Time for Craft

You know? All the while, I've a dream to tie up the areas of my interest with a charity funding project. Yah it's not easy. Remembering how I started volunteering myself at one of the Moral Family Center. The first time was a free distribution of children storybooks. It was donated from the National Library Board to those needy children. There was no connection with my craft, but both me & my son still enjoyed the involvement. It was until I realized a need to set up a blog as my portfolio, showing the things I produced, there I get the chance to expose the collections of the crafts I did. It was a stepping stone for people to know me and get me involved in the teaching of my crafts. This time round I took another great step, that's to teach a group of secondary school students with my gifts craft and thus selling crafts to raise fund for charity. Yes! Much more meaningful than the norm volunteer work. To me, besides the fund raising part that matters, most importantly...

I really had a hard time deciding whether to take up a course that falls on my son's 8 years old birthday. It was a 4 days intensive course, which mean I can't see him for 3 full days... It was heart breaking, as this is the first time I have to leave him (without me and my husband) to celebrate his big day... He was very understanding when we told him about our intention to attend the course. To make it an excitement to him, we arranged him to stay with my brother where he has his two cousins to accompany. It was a blessing, with the help of my dad, aunt, sisters and brother, everything went through smoothly and happily. I really appreciate for all their help making this journey possible. Thank you everyone for making this possible!! Weeks before hand, I made this crocheted snake (his zodiac sign) for him from a book I borrowed from the library. Another self learned approach, figuring out the instructions and steps, I'm glad I managed to make it...

Suddenly have this idea to present a baby shower gifts.  I decided to make a papier mache balloon as a gift box! A box that's not in the usual shape of a cube or rectangular. As egg represents new live, I find this idea great. Using the technique used to make a pinata, colored stripes of crepe papers were sticked around it. After filling up the balloon with the baby clothings and toys I bought inside it, I put the two halves together and sticked a band of masking tape over the joint. Another few rounds of crepe papers to secure the opening, I decorated the Egg with a ribbon! Well, I'm real satisfied with my new creation, awesome!!!!

These are two kitchen cabinet doors turned into decorations. As I do not need the doors any more, I coated them with white paints and did two drawings with shades of green acrylic paint to decorate the living room. It turns out great with a flourescent tube shines upon them from beneath. It lifts up the whole area and creates a very soft natural feel to the home.

This is one of the little DIY project with recycled stuffs I did back in the ol' days, sometime in 1997. I collected the wooden blocks and boards from grapes carton. The wood texture was quite smooth and nice, I just feel 'sayang' (in Malay it means 'a pity') not to 'tap' on its potential:> haha! Making use of the woods, I made them into a toilet roll holder with some nails, hot glue and paints. I even sticked a few decorative tiles and a plastic dog toy for an added fun. So if you're a reading this, feeling stuck to have not enough capital for your home renovation, or things have been stagnant for years in there at home, something just need to be done etc... Make use of the resources that can be found in the surrounding, tap on them to transform into the unlimited possibilties. A little at a time, you just need an eye to look at things differently to make it a great difference to your world!

Yet another DIY project I took up to recycled a wooden box, some cardboards from past calendars, a few commercial toilet paper tubes and sponge etc. Though you can easily get a watch & jewelry box which cost around a few hundreds in the market, I still prefer to transform things around us, that might otherwise end up in the trash, into something useful with our hands and skill. This project requires some precise measurement and cutting skill so that every compartment fits in nicely in the end. Choose a box that caters to your requirement base on your collections, whether it's for watches, jewelry, pen etc. As each box comes in different dimensions, do plan the compartment carefully. I'm very satisfied with my improved skill though a lot of work need to be done behind the scene. Hope this inspires you too to take up the challenge to DIY one of your own version. Happy crafting folks!

  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...