Time for Craft

  Egg Carton is another recycled material I often used in my craft, reason being it's easy to collect and lots of crafts you can make with it. As I was invited to conduct a holiday craft workshop at the family service centre, teaching a craft that the children can easily replicate at home will be even greater. I make use of the rounded shape that comes in polyfoam fruit tray as the top of the mobile, with a string attached to the 4/5 corners. As the cutting of egg cartons requires certain strength and technique, some of the parts of the ladybug were precut for the younger children in advance. The children has lots of fun especially on the painting of the ladybugs and chopsticks, which I think it's due to the less chances they are expose to such media in school or at home. Before the end of the workshop, the children were given balloon to fill it up with corn starch flour. Seeing them getting so excited about their Mr Potato, wondering whether th...

Staring at my little garden at the corridor, I got a sudden urge to create something to mark my territory (sounds like a woof, lol). Just a signage to hang in there to spice up a little. I've a number of spare wooden board collected years ago from fruit crates, when I started DIYing as a new home owner. (not much capital la, no choice:<) In Singapore, you could easily get these polyform fruit trays that comes with fruit carton at any fruit stall or supermarket. So, I used a polyfoam cutter to cut out letters and shapes, plus the propellers of the windmill. Bright fabric paints was highlighted to make them livelier.  All out of recycled materials (black fruit tray, wooden fruit crate, freshmilk bottle cap).

I couldn't imagine when I received the notification letter, as I have never won a prize in any of the competition I took part.  It was really a great motivation that the lantern we submitted won the 1st prize for the 7th Creative Lantern Making Competition held at Chinatown Point in the Pre-school Category. It's like 'hey, you made it! Wow!' I feel so grateful to have insisted on using all recycled materials as compared to other participants who've thrown in huge cost on materials alone just to get them a place in the competition. Certainly, this has pushed me few steps ahead on this journey of go green crafting. Thank you Universe, I'm gratified!

It has been a busy week with a project to take part in a local lantern making competition. I thought I couldn't make it due to a few other things that came in at the same time. As Teachers' Day is drawing near, I have to produce at least another 8 gifts for my son's teachers as a token of appreciation. As I was not technically trained and the support from my 'personal technical officer' was unhopeful, I was unable to fix the light for the lantern. Luckily, I was able to recall a shop at People's Park Centre which might be able to help me with this. After much persuasion, the stall assistant is willing to do me that favor, he gathered the parts: LED bulbs, wires and battery holder etc., and started soldiering... Yeah! At last everything turns out well, though I stayed up till 3am to get those 8 gifts done. Well, I deserve a big pat on my shoulder! This is a heart shape lantern done by us which is made from v...