New Cards

More cards made during the weekend. Ready to send to host for AFA swap.

For 'Strings attached' swap.

For 'Fun and Funky Polka dots' swap

I just couldn't stop painting poppies. They are just so fun and easy to paint.

Art in Your Pocket

I'd been asking around, not many artist/crafter in Malaysia knows about Artist Trading Cards, so far, none. I am not sure why this fun art exchange activity is not popular among the artists and designers in Malaysia.

For those who is still wondering what is ATC, here is the definition I found from Wikipedia.

Artist Trading Cards (or ATCs) are miniature works of art about the same size as modern baseball cards,^[1] or 2 ½ X 3 ½ inches (6cm X 9cm),^[2] small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets.^[3] The ATC movement developed out of the mail art movement and has its origins in Switzerland.^[4] Cards are produced in various media, including dry media (pencils, pens, markers, etc), wet media (watercolor, acrylic paints, etc), paper media (in the form of collage, papercuts, found objects, etc). The cards are usually traded or exchanged rather than sold.

Recently my art nerves suddenly surfaces and I'd been digging back some of my ATCs. Most of them are dated in 2005. wow....5 years ago. Wow...I can't believe it! 5 years. and I'd not been creating anything (except the two bird illustrations and mixed media). Shame on me :( I'd been riding on the craft horses and forgotten about the smell of acrylic paints, sticky fingers with glues, messy table full with papers and ephemeras.
This year my one and only resolution is create more art.

ATCs I created, mainly collage and rubber stamping.

More Art-Venture

Sorry for not blogging more often lately. Have been getting my hands busy with arts and crafts. Don't know what hits me and I'm back to the crafting craze again. I remember the last time I hold the brush was in 1998, when there's still art classes in our education syllabus. Wish I had learn more about arts and crafts during the young and carefree time. And I was among the few that enjoyed art class so much.

Crafting really could kill the boredom, loneliness and stress in me. Am so happy to see all my cute creation. ^_^

Little toothies.

I made this from a Craftster tutorial. I love Craftster. There's so many cool ideas and tutorials. I never get tire browsing the forum and was always so impressed and absolutely awestruck with those amazingly creative artists and crafters.

Tracy Goh's Washi Ningyo's Kit

Received my Washi Ningyo kit from Tracy Goh. She made a really comprehensive kit for making washi ningyo and it even comes with a nicely printed tutorial booklet. I'm soooo excited to try my hand on making my first washi ningyo. I can make 4 cute ningyo from this kit.

And taa-daa........

My first washi ningyo and I want to call her Midori.

It was so much fun making the ningyo. Although a bit tedious and meticulous with the small details but it was so fun especially when styling the hair. It took me 2 hours to finish my Midori. Need more practice >_<

Bought my first set of acrylic paint.

Every artist should get a set. I got myself a set of 12 basic colours. I don't know whether I will need so many colours or not but looking at the colour tubes lining before my eyes, it already makes me very happy.

I'm getting impatient and greedy. I wanted to learn and make so many things.

More ideas and inspirations.....

Clay + Felt = Cute to the max
From powa*powa* (really love reading this blog, although it's all in Japanese)

Unazukin
Clay + Acrylic = Magical!!

MAUstudio bunny
Looks easy to make. Yay, I have white and red felt. But I need to buy red threads.

My first art-venture with polymer clay

I always have a thing with art and crafts. KL has a lot of arts and crafts supplies store, especially at One Utama. I always wanted to try those many many different variety of arts and crafts. I always wanted to learn about oil paint, acrylic paint, glass paint and etc. Yes, is an expensive hobby but compare to photography, philately, golf, antique collecting, art-venture is not expensive at all.

I'm sooooo happy that finally in Ipoh we have a craft workshop and it's so near my place. Yayyyy. They are selling a lot of arts and crafts supplies such as acrylic paints, glass paints, fabric paints, clay etc usually not found in Ipoh. They are also offering a lot of classes such as polymer clay, Folk Art (painting on wood using acrylic), glass painting, glass etching, fabric painting and decoupage. I can't wait to learn all of them. And to my surprise that this kind of craft shop could actually attracts quite a lot of customers and I have to call to book a time for their classes. Although some are just inside the shop to look at the wonder work of crafts and the art supplies that we never knew existed but quite a number of them were actually buying!

Ok, so I start my art-venture with polymer clay. RM80 for a 2 hour class and I get a Sculpey Activity Box Kit worth RM60. I wanted to get the Clay Bear set but the last box were reserved. What a disappointment, the Clay Bears were really super cute!

Sculpey clay and tools.
Actually there's 7 colours but I finished using the brown for making the very cute bear.

My first clay babies. Aren't they super cute?
Am I talented or what? Hehe...

I still have many leftover clay and I will make something else. ~woohoo~

(And I'd waste a lot of money paying for yoga and gym classes. I never enjoy as much.)

Useful link for clay crafting:
Free polymer clay tutorial
A talented and resourceful clay blogger from Indonesia
Sculpey - Materials for polymer clay craft
A talented crafter from Malaysia

Getting Myself Busy

I joined gym and has been working out a lot since Saturday. I never exercise and sweat so much....since...I don't know when. Yes, I never exercise and never do have any sports talents, I doubt that I ever kick inside my mom's womb. And I just hate sweating. But I just can't ignore how unfit I'd become. At 26, I tend to lost my breath walking a few flight of stairs. And despite some ppl still saying I'm slim, but there are certain parts of me getting out of shape, namely the abdomen. You ppl call it spare-tire. And I'm tire of being laugh at by my (idiot) colleagues. >_<

And so I joined Fitness Junction, RM123 for the first month and RM80 for every following months. The gym is kinda small and pack with equipments, much smaller than The Gym at Bercham but since they open till 9.00pm and also on Saturday and Sunday, just right for my schedule. They offer a whole lot of different classes, aerobics, yoga fusion, steps, rotates, cyclerobics, kickboxing, barbell, jazzercise and even tae-kwan-do. Some of the classes starts as early as 6.15am....*whoa* Lots of aunties rose really early and has time to stretch before going to the market, really healthy and must learn from them.

And so I joined two of the classes today, in one stretch which made me really really exhausted but felt so good and alive. The first class was Steps, where I step up and down using a raised platform and perform aerobic moves with it. And also stretching on the big exercise ball, which I had a hard time trying to balance but after awhile it was kinda fun too. The Steps exercise got me sweat alot. Phew... but was really fun. And after that the following class was Yoga Fusion, fuses between Pilates and Yoga. After 2 hours of exercise, which was too much for me, I felt kinda dizzy and toooooo hungry. And I forgot to mention my instructor for both classes, Fay, is a really pretty Caucasian.

I just hope I can keep up my enthusiasm in exercising for a better fitness and tone up my bod.

And lately I'd been doing some artwork too. I'm sorting out my old mags and found some really interesting and pretty advertisement and quotes. So I made some posties....So you don't know I'm into this handcraft stuff? Well, now you do. I even kept an artblog and joined a lot of art swap groups (used to). Hehe....

All torn out....pretty bits and nips.

Some of the posties I made. I made a total of 10. To view them all, go to my artblog.

And I joined Postcrossing to send and receive posties from all over the world. I used to joined Postcrossing and received some really nice cards from places as far as Estonia but I'd slack off for too long and my account was deactivated. If you're looking for a hobby, pick this one up, it's so cool to communicate and actually receive something from ppl around the globe.

Postcrossing postie.

I love my handmade posties too much to send them all out. So I only sent 3 out. >_<
Sending out to USA, United Kingdom, China, Finland and Germany.