Overseas Christmas - Shimada

Can't believe that posting everything about Christmas would take a month, and I'm not done yet. Among all the knitting and cooking for the Christmas Gift Bags, I also made a card specially for my teacher overseas.

Something that I regret very much and wanna bang my head against the wall is that, I forgot to take a photo of the completed card before sealing it up! The only photo I took was this.

This is the first time I tried to make a card out of the norm. Instead of folding it into halves, this card is being folded at one-third length on the right. So the message would read:

冬に咲く                       キセキの桜が…
幸せを込めて、          キセツのお祝いを             　　おくる

Translation:
The miraculous cherry blossom that blossoms in winter...
Together with happiness, seasonal greetings        　　　it brings

This teacher of mine, is a great fan of One Piece, and like me, her favorite character in this anime is Tony Tony Chopper~ Which is exactly why I made this card.

I decorated the back of the card with some watermark stamps using VersaMarker. Was totally excited to use it the moment I got it from ArtFriend. That was why I forgot to take photos of the completed card. I even made an envelope (from recycled paper) specially for this card because of its odd size! (and because I messed up the size buying the envelopes =X)

Well, I suppose I will be using more of the VersaMarker for its watermark effect, and probably for heat embossing. So stay tuned for that~

If you would like to make your own envelopes, follow me here~

Christmas Gift Exchange

A sequel to the topic on Recycling last week, this week I will show you how I wrap some gifts with the 'trash' lying around my cardboard 'shelf'. I was pretty pleasantly surprised and excited at how it turned out to be. (So much that I decided to add a new label for it!)

I used:
- an empty UHT milk carton
- old wrapping paper
- recycled ribbon
- magazine paper decoration
- some glue (or tape) and- scissors

The taller one, which looks like a milk carton, is actually made of a UHT milk carton. I always keep the empty cartons for future uses, because the material is sturdy enough to hold and flexible enough to turn into anything you can think of!

I spoiled one carton while trying to make it look exactly like a regular milk carton (because I think it would be really cute). But I soon realize a much simpler way to get (90% of) the milk carton shape I want.

First, I cut open the top of the milk carton, washed it all clean, and air dried it. Wrapped it with some old Christmas wrapping paper I have for at least 5 years. Did I mention that I didn't spend a cent on the wrapping here?

Next, I cut the four corners around one-third of its height. The height was just nice to fit my gift in. Fold in the narrower sides and glue them together to seal the gift in. Punch a hole right in the middle of each of the wider sides and tie a ribbon through the holes. Lastly, add a magazine paper decoration to make it look beautiful.

I used the remaining wrapping paper to wrap the smaller box. I got the box from one of my online shopping. Did I ever mention I have a huge collection of boxes too? You never know when it will become the perfect box! (It can be really difficult to store my collections in my tiny HDB flat though.)

Anyway, learn how to make this amazing paper decoration from wrapping paper or magazine scraps

Right Here.

Now we don't have to any paper away anymore! We can recycle even the tiniest piece of paper!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

 As the title suggests, I'm a person who quite support recycling, especially when it comes to paper. I remember bringing all my books and notes from school to the recycle bin quite a distance away from my place when I was younger. Recycling isn't quite the thing in our country though, and since I've seen people treating the recycling bin as rubbish bin, I stopped bringing anything there.

That is why my place is overflowing with draft paper, magazine and flyers now. I even have a "shelf" made of cardboard just beside my table. Just because I believe that there must be something I can make out of these. Origami boxes, coasters and I even use them in my card-making. (That is probably my cards look different from those nice fancy ones on the Internet.)

Well, there may come a time where I would be willing to invest more on the materials (and tools) for my card-making. But for the time being, I'll just do what I can, and make the best out of it. =D