Pre-War Chinese Postcards

I spent the morning at Central Market (Kuala Lumpur's art market) today. Other than walked along the artists lane, admiring their work and watched them painting portraits, I happily browsed some of the art & craft products in the main gallery/building.

And look what I have found! 

Very pretty pre-war Chinese postcards.

They are actually old advertisement postcards featuring classic Shanghai beauties; either holding a pack of cigarette, or trying on new shoes, playing new games like golf or promoting Scott's Emulsion Cod Liver oil!. Here my favorite ones, mothers & child paintings. I LOVE to be able to use them for Mother's Day scrapbook projects.

I particularly love the Scott's Emulsion postcard because it reminds me of a very fond childhood memories. I actually RAN, bursting out the front door when my mother tried to make me take Scott's Emulsion cod fish oil by the spoon! LOL. My younger brother was braver, though. Wished I could scrap that! I wonder if these black & yellow bottles of cod fish oil are still out there in the market?

XO,

Shahrul

Mollie Makes Fever!

I'm in trouble. I have been indulging myself too much in reading (and buying! LOL) lots of Mollie Makes magazines, lately. They're LOVELY. They make me HAPPY. I have to pass this fever along. Haha. Seriously, it doesn't matter if you don't like knitting or crocheting.

Mollie Makes is my number one magazine (Sommerset magazines are my number two, for now). This magazine is perfect for anyone who love hand-made things. Each photo in this magazine is an eye-candy. Go ahead and check out their website here. 

I promise you're going to have a grreaat time reading it, from cover to cover. Maybe, if you are lucky you'll get all inspired and start making beautiful things! Enjoy!

XO,

Shahrul

Frosted Designs Fabulous Friday Recipe Challenge

Yesterday, I found an interesting challenge called Fabulous Friday Recipe Challenge @ Frosted Designs. At first I thought, OMG, I have to COOK something to play along this challenge?! LOL. Silly me. 

Actually, for this week's challenge participants have to use 3 'ingredients' which are 3 pattern papers, 2 buttons and 1 word title. Aha! And they encourage ALL kinds of papercraft projects, not only cards and layouts!. I said, GREAT. One of the designers' work titled 'Upkar' by Amanda, inspires me to create a minibook for this challenge. It is called 'LOVE' mini album (so February, right?)

It has paper bag handles so I could carry it around like a book bag or turn it into a wall hanger. (The handles are from a Starbucks paper bag). It opens like an accordion-like pages made out of various shades of pink cardstock papers, all secured 

with a 1" coil-binder (Zutter). This allows for thicker scrapbook content later on. These blank pages are now ready to be filled with love quotes, doodles or any photos of animals, people and things of nature that symbolized LOVE. Some sort of journal about LOVE. 

I used 3 different pattern papers (faint pink flowers, pink stripes, pastel dots)for the cover. The crochet flowers 

match the faint floral design of the pink pattern paper. 
Do you see it? :). A simple accents such as crochet flowers and 

2 pink buttons. And my 1 word title is 'LOVE'. Lastly, I tied up the paper bag handles with cute ribbons for additional support and also to give it a 'finished' look.

I hope you enjoyed my minibook project.


XO,
Shahrul

My Greatest Joy

This is the first time that I'm scrapping all my cats in one layout. Well, ideally I should have captured all of them in one photo, but you know how cats are. They hardly stay put.

I made this layout as an entry to the challenge Sketch Along Tuesday Sketch #33, featured on Frosted Designs' blog. 

... sketch by Ashley @ Frosted Designs.

My journaling is all about how grateful I am to have these three beautiful cats. They give me so much love and bring comfort to me when times are hard. I love them to bits!. 

I wanted this layout to be simple and using mostly home-made embellishments. For instance, I have created gigantic letters 'J' and 'Y' for the word 'JOY' out of pattern paper. I used a fabric yoyo for the letter 'O'. Sewn three pearls, one for each cat.

I didn't use a circle as the background of my journaling, but a love-shape paper instead. Again, love and joy from my furkids. Lastly, at the bottom of the page I secured a tiny flower with a lace rub-on. 

* My first cat; Sir Paws (blue/grey).

* My second cat; Princess Fuji (white).

* My grand furkid; Arthur (ginger).

I had good fun making this page, really.

XO,

Shahrul

Love Birds

It's been a while since I last did watercolor painting. Just last night, I had that urge to paint again. Something really quick and simple. Love-theme postcards would be the perfect choice, I would think. With colors that Emma Block used in most of her art work. Emma Block is my favorite illustrator. I hope that one day she would design scrapbook papers. That would be just LOVELY! 

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, so I feel like painting cute animals showing love to another. Since I am terrible at drawing four-legged animals, I chose to draw birds. Love birds!. So these are watercolor postcards that I have made last night.

* Two love birds hugging & kissing.

* Two loving swans missing each other.

* Two love birds saying I Love You's.

I feel so much love in the air already. A blessing from heaven. 

XO,

Shahrul

Floral Delight

Great altered challenge again at LESSology. Challenge #10 Floral Delight. Their DTs have designed such heavenly floral projects!. I went 'oooh' and 'aahh' for the whole time I was there. So, I slept on the idea of making my own floral altered project, with some lace and pearls, maybe. 

I got up in the morning and felt ready to enter this challenge. I plan to create a love-theme storage box to keep all my giant ATCs. The things I'm going to use for this challenge are including an old purple box that I like to give a new 'look', some pink hydrangeas that I bought earlier for a baby shower gift project, a piece of old chipboard and lastly some pearls, lace and a skeleton key for embellishments.

My heart is blooming!. I find the stretch of light pink lace & pearls give a subtle romantic effect for the box.

At last, my giant ATCs now have a new 'loving' home. I really love this challenge because I could use as many flowers as I like. It's a Floral Delight after all ... I hoped you'd fun visiting.

XO,
Shahrul

super-sized ATCs

Hi everyone. This post is actually inspired by Nida's recent blog post on ATCs. They're beautiful ATCs. I just remembered that I learnt how to make ATCs sometime before.

This is an old project of mine, when I first interested in collage. I was just learning how to make the traditional ATCs and read about the whole idea of swapping ATCs, inchies, fat books and a lot of other funky names. I always thought then, that ATC are much too small (3.5" X 5.5") to have anything on it, let alone inchies. Then I thought ... hey maybe I create a giant ATC (they're 3" x 5" in size). That way, I can have a lot more room to play with my photos and embellishments. I genuinely thought it was a good excuse for a beginner like me to feel comfortable in learning this artwork and have fun with it. 

In addition, I get to keep my giant ATCs and I don't have to swap with anyone because one; the size is WRONG, two; each one has different themes and three; who in their right mind would want to swap for gigantic ATCs, right?. So feeling safe, I went on creating 12 pieces of them over a week's time. It was good fun.

So, I'm showing you here just five of my giant ATCs.

* LOL. The girl kissed a cute boy!.

* The old car clippings are from a nice 

wrapping paper from MOOF. Love their products!

* Lovely bird, looks so dashing with its crown on!. I found him in a magazine.

Do you notice that on every ATC, I have added felt hearts at the corners? I was trying to make them looked more like playing cards and I like hearts more than jokers or spades, though.

XO,

Shahrul 

New Hobby

Yes, new year ... new hobby. Crochet. Actually, I began to crochet just last week. It started out as an adventure i.e to try make my own embellishments for my scrapbook layouts. Simple ones, like paper flowers, ribbon flowers and crochet flowers. I was lucky to find a very good tutorial of how to make crochet flower at Little Birdie Secrets.  

Then I saw Challenge Me Happy website featuring their latest 'word' challenge (Challenge #15). Scrappers are invited to create a layout around the word 'NEW'. This is a perfect opportunity for me to scrap my new found hobby and at the same time, have a chance at winning Little Yellow House kits. Yum!

So, this is what I came up with. A simple 12" X 12" layout with off-white background because I'd already used a very colorful photo. And plus, some colorful crocheted flowers as embellishments.

It says " Crochet. My new hobby. I had so much fun crocheting, I wonder why hadn't I tried sooner??".

... when the flowers are blooming, here comes the butterflies. Stamped butterflies will be just perfect.

I'm inspired to learn how to make doilies and granny squares next. And if they turn out nicely, I may write about it.

XO,

Shahrul

Sketchabilities Sketch #63

One of my many new year promises that I made was to try creating as many 12" X 12" scrapbook layouts as possible this year. Some of my close friends, who are scrapper themselves know that big layout freaks me out. Mini books, any day. Well, inspirations for creating layouts don't come naturally to me. I've been visiting many challenge blogs or following interesting sketches. This is the latest sketch (Sketch #63), featured on Sketchabilities' blog. And I felt like I need to scrap Arthur, my youngest cat (he's 3) using the sketch. 

One night Arthur was watching me working at my laptop and he started to get busy with the mouse. His front legs crossed and whiskers twitching. I took a photo of him doing mischief, so that one day I could scrap this moment. I used that photo in this layout but I had to cut out the part with the mouse, and replaced it with a bird in a cage. I was trying to be as close as possible to the actual sketch from the blog. I used orange-green-white color combo to match Arthur's fur.

... it says " I know when Arthur gives 'THAT' look,

he is up to NO GOOD".

I made the bird cage sticker by stamping on pattern paper bits.

The butterfly from scrap paper and hand-sewn them on the layout.

Then added a little note made of paper scrap to remind me how loved, happy, and beautiful Arthur is. 

Thank you Sketchabilities for such a great inspiration.

XO,
Shahrul

Do More With Less Blogoversaries Giveaway!

My dear friends,

I have just visited a blog by Yvonne Yam (one of the founder  of LESSology.) She is celebrating her 3-year-blogoversaries. Congrats!. Her blog's name is 'Do More With Less'. She's celebrating it in-style by, giving away yummy products & kits! She has great many inspiration of layouts, cards and mixed media projects. To check her blog, click here. While visiting, leave a comment so you too, could have a chance of winning. Enjoy! 

LESSology Challenge #9

Finally an altered project challenge!. I saw this cool altered project challenge blog called LESSology on Nida's blog (thanks Nida!). Their latest challenge (LESSology Challenge #9), is to create an inspiration board using at least one upcycled item. I love giving an old, unwanted item a new life ... so I decided to give it a try.

I found an old wooden sign, 'My Room' in the storage. Gave it a few coats of white paint and doodled on it. And I also used three pieces of IKEA's wooden picture frames and some wires to hold them together.

With a little paint job, 
just two coats of lovely acrylic colors,

... Baby, this is us NOW. Yay!

These three BIG words had always been my favorite creating mantras. To see them hang on the wall while working at my desk, I am reminded and ever so inspired to make something beautiful (or useful).

I used running stitches to make the words because I almost ran out of chipboard alphas! LOL. And I just learnt how to crochet the flowers a couple days ago.

Here are some close ups of the needlework...

Okay, I had fun today making these. It's been a long day and nite nite to all.

a DT at Scrappingville

I received great news recently. I'm now one of the three new DTs with Scrappingville @ Bangsar Shopping Centre. This is my first time of becoming a DT. So, a lot to learn and opportunities to share my love of crafting with like-mind artsy souls.

  

I'm grateful and honored to be invited as part of my favorite scrapbook store's creative team (it's my "candy store"). I can't wait to work with amazingly creative scrappers like Nadrah, Cheryl, Sharon, Yuz, Marina and many others. A bit nervous, but I know I will enjoy this artful journey.

• Follow link here to check out Scrappingville's blog, or to indulge in the amazing products & projects. Have fun!

winter feelings layout

I went blog hopping last night to find scrapbook inspirations. I saw Winter Feelings topic posted on Scrap Yourself website. Scrappers are invited to create a layout to tell how we feel about winter. I LOVE winter! Everything about it.

" The gloom of grey winter sky. The cold breeze on my face. Walking in the falling snow and stuck my tongue out like crazy kids. The heavenly smell of fresh brewed French Vanilla Nut coffee from Higher Grounds Cafe. Yum "

I just wished I had them photographed and scrapped. Oh, how I missed Colorado. 

I used an old photo of me (good ol' college days). I was just stepping outside in front of our rented house in Golden. Testing the fresh powder. Btw, I looked stoned, LOL. Standing so still like that. 

New Year layout

This is my first attempt at making a layout based on the newest challenge on the Scrap With A Song website. This week's challenge is to create a project (layout, card or others) based on any New Years song of your choice.

I made this 12" X 12" layout called OUR HOPES, inspired by ABBA's song Happy New Year. OUR HOPE are actually words taken from the song and were made the tittle of my layout. OUR HOPES in this layout specifically is about a prayer that we all will be blessed with LOVE and PEACE. Like what ABBA said in their song;

"May we all have our hopes, Our will to try"

"May we all have a vision now and then,

of a world where every neighbor is a friend"


Click here to enjoy the song (forgot to add the link earlier, my bad). Such a beautiful new year song!

XO,
Shahrul

playing tourist

I took a walk to the old city center today. Sunny day, perfect for photography. It was fun playing tourist and walked for hours!. 3 hours later, I was more than happy to rest my aching feet on a nice shady spot at Dataran Merdeka. In fact I just lie down, head on my camera bag and just looking up the blue sky ... BLISS.

I have mastered the art of doing NOTHING.