Small photo frame on hand-bound book

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A sweet little girl named Jaja got very good results for her UPSR recently, yes you've guessed it, she got 5As... and she's the one who is getting this Japanese hand-bound book from me. I didn't know what to give her as a gift and suddenly I thought of making this book for her. I'm sure she has never seen a hand-bound book before. I hope she will like my surprise gift! hehe!

I made it so fast since I didn't have a lot of time to spend on the book....so it's not as neat as I wanted it to be. I also added too many paper for the book and it looks so thick. On the bright side, there's plenty of paper for her to write on! hehe! I love the idea of mixing different colour paper in one book but for this one I only used soft pink and white to suit the wrapping paper that I used for the cover.

I gotta admit, I just love sewing the book with the ribbons and decorating it with those white pearls. It's so much fun.....but decorating it more on such a small space is kinda difficult......I had a hard time figuring out what to put on the book....until I came up with the idea of putting a photo frame on it. She can put a photo of herself there. I'm sure she would love that.

I have hand-book fever now....made two of them yesterday in a rush....and quickly had to continue with my other work at hand. Making books can only be a part time thingy for now....hopefully I can make more in future if I can find the time to do so.......will blog about the other hand-bound books I made soon. One of them will be given as a gift in my next blog giveaway ;).

Gold, silver and a bit of red!

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Ok.....so here it is.....the gold and silver flower photo frame I mentioned in my previous post. I added a couple of birds for this flower arrangement. At first I thought it was not possible to do so since most of the time I make my quilled birds quite big in size and probably won't fit in nicely on this half A4 size photo frame. But since my customer requested it and wished to have some birds in either of the photo frames, I decided to give it a try by making them smaller in size.

The request from my customer was that I must think of a colour for the design that would  match with gold and silver. I used to make gold and silver flower arrangement before.....it was a combination of white, black, gold and silver and those colours seemed like a perfect combination but when I had to think of what would match just gold and silver, it was tough......until it came to me how red would seem like a good match for those two colours. Bingo! :D

But later after that, I was a bit confused when it came to decide on what colour to use for the leaves of the flowers......somehow green doesn't seem to match the gold and silver.....so in the end.....I decided to make some swirls as part of the decoration for the flowers.....and swirls can be of any colour.....and that's when I decided that they would be in gold and silver too! hehe! The idea of adding those tiny gold sequins was just something I dared myself to do.....I wasn't too sure about it and started to treat my photo frames like how I treat my handmade cards by doing that. :P

For me, the important thing is I have to be happy with the results of my artwork before I show it to my customer......as long as I'm happy with it, then it'll be ok.....and sure enough it is coz my customer was happy with it.....so it's a bonus when that happens......coz sometimes it doesn't happen that way..... you can't please everyone right? hehe......I'm just glad that I'm happy and she's happy..... hope everyone is happy too today! ;)

Tiny loops flower photo frame

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Last year I accepted an order from a customer who wanted me to design 2 different quilled flower photo frames for her......and she gave me the freedom to design it any way I like it.....but she did have a request for one of them to have some silver and gold colour in the design. I've done that already and I shall be blogging about the silver and gold photo frame in my next post.

Actually I didn't want to take any more customize orders since last year because of my ill health. But I accepted this one because she was willing to wait for a few months for me to get it done for her.....so I could take my own sweet time to get it done....no rush, no stress and I liked that very much hehehe... :). I just want to be able to design whatever I like and sell my designs to those who fancy them. Easier for me considering my current condition. 

At first when I received this order, I had a hard time deciding which type of flower I wanted to make for the frame. Then I decided to use this tiny loops flower design since I haven't made them for quite a long time. I've forgotten how much fun it is to make them using the hair comb. I used to make them in multicolours, in single colours and now I made them in two different colours....soft pink and aqua blue. I love the combination a lot :).

The leaf design......hehe....I had a hard time deciding which type of leaf that would be suitable for the flower.....I made a few types to choose from and finally I seemed to like this simple slim tear drop shape instead of the other types I tried making to suit the flowers. I don't know why but I really like the combination of the two design together. They just looked good together. Well, that's just my opinion.... ;)

My customer did insisted that I add some butterflies or birds in any of the two designs......so for this one I chose butterflies to go together with the flower arrangement. I'm so glad that she loved them so much ^.^. Mission accomplished!

Purple and pink Malaysian flower

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Been a while since I last posted anything new here......been so busy with work and juggling with my crazy health issues......it's been a very challenging ride.

Anyways......here is something I did recently for a customer of mine.......he requested for an arrangement of Malaysian flowers to be made on a photo frame......and insisted that the flowers be in a combination of pink and purple. I've never done Malaysian flowers in two tones before.....so I guess this was a first for me. It was interesting......and challenging as well since I had to experiment on the different types of pink and purple that would actually look bright and cheerful for the frame.....and after some experimenting, I finally found the colours that would please my eyes hehehe. I hope it pleases your eyes as well........ ;)

Hanging photo frames

 

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I got a request to make two 6R size photo frames....first time for me to make photo frames this big....because usually it's just the small type which is the 4R photo frames.....so this request was quite a challenge for me to do.....especially since my customer wants photo frames that she can hang on the wall.

She was very interested in my earlier designs....which is the QF001 and the QF002 photo frames.....she requested that one of the design for the frames must be made in purple and pink colour combination....a first for me as well....coz I don't think I've ever done that combination for any of my quilled photo frames before. 

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The 6R photo frames are about double the size of the 4R photo frames.....therefore, more quilled flowers had to be made to fill up the sides of the frames. Each frame has a plastic cover that will protect the photo...but I find that the bigger the frame the more tricky it gets in inserting the photo inside the frame.... I still prefer making smaller photo frames. Much easier to handle.

But I do like the ribbon part that is used to hang the frame.....I added some medium sized plastic beads to make sure the ribbons doesn't slip....it will stay in place always....plus it's also part of the decoration. Still got more frames to make....hopefully I'll improve more in design and function. :)

Alphabets in photo frames

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Look familiar? Yes, it's an old design but with a new twist to it :). There is a slight addition to it as per request from my dear customer. Yes, I've added some foam alphabets and a multicoloured quilled heart to it. Actually,  I was supposed to make quilled alphabets. But unfortunately I'm still not good at making them huhuhuu... :(. I've tried a few times but failed because the alphabets that I tried to make were a bit too small. Perhaps if it was a little bigger in size, I would be able to do it. I'm still not good at it yet >.<. Must practice more!

I had no problem remaking the quilled flower arrangements on the photo frame except for the quilled alphabets. Thank God I had those foam alphabets at hand. They really saved the day! hehehe! Lucky for me, my customer didn't mind it at all when I wanted to use them for the frames. She is so sweet!! ;) This is the first time I'm using the foam alphabets. I bought them some time ago so that I can use them for my handmade cards but in the end, I used them for these photo frames instead. Perhaps one day I'll use them for my handmade cards. I still have no new ideas yet for that. It will come to me soon.....the ideas will come....I just don't know when...... hahahahaha :D.

Quilled Sunflower photo frame

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I got a request from a customer who wished for me to make a quilled sunflower photo frame for her dear Mother who happens to LOVE Sunflowers A LOT! hehe! At first I was a bit reluctant to take this order since I've never done any Sunflower arrangement before on cards or photo frames.....I was a little afraid of what the outcome would be like. I don't have any special quilled Sunflower pattern....just a simple one except that this time I thought of giving it a little different touch to the flower  here and there.

I used to make the middle part of the sunflower black in colour but this time I decided to use dark chocolate paper strips instead......and the yellow ochre quilling strips that I used to make the petals were given some orange ink shade to it to make it a little different from what I've done before.

It's the first time for me to make quilled leaves that is big and rounded like that.....using 3 marquis shaped quilling shape and joined them together to form the shape of a big rounded shaped leave.....I was trying to make a leaf that looks like a sunflower leaf......hehehe :D

But what I love the most about this quilled sunflower frame is the LADYBUGS!!! I just love them! I found a tutorial in Pinterest on how to make them last May and I immediately gave it a try. I made a few of them but never got a chance to use them on my artwork until now. At the time I learned how to make them, I didn't have a special craft punch to make those tiny little dots on the ladybugs. But I managed to get the craft punch  later on and was able to glue those tiny dots on them just like how the tutorial showed. It's not that difficult to make either. I definitely love making this pattern more than the usual quilled ladybugs pattern I've made before. <3

Have a look at the video I made of the quilled sunflower frame below....get a closer look at it :)

Shades of blue on black

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:D another quilled flower frame of the exact same layout design as the ones I've done before but this time the flowers are in shades of BLUE!!! My favourite ;). You must be wondering why I added some shades of pink as well in this design......well, first of all, my customer was the one who suggested it.....second of all, I thought that the blues were too blue and it needed some bright colours to cheer them up! hehe! And sure enough they did! ;)

This quilled flower frame is actually for my customer's husband....it's for his birthday :). Hope he likes it. She also ordered a handmade card together with this quilled flower frame. I will blog about it soon ;)

Red and pink on black

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Look familiar? Ahahaha.....yes, it's the same design like the quilled flower frame I made before except that this one has a black background and it stands horizontally. I made this especially for my customer exactly like she requested it. The size of the frame is half the size of an A4 paper and can fit a 4R photo in it. 

Actually both of us weren't too sure about the background colour. We were kinda afraid if the black background wouldn't look as nice as the white one if the flowers and leaves were the same colour. But luckily it turned out alright and I actually changed only one colour from the original design which is the dark green colour. I changed it to teal instead. It's a little lighter shade of green compared to the dark green....it's kinda like blueish green. 

I've been pretty busy with work lately and because of that it took me quite some time to finish making this frame. I guess I just don't have much time anymore these days to create. Been spending too much of my time on selling products for quilling instead. But at least I'm making others happy by giving them a chance to create their own artwork instead of just admiring mine hehehe. Now they can create their own beautiful designs and make their loved ones happy. Love making people happy....as it makes me happy too ;)

Paper photo frames with quilled flowers

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Another first for me! Yup! It's the first time for me to make my own photo frame using mounting boards :). It was not quite as easy as I thought it would be when I first started making them but it was quite ok in end. These photo frames were requested from a customer of mine. She wanted me to buy a couple of white wooden photo frames and decorate them with quilled floral arrangements. Since I couldn't find any here in Alor Setar, so she gave me an option of making the frames using mounting boards instead. 

I did search for white mounting boards but the surface of the mounting board was not pretty. So I layered it with a better quality white metallic paper instead. Ting! hehe! You see, by doing this, I can always have any kind of colour on the photo frames. I also pasted a transparent plastic sheet inside the photo frame to protect the photo.:)

She gave me the freedom to decorate both frames any way I like...it's all up to my creativity, but she did requested that the flowers be in red and pink combination. So that's how it all started :). I was kinda confused at first in choosing the type of flowers that I should be making for the decorations. That's what happens when you have too many flowers to choose from haha! In the end, I decided to do the Malaysian flower and also the Cascading + husking flower :). 

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I made the Malaysian flower photo frame first and I think I love this one more than the other one hehehe. I love the flowers and the leaves as well. Can't help it. Love the Malaysian flower more coz the petals of the flowers looks chubby and cute haha. :D