something new

call me anything you want but i've only just discovered the delights of a mobile phone charm.

i have probably noticed them on my young nieces' and friends' phones, but it never stuck (in my memory). however last saturday, when i was at my supplies shop, a couple of samples of the little black string thingys caught my attention. it's funny how things that you never paid attention to suddenly becomes an item of interest when you turn into a bored crafter (like moi) in search of something new to make :)

so ... without further ado ... i present to you ... my selection of mobile phone charms ...

these will be in my etsy store ... and i was thinking perhaps a "choose 4 out of 7" sorta concept?

now ... i'm NOT trying to insult anyone's intelligence here ... just my own. cos i had to ask the girls at the supplies shop ... exactly how to attach these on the mobile phone!! yes ... it's that embarrassing >_< !! the girls looked at me kinda weird, then smirked a little before they proceeded to "educate" me on the techniques of attaching the phone charm thingy to the phone *sigh* now i know what it feels like to be laughed at by a couple of 20 year olds ... in vengeance ... i decided to make "a pictorial illustration of how to attach a phone charm to a mobile phone" ... take that you 20 year olds!!


1. prepare mobile phone (courtesy of a sleeping hubby) and phone charm (preferably from pimp & paint ;)










2. Detach the charm from the clasp (for easy application)

3. find the wretchedly microscopic holes on your mobile phone

* certain phones have it at the top corners, and certain phones have it at the bottom corners

4. push the edge of the black thread thingy into one of the holes








5. take about 15 minutes to get it in and out the other end

* i just found out that for some phones, if you remove the battery cover, it makes it easier to get the thread in.

6. pass the clasp end through the loop end








7. tug and secure (finally!)








8. re-attach the charm to the clasp








9. WALLAH!!!!











from being oblivious, i am now absolutely in love with these! i have one hanging off my phone (TA-DA!!) and i make sure that the charm constantly hangs out of my pants pocket ... what a show off! :p

happy pimping!

P/S ... i found out in the comments that many of your phones dun have holes!! but some phones have like little clasps instead of holes (below) and this one had it's battery cover removed before i could slip the thread through ... could your phones have clasps instead of holes too? i dunno about i-phones tho ... perhaps these high tech ones really dun have holes!

happy thanksgiving!! :)

i will be off to bangkok from thursday 26/11 to monday 30/11 for work ... see ya and remember to keep some turkey for me :))

boxing day

... not the one associate with christmas presents really ... but something to do with postage and packaging ...

first of all, i'm really happy that my bookmarks are selling pretty well :) and since i made the first bookmark sale i've been having nightmares about how they will last 2 weeks in transit. yes ... it takes 2 weeks for my stuff to arrive in USA (so if you wanna get christmas presents from my shop ... better get 'em now ;). what happens in between the 2 weeks, no one knows ... UGH! every time i see the guy at the post office use his devious little rubber stamp with utter vengeance on my poor envelope, i cringe in fear that the action would shatter my bookmark to pieces! and that's only in the local post office ... one wonders how many times thru the 2 weeks my precious bookmark, cowering in it's bubble wrap envelope, goes thru the painful and ear shattering torture of the post office stamp!

thus i've been looking for a box to fit them in, hoping for some extra protection. well, i found ready made necklace boxes made in china, but they were a little too narrow and too long for my 12 cm bookmark and my poor bookmark truly looked stunted inside the box! also there's the issue of the color and that ghastly ribbon on the box ! i looked for my box maker who makes my coaster boxes ... she's good and willing to custom to my measurements. however, i felt that her pricing for the box was a little too much to pay ... for now. maybe i'll reconsider again, if my bookmarks really sell well.

so ... i bought some cardboard, and paper and since i hardly use my medieval rubber stamps (i know sweet tammy has a set and she uses it all the time in her vintage creations ... so i'm just a little more than envious :p) ... sat myself down and experimented with making boxes.

so far i've managed 12. that's with lots of wastage which is quite alright since it's my first try and measurements could be a pain in the ***! if i had to make the next batch, i think i'll be able to be more efficient with my materials.

making good use of my medieval rubber stamps :) inside and out!

i'm quite delighted with the results, maybe not a perfect box but it serves its purpose. the added advantage of having a box is it also serves as a nice little gift box if ever my bookmarks are bought to be given away as gifts :))

HAH! yes ... i now have a nice size sticker and it's there, sitting snugly (or smugly ;) inside the cover of the box :))

happy sunday! and
happy pimping! :)

weekly challenge - romance

it's all about love and romance on inspiration avenue this week :) normally when i think of romance, i think of roses, ephemera and collectibles, images of vintage ladies, old-world artifacts or a secluded cabin near the sea. and sometimes when i'm really in the mood ... i'll daydream that i'm in a transylvanian castle with the count himself, or in a victorian mansion with edward cullen or maybe in the old compton house with bill ... yea ... all my gothic romance fantasies come alive :))

but alas! all my daydreamin' did not turn into reality this week (not that they ever did *grumble*) ... instead i made these :)

well, at least the roses and the vintage lady are there ...

these are made with polymer clay, and glass cabochons. i've been wanting to do something with the little glass drops for ages. they are so cute! i was really inspired by an artist i found on flickr ... Alkhymeia. she's just fantastic with her clay and wire work, you will know what i mean when you visit her on her flickr or at her website ... your jaws will most certainly drop, i guarantee it! the details, the intricate workmanship, the creativity, the artistry and the beauty of it all ... tell me if you're not inspired by her work ...

as for my pendants ... ^_^ la di da di di da la di da ...
i guess you know what i mean ... :p

having said that ... i really like the color on this one. as the world already know i'm a blue and green girl :) when i was making this i thought of wedgewood. (ok... i know it dun look too much like wedgewood ... but it did come from there, first!)

i remember when i was a kid, my dad use to bring home wedgewood items each time he came back from a business trip in the UK. uncle wilkinson would get every girl in the house a piece ... and trust me, there were plenty of girls in the house! when i was a kid, we lived like an extended family ... my uncles and aunties were all living under the same roof... my house's roof that is :) and uncle wilkinson would get us all wedgewood trinket boxes, little vases, plates and so on. oh mind you ... uncle wilkinson is not my real uncle, he's dad's very very old friend and first foreign business associate (uncle wilkinson has passed by the way) ... but kids from a chinese family were always taught to address anyone of their parents age or older, 'uncle' or 'aunty' ... out of respect. i still teach my daughter to call my friends 'uncle' and 'aunty' :)

ok ... gone off path ... coming back to wedgewood ... i love to sit and just stare at the little white designs or "grecian" people embossed on the blue ceramics and weave stories about them. and sometimes when we get an occasional green wedgewood from uncle wilkinson, i would totally be delirious!! ... i think that's where my fascination for blues and greens come from, seriously!

anyhow, back to the romance theme ... now i dunno why i can't just let thing be. you would have thought that the pendants were my challenge entries? well... not. i had to do this to them ...

all because i saw this lovely piece of lace at the haberdasher shop today and fell totally in love with it! GAAAAA ....

well ... now it's sort of like attached to the lace ... the pendants are easily interchangeable tho. my dilemma is, what would i do with these!? but dun the lace just accentuate the feeling of romance? i guess maybe my christmas tree needs a bit of love this year ;)

happy pimping! :)

making blog pictures larger ... and SPAM!!

ok ... let's start with SPAM first.

in the last week, my old posts have been attacked by SPAM messages! by a certain entity who calls himself "anonymous". so since i can't locate his profile, i will just send him this message here.

dear anonymous,
i dun think you should waste your time sending me messages on where i can get viagra anymore... simply becos i dun need it :) thank you for your concern with regards to my performance ... but please do something better with your life. anyhow ... i have changed my comments status to NOT allowing people named anonymous to leave comments, and so just you know ... i am still moderating all my comments :)
thank you for your time and have a creative week (doing something else)!

right ... that's settled ...


now onto something exciting i found while googling!! (perhaps most of you already know this trick but i'll share it anyway ... hehehe).

i dunno how many of you have noticed that my images are larger on the blog now? i've always been a visual person so i love big images, and i always prefer writings that go with lots of pictures ... i found a way to make the pictures on the blog larger :)

becos each blog layout in blogspot would set a limit to the size of uploaded images, so regardless how large your original image is, it will still shrink to that "set" size. to enlarge the "set" size you'll have to tweek the HTML codes each time you load an image ... and here's how...

1. after you upload an image, go to the "Edit Html" tab on the top right and click.

2. you will find your uploaded images in the form of a bunch of HTML codes ... like this :


the picture will look this size at it's largest :

3. there are 3 things you have to change in the HTML code (ie... the ones in red). get the proportions of your image right and change it to your required size, keeping in mind the maximum width of your blog post area. mine's set to 540px wide so i won't make my images larger than 540px in width. also consider that your images will look better with some margin on either sides.

the first 2 numbers i changed are the width and the height of the image. now... i'm not sure why you have to change the s400 to s800 ... but when i tried to keep it at s400, and my image came out just a little blur, although it did go larger. maybe that's similar to "pulling" the image larger with the cursor... the image gets larger but the clarity drops becos you are enlarging a small image. make sense?

so after changing the 3 numbers in red, the image will be this size :

BIG isn't it!!?? and not much drop in the clarity. i over-did this a little just to make the difference clearer ... but you can always try out different sizes :) the only thing you have to keep in mind is the proportion of the image.

hope you found that interesting too :)

happy pimping! :)

mighty fun!

HAH!! once i got pass the fear of having over-"burn" photographs and my puffy pair of asian eyes got used to them ... i had a mega time creating compositions with them! well ... photo compositions that is. i know my dear teammate tali must be rolling on the floor from laughing at me cos she's done this the whole of her photographing life ... but hey! i'm a newbie so i'm allowed to feel delirious and act silly when my compositions turned out looking ... erm... well ... nice :) ... at least to me they are :)

this is was my entry for inspiration avenue "frosty" week ... lor-Arda the dreamcatcher

and this is suncatcher which i called "the path" ... inspired by a dreamcatcher :p

yea... yea... i got carried away :) ... i stretched them so that they look bigger in my facebook page ...these would never make the cut into etsy :)) ah well ...

i prefer the composition that combines both the white backgrounds and the green backgrounds. looks more interesting dun you think?

right ... before i go off to play some more, i shall leave you with some christmas ornaments i made :) YES!! it's christmas season again and this is the first time i'm making christmas ornaments!! YAY!! these are going into my etsy shop right after this post :)

happy pimping! :)

photo magic

i've been meddling with my photo editing software and pushing the limits a little ... well, i think "pushing the limits" is an overstatement, cos i actually just discovered you can do things like that *v_v embarassed* ...

i used to just use irfanview to tweek my images, but today i decided to try the GIMP2.6 software (you can download free from the net) people tell me that it's a real basic software, but since i haven't gone and learn the illustrator or photoshop yet (and also i have no money to buy them... yet) i'll just stick to basic and free for now... :) initially i only used the GIMP2.6 for all the effects and the photo collage i make for my items, but never the photo editing part.

it all started when i saw my fren mindy's photos on her accesories collection in her facebook page (click on the link and you'll see what i mean) and she says she uses natural sunlight, a white dining table and a bit of editing!! crap! so why dun my images look anything like that? (ok... i dun use natural sunlight much for reasons that i won't go into and i only use a mini auto sony cybershot *sigh*)

mine would look something like this ...

and that's after the tweek on the software...

by the way ... that's my new dreamcatcher or rather, i think it's more of a suncatcher cos it does look lovely by the window when the faceted beads are a-glittering in the sun.

well ... dissatisfied i was, i decided to tried the GIMP2.6 photo editing functions ... and here are some results. the left image is the original straight-from-camera, the right image has been "photoshopped" by the GIMP2.6 ("photoshopped by the GIMP2.6", ironical isn't it? see what branding can do to consumers?)

images 1a & 1b

images 2a & 2b

i pushed the exposure (?) or is it gamma (?) higher than i normally would go and i got closer to mindy's photos feel. now if you compare image 2b (right side) with the very first image, it looks much whiter. i also pushed the contrast up to bring back the dark details.

images 3a & 3b

images 4a & 4b

i "burn" images 3b and 4b even more ... and they're starting to look like some ancient elven relics glowing with magic!

image 5a & 5b

and this final one 5b is waaaay burn i think!

i think i got quite close to mindy's pictures effect ... and now the question is ...
can i actually put a product shot such as this one in etsy? would it be totally misleading? i personally think 1b and 2b are still alright but 5b is pretty unrealistic.

since i'm pretty new to photography i would love to know what do you think? ... especially etsy users and my photographer frens :) tell me your thoughts ok ... and tips ;)

and on a different note :) see the bangles? familiar?

that's what i used for the dreamcatcher hoop :))

oh yeaaaa ... i also took this picture of my "photo studio set up" ... hehehe, just for you!

yes ... this is where i do my crafts, surf the net and where i take my product pictures!!

the "studio set up" is fully DIY and can be installed and pulled down in seconds ... and yes ... i usually do everything between 11pm - 5am :) i seriously think i'm some sort of vampire hybrid! see? that's why "no natural sunlight" :)

happy pimping! :)

weekly challenge - frosty

since my bangkok trip has been (last minute) postponed yet again ... UGH!! i could craft this week. sweet catherine of coral seas jewellery came up with this week's inspiration avenue challenge theme "frosty" . the first thing that came to my mind was ... *frosty the snowman ... da da da di da di da*. then it all changed when i had a dream.

in my dreams i saw a forest, not unlike lothlorien. the trees were alive with thousands of years of memories and their leaves glowed with elven magic. as i walked deeper into the woods i felt the soft whispers of the ancient trees urging me forward. it was the whispers of an ancient power, of magic... then i saw something glittering in a distance. i walked towards the glittering object, and there it was ... hanging from a branch, a relic of mysticism, of ancient knowledge, of elven magic and of dreams...

" i am lor-Arda* ... i beckon you from the realms of spirits and dreams"

... upon the silver web of this ancient elven relic, were tiny crystals of ice glittering like the finest diamonds in the sun.

and as my hand fell upon the ice crystals, just like magic, everything around lor-Arda crystallized ...

in an instance, the power of crystallization infused my body and i felt a surge of joy and hope...

and i knew that a transformation had begun ...

dreams that seem insubstantial and intangible may someday crystallize into reality ... if one would only follow its beckoning and believe that magic does happen...

*lor-Arda - dream-Realm in elvish

happy pimping! :)

winter shopping extravaganza

there are soooo many wonderful people on bloggie land and they are all my frens!! YEAHHH!!! LOL!! i feel uplifted ... seriously! becos there are good people in this world :)


my fren, small footprints (cute name isn't it :)) at reduce footprints is throwing a winter shopping extravaganza. and i think she rock for doing this! from now until thanksgiving day, all artisans who have handmade shops can go to this link and leave your shop name, your site's URL and your handmade category (eg, jewelry, houseware, soaps) in her comments box. and since reduce footprints is a GREEN blog ... if you make eco friendly stuff ... you are encouraged to state that as well :)) we all like to give something back to mother nature since we've taken so much from her already.

she will then collect all our links, and on thanksgiving day all our links will go live on her blog through winter!! anyone who wants to shop till they drop, can go to her blog ... and find everyone's shops, and all sorts of stuff on her sidebar!! isn't that a great idea and dun you think she is brilliant for supporting handmade artisans and fellow bloggers this way?? so plssssssss ... click on everything on here... it all goes to her winter shopping extravaganza post and put your details down. spread the word too ok!! good stuff are meant to be shared!! :))

there are good people in this world :))

oh by the way ... the annual green web awards are accepting nominations and, if you think my fren's blog, reduce footprints, is worthy, pls put in a nomination for her ok :) Here's the direct link to nominate http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/
and here's reduce footprint's URL :) http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com


i leave you with SILVER DUST...

happy pimping! :)