HR029

I had a request to make an eid card for a good friend of mine but I was contemplating if I had the time to do so since I have my hands tied already with all the other orders of eid cards that's waiting in line. She didn't want the ready stock pop up mosque card that I made using ribbons because the card she requested is to be given to her ex boss who happens to be a man. I guess it won't be suitable to give a man a card that has ribbons and bling bling on them right? Since I didn't have time to figure out a new design for an eid card, I suggested to her that it would be less girly to use all paper instead to make the weaves since the paper would look less shiny and less girly ....and so paper weaving it is!!

Again for my pop up eid card, I kept it simple and clean cut. Since it's for a guy, it has to be even simpler. No shiny or glittery embellishments. No flowers either. Gosh....I always have trouble deciding how to design a card for a guy. I always end up going for straight lines as the main design. I love LINES! It has been my favourite since God knows when. Just simple clean lines. And weaving makes it a little complicated. Makes it a little fancy than the usual simple lines.

I do find it a bit harder to weave paper compared to ribbons. Weaving the ribbons are a lot simpler and faster. But the paper looks a lot neater. Well I guess both materials have their own specialties in their own ways.

As for the pop up mosque....I promised her that I would make it a lot fancier than the one I made before. She wanted it to be different than the rest. And that was what I came up with, with the limited time I had. Instead of using just one colour paper for the mosque, I decided to add some gold colour paper to it to somehow beautify it as minimum as possible. More engraving though.....definitely more. I'm so happy that she loved it! That's all that matters :).

You can view the card in motion at the video below. Do check it out! Thank you!

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HB124

Just recently I made a handmade birthday card for a good friend of mine whom I've known for many years. We were room mates when we were studying in ITM. I had wanted to do this for her for quite a while now. Planning and planning but the plan didn't work out as it should and in the end I had to post the card to her instead of giving it to her by hand. I guess God had something else planned for me on that day. I'll just have to make another plan! haha! :D What matters is that she loved the card so much and that really is all I could ask for. To make her happy even if it was just for a day :).

OK! Back to the card! I came across some really nice DIY pop ups at a stationery store recently and I was really excited about it since I love pop ups so much. I never knew they sell these things! I've never seen them before. So you can surely imagine my excitement. Hahaha! Unfortunately, the choices that they had were quite limited. I wish they had more.

Usually I would make the pop ups myself from scratch but I thought it would be nice to once in a while use a ready made one instead for my handmade cards. It's so convenient especially if you are in a hurry to get a card done for someone's birthday. You can also add some personal touch to it if you like to make it different from the original design. But if not, you can just use it as it is.

It was not that difficult to fit the pop up birthday cake in my handmade card as I am quite familiar with the mechanics of the pop up. So it was easy peasy for me. Besides, they do have some photos in the package that explains how to fit the pop up inside the card. 

I also did something I've never done before with quilling flowers. A difference in technique in this case. Usually when I add more than one colour to each petal, it's mostly done using the combing technique.....but for this one I used the slotted quilling tool instead. Perhaps I should consider making a tutorial on how to get that effect on quilling flowers and leaves. If there is a demand for it....or not....I just have to find the time to do it. :)

Another different thing I did was sewing all around the decoration with multicoloured embroidery threads. No cross-stitch this time....just plain straight line. That was really fun! It created a texture on the card and a colourful background that would match the decorations. The gold painted soft clay that was pressed with a birthday sentiment was something new for me to experiment on with what I can do with soft clay. It reminded me of what I used to do with real clay back when I was studying ceramics. Gosh I missed it all so much!

Do check out the pop up birthday cake at the video below and you'll be able to see how it pops up in the card. :)

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MD009

I know I'm a bit late in uploading photos and blogging about my Mother's day card. I guess I got carried away with the Eid cards recently that I completely ignored this one for a few days. You know how it is when we are in the "zone". We just can't get out of the zone until we are over and done with it. Only then can we see or do other things. Like seriously, it happens to me all the time. Hahaha!

This card is actually quite simple to make. The only thing that was complicated was the pop up heart inside the card. This is of course the first time for me to pop up a heart using this mechanism. Another new one for me. Another challenge. But I love a good challenge :). I especially like the little hearts dangling at the bottom of the heart. I love seeing them swing! 

The sentiments were written by hand by yours truly. I had a hard time writing it with my shaky hands. It gets harder each day. But I'm being positive about it and really hope that I can still do more with these hands. In shaa Allah...... :).

I think I probably over "blinged" the card with all the pink and green stones. I got a little carried away there but luckily my Mom didn't mind it. Over glittered it as well! LOL! But all is good because the recipient loved it. Phew!

Do check out the video below of the pop up heart card.....then you'll get it why I was so enthusiastic about making it in the first place :).

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HR027

This year we will be celebrating our Eid in mid July. I'm starting early this year with my Eid cards because I don't want to rush making them last minute like before. I'm allocating more time for my Eid cards this time around. But still no custom orders as planned. I still prefer making ready stock ones so that I have more time to complete other projects.

If you have been following my work in the past years you would know that I love using the weaving technique for my Eid cards. It all started with my favourite subject matter which is the Ketupat. I used to make Eid cards that was embellished with Ketupat. The Ketupat was made using ribbons that I weaved by hand. And the common colours I picked are usually shades of green. That's why for this card I did the weaving technique for the front design. So the whole page of the card is embellished by the weaved ribbons. So instead of weaving ketupat, I decided to weave the whole front page of the card. Just trying something new for a change :).

For this card I specifically picked the colour green and white as the main colours because it's the Prophet Muhammad's favourite colours.  I still have a lot of left overs of green ribbons from last year's ketupat card design. So I used them up for this new design. It's simple....just weave different shades of ribbons and embellished them with some rhinestones.

Since I'm more focused on making pop ups cards this year, I  decided to try making my own pop up mosque for my Eid cards. This is the first time that I've tried making it and to my surprise I managed to do it. Seriously I never thought I could. It was a struggle in the beginning to draw up the shape and details and choosing the right type of mechanics for the pop up. But I'm glad I gave it a try. If I didn't, I would have never known that I could.

I might do different shades of the same design or I might just stick to this colour combination. It depends. If there is a demand, I might just do it. The important thing is to have fun making it :D.Do check out the video of the card below and see how the mosque pops up in the card. :)

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 HB122

The pop up craze and cross-stitch continues. Not to mention the washi tapes and soft clay too. I guess, you'll be seeing those things a lot in my future designs.....well at least for the next few weeks until I get a little bored using them for my handmade cards. Hehehehehe!!

I've been making a lot of the smaller size cards lately and for today I wanted to share a bigger one for a change. It's not that big though, just half the size of an A4 paper. I started with sewing the cross-stitch all around the edge of the card to form a frame for the decorations. I used 4 different types of red colour embroidery threads. I love the effect it gives compared to using just one type of colour.

The polka dots washi tapes was then lined up with the patterned papers, birthday sentiment, quilled flowers and leaves, and lastly touched up with the rhinestones. I made those double star loop flowers long time ago. But only now do I use them for my design. The flower itself is so tedious to make. Takes such a long time to complete one flower. I guess that's why I never used them before. I do have a tutorial on how to make them if you are interested to try. Check out the video below:

I've always wanted to make this type of pop up technique for my cards. It's not that difficult to make either. I like it a lot because I can paste so many flowers together and not worry about any of them bumping into each other whenever the card opens and closes. Basically, you can use all sorts of subjects to pop up with this technique. I'll definitely make more of this type of pop up in future now that I know how to do it. :) Do check out the video of the completed card at the video below and see how the pop up flowers spread open like a fan when the card opens up. Hope you all like it! :) Enjoy!

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W019

Initially, I didn't intend on making a wedding card. I wanted to make a birthday card. But when I was decorating the lattice on the card, I suddenly visualized a couple of butterflies resting on it and then it struck to me that the card would be suitable as a wedding card instead.

You know how much I love swing cards by now as I have been making a lot of them for the past couple of years. And one of the things that I've always wanted to do is to do a lattice pattern on the mid section of the card. Since I don't have any die-cut patterns of lattice or anything of the sort that looks like it available at hand, that means that I had to make one myself. So the simplest way of doing it is by drawing it on the card and cutting them out by hand.

I gotta say that I had fun cutting the lattice out and decorating it with strings and punched out shapes of flowers and leaves, although I do have another idea or a way of cutting it now by hand which I will try to do later on in future but I still love this lattice pattern just the same. 

I have always loved the Martha Stewart Monarch Butterfly pattern....but I rarely use the butterflies on my cards. So much so that I thought it was a waste to have bought it and yet I don't always use it. I definitely need to use it more often. So for this card, it was really suitable for the butterflies and so I added a pair of antennas to each of the butterflies since they didn't have any.  I loved how they turned out in the end.

There are a lot of bling bling on the card itself......inside out. Anywhere I thought it would be suitable, I would paste them.  I'm having fun with them! Will use more of them in other cards soon. They are so fancy schmancy! Hahaha! :D Do check out the video of the card below. You'll be able to see how the lattice swing around with the butterflies :).

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V064

As you can see I haven't been blogging much. I'm taking a break from work to concentrate on my health for a while. But recently I got a request and sometimes it's difficult to say no. So I did it anyways. Just this particular one. I would probably make other card designs in months to come but it would be something I would do because I love doing it in my free time and not because someone asks me to. Crafting keeps me sane. I heard it does for a lot of people. It makes us happy in ways we never thought it could. Agree? :)

This card is a combination of some of my older designs. A bit of this and a bit of that from a few of my handmade card designs and they all came together in one card. Personally I wouldn't have had it combined this way but since it's a request, so I just did my best to make it look good. Combination of colours have to match too and therefore certain designs with certain colours had to be changed to fit in.

You could see that I wrote most of the text on the card and also inside it because the person requesting it loved my handwriting so much. It can be a little tricky to write on the card because you can't afford to make any mistakes. One mistake means that you would have to redo the whole card. Scary! 

All the pop up envelopes have a tiny card in them with short messages. I think that adds an element of surprise for the receiver. I used to put only one tiny card in one of the envelopes but this time around I was requested to make 3 tiny cards with messages she came up with herself. I appreciated the new ideas from her and will try it if I think it suits the card. 

Another tricky thing was writing the glittered text on the die-cut heart shape paper. Can't afford any mistakes there either. But I love the texture and how it glitters when it hits the light.

It was nice to do quilling again and I must say making pop up cards is always a pleasure. I seriously need to make more of it so that I won't lose the skill I gathered over the years. I'm praying that I have the strength to do so soon. How I miss doing it all....it was really fun. :) Till then, do enjoy the video below. 

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HB120

This is my first new card in a box design for this year. Although I don't do anymore customized handmade cards, however, this design has about only 1% request and 99% freedom. My customer gave me the freedom to design this card for her hubby. Just knowing what his favourite colour is, was enough for me to know. The rest was up to me to decide.

I have done stripes designs a lot over the years when designing cards for guys. It's the most simple idea and the outcome is usually good. Especially when you combine a few colours together. In this case it's a combination of white background with, green and brown paper strips. He loves natural green and earth colours. And so that was how I envisioned the card to be on the outside. I cut the brown and green coloured paper and pasted them on the card one by one. It took me some time to arranged them together but I didn't mind because I love doing it.

However, on the inside, I made it a little cheerful because it's a birthday card, therefore it has to look fun and happy somehow....to create that festive look. I love how all those stars, wordings and all pop up when the card is opened. It gives you the feel to celebrate. And it's a good idea as well to pop up the wordings that way especially if you don't really have much to write for wishes. So all the wishes are already there for you.

I really loved playing with the clear stamps that I got from Popular bookstore. They are just the thing I needed for this project. The wordings fits perfectly like it was meant to be. They are so small and suitable to be stamped on the dialogue cut outs. I don't mind doing this again because it was really fun! :)

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HB119

Another swing card design for this month. It's a birthday card this time. A lot of dark red and green combination with this one. In fact I think there's quite a lot of red going on here! hehe!

I wanted to use the big wooden flower bead that I got last year as the focal point of the card. The one and only stock I have! haha! I guess this card is a combination of a lot of things that are limited in my collection. Some were given....some were bought. The ones that were given, was kept for quite a while with me because I adored them too much to use them..... But I can't keep them with me for too long ....I have to use them some day right? Otherwise, there will be too many craft stock inside my room and very little space left for me to do work there.

There were some parts of the card where I applied some molding paste. Flower patterns this time around seemed suitable since there are a lot of flower designs on the pattern paper itself. I enjoyed decorating the card using molding paste although it is quite a messy type of craft. But seeing the pattern formed on the paper somehow thrills me :D. Textures gives the card a different feeling. Hence, more molding paste artwork projects coming this year.

Played with a couple of clear stamps that I bought from Popular Bookstore. They seem to sell a lot of new cool designs there now. Super cheap too! I couldn't resist buying them every time I visit the shop. In fact I just bought some new ones yesterday. Ooooppppps! There goes my budget this year!! LOL! They also sell a lot of pretty acid free pattern papers. Very affordable as well. I like that very much!! :D Hope it stays that way for a long time hahaha!

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