Reaching the Inner Princess

Our friends Thom, Pauline & their little daughter, Georgia, were leaving Vancouver after more than 15 years living here (well not Georgia, she's only been around 2 years or so). They were driving across the breadth of Canada, to Ontario, to make a new home there. For those of you who are used to Singaporean or European distances, it's like driving from Singapore, up peninsular Malaysia, through Thailand & Cambodia, up the length of Vietnam, pass Yunnan and southern China to Beijing. Or from London to Tehran. But this is beside the point.

The point is. I didn't get to say goodbye to Georgia, not that she'd remember me, her being a wee girl and all. But I felt that I wanted to give her something to remember Vancouver by. Reaching into the depths of my own inner Princess (which I knew EVERY girl must have inside her) I dredged up long forgotten memories of what someone shorter than 3 feet would find fab & fun. Then I put together the design for 3 little girl purses. All were made of glow-in-the-dark fabrics which will give children loads to fun with after the sun sets.

Inspired by another princess from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away, Princess Neon Cheesecake came into being. She's was a twin of the one that went to Georgia. Pink, yellow with headphone-like handles resembling the clenched fists of a power puff girl. She was bought the moment I'd put her online.




Then came Princess Lime Sherbet to keep Cheesecake company.




Princess Lemon Lollipop completes the trio of royalty. Each with a colour & a character of her very own. Kinda like every little princess exploring in every girl. Or sleeping in every woman.

Face Forward

I had bought an A5 hardback journal for my craft ideas because of its plain white pages. So good for sketching and non linear (read: messy) writing. It was the right size to fit the handbag too, with the hardback protecting its pages.

But the journal was faceless, nondescript and worst of all , grey! Looking as if it should contain spreadsheets or engineering schematics instead of wild, saturated, unrelated ideas fit for gestalt.

Since journals are such personal things, they really should have something on their faces to say who they are and where they are going. Thus inspired, I'm doing a range of Face Forward Journals.

So I decided to jazz up these plain Jane journals with all manner of fabrics to fit all sorts of moods and all types of people.

Using the last bit of a ancient 70's vintage fabric given to me by my mum, I made a pretty zen tile for the cover of one.

Then there's the understated sage & gold tile for another.

And the third is one that ties shut for privacy using a fab golden brocade ribbon taken from the decorated ends of a lime green sari.

There will be more to come. As ideas never stop flowing, we'll always been needing pretty places in which to keep them safe.

Fat Flower's Got A Sister

Yes, it's Fat Flower's sister bag. everyone.

Been fun making it and this bag's got some spunk. Never had as many pin pricks or cuts as I've had making this bag. But at the end of it all, it's been worth it.

She's a bit longer than That Fat Flower Bag, so she can actually take a small folded umbrella. Ermmm...not that I carry umbrellas.
And she's got Labradorite & Shells as ring details on her shoulder straps.

She also has a sly pair of hidden magnets that close the inner pockets. The new owner of the bag won't know why the pockets just seem to want to stay close. I love gadgets.

And I hope someone loves this bag enough to buy it.

It's on Etsy should you know some one looking for another Fat Flower Bag.

The Fat Flower Bag

I know. It's not exactly the most poetic name for a bag. But it fits, it's fun and it's plum luscious. Yummy!

Hit by the muse of It's-so-totally-fab,-I-just-gotta-make-it, I stayed up the wee hours of last night to get Fat Flower finished (now try saying that quickly). With the company of Minke the terror cat, the girl managed to transform the reversible upholstery grade Chenille into the cutest little bag.

The idea for Fat Flower actually came from an ad in Sunset Magazine for some flooring system. There was the floor and, perched delectably above it, was this gorgeous mustard leather handbag. Inspiration, truly, can be found just about anywhere.

Fat Flower is a lighter cheerful take on that classy leather version.Call me biased, but I just love florals. So I'm making 2 for sale on Etsy and keeping 2 for meself. Sometimes I'm not too sure on the profitability of a business model where you keep one of everything you sell.
But, life is short, and it's a good feeling to like the things you make.

Gorgeous Taffeta Summer Scarves

Ok. I couldn't help it. I saw the Eggshell blue one first. But it was what was waiting behind that bale of embroidered blue that truly frightened me.
There were seven other bales all of different colours! Mustard yellow, burnt orange, midnight blue.... Yikes! All feeling so smooth and silky and rich. How is a girl to decide? So many choices, so little space!
Having recently seen "Neat", a de-cluttering show on Home & Garden TV, I just couldn't buy them all. So I did the next best thing. I bought 4 colours. AND, only 2 metres of each. I have been a good girl!
And now, I'm happily sewing and turning them into gorgeous scarves.

This pretty eggshell blue scarf/shawl was finished yesterday. Imagine this under a tough black leather jacket. Rocking or what?

Tonight, I'll making another with both sides of different colours. The blue with the orange. So it's reversible and slightly more interesting methinks.


More will be on sale on Etsy. Enjoy!

If anyone has suggestions on other things to make with this fab material, leave ma a comment.

Joy of the Unexpected

Sometimes I wished I made jewelery. Like my Etsy friend Marsha has on her blog, the makings of a stunning red (OOAK) necklace. From start to finish. Pictures of every step looks as delicious as the next. All sparkly red & silver.
But instead, I'm making paper these days. Now that the weather is getting warmer, there is little demand for warm, funky scarves which is what I usually make.

The making of paper, especially from recycled paper, cannot be called a pretty or accurate process. What you put in isn't necessarily what you get out. A polite way to describe the somewhat messy process is that it's.....well...hmmmm...... organic? You're never quite sure of what you'll end up with when everything dries. While this makes things interesting, it is does leave the house scattered with stacks of 'experimental' papers.
For instance, I was recycling yellow pages the other day and had expected the finished paper to come out at least a tiny bit yellow, or olive green at least.
But no. I harvested sheets of stony bile grey. Sigh, not something you'd be writing your love letters on I'm afraid.

I do persevere, however. Yesterday I used basically white used printer paper blended with Lover's Rose Elixir tea (I work part-time in a tea shop & can get my hands on all sorts of exotic teas) that has rose petals, hibiscus and lime leaves. The mushy pulp smelt ambrosial (another benefit of making paper, the scent spa your nose gets) and the inclusions (technical term for the tea I added) gave such a cheerful pinky, purplish sprinkle to the mix.
And today, as I peel the newly dried papers from their couching sheets, I'm a happy girl!
The finished paper is in a couple of shades off white, which I guess the best you can expect without the use of bleach. And the inclusions are speckled snowflakes in the white.
All that's left now is to convert these sheets into note cards, envelopes & decorative paper for scrap-booking & other crafty projects. All of which will be sold sooner or later in Rumah Kampung, my Etsy store.

Enter the BLOGOSPHERE

It's incredible to believe that I started blogging only 10 days ago. Not even 2 weeks and yet it seems a life time. Still loads to learn and I've already learnt so much. It's rather like sinking into a whole new layer of world floating just below the one I currently swim in.

My first post was about going back to Singapore after 2 year of being away. That blog was meant to be a test piece so that I could figure out how to work inside a blog. You know, like placing pictures and changing fonts and making categories to place things like favourite seller. Fun and frivolous stuff like that. And to my surprise, seeing something personal like that out for the whole world (well, at least teeny portion of the world) to see & read was an unexpectedly cathartic experience.

In a couple of days I was trawling through other peoples' blogs to see what they had on theirs and how I could improve mine. In the meantime I set about another Etsy treasury featuring Etsy carfters & artists who blog. The treasury still has 13 hours to go...
http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php?id=1174435528381U94376

Here are some really cool Etsyians with interesting blogs

http://www.marshatoh.blogspot.com/
http://rightoutloudhandmades.blogspot.com/
http://toybreaker.net/blog/
http://www.crystaljsilk.blogspot.com/
http://msessions.blogspot.com/
http://www.tsunamibeads.blogspot.com/

Do you know how many blogs there are out there in the bulging blogosphere? Too many for this girl to blog-hop with a single beer! I needed to focus. Which I did.....on shopping sites, what else? Well that was the most obvious! Besides, so many Etsy sellers were on them. Made sense to have a look.
These I've listed aren't blogs per se but they do have cool widgets to ad to your own blog to make it look better and, well, hipper.

www.etsy.com has a etsy mini widget to show off stuff from the shop,

then there's www.wists.com
& www.stylefeeder.com

that let you compile things you like online and do yourself a wishlist that is open for public viewing and that you can put on your won blog too. Unfortunately the idiot-proof instructions for both those sites left me tearing me hair out because they never told me if my picks were confirmed or not and so I've left those for a while.

Technorati is apparently something no blogger can do without. It's a blog search engine, or so I believe. No wait, it's more than that. It ploughs though blogs and tags like a baleen whale and counts up links and ranks these to tell you in an Internet second which are the most popular. And if your blog is ranked high, the more likely you are to be picked up on a search and it follows from there that more traffic will come to your site. It really doesn't matter to those of us who have personal blogs but if you want to start making money from your blogs, then it MATTERS.


More about making money from your blog in the next couple of posts or so. I've only made close to $5 so far in the past 4 days, so I'm no expert. Mostly from Google adsense. The way I look at it, it's better than a kick in the head.

Moonlight & Magic

This is the most fav treasury I put up on Esty yet. It's called
MOONLIGHT & MAGIC

As ephemeral as is the moonlight, so are etsy treasuries. They have a lifespan of only 2 days and as I type, Magic & moonlight has only 15 hours left to it's existence.

Sorry about the resolution of the picture. I still don't know how to save a screenshot yet. So I took a pix from the screen itself. Learning about technology all the time.

For a better view go to the site to take a look.

Here's to not being attached and enjoying the moment.

http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php