The excitement is not over yet...

Not to mention the inspiration I received during the whole weekend but also the anxious waiting since the day I knew she is coming...

I still can't believe that Iris was here with us for the past weekend, an exciting, beautiful and technique packed fun weekend. We talked, laughed, scrapped and most of all, been totally inspired!

The 4 projects that she prepared specially for Shabby Chic are beautiful -- I simply have no idea how to describe them, so breathe taking, each of them. The 4 hours each afternoon will be remembered for a long long time, I am sure.
I remember exactly a year ago, Hilda started scrapping and nothing has taken her back since, she is a professional now...

And I have to say this is actually the first time, I finished all projects within the class! Here is one of them:


I was kinda packed with work and slowed down for a while, but guess not any more, after these lessons, I have to get back to my scrapping table and start all over again!!! Thanks, Iris, for the inspiration!

Just a few updates

First, Shabby Chic's aniversary sales starts today!!! And don't forget Iris's fabulous class is scheduled this Saturday and Sunday, I can't wait any more!!!

Secondly, this month over at Artz de Scrap, the project is taking your breathe away: Candy's design of that beautiful earring carusel! Mine is here:

pp: melissa francis; crystal: heidi swapp and lots of buttons. Anyway, mine more looks like a tower (as per Rafeeqa's words), so this has to go to her table!!!

Enjoy your sunday!

Horses and ghosts

Yes, that's our last weekend.

Horse riding in the morning and the Halloween Party in the late afternoon.

A very busy, exciting and tired ( for me ) day, but seeing their joy, it's all worthy!!!

18 years

There are tons of things happened in 18 years for all of us, especially for me. But I didn't expect that nothing has really changed at the place I was born -- Hou Ba, Si Chuan.

I hardly lived there though as my parents sent me off to Shanghai to stay with my grandparents when I was three years old. In 1966, at their early twenties, they left Shanghai to join the service to help the Southwest China, I was born 7 years later.

When I was much older, I recalled all the train trips in summer, which took me 48 hours to meet my dear mummy and daddy. I can remember my parents moved from the tiny house at the riverside to the bigger apartment. Later during my last two years in the high school, I had to leave Shanghai and stayed in Si Chuan to join the national level university entrance exam. But again, I stayed in boarding house in the school, travelled weekend by train to see my parents. After I started university, my parents left that little town, left all the thing behind, that was after spending over 20 years in that little town.

Dad always wanted to go back to see the place especially after mom left us. I know that is a special place just for her and him, and me. After many planning , I finally made the trip with my dad during my recent break.

There are lot of changes in the big cities, but once our rented car entered the small and only road lead to Hou Ba, I realize that nothing really changed. I remembered the bridge, the old hospital near the roadside, the school, nearly everything...

4 hours' drive from Chengdu, after this bridge we arrived Hou Ba.

I can't believe that this little house is still there. This was my parents' first house where I was born. The iron bar on the window was installed by father nearly 37 years ago.

This is the place we lived before we left, now it looked so old and small... but still there!!!

The weekly train ride was never bored coz I couldn't wait to see my parents, I can remember that I usually ran on this road to the staircase that lead to the home. The place was small but very warm.

Almost

Almost
Almost there
Almost reach my target
after 6 whole weeks
sorting out the new mess
at work
and at home

Missed a lot of things
Hope to be back on the track soon

New and Old

New: first day of school year, just like what happens each year, a fresh morning to start with and ended up with lost bag ( Rafeeqa forgot to take her school bag home ), missed lesson ( Renee forgot to go to her voilin lesson after school )... well, not really new, isn't it?

Old: some layouts did last week.

Worked on sketch from MME, looks like I am in a double page mood recently.

Sketch from pencil lines, I can never get enough with the webster's pages as well as MME paper, and also love the combination of these two.

Have a great week, everyone.

Party ideas

Over at the Artz de Scrap, we are altering toilet paper tubes. Ya, the toilet paper tubes, what do you do usually? Throw into the bin, right? Haha, I use to collect them for school projects but haven't done this for a while. So when I was about to start my altering job last week, I was panic that I couldn't find any in the house!

But finally managed to gather 4 last night! The ladies at Artz de Scrap made pretty stuff using the toilet paper tubes and me here, just came up something for Rafeeqa's 6th birthday party -- how about a pirate party?

Here is the treasure box, cut out the cover from the middle of the tube, spray some glitter mist and stuff it with some "pearls ,diamonds".

The pirate set: 2 tubes for the binoculars, one for the treasure map cover.

The whole set I used sassafras lass paper and ribbons from maya road. So what do you think? A pirate party, is not a bad idea, is it?

working with sketches

I have to say that I didn't really a sketch follower -- I will modify any lovely sketch and sometimes it just turns out to be something differently. But on the other hand, I have to admit to work with a sketch is easier and faster if you have lots of pictures waiting to be scrapped.

Based on the sketches from Inspired Blueprints, I have created the followings:

These were over due since last year, papers are from Cosmo Cricket and Vintage Plum.

I seldom do 2 pages layout but with so many pictures from the Singapore trip, I decided to follow sketch # 26 which allows me to put more pictures instead just one or two.

I converted the sketch #27 into a 8.5 * 11 layout. The prima flower and vine is my favourite.

I am also a follower of another sketch community: Pencil Lines. Recently I have done a few based on their lovely sketches:

I like the last sketch the most, just can't stop looking at the multi layered effect.

Also I finished my kaisercraft's clock using Basic Grey's kraft kuts paper, I am a blue person afterall, anything blue caught my eyes straight away!!

Well, well, can't believe that my holiday will ends in two weeks' time, what can I say...

Altered play cards in Artz de Scrap

This month's altered challenge in Artz de Scrap is to alter playcards.

The lovely creation from DTs are to be seen here and mine is here:

Don't forget to play alone and submit your entry by end of this month, have fun!

Where have I been?

Well,well,well, simply being very lazy around.

The trip to Singapore was a pleasant one, meeting up with Sharon, Lia , Kristy and Sal! Besides all the shopping, lessons I had to do , I even managed two siteseeing trips for Renee, she definitely enjoyed the duck tour and the trip to Sentosa. As soon as we landed in Brunei, I was mission full loaded for her 9th birthday: cakes, party packs, food and whatever needed to be done.

I am working on my August assignment from Shabby Chic, I can't describe how much I like the stuff I received, and I finished 2 looks so far:

Till then.

Today

Thirty six years ago, I arrived as a 7month old premature baby.

By looking at the height of my parents, most of the people would think I should end up over 170com. My dad is 182com and my mum was 168cm, but I concluded my current height was due to the early arrival to this world, lol.

My dad called me two days ago to wish me a early Happy Birthday, he always remembers the date even we are thousands miles apart. I miss you, dad. This was a layout I did 2years ago, to me, he's a forever hero.

He had the hardest time 6 years when my mother was having the cancer treatment, bearing all the pain by himself as he wouldn't want me to know, for me was 7 months pregnant at that time. If I would know ...

She was always there for me if I needed her as long as I can remember. Though there were times that she was not able to, she's still with me in my heart. I miss her terribly every year on my birthday.

I know she is somewhere around and she is with me.

My sweetest Rafeeqa wrote me a letter as the birthday present which I will load in another post later. She was born one week after my mother passed away. I always think she was sent by my mother... I don't know, just have this feeling for all these years.

Today, I looked through all the album and found this:

I am truly grateful for what I have today.

A crazy weekend!

and I don't have enough sleep! 

But it was so fun!!! 

Lia makes pretty stuff which we all agree and the butterfly album is so gorgeous, with all the pretty ribbon, lace, flower, leaves and Pink Paislee papers. I haven't completely finish the pages yet as I think I have still quite some things to add in, it's such a beauty! 

I went home around 10pm on Saturday and dose off to my dreamland... 

My class on Sunday morning turned out to be a measurement and calculation assessment! Many of us were completely lost in the number land, with 1/8", 6/8", 7/8"... haha! 

Jackie is always a great help! Look, she's helping new scrapper Jenny to do the cutting.

These two seemed fine with the numbers although Sharon did complain that I should not give them too much measurement in the early morning! LOL.

Our new scrapper was very pleased after she finished the lesson.

Thank you all who came to my class! 

The afternoon were filled with food, snack, shopping so by the time for Sharon's class, I was half way out.  But I didn't miss anything that she taught, well, I THINK I didn't miss anything!  It's called "Get messy with paint" so we suppose to get very messy and it did the best Messy I have ever done! Therefore, no pictures on my camera, we were try to hide all our things away from the table! But I am sure you can check out some here.

I will head to SC later to finish the remaining layout, yes, though I still feel sleepy!

Artz de Scrap - altered storybook

My first assignment from Art de Scrap is to alter a storybook. I love books, my girls do too, after they finish reading some books, we normally give to their cousins or donate to whoever needs them. I couldn't find anything in the house that I can alter ( or I should say that I want to alter ).

Well, making a book is always a fun thing to do especially when I have all those lovely picture of Rafeeqa featuring Goldilocks!  Two years back when she was still in kindy, they played out the story: Goldilocks and the 3 bears. I saved all the pictures and resized all of them to 2R to fit on the pages. I had this idea of making a personalized storybook for her, so this fits perfectly in my July's assignment!

The tree stamp I got from my last trip to Shanghai, just love it! Renee helped to draw Goldilocks and the three bears which were hiding among the trees, I used UTEE for the girl and like the 3D effect.

The book is about 4 * 6" in size, to fit the color "blue and green", I used a lot of paper with this tone and stickers, felt bird from Maya Road, rub ons from Yellow Bicycles and most fun part, I hand cut lots of houses and window. The two girls read it over and over at night which make me smile from bottom of the heart!

So are you ready for this fun project? Gather your stash and set to go!! Do upload your project and send to Artz de Scrap.