Altered Projects⎪Inspirational Tags and Amigurumi Workshop

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Today is first day of Chinese NEw Year - And I am pretty excited because this year is gonna be Ivan's first new year going around collecting red packets. I took this photo of pretty Chinese New Year decor at a shopping mall last week. So pretty eh?

Today I am sharing a few tags that I made under 30 minutes on Craftwell blog. I love packing happy mails and add tags to my packaging. I diecuts  plenty of alphabets, doilies and shapes one night and keep them in a mini paper suitcase. So when I want to create something, these die cuts come in really handy when I do layering on my projects.

If you have been following my posts or projects, my favourite dies are probably the doilies and hearts. In these two tags, I added heart doilies to the tag. I always like to die cut a bunch of shapes using white cardstock. If I need it in other colors, I would probably mist it or color it with watercolor. And you will never go wrong with white color too!

For these two tags, I added doilies, ampersand, key and lock die cut that I cut with My Favourite Things die-namics. I love how quick eBosser would die cut a bunch of shapes with its huge platform. I fit like 4 sets of dies (included 2 sets of alphabet dies from A to Z) in one A4 size platform. Just in case you are wondering, the quotes on the tags are typed with one of my vintage typewriter – Royal Future. Love love love the type face and if you squint your eyes, these typewriter has really unique ‘e’.

Do you make tags? I hope this post would inspire you to make some tags with your scraps and die cuts.

And here's a peek of my Vintage tappy - Royal Futura. Love the dropped 'e' and I had a hard time deciding whether I should sell it!

Supplies Used:

Papers – Basic Grey, American Crafts, Studio Calico

Embellishments – Basic Grey

Dies – My Favourtie Things Die-namics

Others – Vintage Typewriter, twine, tine attacher, Mister Huey

Another updates: I am also conducting crochet amigurumi workshop recently. Here's a peek of my tools and also dolls that you can learn to make in my class. Yes, I am kinda obsessed with crochet hooks - I have total 4 sets and I wish I could crochet as much as possible. Crochet is very therapeutic and I enjoy watching youtube (Chinese match making show to be exact ;P) while crocheting.

Here's one of the doll (Pom Pom Purin) you could learn to make in my amigurumi class in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) & Singapore. Huge huge thanks to Mei from Amigurumei for sharing her patterns on her blog generously. Also huge thanks to her for allowing me to use her patterns in my class.

The dolls that you could make in my amigurumi workshop ranging from beginner, intermediate and advanced class. Even beginners who have no crochet skills could learn the basic chains, slip stitch, single crochet and making magic ring and a lot of crochet stitches + knowledge for making you own amigurumi. I would also teach you to read Japanese and US patterns. For more info: email: shop.happiescrappie@gmail.com

XoXo

Meow In Da House (Amineko)

This is the ta-dah moment that I can't wait to share with you all!

It's huge, isn't it?

Mr Meow loves my doggie Popcorn

Whoopsie... gotcha!

Mr Meow took up the whole bed here

The hamster, the meow and the dog get-together >_<

Been thinking of making this amineko ever since i started crocheting few years back but I am never persevere to complete a huge project like this. Love this cat to bits and it totally worth my 4 days of handwork + 7 skein of 100g yarn for this awesome meow~ using J hook (the largest hook size I have) and three bags of polyfil, small pebbles (to weigh the buttock and limbs down) lead to a 3ft tall amineko meow.  I have yet to name the meow yet... Any ideas? My mum suggested me to do this huge meow again in PINK and make them a couple. I guess I would need to stop crochet-ing thick yarn for a while as it really hurts my wrist! It's time to get back to my granny square blanket. 

p/s: I use the original super huge Amineko crochet pattern form this japanese website.

❤ XoXo ❤

September WIP

A lil' note for my dear husband who stalks my blog occasionally, WIP stands for Work In Progress.

Considering adopting another pet to be my new couch-mate

Good ol' Granny square blanket

My first attempt on a huge project!

Love the double posers in the household

A little napping wouldn't hurt

Sleeping in front of TV.... Do you do this too?

And more last minute projects for my wedding reception too.... =) Oh my.... I have only 1 more month to my big day!

Toothpaste?

Guess what we have here?

Toothpaste with minty flavor?

The good ol' Colgate?

Noooo! You are wrong! They are watercolor in tube!

Watercolor in red

Oh no... Someone left the cap off >_<

And these two are my watercolor paintings for my previous children book illustration class at NAFA.

An apple dog inspired by the famous Pandapple

Watercolor painting is not so difficult after all and it helps relaxing =)

Another drawing inspired by my teacher. I love how the little doggie turned out. We didn't use watercolor during our first class, he taught us paint using batik paint and also food coloring which gives a slightly more vibrant effect than the watercoloring.

More crochet & amigurumi projects will be posted soon! XoXo =)

Moshi Moshi

I haven't been scrapping at all lately, been addicted to crocheting again after ages. Been really sick recently and haven't been going for shopping for weeks. After crochet-ing days and nights, my amigurumi dolls been popping out everywhere in my room now.

Its been raining and raining recently. And this cute mushroom just popped up on my craft table.

Mushroom says hello to the new owner! I made this for a crafty friend whose birthday is coming up real soon. I hope the mushroom will make her day & brighten an usual craft table.

Insert a used water bottle to make it sturdier. Perfect for keeping paper clips and mini junks.

Let's Crochet: Magic Adjustable Ring Tutorial

I remember when I was a little girl, my mum always crochet some really gorgeous dress for me. She always had this orange yarn bowl with a few balls of yarn mainly in white and pastel yellow color in the living room. She said she didn't know how to sew me pretty dresses so all she could do for me is crochet dresses for me. Some of dresses had been passed to my young cousin, Isabella.

She was wearing one of the crochet dresses when she was 3 years old. Mum had been keeping those dresses for more than 20 years because they are just so precious! As you could see in the pictures, my mum was so used to crochet dresses using those tiny lace crochet yarn which took forever for her to complete a dress as compared to those chunky / heavy weighted yarn. The reason mum using lace yarn / light weighted yarn because those really thick wool yarn will be too warm for a tropical country like Malaysia. And guess what? I am sort of allergic to wool. 

Mum is the one who got me started crochet but I have never crochet anything else other than amigurumi. The fundamental of amigurumi is single crochet everything in ROUND. And mum taught me crochet in round by using "Chain 2 method". So when I just started crochet or making amigurumi, I usually took more than an hour to complete the very very first round of my amigurumi because I would try very very hard to make the loop in the middle as tiny as possible.

Left: Chain 2 method: Ch 2, 6 SC in 2nd chain from hook.

        It left a much bigger hole than the Magic Ring. 

Right: Magic Ring, 6 SC in Magic Ring. 

           Magic ring makes your amigurumi project much neater with the almost invisible hole.

Here's the step-by-step (ultra lengthy) tutorial for making Magic Ring. Let's grab your hook & yarn and get started! (Click to view larger image)

Tadah! Once you have mastered the Magic Ring method, you can now start doing any amigurumi project! Do email me / leave me a comment if you have any questions when doing the magic ring. 

Here is the list of other really useful resources that provide tutorials for amigurumi:

PlanetJune by June Gilbank

All About Ami

I will start posting some really easy-peasy & practical amigurumi pattern real soon =) Have fun crocheting. 

Bring Me A Sunny Day

       Teru teru bozu 照る照る坊主 bring me sunny day please =)

I made these cute 'teru teru bozu' last night and took approximately an hour for each doll. Some of you might think that these are just identical to cute little ghosts, but in Japan they are so much more than that.  Teru teru bozu literally translates to shiny shiny monk or sunny sunny boy.  This amulet is supposed to have magical powers to bring good weather and to stop or prevent a rainy day. Read more here.

What do you do when you are moody? Making these cute teru teru bozu definitely bring me sunny days when I am unhappy.

Let me know if you would like to get the crochet pattern. XoXo