Seven flowers pop up birthday card

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Way back in 2009, I made my first 7 flowers pop up. It was for a Chinese New Year card. I remembered how excited I was to see all the 7 flowers pop up each time I opened the card. I felt as giddy as a school girl. Back then, in my mind I thought that this pop up was the most difficult of all to make. But now I know, there are others types that are much much more difficult to make compared to this one.

There were little flowers and leaves added to the 7 flowers pop up to make it look like a bouquet of flowers. I didn't want to leave it plain and simple. I just had to add other things to the flowers to make it look more fancy. What do you think? Did it work? heheheheh!!!

I guess that this is the first time for me to use the Teary Loop flowers for my handmade card. I made a tutorial on how to make the flower long time ago and uploaded the video on YouTube, but never used them for any of my cards until now. In the tutorial, I made a small version of it, but for this card, I made the small and large version of it combined as a flower. I like the way it looks, either single or double.

The previous birthday card I made had cross-stitch on it too, where I used 4 different types of colour threads. In this one I only used two colours but had them stitched side by side. I love this idea and will probably use this idea for future cards. The cross-stitch took such a long time to sew on the paper but at the end of the day, the results made me so happy. 

Another thing I would like to mention here is the gold frame that I added to the card. I made it myself using a hard board. After cutting it up, I painted it with a gold colour to make it look fancy. I framed the washi tapes and patterned paper with this frame and decorated it with the flowers and sentiments. The rhinestones simply added some bling bling to it and made it look fancier than before. I just love how it all turned out.

This birthday card was made for someone who is very dear to me. I really hope she likes it. I know that she looks forward to receiving my handmade cards every year, but I sometimes don't have the time to make one for her. I'm so happy that this year, I can. Hey, even handmade card designers have problem sending cards to their loved ones, I kid you not! Hahaha!!

Do check out the video of the card below so you can view how to flowers pop up inside the card. Enjoy!

Green themed card in a box birthday card

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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! :)

Love themed birthday swing card

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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!

Card in a box #3

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You must be thinking.....hmmmmm.....this design looks familiar, right? Well, of course it does because it's the same design I made for my first card in a box card last month. The only difference is the colour of the box which I had to change because my customer wanted a card that is in a red and black combination.

Actually I didn't have a red and black pattern paper with a similar design of stars on it. So I had to create my own with the red and black paper. The stars were handcut and pasted on the card one by one. Slow process but at least I get to do a similar pattern as the original design.

I also ran out of the 3D pop up stickers. Huhhuhu!!! So sad about that. The shop never restock them. Searched every where in Alor Setar but couldn't find it. So if anyone were to order this card again, I would have to figure out a replacement for those 3D pop up stickers.

I really enjoyed making card in a box.....they are so much fun! Do check out the video I made of this card. You can see how it opens up. Thank you! ;)

My first Coptic Stitch hand-bound book!

I'm super excited today because I finally get to blog about my experience in making another type of hand-bound book. The technique used for making this hand-bound book is called the Coptic Stitch book binding technique. I was very skeptical about making it at first because it looks so difficult to do and requires some special thread for sewing the papers together. I didn't have any at first.

Luckily for me, I found out that WholePort has some really nice threads in their collection and I immediately requested for some from them for me to use in making my Coptic Stitch hand-bound books. Below are some of the threads I received from them and one of it I used for sewing this hand-bound book. It's not a wax thread but it's quite strong enough for sewing small hand-bound books. I waxed it with some candle to make sure that the thread won't get entangled when sewing. You get the same thread at the link here: Brown yarn.

I also used some of the brass charms that I received from WholePort to decorate the cover of the hand-bound book. I love them so much!!! They are so pretty!!! You can check out the brass charms products at the links below:

1. live your dream brass charms
2.  never never give up brass charms
3. believe in love brass charms

I only used wrapping paper from WholePort for the base of the cover. It's really nice, an old newspaper type of wrapping paper. You can check it at the link here: Old newspaper wrapper.

The wooden ring that I used to put my name on it is really something! I was wondering how to use it and suddenly thought of that idea. I love the wooden alphabets too! I wish I have more of that. You can check it out at the link here: Wooden ring and Wooden alphabets.

If you ask me, I would have to say that I prefer this type of book compared to the Japanese hand-bound book because, it is easy to open and use this book because when opened, it opens up completely like the photo I showed above. So it's very suitable for those who loves to sketch or even for writing. Plus another good thing about it is that I can add a lot of pages in the book and it won't be a problem to open it up at all. That's the beauty about the Coptic Stitch book binding technique. :)

Hope to make more of this in future!!! ;)

Little girl's birthday swing card

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I almost gave up a few days ago. I wonder if my customer felt the same too at that time. She had to wait a long time for this card to be completed because I had a pretty difficult time getting an idea for it! It looks like a simple design right? Nothing that complicated. But sometimes I can't even think of a simple design....hahahaha! I always wanna complicate things. Indecisive too! But in the end.....the card looks simple anyways! LOL! :D Sometimes what I planned to do comes out differently from what I had in mind. It always does. I'm just super relieved that my customer is very happy with the results! :D

This pink theme girlish birthday swing card is made especially for my customer's 8 year old daughter. Her name is Fatin (if I'm not mistaken) ;). She is very much interested in card making, quilling etc. I was so surprised when her mother told me about her passion for crafting. It makes me really happy to know that at that young age, she already knows what she wants and what she is passionate about. She had already told her mother that she wishes to learn about crafting from me someday......awwwwww.....how sweet! Hopefully someday she and I can meet up and have fun crafting....in shaa Allah....God willing.... :). 

I used a lot of sponge stickers for this card.....just like how my customer wanted it. She wanted something like the birthday card that I did in my first swing card....but since that card was meant for a boy , so I had to make some changes with the colours and motifs since this card is for a girl. She also mentioned how much her daughter loves pink! So pink it is all over! With a little white, soft yellow and purple combination. :)

I wanted so badly to use the die-cut letters of Happy Birthday on the card. I tried to arrange them, but they won't fit in if they are arranged in a straight line!! So I had to arrange them in a way that all of them can fit in one space. Even though they are not in a straight line, I kinda like looking at them randomly arranged that way.... :D As long as you can read it, then its all good! :D

I love the paper balloons! This is the first time I'm using them! I bought the balloon motif craft punch so long ago and only thought of using it now for this card. Kinda nice not having to cut out my own paper balloons hehehe.....I kinda wish I have a bigger balloon craft punch now.....coz it's super nice to use for birthday cards!

Have a look at the video of the card below for a closer look at the card and how it swings in motion! :)

Ribbon heart

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Lately I've been playing a lot with distress ink. I just bought 2 more new colours to add in my collection and I've been having fun distressing card stocks with them. I gotta say....it's a new addiction. Before this, I was not successful in using this technique in my card design. I was doing it all wrong. So I took the time to study it closely by viewing a lot of video tutorials on Youtube and saw how other crafters use this technique. Now that I know how to do it, I just can't stop using them in all my new card designs. Now I wish I have more colors to play with!! LOL! 

There are a few reasons why I made this anniversary card and one of the reasons is because I wanted to use those quilled roses that I made using the mini rolled roses die cut pattern. I had so much fun making them! You can see from the photo below some of the rolled roses that I made. 

But for this card design I only used the smallest mini rolled roses. The medium sized ones were not used. Perhaps I'll use them for other designs soon. :) I've been wanting to make a tutorial on how I made these roses but I've been very busy lately and didn't have the chance to make one yet. But I will do it eventually :).

I've done heart shape iris folding using ribbons before like the card you can view HERE. I miss doing it and so I made another one for this card. It's so much easier using ribbons rather than using paper. believe it or not....I have yet to try doing iris folding using paper. Must try it one day for sure.

Have a look at the video below to see how the card swings in motion. I love looking at it swing :).

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Pop up graduation hat card

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I got an order the other day to do a graduation card, but I didn't have enough time to do it. I didn't want to take the order at first but since my customer persisted, so I accepted the order in the end. But I told her, I only have time to make a simple one and a small one too since my schedule is pretty full for this month. Luckily she didn't mind it at all. :)

I believe......this is my second graduation card design. I don't really design graduation cards a lot. Don't really fancy making them that much as compared to other types of cards. Don't ask why ehehehe.

Well, for this design, I thought of doing something different. I thought of doing a pop up inside it. But didn't know what would it be until I saw a tutorial on how to make a graduation hat! That really caught my eye! Immediately I tried making it and I was surprised at how easy it was to make one. I really enjoyed making it and I especially love making the tassel for the hat! That was pretty fun! :D 

Since the card itself is pretty small, so the graduation hat had to be made small in size as well. That was the only thing that was pretty tricky for me to do. Especially since I have big hands, and chubby fingers, LOL! :D I also tried something new by stamping some flowers and colouring them and later making them pop below the graduation hat. Although it's very easy to do, I still loved it anyways since it's something new for me to try. All this time, I've always made pop up flowers from scratch, so making pop up flowers from rubber stamps were a fun thing to try out.

All in all, what's important is that I had fun.....and I tried something new.....plus, I made my customer very happy ;). You can view how the graduation hat pop up in the card at the video below:

My first Swing card

 

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This is the first time ever for me to make my own Swing card. Some call it the Swivel card, some call it the Flip Flop card.......but I guess the name Swing card is the most commonly used among the card makers. Basically because the middle part of the card swings in motion when we open the card.

I really love how the middle part of the card swings in motion the minute I open it. I guess that's the main reason why I was attracted to the card and decided to experiment with it. It took me a while to decide on the measurements and fixed one that I was happy with.

This card is for a customer who requested me to make a birthday card for a 1 one year old boy who will be celebrating his 1st birthday soon. So I thought it would be fun to use this card layout for his birthday card. I'm sure he would love looking at the card swinging back and forth. It would cheer him up definitely :).

I love playing with the sponge stickers too! I bought them quite a while ago for me to use on birthday cards and for new baby cards. Glad that I can use them for this card design. :) Played with my clear stamps as well. Stamping those star patterns on the front design and creating my own pattern paper for it was fun! 

I also uploaded a video of the card on Youtube so that you can see how the card swings. Do check it out :).