Embroidery floss: DMC Blanc Floss

Any comments would be very much appreciated!
(I'm sorry if this LO looks cut-out, my scanner is only 11" and I really can't be bothered to scan that extra 1" at the side :P)

Have been feeling rather productive :D

Status:
Completed 4 LOs (within 2 weeks).
2 more LOs in progress this week.

:)

This might seems low production rate for most scrapbookers, but trust me, it could very well be the record for me. I usually only produce 1 LO per month, so yeah, this is really turning out into a pretty inspiring and productive peroid for me. :)

It's school holidays here in Singapore, which means that I will get to have a lot of free time compared to the hectic school hours once school starts again in January 2009. That reminds me that I better make use of the free time now before homework and exams start pouring in before I even realise it.

I will scan in the layouts and upload 'em to my Flickr/here as soon as I can! :) Been pretty busy lately so I didn't really have the time to do so...

Tata for now!

xoxo
S.

The "Playing with dandelions" layout... reveals!

Playing With Dandelions by you.
*Click to enlarge the image!*

This is the layout that inspired the title of the blog, just for trivial purposes, as mentioned in my first post on this blog about what inspired this blog's title. :)

Virgin post on this bloggg!

Welcome to my new blog dedicated to only crafts/scrapping and everything else pretty.

My name is Shermin and I am just a young scrapper addicted to the world of visual arts, and I am from a sunny country, Singapore, where we enjoy summer all year-round. ;)

It only occupies a small red dot on the globe, so don’t feel bad if you don’t really know about its existence.

The name ”Playing with dandelions” derived from one of the most recent layouts that I have done. It is my favourite layout to date and even the title of the layout appealed to me as well. Thus “Playing with dandelions was born”. I have previously placed all my scrapping interests and creations in my personal blog but since I kept my whole blog private, so my works have never really gone ‘public’. I have been scrapping since late 2007 till now, and I would love to share my creations and works with the rest of the world if possible. :)

Now that I have finished mentioning whatever I wanted to say, I hope you guys would enjoy this blog as I post about my crafty pursuits. :)