Time for Craft

On the actual day of the workshop, 6 volunteers and my dear Diana were at the centre to help run this craft session. Though its a 2 hour session, we are all in a mess!!! Paints everywhere, egg shells everwhere, sigh... But the most important thing, the children really enjoy themselves. They happily brought back their creation. And I, my main objective, is to hope that they can continue to recycle in their daily lives and remember this craft that they have learned today.

I 'm volunteering to teach some craft during this November holiday. These are the two crafts I'm teaching... Making use of the toilet paper roll (commercial type) , egg shells and "ticum" balls (扭蛋), I recycled these into useful items - Stationery Holder and Decoration Baubles. As you can see, I create mosaic art by using egg shells as material. Fabric paints were used to highlight the picture.

Inspire by my friend, Mindy, I couldn't wait further to put my hands on making a pinata for my two nieces on their coming birthday celebration at the beach. From the old old story, Pinata was first started by the Chinese. They celebrated New Year by making figures of cow, buffalo, covered with colored papers and filled with seeds. Though the point of the game is to get the goodie inside, the underlying meaning of such game symbolizes 'hopes'. As the pinata is hanging above your head, its just like you are hoping something from the sky above. Besides, it also symbolizes 'charity', as everyone will have their share of the goodie inside the pinata when it's hit opened. It took me a few days to have it done and a couple of minutes to have it 'destroyed', but I enjoyed making it and seeing the kids having fun and laughter hitting it. The happiness and memories that left behind is enough for this craft to be continued after generations. ...

Spent the last two days at a family service centre decorating these letters that were hand written by some neighborhood secondary school students in Singapore. These letters were to be hand delivered to an orphanage in Thailand, sending them some words of encouragement and giving them hope from another part of the globe. For a good cause, I'm invited to help make these messages that were written on plain writing pad papers more appealing or heart melting to those unfortunate children at the receiving end. Hoping to catch a little smile when they receive them, or inspire them with some decorative ideas, I do my best to turn them as lovely as possible. I supposed this is what I can do for them at this point of time...

A continuation from my previous post... I've created a jungle theme as per requested. As what I've previously mentioned too, those are the thin polyfoam sheets I've collected free from neighbour who bought new fridge/TV, they came with the packaging that are then dumped away. I find it very wasteful to thrash them, thus giving them a new life to make this room livelier. As for the giraffe, I chose the thicker type of polyfoam to carve out the shapes of the mouth and the head, both parts separately. Assemble them with some white glue and then attached to the thinner neck stripes. I left a number of portion white (uncolored), like the worm and monkey for example, thinking that I'll leave them for my boy to do his scribbling and coloring, and have fun!:)

As a mum with young kid, we tend to wake up in the middle of the nights checking on their safety, whether they are well undercover with a blanket or have our pet dog taken over their pillow and bolster and having a rolling good night... There're so much that we couldn't stop getting worried. To save me from fear that my boy might roll down from the bed one day, I made this bedside falling guard for him last year. We call it his guardian angel. Even though I'm not quiet confident how it will work out when I first started working on it, wondering how tolerant it will be to withstand his weight in the night, but months of quality checked - Passed!, He did not roll down- Relived! And I have more peaceful sleep all this while. These are all you need to get started: 1 huge, thick and durable carton box (I got mine free from a neighbor who bought a LCD TV) Cutter &...

I'm proud and humble both at the same time to be awarded for the craft I did in these two consecutives  year. I submitted this project for the 8th Lantern Making Competition, Primary Category (for my son) organised by Chinatown Point, the Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, 福娃欢欢  as the inspiration. It takes about three weeks to make, using all recycled materials as usual. I spent less than $10 on paint, masking tape, glue and bulbs. It's quite motivating after all, cos the lantern won the 1st prize and was published on papers (晚报) the next day. This reminds me of a proverb that says: " You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standard. And when you reach your highest limits, that is real joy." Though this is yet to be the best, but as time goes, we are a better version of ourself, each time we take up a challenge and keep moving. One great tips here if you have realised, is the use of papers f...