Great Outdoors with Maja Design

Hello friends!

Popping in on a Thursday afternoon to share my latest project for Maja Design. My fingers were all purple and white after completing it, but what I really want are green fingers! Let me tell you why.

Firstly, here is the project:

I'm using the Antligen collection from Maja Design, which is really all about Springtime and the earth coming back to life with beautiful flowers after a long cold winter. Well, the photo I chose was one I took of my favourites - Lavender Augustafolia, but that was in autumn. Now, the climate here in Singapore is really not suitable for growing lavender because of the over-bearing humidity which kills off the plant by encouraging root rot. In my last tries, I managed to get the seeds to germinate and sprout, and then suddenly they all died off after a month. Then someone gifted me a pot of blooming ones, but they all never survived more than two months even with full sunlight and careful watering. Bear in mind I'm someone who can actually kill cactus.... So when we booked ourselves into the Lavender and Berry farm on our Perth trip, you can imagine how gaga I went over the gorgeous flowers in bloom. And it was effortless for them. *Green eyes* Now I'm trying to grow some cherry tomatoes but they all seemed to have stopped at the seedling stage. Maybe I should give up and just paint my fingers green instead.

So my long story aside and back to the project. I've kept my paper layering to a minimum and focused a lot more on the background details this time round.

More in the close-ups:

Back to my usual style of tucking in those gorgeous Blue Fern Studios chipboards in between my papers. I have strips of green and purple paper from the Antligen collection, as well as some fussy cut flowers from the collection to fill out the composition nicely. The chipboard I colored with Shimmerz Inklingz, 13@rts Purple Metallic and Lavender Matt paints, and adhered clear Distress Glitter on the edges.

A closer look at what I did for the background - stenciling and doodling around the relief, sprinkling of transparent and black microbeads, splatters of Twinkling H2O and Purple Metallic Paint from 13@rts. And finishing it all off with the Splash! acrylic inks, also from 13@rts.

Hidden details behind the photo with random stamping, a painted metal water fountain with little roses tucked in. It's starting to look like an English garden! My title is "Great Outdoors", also from BFS and it describes so well my love for everything under the sun.

Filling out the bottom part of the composition nicely with another piece of Blue Fern chipboard. I painted with two different shades of green and sprinkled on clear microspheres when the paint is wet. And just in case, I sealed the beads with a thin layer of gel medium. 

 So that's all I have for today. Before you go, I would love to hear some of your gardening wins and woes too!

love,

Remember This with Made With Love

Hello friends!

Popping in late (or very early!) today to share a canvas I made for my LSS Made With Love using some fabulous products available at their 313 Somerset store.

Now that I'm comfortably settled into my second trimester (almost the end of it actually) the insomnia is setting in, making me horribly tired in the day but not taking away the tons of things that have to be done. Maybe I should make that appointment for some pre-natal massage (hee!)...

Anyhow, here is my project:

This canvas was made with papers from the Bo Bunny Garden Journal collection pack. It's been awhile since I made something with a lot of paper and the mixed media background just subtle enough to add some flavour.  If you're going to work with a lot of papers but don't want them to look too flat, pop up the layers with 3D foam dots (I like to recycle cardboard and my craft room is starting to look like some karang guni's backyard), or work on the edges so that you get plenty of texture and dimension at the same time.

This photo is us at King's Park in May, enjoying the gorgeous autumn weather and it's fantastic how the papers matched the colors of that lovely day. Our moments together finally got captured by Daddy when I decided to put the camera down and just enjoy being silly with the boys. We all need to be a Mary instead of a Martha once in awhile eh?

Some close-ups:

Subtle details from stenciling - my texture paste was mixed with clear microbeads and spread over a Prima stencil. Followed by light sponge dabbing with Victorian Velvet and an even lighter touch with Bundled Sage (Ranger's Distress Paints). I then created some contrast with a script stamp and heat embossing. 

Using a sticker from the collection as my title. Underneath that is a chipboard piece from Blue Fern Studios (Notebook Edges) which I covered with the same texture paste + microbead mix and colored with Distress Stain in Brushed Corduroy. In making my paper layers, I have distressed the edges, as well as did random border punching along the sides for a very shabby look. 

Layering fussy-cut elements from the papers and tucking in a piece of wooden gear underneath my flowers.

Some more texture galore. Instead of using clear microbeads, I first applied texture paste over a Damask mask from Kaisercraft and then sprinkled black microbeads while it is still wet. Then it was sponge dabbing with Distress Paint and I finished off with splatters of gesso lightly watered.

List of supplies (available from Made With Love at 313 Somerset B2):

pp: Bo Bunny Garden Journal collection pack

word stencil , texture paste, microbeads, flowers, resin and wood embellishments: Prima Marketing

Damask stencil: Kaisercraft

chipboard: Blue Fern Studios

Distress paint, stain: Ranger's

embossing powder: Wow!

And that's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by!

love,

February Mood Board Reveal 2 for OTRS

Hello friends!

In again today with a little card I made for the Feb mood board challenge over at Off the Rails Scrapbooking. Here's the gorgeously colored mood board:

Below is how I put everything together.

Step 1

I started off with a sheet of white cardstock (12" x 6") and folded it into half. Taking some papers from Maja Design, I trimmed them further into 2 sizes for layering - 5.75" x 5.75", and 5" x 5". Distress the edges and ink them.

Step 2

Take some distress stain and paint (I used the same shade) and color the edges of the white cardstock. Ink the edges again.

Step 3

Adhere the 3 layers together. I also added some twine underneath the second layer for a nice little bow later. Twine also because I saw the balloons in the image and the strings they were drifting from.

Step 4

To make my floral paper a little more interesting, I added some modeling paste over a stencil.

Step 5

And some splatters of color by mixing paint with liquid medium, both from 13@rts.

Step 6

Adding a die cut doily with the edges inked.

Step 7

Scrounge up a piece of canvas cloth and glue it onto the card, followed by pompom trim. I added the canvas for a fabric texture, which I figured the lady in the image must have been a fashionista (from the oversized sunnies of course!). Pompoms because they look like cute little balloons.

Step 8

Colored a piece of mini flourish chipboard (Blue Fern Studios) with a few different types of pigments. Assemble everything else (flowers, embellishments etc) and voila!

You can see the purple, deep red, pink and just a tiny bit of green. 

I didn't have anything stickers with "awesome" in it, so I guess being yourself is another way of being awesome :D

The Eiffel Towel trinket was just begging to be used after being hoarded for so long!

So that's all I have for today. Do check in with the blog for more details on the challenge!

love,

August Prima BAP

Hello everyone!

Back in after the weekend to share with you my take on Prima's BAP for August. I thought I would be quite exhausted from taking care of a sick toddler but creating this page was really therapeutic for me. And I wouldn't be doing this if not for the fact that my talented friend Jennifer Synder designed this month's sketch! 

Here it is:

And my take on it:

As a tribute to her talent, I scrapped a photo of one of my favourite cats (if you're familiar with Jennifer and her works, she often features her Escape Kitty). This particular feline of mine, named Meow-Bi aka Empress Dowager, came to me as a little kitten of 8 weeks old and we had her till old age. Sweet lovely girl but oh, grouchy most of the time. This is a photo of her basking under the sun taking her nap.

For the papers, I've used mostly from the Delight collection. Initially I wanted to go without a backing, but the page was heavy and I had a sheet of patterned paper from "Something Blue" lying around. Yes, it was utterly destroyed in my first attempt to take on this sketch but nobody said you can't reuse it as backing. As it is, the mistakes were nicely covered up. Me - 1; trashbin - 0.

some close ups: 

Some Prima flowers, resin frame and blings layered on top of a Wild Flourish Frame from Blue Fern Studios. One thing I like to do with bigger chipboard pieces like this is to snip it into two and tuck them under separate clusters. It creates a certain sense of balance and fills out the page nicely. On this page, I painted the chipboard with Distress Paints and a dash of Ayeeda matt paint in Raspberry.

My chandelier stamping which didn't turn out as perfectly as I wanted it, but easily covered up with some pretty flowers and a word sticker. 

More vintage trinket and flowers. Love how the cheesecloth softens up the page.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by the blog and leaving your love. Until my next post,

happy scrapping!

love,

My first post with Made with Love Singapore

Hello friends!

I'm so excited to share with you my first project for my favourite LSS Made with Love. It's the first store I shopped and took classes with in Singapore and have made many friends over the years. I took my first mediums workshop (Tattered Angels) there as well and it's as close as a second home. So it really brings me a lot of joy to be part of this wonderful family.

My first project is a mixed media canvas created using products available from the store at Somerset 313.  I've used a few different types of mediums for my background. To create the soft blue and green highlights, I used Tattered Angels' Chalk Mist and Ranger's Distress Stain.

Instead of using my usual white acrylic modeling paste, I've used Art Anthology's Dimensional Paint with Stone Effects over a stencil. This was followed by random stamping using the Stitched Circle Stamp with Archival Ink and a French Script stamp with Prima Chalk Ink.

A close up of one of my clusters. I diecut some leaves from a piece of Prima Resist Canvas, my title was also cut with a Sizzix die from a piece of glitter cardstock. Under my photo is a piece of vellum with silver polka dots. Tucked within the cluster are also little chipboard hearts from Pink Paislee's Mistables which I colored with Ranger's Distress Stains. Layered at the bottom are pieces of pp I cut out in random sizes from Prima's Princess collection. 

This side of a cluster features a shabby frame which I fussy cut out from a piece of Teresa Collins pp. There's also a Prima resin frame and cardstock doily which I cut using Prima's new metal die. For these two, I lightly distressed them with Distress Stains.

List of supplies (available from Made With Love)

Tattered Angels Chalk Mist (Boogie Nights)

Art Anthology Dimensional Paint - Stone Effects (Sand)

Ranger's Distress Stains (Milled Lavender, Bundled Sage)

Prima Stamp - Stitched Circles, French Script

Patterned Paper - Prima Princess collection (Sophie), Teresa Collins Memorabilia collection (Frames)

Black Glitter cardstock

DoodleBug Designs - Sprinkles Vellum in Silver

Prima Resins - Frames

Prima Metal Die

Pink Paislee Mistables Hearts

Prima flowers

Prima Elementals Resist Canvas

Prima wood frame

Prima Stencils

Sizzix dies - "Love" and Tim Holtz Alterations "Tattered Leaves"

That's all I have for now. The canvas is on display in the Somerset 313 store, so do drop by to have a look. Hope you like what I have to share with you today!

love,

An entry for SATW July

Hello friends, how was your mid-week?

I'm back in after my birthday celebration (read: eat and scrap) to share a layout I created for
Scrap Around the World's July challenge. It was rather last minute as I was quite busy with DT assignments and a sickly toddler, but seeing that my talented friends Priscilla and Fiona have submitted their entries, I was inspired by them to put up one as well. 

Here's the moodboard created by dear Tusia:

and this is my take on it:

Obviously you can see where the pink and teal came from. And this must have been the second dandelion photo I scrapped this month, the other is a DT project for 13@rts. The dandelion came from the picture on the bottom right, and I wanted to create a light airy feel to the page. I started with Susan's Dream from Blue Fern Studios' Ombre Dreams as background and begin to layer it with color from Ranger's, 13@rts and VersaColor.

I went in vertical strokes with my painting and vertical strips with acrylic modeling paste because the stripes on the lampshade told me to.... 

One of the clusters. Instead of using texture paste or acrylic modeling paste, I used gel medium over a stencil and sprinkled embossing powders over. My stamping done with the dragonfly stamp was deliberately incomplete for both halves of the page, and this was inspired by the room with the mirror. That both are an unequal reflection of each other and you don't always get the full picture unless you put the two images together (did that make any sense? LOL).

The picture of the plant in a bottle reminded me that I still had a layering stems die from Sizzix in my stash which I have not started using, despite me trying to design projects around it. So out it came and in it went into the floral cluster.

A title from one of the sheets from the lovely "Fly Away" collection from 13@rts. I would have liked to title the page "Let It Go" to sync with the theme of happy thoughts in the second photo from the moodboard, but thought it was a bit cheesy. And it reminded me too much of a certain song that my boys have been asking me to sing n times every night.... But the sentiment I chose did represent the flying dandelion seeds and theme quite well; our lives are defined by the wonderful moments that we capture in our art. 

This is a chipboard piece from Blue Fern Studios (the name eludes me now) which I actually snipped into three pieces and colored with distress paint and 13@rts matte paint in turquoise, followed by some heat embossing. The flourishes were layered just under the photo while the circular frame was tucked under the rest of my flowers. 

Well that's all I have for now. Hope this has inspired you to make something pretty too. Also, don't forget that there's a birthday giveaway happening here, so don't miss out on a chance to win a pack of lovelies!

Until then, happy scrapping!

love,

BFS June Sketch Challenge

Hello friends, we are officially in June! Half a year has almost passed and I'm feeling blessed seeing all the wonderful things that have happened so far.

First day of the month also means sketch challenge reveal over at Blue Fern Studios, and this time round, Michelle Singh has come up with yet another gorgeous sketch. And lucky little me got to play with the brand new paper collection from BFS. It's called Ombre Dreams, and it has the most beautiful colours blended together like a watercolour painting. It looks absolutely dreamy, and so breathtakingly lovely that I can cry. As I was telling my team mates, I just want to lock myself in the studio and do nothing but scrap with these heavenly papers.

Anyhow before I get too carried away, here is the fabulous sketch:

And my take on it:

I used the paper named "Susan's Dream" for my background. It has the most calming tones of blues and greens, with a tinge of orange which I have used to highlight certain elements of the page. Those of you familiar with my style would know that I like to use a lot of mediums and thinner papers tend to warp with so much fluid sitting on it. But the BFS papers are so much heavier (and sturdier), my LO remained pretty much the same shape even when I was adding quite a fair bit of water to bleed the colours. If you love playing with mediums like me, you'll find the quality of BFS papers just perfect. 

A cut-out phrase from "Dream Cards". There are several elements that you can fussy cut out from this page and layer them on your project. I also used a gear and bird chipboards.

Another phrase from "Dream Cards" layered on top of the Mini Ring Things chippie. 

The Treasured floral frame chippie. Love the delicate vines and flowers on this piece.

My floral cluster made up of gorgeous Prima flowers.

And here's a start to finish video I put together to show you how I did the background, as well as the various techniques I used to alter the chipboards. Sit back and enjoy the show, and do remember to play along with our sketch challenge this month!

BFS May sketch

Hello friends, we are officially in the month of May!!!

I'm sooo excited because we are headed for a family holiday in Perth in just 6 days. Looking forward to spending time with our friends there, lots of wine and dine, fun on a farm for the kids and of course, LOTS of pictures for scrapping!

As always, first day of month is Blue Fern Studios sketch time. Michelle Singh has outdone herself again with this beautiful sketch.

And this is my take on it, using the Signature paper from Blue Fern Garden:

Some close-ups:

Those gears and bits are from BFS. I've coated them with layers of Texturez from Shimmerz. For the flowers, I dabbed the edges with my latest favourite gold paint from 13@rts. For this layout, I've challenged myself not to go spraying everywhere but do a really subtle background using just Distress Stains. Unfortunately I caved in towards the end and used one of Ayeeda's mists (in Navy Blue) from 13@rts as well and made little splatters everywhere. Well, absolutely love the punch it added!

The Circle Group Panel chipboard. Perfect for background and layering. After painting them over with distress inks, I've plastered Shimmerz Texturez in Patina and Tidy Widy all over, and added some glass beads on top of little smears of Spun Sugar. You can also see the stitched circle stamps from Prima. I had looked for them everywhere but couldn't find them. Only to flip through a stack of stitched SQUARE stamps and see them. Note to self; perseverance pays off and never judge a stack of stamps by the first piece. Or maybe even the next ten pieces :p

A chippie tag, also from BFS. This was brushed with gesso then stamped in grey and black. 

Well, that's all I have for now. Thanks for dropping by today!

love,