My first twist circle pop up card

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Hello everyone!

In continuation from yesterday's post, today I want to share another Eidul Fitri card that I made this year. This one is a little bigger in size compared to the other design that I blogged about yesterday that is only half the size of this card. I only made two Eidul Fitri card designs this year and as I said in yesterday's post, this year's card designs are all about flowers and I chose the Rose flower as the subject matter for this one.

I also made a pop up for this card and the thing is, the mechanism for this one is similar to the one I made for the other Eidul Fitri card. When I was learning how to make the pop up twist from the various YouTube tutorials, I found out that the base for the pop up twist is the same as the base for the pop up twist circle. The only difference is how the position of the circle is glued to the base of the pop up. They both twist as they pop up but in a different direction and I find that to be so interesting!! That's why even though I don't have the die cut for this pop up, I still challenged myself to do it manually. The pop up twist is definitely easier to do compared to the pop up twist circle. I almost gave up doing it in the beginning but my many experiments finally became successful in the end. So NEVER give up trying!! :D

I just love these Rose flower die cuts from Die-namics. I have two different types of Rose flower die-cut patterns, but this one is my favourite. Once the patterns are cut, they need to be embossed in order to get that look similar to of a Rose flower.

Another thing I love doing whenever I make my handmade cards is sewing beads on the card. I think this is the first time I'm sewing these beads this way. Usually I would sew them on a square or rectangular shaped paper, so it's a first for me to sew them along the lines of this oblong shaped paper. 

Although I didn't make any quilling flowers, I did however made some quilling sprigs to use as part of the decoration for the flower arrangement. Not too many of them though, as I don't like seeing them too overcrowded. They seem to blend well with the Roses ;). 

You could see that I used a Rose pattern corner punch to punch out the corners for the pop up insert inside the card and also for the front layer of the card. I really like this puncher because not only I can use it to punch out Rose pattern on the corners but I can also cut out pieces of Roses with it. And I used them to decorate on the twist circle pop up. I love playing with the Rose puncher and see what else I can do with it for future projects. It's nice to buy a puncher and to find out that it can be used for multiple of things, not just one. :)

Do check out the video of the card below. Thank you so much for watching!

Salam Aidilfitri pop up twist card

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Salam Ramadhan everyone and hello again!

It's already June! That means I missed out blogging in April and May. Sigh! To think that I wanted to blog everyday this year and end up not even blogging every month. The guilt is always there, ok!!.HAHA! Oh well, hope to do better next time!! So today I want to share about what I've been up to the past couple of months. 

This year's Raya card design is all about having fun! Fun means that I just don't think too much about the Raya theme and just focus on how to make it look pretty. Previously my Raya cards had to have Ketupat or Mosque as the subject matter. But this year, I decided to do something that has nothing to do with Raya at all. So it was all about flowers! Lots of them! 

I was thinking of doing quilling flowers, but they are a bit time consuming and I didn't have enough time to do it this time. Maybe next year, I'll be more prepared, if I start really early. As you all know, I was a bit distracted early this year with the knitting, weaving and crocheting, which took my mind off from paper craft for quite some time. When I got the order to make the Raya cards, I had to shift the mode from playing with yarns and focus on paper craft. Somehow it didn't turn out as well as I thought it would in the beginning. I had a hard time deciding what kind of design I wanted to do versus what I can do.

What is certain is that the Raya card has to have a pop up inside no matter what. I've always made sure that my Raya cards have pop up inside. For my Raya cards this year, I wanted to use a pop up mechanism that I learned from various YouTube tutorials. It's the Pop Up Twist mechanism that really interest me this time. I watched a few tutorials before deciding on how I would to do it. Because watching different tutorials means that different teachers will give me different tips on it, so it's always wise to watch more than one tutorial so that I will have a better understanding of how to do the pop up. 

I also thought of my craft punches. I have lots of them. But not enough for a showcase though! LOL! So, the idea is to figure out how to incorporate all these craft punches in one card design. That of course took me a lot of time to figure out, hahahahaa! I wanted to make a simple design, nothing too complicated because I need to make a lot of the cards. So if it is too time consuming, I have to think of something else to do. 

To be honest, decorating the card with the punched out flowers and leaves are not that hard to do and not time consuming at all. The only reason why it was time consuming was because I embossed them. The embossing took so much of my time. I embossed hundreds of the flowers and leaves. I had to do that because the embossed look was so much better than if it was not. So, for the sake of beauty, I sacrificed my time and energy. HAHA! It was worth it though! :D

OK, the butterflies, need not be embossed....so I just stick them on the pop up spirals I made. The pop up spirals were cut by hand by the way. No die cuts for that. 

I think I used about 11 punches for this card alone! That's the most I've used for any of my handmade cards before. I really made used of them this time, HAHA! As you can see, I had to make the pop up twist from scratch. No die cuts. I've seen on YouTube how they use die cuts for this pop up and it's so easy when you have that at hand. But it's also good to learn how to do it yourself. It's more challenging and interesting. Keeps the brain working you know.

Last but not least.....my love for writing my own sentiments for my handmade cards. In a way, it's my way of forcing myself to write with the brush. It gives me the practice I needed. You know how it is if you don't get the practice every now and then, you tend to lose the skill. 

All in all, making this card was a good lesson for me. I learned a lot in the progress. It's always good to try new things and work the brain a bit. Do check out the video of the card below. You can see how the pop up twist works inside the card. Thanks for watching! ;)

Miniature hand knitted sweaters on Christmas cards

Hello everyone!

I'm sure a lot of you are in a holiday mood and can't wait to celebrate Christmas that is just around the corner. I've just finished making these cute pop up Christmas cards for my friends. Looks like I'm late again and the cards would probably arrive to them after Christmas.

I had it all planned out so well but God knows best. I thought this year I could get my Christmas cards done early and have them arrive to my friends a few days before Christmas. But unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned. Something horrible happened to my Mom and all my work had to be put to a stop! My Mom fell in her bathroom and hit her head on the floor a couple of weeks ago. She had to be warded for about a week and is on the road to recovery now, alhamdulillah.

It was really a difficult time for me and my Mom. None of us has ever experienced something like that before so it was an eye opener and we learned a lot from the experience. I hope to never have to go through all that again. We are indeed very very careful now. 

Actually I started making the knitted sweaters before the accident. I also made the Christmas cards as at the same time as well. But I didn't get the chance to blog about it earlier or completed the whole card because of the accident. So today I finally get to complete them all. There are actually 2 different designs of knitted cards that I managed to do for Christmas this year. The other one I will share with you here in another post soon.

I made the simplest pop up Christmas tree ever! In fact I think this is the simplest pop up I've ever made for any card. When you are in a hurry and do not have enough time, you just gotta do with what you can. I like it, and that is what is important. No point doing something you don't like right??

I can't believe that I made those tiny sweaters! They are so cute! I'm still a beginner so the pattern is very basic and very easy to do. I couldn't find any tutorial on how to make them so I just wing it! Can't believe I manage to pull it off! Hope to learn more on how to make a more realistic looking miniature sweaters in future. 

Combining French knitting and quilling on a card #2

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Hello again everyone! Looks like I've been making this knitted quilling heart card again this month. In fact I made quite a few of them for some old friends on their birthday and some extra for stock. I really enjoyed making this design because I get to play with vortex coils again and of course not forgetting the knitting!! Obsessed with knitting nowadays haha!

The reason why I'm blogging about this one is because, I've made some changes to the design especially the colours of the knitted quilling heart and also the pop up hearts. I decided to make it look more bright and cheerful to match the colours of the pop up hearts.

The knitted heart now has flourescent pink and red Lily yarn combined together. The previous one has soft pink and red Lily yarn. 

I remembered having this really cute bling bling heart stickers and I couldn't resist not sticking them on the pop up hearts. I also added those punch out hearts to add more different sizes of hearts and crowd it up a bit. The more the merrier they say. :D

I didn't put those dialogue boxes anymore with wordings in them, instead I added a Happy Birthday sticker on the knitted quilling heart. It really matches and I really love this one a lot compared to the one I made previously. It's just so cheerful to look at. Have a look at the video of the card below and you'll see what I mean. Thanks! :)

Combining French knitting and quilling on a card

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When I first started learning how to do French knitting last month, I always had a thought at the back of my mind about how to use it as part of the decoration on my handmade cards. If I could combine it with quilling that would be even better. So the thought never left my mind. I knew I had to combine them somehow, one day. 

So I did some research on what people would use the French Knitting (i-cords) for. I was really surprised at the things that people can make with it. However I didn't find any examples of the i-cords used for cards, but I did find that there are people who made hearts, ribbons, stars and many other shapes with it. So, it's all up to your imagination to design whatever you fancy and make it your own.

This month I have a birthday card to make for a dear friend of mine and she's really crazy about hearts!! She loves hearts so much I tell ya! Haha! So I thought the ideas I had for this birthday card couldn't have come at the right time for her. In my previous blog post, I've already shown in it some photos of the i-cords that I used to make heart shapes with. See the photo below :

As you can see, I used Lily yarns to make the i-cord. Two different colours knitted together, to show contrast. I have lots of Lily yarns left from my previous projects, so I love the fact that I can use them up for making knitted hearts. There was lots of trials and errors before I could get that particular size. Since Lily yarns are not that thick, I had to double it to get that size.

After that I kept thinking of what shapes of quilling that would be suitable to arrange in the middle of the heart. I thought of using the quilling vortex coils because ever since I made a video of how to make them, I myself have never actually used them as decorations for any of my handmade cards. So it was great that I could use them now for this one. I made lots of them, just small sized ones in different shades of red and rose to match the colours of the knitted heart.

Usually for all my handmade quilling cards, I would use shredded quilling papers, but this time around I decided to use 5 mm standard quilling papers that I bought some time ago. The vortex coils look really neat when quilled with this paper compared to the shredded papers because the shredded papers don't have that smooth finish on the edges. So I really love the look of those vortex coils! 

As for the background decorations, I wanted to use the embroidery threads and create a pattern by sewing on the card. It's a quick, easy and simple way to beautify and fill up the empty spaces. It was a lot of fun sewing it.

I'm really excited about the pop up hearts that I used for the card! I bought it from the diy shop and it's really wonderful. So easy to use and saves me a lot of time. All that is needed to do is just paste it inside the card and then I could randomly add on more punch out hearts and sentiments on it to make it my own. There's just so many ways to make it different, again it's all up to our imagination whether we want it simple or elaborate.

I hope to make more of this card soon. It's fun to make and it can be used for more than just one occasion. That's what I love about it. Hope my friend loves it as much as I do!! Need to post it as soon as possible! :D :D

By the way, do check out the video below and see how the card pops up lots of hearts inside it! Thank you!! :)

Sweet pink and blue card in a box birthday card

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Second card design in August! Woohoo! Excited about that since I only managed to make just one in July! LOL! Been busy with other projects, I hardly have the time to make cards like I used to back in the days. It seems that making quilling kits is more in demand nowadays and preparing them do take a LOT of my time. I also have other work to do that keeps me away from the craft table. However I do hope to have more time to spend on designing cards if possible this month. I also have to make a few birthday cards for birthdays that's coming up soon. Gosh....there's just so many things to do and so little time. 

This card was requested by someone who ordered the tri-shutter card that I made in July. I was supposed to get this one done at the same time but I was just too busy at the time to do it. Luckily for me that I got me a very understanding client. She gave me all the time that I needed to get it done. 

You know it's not that easy to get new ideas for handmade cards sometimes. You get stuck halfway through and start staring at it, hoping for a miracle to happen. But sometimes the ideas just flows like water. Well in this case.....I got stuck in the beginning and later on it just flows non stop. I haven't been making any card in a box for quite sometime....I did however made lots of them last year. They can be pretty challenging sometimes to create as there are so many sides to decorate on them. And they all have to match and harmonize. 

I did however get a lot of help making this card by using die-cuts that I bought some time ago. So I don't have to spend too much time cutting everything by hand or make them myself from scratch. All I had to do was to just figure out how to match them altogether in one card. Find the same colour combinations and matching theme and then BAM!! It's done! You just have to know what fits where and enhance them to make them look fancy with the sticker and bling blings.  But I did however do a little hand lettering to write the name of the birthday girl and her birth-date as per request. 

Do check out the video of the card design below and see how the card opens and closes. Thank you so much for watching :).