Just for you on this new year :)

Hope it's not too late for me to wish a very Happy New Year to everyone!! How's the new year been for everybody so far? Really good I hope....at least for me it's been a good start. I want to do my best to focus on good health and enjoying life as it comes. Don't want to stress myself too much. Last year was a really stressful year for me. So for this year, hopefully, more fun will come my way :D.

It's been a while since I last posted a handmade card design on this blog. I kept posting too much of handmade books. So I'm excited today to share a new card design here for the first time this year. It's a simple swing card design with a simple quilling flower arrangement on the front cover.

I haven't been quilling that much last year. Just some small projects done on quilling because most of the time I would be spending on making quilling starter packs instead. So it was a little exciting to do the quilling flower arrangement even though it was a simple one.

I love the huge wooden button because the design on the button was perfect for the pattern paper I chose for the card. It was a perfect match! It's not always that you can find two patterns of different material that compliments each other really well. So I had to add that button to the card. :)

I really like the olive green colours and how it combines really well with brown and other warm colours of the pattern paper. It gives a warm fuzzy feeling to it. This card can be used as a birthday card or a card for any occasion for that matter. And quite suitable to be given to a girl or a lady :).

More cards coming soon in shaa Allah......:)

New Baby Girl swing card

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A combination of the old and new indeed. Because for this card, it has at the front part of the card, a newborn baby girl design that I did long time ago. The only difference is the material used for making it. In the previous design, I made it using foam sheets but for this one, I used felt. You can see below how I sew the eyes with a dark brown thread for the little baby.

The card has a few 3D fancy stickers on it which is in my opinion is so cute! I got them at Tesco. They are not that expensive and the design is lovely. I couldn't help myself from buying it. I do have a similar design for new baby boy too. So I will definitely use them soon for another new baby card.

 I love the off white floral lace trim from WholePort.....it looks really cute combined with the colourful pastel buttons. I didn't use a lot of items from WholePort for this card, just the lace and the embroidery thread for sewing the felt and paper. I just love using the embroidery thread. The colours are so pretty and it has a shine to it that makes it looks so fancy. Easy to sew on paper too. :)

Overall I had fun making this one. With a candy theme colour combination, it makes the card look sweet and warm. The Dymo embossing label maker was a fun gadget to use too for making the wordings for the card. I kinda enjoy using it nowadays. I guess I need to get more colours too as I only have black and red colour labels at the moment. ^.^

Do check out the video below of the card in motion.....I love the sounds of the birds in the background chirping away so happily in the garden. I guess they were excited to see the card too hhihihiihihi!! ;D

Elephant and Horse theme birthday card

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I've said it before.....I'm not good at making cards for men. But I wanted to challenge myself when asked for the second time around from my customer to make a birthday card for her hubby that has an elephant and a horse in it. 

The elephant represents my customer and the horse represents her hubby. I was given full freedom to design the card. The time given to complete it was more than enough..... in fact, she gave me ample time to think it over and get it done. I took such a long long time to do it because the idea did not appear when it should have....if you know what I mean! hehe! 

At last I finally got it done. A lot of technique came to mind when thinking of how to do the animals.....but in the end I decided to go with felt as it is easy to draw on and form the shape of the animals.

I loved using distress ink to enhance the look of the card. It makes such a huge difference if the distress ink is used compared to when it's not. It's something that I can seem to let go of when making cards nowadays. I also fancy the designer papers that I chose for this card. I'll bet my friend Sandi Staley would recognize the papers since she was the one who gave them to me to play with! ehehe!

All in all I'm glad that my customer is so very patient with me.....I wish I am much more creative in thinking of new ideas for custom orders in future so that my customers wouldn't have to wait such a long time for me to get a card done. I'm so relieved that she loved the card so much. That really made my day! ;)

Felt hearts

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I received a request to design a birthday card using felt as part of the design on the card. I did freaked out a bit when it comes to using felt because I am not an expert when it comes to using felt as embellishments on cards. I've only tried my hand at using them early this year and still have a lot to learn about it. So I did feel a little scared using them especially since it is a little expensive and therefore I can't afford to make mistakes when cutting them up otherwise it would just be a waste.

When my customer told me how she wanted the design to look like on the card, I was worried as well. Arranging 15 circles and 15 red felt hearts on the card and making sure they are arranged neatly on the card is not as easy as I thought it would be. It had to be precised.....I needed to make the correct measurements. I had a hard time figuring out how to cut the felt into heart shapes too and making sure they are the exact same size. I don't have a special machine to cut felt in the same size and so I decided to make a template for it instead. That solved the problem and I managed to get them all in the same size. Yippee! :D I also used the circle template to get those circles for the heart. If I had a circle cutter, then cutting up circles would be a breeze! :)

Another problem was how to write "HAPPY B'DAY ~SYG~" on the hearts. At first my customer wanted me to stick letters sponge stickers on it....unfortunately they were a bit too big for the hearts. So at the very last minute, I got the idea to use glitter glue instead. Yup, they worked perfectly on felt. I never knew that before! I knew that you can use glitter glue on smooth type of fabric but didn't know that it's great on felt as well. Now I know! I experimented some silver glitter glue on a small piece of felt and after 10-15 minutes, they dried so nicely on it! So I finally could write those letters on the hearts as per request. Phew! Another problem solved!

Then I made a small pop up cake inside the card as per request and decided to put the MU logo on the cake itself as she wanted me to add some MU elements inside the card since her BF is a MU fan :). Simple....really simple :) I'm so glad she loved it so much! :) and I love it too! ;)

Black felt electric guitar

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:) Finally I get to blog again here today hehehe with the help of my aunt's laptop again but but but......I'm not quite satisfied with the photos I'm sharing here with you today. Due to the problem with my PC, I am not able to upload photos I took of this new design using my digital camera...instead I had to use photos I took with my hand phone instead for this post today. The colors are not that clear and the sharpness of the photo is not up to my satisfaction either but no worries because I have kept the nice photos of this design elsewhere so that when my PC is fixed I will upload them here to replace the ones shown here today hehehe!

I've made an electric guitar before but I made it using foam materials.....you can view the card I made before at the link HERE.......but this time around my customer insist that I use felt materials. I've never in my life used felt before in any of my card designs. I've never bought any before either. Luckily there are a few people who are selling them online and I managed to get in touch with one who had the colors I was looking for. Felt materials are quite expensive but I got a good bargain hehe :). So for the first time ever, I played with felt. Quite interesting really....didn't even know how to draw the pattern on it etc etc.....lucky me coz I got some tutorials from the seller herself and I successfully managed to cut out the pattern of the electric guitar. Phew! What an experience! hehe!

Another issue was how to make the pop up inside the card. I had a hard time deciding a pattern for that one. Finally I came up with this pop up music notes that popped at the top and bottom of the birthday wish. I wish I could have done more with it but didn't have any other ideas hehehe....plus my customer insist on those colors only and must only have music notes as part of the design. Nothing else. So that's all I was allowed to add in it. I'm so glad that my customer is happy with my design! hehe! I love it too and didn't want to part with it actually huhu. Perhaps one day I'll make another one with my favorite color hehe!

Felted ornaments

This is not the first time I've received a Christmas card or a Christmas ornament from my friends who celebrates Christmas. But what makes it special this time is because the ornament is made from felt. I had no idea about hand needle felted craft before. This is the first time I'm seeing it. :)

A great pal of mine, CC Peyton, who now lives in New Mexico, USA, made it for me. She even printed her own Christmas card which she and hubby designed.....with Spanish wordings "Feliz Nevidad!" at the  front of the card which simply means "Merry Christmas" in English.

She knows I love BLUE and that's why she made the hand felted ornament blue in color....hehehe.....and her favourite color is blue as well by the way ;). CC and her hubby Ron make their own Christmas ornaments each year. It's more special when you try to make your own instead of buying them at the store. This way, it's more personalised as well to suit your theme or personality. 

Honestly, I've never even tried felt craft before. Been thinking about trying it out this year. Not sure yet when though, but will make an effort to create or incorporate felt craft in my handmade card designs. :) 

Thank you sweetie for this lovely card and gift! I love them!! ;)