Winners of January 2012 Blog Giveaway

At last! I finally found the time today to check all the entries of my January 2012 Blog Giveaway. I used the True Random Number Generator to help me choose the two winners. As you can see from the photos above, the lucky winners are, lucky number 33 and 68!!

Number 33 is NOOR AZAREF NAIM

Number 68 is SITI SARAH OMAR MOHD AZAM

I will contact the both of you soon to get your mailing details so that I can post the handmade cards to both of you soon. Congratulations to both the winners!!

Thank you so much to all who participated in my first blog giveaway for this year. It kinda bring back fond memories of the giveaways I did in 2010...hihihhihi! So many participated in this month's giveaway. About 89 people! Wow! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it  a lot!!

I'll  be posting about the second giveaway for this year soon. I think I already have an idea of what to giveaway for the second round....can't tell you yet.....let it be a surprise!!! hehehe! :)

Husking flowers

Simple husking technique combined with cascading loops in the middle of each petals.

This is the same flower like the pink flower photo at the top with loops inside twisted using a slotted quilling tool.

I did it!!! Finally I am now able to make flowers using the husking technique! I combined it with the combing technique as well. That was how I started it out in the beginning. It helped me get the same size of petals for each flower. You could see the cascading loops in the middle part of the petal which is the start of the husking technique that I did. :) 

I always thought to myself that I could never do a flower like this because it looks so complicated to make. But now, it's no more a problem for me to do it, thanks to the quilling comb :). Now I'm so excited to do more of this technique. But I'm new at it and still need to practice to make it perfect :).

 

Simple husking technique combined with cascading loops, but the colour of paper I used for this flower is a mix of two types of blue.

This is the same flower like the blue flower photo at the top with loops inside twisted using a slotted quilling tool.

An idea sparked by one of my student, Remy gave me the idea of how I could do the husking flower with two different colour paper. I did try making one in the beginning but it didn't turn out nice. I showed it to him and after much discussion about it, he asked me why not I apply the technique I did for the two toned cascading loops for this flower. And that's how it started!! Just like that! I immediately tried it out and tadaaaa!! Here it is! In my favourite colour too! Love it!! Thanks Remy!! :)

This is what is called the Royal flower. A good friend of mine Asma' Ahmad Bahari, invented this twisted loop technique for her husking flowers long ago. I've always wanted to do it but never believed that I could. Until now.....I'm so super excited about it. You can view her Royal Flower technique at her blog called Simple Ryhme. She also did a tutorial on how to make it :).

This is one of my favourites! Love the shape of the flower and the twisted loops inside it. ;). Will definitely practice more and hopefully will come up with new card designs using this technique :).

Quilling students

  Fauzan and Remy

I never actually conducted any formal quilling classes before. I never was much interested in conducting one either. Never really had the time to actually do it seriously. But whenever anyone is interested to learn about quiling from me, I'm more than ready to teach them, informally that is. And this is one of the examples of me teaching a couple of my "informal students" at a local supermarket hihi! This just goes to show that if you are really interested to learn, you can learn it just about anywhere you like.

As long as you have the passion, you have the positive attitude, you can do anything your heart desires. And these two students have all that. It's a blessing for me to teach people who are passionate in what they do.  :)

Haha...Remy put one of my quilled flower on his head as decoration. So funny! :D

Fauzan is a Bachelor of Science in Biology Conservation graduate and currently loves to make handmade pop up cards in his spare time. He now loves to apply quilling on his cards as well. Although he is still new at it, he has his own style of making cards that is in my opinion pretty fun and cool :). 

Remy is a chemical engineer student who is in his final year and currently on his semester break. His best buddy Fauzan has managed to influence him a bit on quilling and now he is very much interested in it. A fast learner and very enthusiastic I must say, just like his best buddy :).

I really had a great time teaching them today all kinds of techniques in quilling. Randomly teaching them the basics on how to create quilled flowers, leaves, stalks, and etc. Remy has even sparked a pretty good idea for me to try out tonight. A new kind of flower using the husking technique! Thanks Remy for the idea! I can't wait to do it :). 

Sometimes, your own students can inspire you and push you to go further. You'll be surprised at the end of the day on the impact they can give you. I've definitely been inspired by these two and I hope I have inspired them as well to quill with a lot of passion :). 

New mini paper shredder

Yay! I got 2 mini paper shredders now. One small one, one big one. I just bought that big one recently from TAMU JAJA KRAF. You can check out the link to the blog HERE if you are interested to purchase one yourself :). You can contact the owner of the blog and request for preorders of the paper shredder. 

I just love this big size paper shredder because I can shred one piece of A4 paper through it, without having to cut the paper in half like I used to with the small mini paper shredder. This saves me a lot of time and energy as well. 

I thought of buying a new one just in case something happens to the small mini paper shredder, at least I'll have a spare for me to make my quilling paper. It's not easy to find a supplier who sells this shredder anyways, so when I saw the advertisement, I just quickly bought one without any hesitations. I love it so much! :)

Combing new leaf

I've been playing around with my quilling comb lately and came up with an idea to do a different kind of leaf design yesterday. There are 5 different colours of green shredded quilling strips in one leaf. I've combined many different colours in one shape before so it's nothing new. But.......

I love how the tiny loops inside the leaf looks, arranged one on top of the other. Unlike the looping style I've done before where the loops were arranged side by side.  Just like the flower I made for this card. You can see the difference there right? The way the loops are arranged are bit different from the leaf. Although this technique is a bit difficult to do but the final part is easier to pull out of the quilling comb itself. So I like this technique better just because of that. 

Hope to make other designs with this technique if I have the time. I can only experiment during my spare time now these days. Don't have much time to play! But when I do, it's great fun! :).

January 2012 Blog Giveaway

It's been a year since I last did a giveaway at my blog and this year I would like to start it again but it won't be like the blog giveaway I did in 2010. Although I will be doing it every month but I will only pick 2 winners per giveaway so that I will have ample time to prepare the stuff to be given away each month.

For January, I have these 2 cute little quilled lovebirds cards to be given away to 2 lucky winners. I can't wait to see who will be winning these two cards at the end of this month! ;)

OK! Now, let's check out how you can win these cards :).

1. Anyone can join this giveaway. Blogger, facebooker, twitters.....practically anyone from all over the world. :)

2. Just make a post about this giveaway at your blog or at your facebook or at your twitter. If you don't have a blog or facebook or twitter account, then just write your details at the comment box.

3. Write this details at the comment box : 

    - Your full name
    - Your email address
    - The link to your post (if any)

The deadline for this giveaway is on 30th of January 2012. Winners of this giveaway will be picked randomly. I will be making an announcement on 31st of January 2012 to declare the winners. 

Thank you for participating in this giveaway and all the best everyone!! ;) Do share!!! 

Multicoloured flowers

After my first try at combing two different colours of scrap quilling strips in my previous flower design, I got another idea of combing 5 different colours of scrap quilling strips in one flower. The idea came about when I was packing my multicolour shredded quilling paper. I have 5 different colour packs and I made 5 different coloured flowers using colours from each pack. I even made a flower from the multicolour green quilling strip pack! haha! First time ever making a flower using different shades green colour.

The shape of the petals are a bit different from the previous flower design. I made the marquise shape instead of the teardrop shape. I like both shapes the same. No favourites. :) Each shape is special in it's own way. 

Using scraps of quilling strips

If you are just like me......someone who uses a paper shredder to make quilling strips, I'll bet you have a lot of scraps of these quilling strips available from all the shredding. I know I do! Lots of them!! Currently I have 2 garbage bags full of them! haha! 

I don't like to throw the good scraps of quilling strips away each time I shred paper. So I keep them in case I have ideas for future projects. The scraps of quilling strips can still be used but they had to be processed first. I had to sort them out one by one and cut out the ends that were not usable and used the good parts of the quilling strips in order to make these flowers you see above. 

I just got the idea of how to do it this afternoon and kept on making them because I loved how they looked. Each flower has 2 different colour of quilling paper. Each colour paper were cut the same length and were joined together piece by piece. Although it took a little extra time for me to join each piece of the short quilling strips together to get one long strip of quilling paper, I didn't mind it at all. It was all worth the trouble.

So, after I formed a long strip of quiling paper, I used the combing technique to create these flowers. 

The best part of this little project was that I felt good being able to finally reuse the scraps of quilling strips. ;) Waste not, want not ;) 

A small donation

Yesterday I received a lovely email from Miss Jennifer Tigges who is the owner of the blog "A Letter A Day Keeps The Sadness Away".  She approached me with her idea about sending a letter a day for an entire year. I was really fascinated by her idea and to my surprise she asked if I was willing to donate some of my cards for her project. It doesn't matter how many cards I want to donate....it can be just one, or two or three or how many my heart desires.  And so I immediately said yes :).

In return for the donation, she will write about my handmade cards at her blog and she will write about me as well to those who will be receiving my handmade cards. I have no idea who will be receiving them, but I hope whoever they may be, it will bring much joy and happiness to the person receiving it. To be able to put a smile on someone's face is something that money can't buy. ;)

I do have some collection of cards that I have put aside simply for giveaways. So this is just another good channel for me to give other than doing blog giveaways. I love participating in this type of project and it makes me happy to be able to donate my handmade cards for a good cause. So, if you are a cardmaker yourself and would like to donate some cards to Jennifer, you can do so by contacting her at her email address: jtigges@mac.com    :). Do visit her blog too if you wish to find out more about her project ----> A Letter A Day Keeps The Sadness Away

Thank you everyone for stopping by! ;)

Really Reasonable Ribbon's 2 year Blogoversary Giveaway

I'm going to start the new year by entering a blog giveaway! hihi! Before I start doing one myself for my card blog, I thought this would be a good idea for me to start off the new year by taking this opportunity to try my luck at winning these lovely goodies from Really Reasonable Ribbon. 

All those ribbons, pearl dots etc looks so yummy and the most yummy of  is definitely the Scor-Buddy!!! Gosh! I've been wanting to get me one of those for quite sometime now. It's great for scoring cards and there are lots of things you can do with it. I just want it so bad since last year but never got a chance to win it whenever I entered a giveaway that offers such product. Hopefully I'll get lucky this time, who knows but if not, at least I gave it a try ;).

If you would like to give it a try too, check it out at their blog link here ---> REALLY REASONABLE RIBBON BLOG GIVEAWAY. 

Happy New Year 2012

Hello dear readers!

I hope it's not too late for me to wish Happy New Year 2012 to all my readers! Today is the first day of a brand new year for all of us and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude for all your continuous support for this blog throughout 2011 and for still sticking around with us for 2012 :).

Although I didn't blog as much in 2011 compared to 2010, for me 2011 was an awesome year for me nonetheless. A lot has been achieved by Lin Handmade Greeting Cards and I think I've learned so much last year personally. But there is so much more to improve creatively and in business. 

For this new year, I've so many things planned and hopefully be able to carry out each plan that I have made for this blog. One of it is to bring back one of my most favourite activity which is "Blog Giveaways". It probably won't be as big as I did in 2010. It will just be a small one that I do each month for my dear loyal readers. I'll blog about it soon enough :).

A lot of people are still not aware that I no longer take personalised card orders. Yes, it's true. I'm taking a break from taking personalised card orders for a while. Not sure for how long. Perhaps until I am ready to do it again. Truly sorry to disappoint those who are interested in personalised cards from me. I hope you understand. 

I want to concentrate on other new projects for this new year and taking out personalised orders from my work list is a must to make the new projects successful. I hope to be able to make ready made cards instead and hopefully that will be something that you will like. :) Hopefully ;).

Here I would like to apologize to those who's emails or messages in Facebook or in blog I did not reply or replied so late. Surely it was not intentional. Truly sorry. Due to technical problems sometimes these things happened and your messages did not get to me or was not replied as fast as you hope I would. Hopefully this year, I will be able to avoid such problems and things will run smoothly for all of us.

Lastly, I do hope to get your continuous support and positive feedback so that I can improve for the better. Again, I wish everyone a very happy new year and all the best!! ;)