DIY: Keepsakes for the Kids

I left the kindergarten recently because internship was starting and I had mixed feelings (still do). I wanted to leave the kids with something valuable to remember. Something that can last, withstand time and abuse, and also something that could remind themselves of mini them when (and if) they look at it again when they’re older.

This article came up somewhere and I thought it was a brilliant idea. But not everyone has a dollhouse and having only one could look a bit like a tombstone (my principal mentioned that haha good thing I bounced it off her first). So, they became keychains. All of them were tasked to draw themselves as a superhero. It has their drawing on one side, their name in their handwriting on the other. I must say some of them turned out pretty well.

It’s not very difficult and the total cost when divided by the number of children, was low, even if you include the cost of the equipment (I had to buy a wood burner). Here’s how I did it.

You need:

Wood (Daiso), wood burner (Mustafa), chain (Chinatown), drill

1. Get kids to draw on wood.

2. Burn the images using a wood burner. Remember to practice a little before actually starting so you get the hang of how the burner works.

3. Drill a hole for the chain. Remember to have some extra wood at the bottom so you don’t drill a hole into the floor! (We used the smallest drill bit we had at home. But anything works, as long as your chain can go through the hole!) (My dad helped me with this because skinny me isn’t strong enough to control it.) (Explains why I like tabletop equipment.)

4. String them up.

Things I learnt the hard way:

1. Tie up your hair. I burnt mine a bit.

2. Don’t think the metal has cooled. It takes a good hour at least to be totally cool. I was impatient and touched it and almost got a blister from the burn.

Have fun (if you do try it)!

Plastic Taxidermy Animals

There has been this fad going on about taxidermy wall decoration and stuff. I really like the cardboard ones being sold at TYPO but (1) there is no wall space left and (2) I refuse to pay 30 bucks for it. Anyway, I had some left over materials from various abandoned projects including plastic animals that had been sliced into half lying around so this happened: mini wall decor. It's not that difficult though it does require a bit of patience. (Side note: I don't actually know if taxidermied is a proper word)

You need:
Board (I used those 3mm boards foam boards architecture students use to make their models), paint, plastic animals, pen knife, glue

1. Cut boards into desired shapes.
2. Paint them. I wanted mine to have different shades so I used masking tape to mark out straight lines.
3. Paint the boards.
4. Spray paint the animals to whatever colour you want (I only had black spray paint so I didn't have much of a choice). You can either spray paint it before cutting it or cut it and then spray paint it, I think both works fine. Use a pen knife to cut it carefully, straight down the middle (it may take a while and a bit of effort).
5. (Not pictured) Glue the animals to the cards. I used E6000 glue from art friend. Any other hardware store should have it too.
6. (Very first picture) Put on display.

There you go! Here's a slightly clearer photo of all the animals put together. I learnt that it's not very wise to use a light blue wall as the background after taking the photo because the wall just looks dirty and not very well lit now (oh well, live and learn right!).

Rainbow Looming

Soooooo I gave in. I was in Bangkok and well, they were selling it at SGD $3. So why not right?

My little cousin was teaching us how to do it because well, we never did it before and she has the most experience (I think we did pretty okay for a first try). Youtube and the rainbow loom website was very helpful. I guess depending on you and the people you're doing it with, it can either get really boring really quick, or kind of addictive. Try at your own discretion. (If you need a loom, mine is up for borrowing. If you want to rent it, by all means, please contact me!)

DIY: Weaved Wall Cards

Thought it was about time a DIY. Today, it's about weaving. It's really quite easy and the designs are entirely up to you. I've never done it before so this was really a trial of a trial (somewhat). And the numbers written in the photo below is just me trying to test out the bamboo tablet my cousin so willingly lent me (thanks cuz). Okay, anyway, here's how to go about doing it.

Steps are right to left, top to bottom.
1. Slice 0.5cm slits along the shorter edge of the card 0.5cm apart
    You could cut the long side instead. It really depends on what you want. The card used here are the
    3x5" presentation cards that you can get at pretty much any stationary store.
2. Thread the warp (the longer thread of the loom)
     I taped the edges down with tape to make weaving easier. Refer to image 2 and 3 above.
3. Weave
     I threaded the weft thread into a book binding needle to make it easier to weave but ice cream sticks,
     straws and other thin, hard objects that you can wrap yarn around should work fine.)

And this was what I got in the end! Oh the possibilities.

Happy weaving!

A-Sentence-A-Day Gratitude Journal

It's been 17 days since the start of the year. I was thinking of a way to record things that I was grateful for and something to remember the day by. As some might already know, I am super picky about notebooks and things I use to record stuff in. It has to be small enough to keep easily, not too thick, but have enough space (and the right kind of space) to write a decent amount of things in it. So, scrolling through Instagram, I came across a video of a calendar and I decided to make a calender. It's really easy. I wanted to try water colouring so all the designs were water coloured and then sprayed with hairspray to keep it waterproof (to a certain extent). Here are some of the designs.

Basically, all I did was create a table in InDesign and then print it out in a booklet form. After painting, I strung the paper together using a simple pamphlet stitch. Then I rained hairspray over it. And that's it!

So if you're thinking of making one yourself, here's what you need:
Paper (to print on. I used A4. So it folded into A5)
String, needle, eraser, push pin (to string the pages together)
Whatever you want to use to decorate the pages

Steps:
Download the calendar I used and make sure the print settings are as follows in the image below (It's set too "Booklet" if it's not clear enough in the image)! If you don't like the format I used, you can make your own layout in Microsoft Word or InDesign or anything you're comfortable with.

Then, fold the pages into half, decorate, string and you're good to go!
Stringing and decorating doesn't have to be done one after another. It really depends on you and what you're decorating the calender with.
For stringing, here's a comprehensive tutorial you can use. It uses 5 holes but I used 3.

That's it! Pretty simple right?

Robert.

I've been wanting to make something for a long time now. By "make something", I mean to literally make something because I haven't touched any of my craft stuff in such a long time. And now that an assignment is finally over (thank God), I decided that I deserved an evening of making things. And since a friend's birthday is coming soon, I had another reason to get all those materials that have been gathering dust out.

So, anyway, this is what happened: Robert.

My friend hasn't gotten the gift yet but I don't think (s)he reads this blog so, yeah. And besides, Robert's too cute not to share.

So, friends, meet Robert.

Mothers' Day

Mothers' Day is coming up!
My cousins and I had dinner together just now and the younger one came with a craft he had done in school during the day. It's the yellow and red paper thing you see in the photos below. He said it was a bracelet for his mom for Mothers' Day but it was too long to be a bracelet. So it became a crown instead. He was so excited about it and so I asked him to teach me how to make it. He did. Though I did most of the folding and cutting and stapling. Either way, it was fun.



He said he had used 6 strips of paper to make his crown but I think the strips were a lot longer than the strips we had. Ours turned out quite short and small. He was laughing and saying how "it's so short" and that it could become a flower. So of course, that lit a bulb. We made our too-tiny crowns into flowers and viola! I have found what I want to give mom for Mothers' Day.


This boy here was too cool for flowers so he made a plane instead.


The little one with the (originally a crown) flower he made for his mom.




Check out the instax photo the older coussie took (the photo on the left). I think he's possibly a photographer in the making. hohoho

Happy Mothers' Day, mom <3

DIY: Laptop Case

It was my brother's birthday a few days ago and he had been pestering me to make him a laptop case since a year ago. So, I decided to be nice and make one for him. He liked the one I made for myself so I made the same thing but changed the colour of the inner layer. Here's how I did it.

You need:
4 pieces of felt (2 for the outside and 2 for the inside. This makes it padded enough to keep the laptop safe)
Needle
Thread (I used purple because I thought it matched the felt)

Step 1

Cut your felt to the size you want. Make sure that you give enough space so that each edge of the cloth can cover half the height of the laptop and still give you excess space to sew.

Step 2

Arrange the layers of felt. The outer layer should be inside. I wanted the grey felt to be outside and the yellow one inside.

Step 3

Pin the cloth together. The side with the clips are the side your laptop goes in and out the case so remember not to sew that!

Step 4

Sew. I started about an inch from the opening, sewed towards the opening and then downwards again. Mine looke like that after sewing:


Step 5

Turn the case inside out and use!

DIY: Packing

So, it's Chinese New Year for us Chinese. And with this festive season during which us kids collect our annual variable bonuses, comes the dreaded spring cleaning. I don't really like it because it makes my nose run and my room would look like a hurricane swept through it for much longer than it is neat. This year, I pushed it off as much as I possibly could. Meaning to say, I only packed it yesterday, on CNY eve. Anyway, the point of this post is to share how I organised my craft supplies.



The boxes aren't all the same size because I got them at different times and I didn't realise the first box I got was larger. (Silly me). Those clear plastic containers are the best for putting anything and everything pretty in. I should have gotten more to put my loose ribbons in. Anyway, all the containers and boxes are $2 each at Daiso. If you want to pack your stuff and you need containers, Daiso is the place to get them (though it still depends on what you want). On a side note, while I was at Daiso, I found out they actually sell some cute cloth! Like, the small patterned ones that are 1m x 0.7m big. That's cheaper than Chinatown! But you've got to look hard for the nicer ones. I know where I'm going to start shopping at for craft supplies this semester break. Okay, to end off, the labels are just paper masking tape stuck on the boxes and it's just permanent marker ink on the tape. Yes, simple. I kind of really like how it turned out.

DIY: Needle Felting

I've been wanting to try out needle felting for a while now but it has always been to costly to start and I didn't know where to get the materials from. Singapore's not very big on needle felting. But that was not until I got this (photo below) for Christmas.

It's a starter kit for needle felting. It's from Daiso so it's very affordable. 2 bucks for a packet of wool and it comes with a needle! Woohoo. So, yes. This kit was for a needle felted bunny. [side note: Wool for needle felting at the craft stores cost about 17 bucks (or was it 26? Either way, it's a lot of cash) for a packet about 5 times the amout of the Daiso kit. And a needle costs 19 bucks. So the pack pretty much saves about 34 dollars. YAY for auntie thriftiness] So, anyway, the process was painful, literally. But it was also quite fun and therapeutic in some odd way. I loved the sound of the needle stabbing the wool and then again when it's pulled out of the wool. If you ever want to try your hand at this, I would recommend this kit and that you get something tough enough to protect the fingers that hold the wool. I stabbed myself quite a number of times. Okay, for anyone who wants to know how it went, it's pretty much the photos below. The needle is there for size comparison if you're curious as to the size of the bunny.

DIY: Stamps

Since it's nearing Christmas and I wanted to let you know I'm alive, I'm here now, blogging about my wrapping paper before going back to getting some work done. Every year, I have this issue about wrapping gifts. I usually put in more effort wrapping the gift than actually getting the gift. Speaking of which, I haven't gotten any of my friends gifts and not for the person I'm being secret santa to (uh oh). (Perhaps that'll mean I'll post another post soon on that DIY). Anyway, I did some stamping on plain IKEA paper to wrap the gifts I got for my little cousins.



It's really simple to do this. The circle stamps are the erasers at the top of pencils. You don't need to do anything. Just ink and stamp. For the triangles, I just got a craft knife and slit it into a triangle and then cut the bottom a little to get the outside bits out of the way. And then it was just about inking and stamping before wrapping. That was really easy wasn't it? I've got so many ideas to try out! But not enough gifts and $$ to try them out with. Anyway, toodles for now. I shall be back soon (hopefully).