Dos-A-Dos: Oriental Blue & Gold

After a long while, I've finally gotten around making a book! Long stitched binding using a maroon book binding thread, using a pretty blue oriental patterned japanese paper with gold for the covers, and a red with gold strands handmade paper as end sheet on the inside, lovely contrast.

Oh, and I've cut windows in the spine of the cover so you can see the book block as an added interest.

So this book, is off on a plane to Singapore as the client wants to give it to her long time best friend who had moved to Johor, Malaysia.

Books I've made get to travel to more places than I do... Amazing...

Bento: Charaben!

With baby's first birthday coming up, I wanted to give something to her first classmates (she goes to a weekly 'Sing and Sign Language' classes since March for the past 12 weeks) to mark the occasion of her first birthday. At first I thought a pretty cupcake of a sort. Then it got me thinking how my baby can't have it (not for a few years at least) and I feel bad if I'm feeding my kid sugar, and equally if I'm feeding other peoples kids sugar. Empty nutrients kind of thing when they are at the stage of needing the good stuff for their development, ok enough of that,it's just me, new mom syndrome...

And that's when it struck me to make bentos for them! Last time I made bentos was when I was in my first trimester, every time I look at the pictures of those bentos I made, I remembered how sick I was all day, I didn't have morning sickness, I had all day sickness!

I did research on kids bentos and preschoolers bentos, what they eat, how to make character bentos and looking at hundreds and hundreds of pictures of bentos.

I laid out a plan and did a sketch of what I would put into the bento. I made a test bento the day before, as I wanted to make them fresh for the actual thing and I needed to know how long it would take me to do them.

What I didn't anticipate on was the time it took to make them all, I thought I had simplified the design, the preparation took ages, but once the items were all ready, it was just a matter of putting them together.

Pretty satisfied how they turned out, cute, colourful and healthy. The only thing processed was probably the bread and that was wholemeal.

I don't know if each child we gave them out to enjoyed it, the mommies were impressed. Dropped one off to dear husband, who showed it to his colleagues and they can't believe it was edible, baby and I shared one together. It was interesting making them, but it won't be something I'll be repeating anytime soon.

More pictures can be seen here.

Buku Hantaran: Purple & Gold

This was order from a client, I would say she took the whole package, hantaran pertunangan, buku hantaran and menerima berian (engagement dower and dowry, engagement book and soon the receiving dower and dowry we're currently working on due in a couple of weeks time) of course all the hantaran (dower and dowry stuff) are made with my friend Heidi.

Anyway, the client, a sweet girl, requested for an A4 folder with a purple and gold theme. She also let me know other things she liked which was helpful. Purple and gold is a very royal colour combination, have to do it justice.

Fortunately I happen to have in my stash this purple with gold prints on it. Perfect! After I had it on the folder, I got stuck. It sat on my table for a couple of weeks until I decided on the fastening, and how to go about hiding it and everything else came into play.

There were almost 100 elements that needed to be stuck down individually. But it worked. It helped added some punch and a contrast to the pale gold in the background. I love how the tassels came into play. Not realising it while decorating, the print on the paper helped give a theme to the design, it had an oriental feel, the colour, the gold heart shaped gems, the tassels, the diamonds, I'm really liking this one, the print had spoken to me that was the direction it wanted to go. Good thing the inner me listened...

Pop Up Greeting: Presents For The Inlaws

The SIL, FIL and MIL birthday presents for 2011

I'm trying to catch up on posts here...

What do you give for someone who has everything they need already? I don't want to get a present just because it's a present, I'm the kind of person who cares enough to puts effort and time into a gift. And I'm fortunate enough to have the talent, skill and experience to make these for the inlaws. I figured this was perfect, there was no picture of their first grandchild and niece in the house yet, and this way I can personalised each one to them. I had help from the SIL to get the pictures done for me, and she helped chose which print to use for the parents, I have already finished hers so she had no say, haha.

Gave their presents for the year early and belated during my daughter's first birthday celebration, and they are proudly displayed on the shelf. You know it's a compliment when people asked where did they buy them. Interestingly enough everybody liked the MIL one, it was the most tedious and simplest one to make. I thought of making more of those...

More pictures can be seen here.