Plain Jane

Hello Thursday! I was up last night burning some "crafty oil" to make LLC's card challenge. Our challenge for this week is to use handmade paper ribbon (Did I get this right, Sue?). This ribbon looks like a strip of twisted paper...hehe...that's how I see it. I, too used it for last week's challenge. ;)

Well this time, I decided to make my card more plain & simple. So I had to put a restraining order on myself as to not putting so much stuffs here & there...as I usually do (gatalnya tangan!), haha! So here's my plain jane...in my pursuit for simplicity..aiseh.

I used the stamp that I bought from Scrap'n'Crop, which I simply adore! And handwritten the word "Celebrate". Thank God, it came out ok, hehe. Was a tad nervous while writing it..takut it will turn out cacat! Plus, I was also afraid that I would get the words all smudgy...(lefties would undertand this ordeal, especially when dealing with inky pens). Phewh!

Some close up shots of the card and my "Celebrate". :)

Alrighty, I guess that's all folks! Happy peeking & enjoy today.

Do you not know...

....it’s mid August already?! Wow! Time does not fly...it zooms! For the past week, I have been busy especially with the SOMA (Sharing of Ministries Abroad) seminar on last Sunday & Monday. I thank God that everything went well (especially with the praise & worship team). :) Phewh! He is indeed a God who provides! And it was also a blessing to have the SOMA team, led by Revd. Titus from Singapore, to come to encourage, give words of wisdom & share their testimonies.

Well, for the past week or so, I’ve made several bookmarks & notebooks. I kinda miss making them…I couldn’t even remember when was the last time I made them as I've been making mostly cards lately! I found time, two weekends back to make some, which Sue & I then sold at our church on Sunday. The sales that we receive go into the youth fund. (Doing a little contributing to the youths eh, hehe). And here they are:-

My bookmarks...

One of my favourites :)

My notebooks...

I’m still figuring out what card to make for LLC’s challenge this week.*scratch head* We’re running a little late this time, as Sue & I were caught up with the seminar for the past two days and by the time we made it home after the seminar, our only agenda was to hit the sack! So, check out the blog tomorrow for our new updates! ;) Plus, I’m figuring out what to make for mummy dearest. Her birthday was last week and I’ll be seeing her in about a week’s time (Yippee! Can’t waaait!) I would like to make something for her as a birthday pressie! Maybe a journal…or a decorated frame…hmm…I’ve yet to decide. Got lotsa brainstorming to do..whooh! Will get ‘em crackin’ tonight! Hehe.

Before I go off, I would like to share these beautiful & encouraging verses, which has helped sustained me the past busy week. Even Revd. Titus quoted this verse (v.31), such a pleasant surprise! :)

28 Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The LORD is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary,

and his understanding no one can fathom.

29 He gives strength to the weary

and increases the power of the weak.

30 Even youths grow tired and weary,

and young men stumble and fall;

31 but those who hope in the LORD

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

~Isaiah 40:28-31~

Thanks for peeking & have a blessed Wednesday!

Oh sleepy day!

It’s LLC’s Tuesday Challenge once more! This week’s theme is to make a card with these 3 colour combination - purple+pink+black. Alvin aka Abinz (Sue’s hubby) threw in the challenge at us. Knowing very well that he’s a fan of anything black, he requested that the cardstock that we are to use was to be black and embellished with the colour pink & purple (sorta emo-ish colour, eh). Here’s my late night turn out:

I was extremely sleepy while doing this card. It was a tiring day for me plus the annoyingly hazy weather didn’t help much either (And I’m still sleepy now! Gulping down 2 mugs of coffee did nothing to give the much needed jolt to my system). I started about 11pm plus last night, which was after I came back from choir practice. Heck, I was already sleepy during choir practice! Fr. Chua made us sing with rounder mouths, which was rather hilarious because it made us look like monkeys when they make their monkey noises...hahah! Uhuh…I sang with rounder mouth alright…yaaaawning away! Good thing, he didn’t see me do that. Thanks to Maggie, she was the “view blocker”. ;) If not, memang kena pukulan hebat on the arm!

Hmm..I think I should've put "Live Laugh Sleep"

Anyways, I’m glad that I didn’t get any “crafter’s block” moments while making the card. The only thing on my mind was “Must. Get. Card. Done. By. Tonight.” ….but it wasn’t all that easy & breezy, as I did have a little frenzied moment where I couldn’t find my acrylics as well as moments where my eyes are constantly drifting towards my comfy lookin' bed. By 12.15am, I was done! But I wasn’t satisfied. (“I can’t get no…satisfaction”, heheh) I don’t know why. It seems like my hands are still itchy to tambah here & adjust there…but was tooo sleepy to do so. :p

So, I left it at that and then crashed my bed, heading off for dreamland.

Thanks for peeking! God bless.

A day under the August sun

Last Saturday, my group of friends & I hit the beach (well not exactly on the beach…in close proximity, is more like it) at Taman Selera for some fun, food & fellowship under the August sun! The occasion was an appreciation get-together for those youths who have helped out during the recent Diocesan Youth Sunday service, which was a success!


Kudos to Maggie, the organising chairperson, who worked her butt off (hehe)…I meant, worked really hard, that is, in leading the team to bring the event together! :)

It was a great time together, despite getting sun burned (real bad especially poor Lisa who's now sharing the same colour tone that of a lobster) afterwards & bitten by sand flies (I kena 3 gigitan…which is itching really baad right now, urrgh).

A concoction of laughter + food + great company + beautiful view + good weather (however, I would have hoped that God would turn down the heat from the Mr. Sun for a teeny bit..hehe. Didn't happened though. :p), was in our menu for the day.

These are some photos to share, of what we did on the first day in the month of August (seriously?!! It’s August already!) Eh enjoy…:D

Some of us either barbeque or get barbequed

While waiting for food to be served, some prefer to sit around & read primary school books. They're very educational.

Or some just can sit quietly & look adorable doing it. ;)

Some pick on tiny people :p

Some sit bawah pokok

Some take time to share stories & laughter

But above all, one can't help but marvel at the nature that surrounded us that day.

What beautiful sights to set eyes on.....

And thank God for His goodness & greatness!

"Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?"~ Isaiah 40:12

A vision of white

LLC (Live Love Craft)'s theme for this week is WHITE! And this idea was given by my friend, Jo. I guess she's in the "wedding" mood already, as the first thought that came to my mind when she mentioned a white theme, is to make a wedding card! Heheheee... ;)

So here, a wedding card I made for this week. I put a little colour to it...by adding a blue ribbon & used a greyish patterned paper.

~Forever~

I was up late last night to make this one (only had time to start doing after I came back from choir practice and that was about almost 11pm when I got my craft motor running! Eek!).

Initially, I had a picture in my mind of how the card would turn out to be but in the end, it came out totally different from what I've planned! But that's the wonder of making cards! The element of surprise comes by while you're busy creating & getting those pieces together. Sometimes an idea could just pop out of nowhere (an "Ahaa!" moment) & you just follow it by & surprise yourself with what you could do in the end. What delight! ;)

July Creations

These are some of my creations for the month of July!

First off, is a card I made for my friend, Jo, who got engaged on 4th July 2009! Still can't believe it! Hehe. Congrats to them both! I did a pinky-purply card, backed with a floral pattern paper and a nice white-silvery ribbon across it. :)

Next would be my housemate's birthday card. Vic is a bigg fan of the colour blue…hence the blue card I made especially for her with a bigg ribbon. Her birthday falls on 6th July 2009.

On 7th July, my dad turned 61! Whoohoo. Mum calls it his "six series". Hehe. I made a card with a golf theme, since my dad is such an avid golfer.

You can find him practicing his swings at almost every corner of the house. His favourite spot is either in front of the tv or at the living room. Once, I even found him doing it at the dining area. Hahah!

And...here are my weekly challenges' creations for the LLC blog.


For the 1st challenge, our theme was green cards. This idea came up from Abin's (Sue's hubs) colleague, Agnes whose favourite colour is greeeen. I wanted to do something cute & fun..hehe. This is it. I named mine the "Green Smile". I totally dig the tiny brad which I've put on the centre of the blue ribbon. How cute is that!

The 2nd challenge was to create a card consisting of these 3 colours - brown, orange & white. An idea I got from this guy I saw, wearing a striped t-shirt with those colours. It got my attention straightaway. (Not the guy aa..so not, haha). So, to Mr Striped Shirt, thank you for wearing that t-shirt!

I made a thank you card this time round and it turned out to be earthy-ish.

And the 3rd and most recent challenge is to make a pop up card. An idea given by Adam (thank you for the input encik!). This is really a challenge to me! I totally have no idea how to do this challenge as Sue informed me about it only on Monday night (which was rather last minute!), and we're to finish by Tuesday so that we can post it on our blog for Tuesday's updates. But I told her, we shall go ahead with it & see how things turned out. So, without any samples (I didn't have access to internet anywhere else but the office, so tarak dapat get ilham online di rumah), I tried to flip through the pages of my craft magazines, hoping they have a picture (at least) of some kind of pop up cards. I managed to find one small picture and the bottom page of one magazine and that gave me an idea. Phewh..I'm relieved & glad! At least I have a picture of how it would look like...and this is the end result.....

Am not entirely satisfied with it...aiya, especially the cover of the card. But I do love my ladybug!

Another card I did was for my dear aunty Minda, my dad's che-che. I wanted this card to be very floral & sweet. I sure I hope it does! Well, this is it.

And I hope that it arrives in one piece and not in pieces, as this card will be travelling across the globe (hehe, not entirely lah) to Washington, North England (I wish I get sent there instead of the card :p).

And last but no least, my final creation for July is........

Tadaaa....

A purple farewell card for a lady who made an order for Sue & I to make 2 farewell cards for her colleagues. Sue & I split the job and did one card each. I sure hope she likes it! I'm satisfied with it, though I had a tough time figuring out how to piece 'em together..

And oh..I adore my newly purchased polka-dotty pink ribbons...makes me smile, lookin' at them.. :) Terima kasih 'Cinta' (the place where I found those pretty ribbons..bukan lagu Afgan, hehe)

So, there. My July's works of art. Am embracing the new month ahead for more inspirations & creations! :)

Til then, God bless & thanks for dropping by!

Diocesan Youth Sunday 2009

Last weekend was indeed a memorable and a busy one! Heck we've been busy all week! All these busyness is to prepare for the Diocesan Youth Sunday on 26 July 2009. This year the youths decided to hold a Youth Service to commemorate this day, with the theme "Take Up Your Cross". Hehe..our very own service, how cool is that! A day in a year where it's purely for youths!

I was involved with the band and oh ya...I've found my very young "padwan" keyboardist...the young & petite Phoebe. I'm glad that she took up the challenge to try out and play for this event when I approached her. It has been quite sometime that I've been wanting to ask her to play (in other words to ganti me..or at least I have a substitute, so to speak), and now finally dapat..hehe! Anyways, we, the band and dancers started practicing since two Sundays ago and had practices every other day, ever since, plus with meetings which kinda left me having only 1 free day!
Phewh!

Saturday was our final practice and as well as decorating session! Mag and I were at church from about 930am til 930pm that day!! Imagine that! Never in my life, have I ever been in church for that long! "Holy" indeed! Haha! :p After our practice and rehearsal we started off with the decorations for the church. Well, we planned to make a wooden cross and decorate it with small purple & white balloons. We also decided to use folded crepe papers to hang around the church which we gave to the "dancing girls "(Lisa, Jill, Shannon & Nunun) to do. The huge challenge was that our church has such hiiiiigh ceilings, which make it impossible to decorate anything up there, so ended up, they hanged the papers onto the tiangs...hoping it will remain sticking til Sunday afternoon (crossing fingers!). However, I guess the biggest challenge yet was to find wooden planks and construct a life sized cross. But it wasn't til Uncle Dennis, who overheard us deliberating on it..jumped into our conversation (and saved the day!) and said that the church already has a wooden cross which they used for Easter. What a relief! Challenge no more! Haha..well...not entirely. A problem surfaced when we couldn't find a part of the base which holds up the cross. So the boys (Adam, Bajeng & Malcom) decided to use what's left of their Kemahiran Hidup skills & try to construct the missing base for the wooden cross. With much groans and grunts...partly infused with occassional laughters (by us gals), they managed! Not bad, though the cross kinda looked "senget"...but it stood, alright! And THAT'S the most important thing. While the boys were busy with the Cross, us gals (Jo, Mag & I) unleashed our hand painting skills..hehehe. The plan was to make a "guest board", so that those who attend the event can write comments etc.. on the board. We decorated the board by "stamping" our watercoloured hands along the corners and thumb printed the borders. It was so much fun! At one point, I almost wanted to paint my tapak kaki and smack 'em right on the board...tapi tak jadi. Heheh. Melampau lah pulak.

So, with the board and cross done, we have the cross yet to be decorated. Oh..we also found out that Amy & Sheila has ter-over blown too many of the balloons. We only needed like, about 30 balloons max and they, in fact have blown the whole packet of 100 pcs (but I think it was less that that. Siong Lee cheated us! Hmmph) of white balloons that we've bought! Noooo....another "garuk palak" moment! However, we timed-out for a bit & went out to grab a fast dinner as it was already half past 6 in the evening and we're famished! When we got back from our dinner, the cross was already decorated!

Thanks to Jo! Hehee. She didn't join us for makan & stayed back to do the cross. Yay! So, cross...done. Now...whaaaat are we going to do with the left over balloons(??!?)....Mag & I were still weighing our options while Bajeng has nicely tucked himself on one end of the church pews...sleeping(!) and the "dancing girls" (hehe) and Malcom still struggling with their crepe paper hanging issue..Maggie then came up with an idea to decorate the entrance doors with the balloons. Ok, agreed. We gathered the balloons and start tying them along the strings. I was already thinking that this would be a looong night and don't know when will we finish with the balloons and it's as if God heard me (well, of course He did! HE always does! Hehe...it's just that we need to be more aware & reminded of Him working around us rather than be overwhelmed by situations and issues), Iyok & Moi came to help out. What perfect timing! And the best thing is that, it so happened that she knows how to tie the balloons 'coz she did it before for her company dinner. And in no time, she's tying up the ballons at a pace that Maggie and I couldn't even catch up. I was on my 2nd balloon and got tangled up, whilst Iyok was halfway til done! So, feeling that we're the "biggest losers" in this balloon tying challenge, Mag & I decided to paste up posters instead! And oh, poor Baj's bike got pimped using left over crepe papers..hehe.
So, that's that. Finally we're done with the decorations by 9 plus and started packing our things. It's time to head off home. Despite being verry tired to the bones, I was satisfied with what the youths did that day...the deco and all, and thankful to God, our provider that has blessed & guided us throughout the day. A little proud feeling swelled in me but not without a tad of nervousness for Sunday's event! However, I shall not be worried, I reminded myself, for God is already there. Amen!

Come Sunday (the day!), the youths who are involved came early to church, all wearing their blue-white AYC tees! We look good together, aiseh hehe. :p

By 230pm, people started coming. Youths from Tudan, Taman Tunku, Chinese congregation and also Good Shepherd, Lutong made it to the service. :D By 3pm, the event is well on its way. We started off with a pageantry (which consists of the tambourine dancers, banner & cross bearers) to the song "Tiba Saatnya" and then a praise & worship session led by Bro. Bajeng. Readings from the Bible, thereafter by Nunun & Zara (part of the dancing girls..hehe). The sharing on the theme, Take Up Your Cross, was preached by Fr. Ramdan, who never fails to bring a blend of seriousness and humour to his preaching. A real good sermon indeed! After the sermon, was the intercession, read by one of our youths, Casper, a 15-year-old-who-sometimes-asks-the-most-impossible-questions, to which I saw potential in him. :) At one point of the intercession, my heart was touched as his deep voice looms over the microphone, reading the prayers. It's one of those heartwarming & inspiring moments I get occasionally. Hehe.

After interceding for the needs of the youths in the Diocese, we we're entertained by a song, sung by the Chinese Youths. I loved the song! I wonder if they have it in English too. Very melodious!

Before saying "it's a wrap!", Fr. Cheong shared a word or two of his story & experiences with youths. The service ended with a song "Hidup Tanpa mu", before everyone heads off for refreshments & fellowship, thereafter, di bawah pokok, atas rumput. :p Sue & I put up a small corner to sell our cards & notebooks too..!

After a few karipaps, sambal puluts and several packet drinks later, it was time to "close shop". But, before we head off home, we did some cleaning up and not forgetting (i repeat not ever forgetting)...group photo! And now, finally..we can say..'It's a wrap, y'all! Overall, the event went smoothly..well, not without a lil' minor hiccups & surprises along the way, but I believe that the youths did a great job and I too believe that there's always room for improvement!
Praise & thank God for He is good! :)