Ahhh!!!!... It finally arrived!!! My very own Big Shot! I really can't wait to get my hands on it.. try it... compare using it to a Sizzix.. Yay!!!!!!!!!

Roast Chicken and Herbs Lunch

A recipe from Martha Steward's EVERYDAY FOOD. Every Sunday, we try to make something special, apart from the norm, nasi and lauk. Today, I decided to roast chicken! Thank Gawd, it turned out great. Love this recipe and very simple too. Takes only 15 minutes to prepare but 1 hr 30 mins to cook! Chicken is marinated with butter, salt and pepper! the rest such as lemon, crushed garlic, rosemary and thymes are stuffed into the chicken. Cook in 245 C. Everybody loved it! Yay! Another fun Sunday lunch!

Making a 6X6 Accordion Album

To make an accordion album is very simple. Usually I use glue stick, it works just fine. But if you are making a bigger album, I would suggest to use liquid glue, any liquid glue that is, it holds much stronger.

Make sure glue is all over the mounting board, especially the edges too!

When cutting off corners, just make sure that the width between the mounting board and the paper is the same length as the height of the mounting board. Just so that corners will look much neater when there are ample space for folding in corners

After applying glue to flap just bring the mounting board forward like so, to minimise the air bubbles from getting in between paper and board

Use scorer to fold in the sides.

This is how my covers will look like when finish.

Now when adding ribbons to albums, adhere end of ribbon with double sided tape,

Bring back and over then glued down again with another piece of double sided tape, the more times you go over the tape, the stronger the ribbon will hold onto the board..

Its very simple. As I intend to decorate this album with light embellishments only, I have only gone over twice with the ribbon, that should be sufficient enough to hold album together.

I like to line pages up this way so i know where i need to have the double tape. This technique will really help when we are doing the star album next time.

Lining up the pages can be tricky. I used to line them up in standing position like this before i stick them together.

But.. I found that if you lay pages flat on the table and align the edges together, there is a better chance of a perfect stick. Practice makes perfect though..

Lastly, pages are then stuck to covers to finish.

Project done! with the most simpliest technique ever for an accordion album!

Hope you find some handy tips here. Please check back for more albums coming soon!

Altered Bubble Gum Mini Tin

My very first altered tin and this is for you, Ning! Remember how Mel used to use the same tin for her ciggies, yeah well, you can use it for something else then..now that you..(ahem). This altered art was very easy to do, took me longer than i thought to finish only because i was taking my time to decide on the paper and colour i wanted to use. I had to pick a theme that was not to flowery (as you know my taste.. sometimes.. it can be too flowery.. so i try to not be this time). Hope you like this one!

Parcels, Parcels, Parcels Today

This is what arrived for me today. Books from Amazon.com and scrapbook supplies from Creativexpress.com. My absolute 2 fav websites at the moment. Creative Express is very efficient with their parcels. Only takes 1 week for parcel to arrive after ordering. Very efficient indeed! Works very well when there is something you need a.s.a.p! hehehe..

Rumah Tanjung

So anyway Mimin and I managed to get away from everything else this morning to spend time at the Spa, Rumah Tanjung, in Damansara Heights (ahem.. its close to home too!) Boy, did I need it! (So did she.. hehehe) Place was so serene and quiet, just the place i wanted to be on a Monday morning! We arrived around 10ish when we served ginger tea followed with a soaking of the feet in serai and lime warm water.. aahhh.. changed into towels for body scrub for an hour, then after soaked in aromatherapy bath with flower petals, last but not least another hour of body massage!! Came out feeling so refreshed and rested! A little time away from the screaming kids is always good for the soul! Time to myself. All in all 3 beautiful well rested hours!! (except for time when hubby called asking where his shirt was..argh!) But it was all good!!

a project by salt

Found these hand crafted notebooks in Bangsar Village today. Couldn't help but bought some just to inspect. Little notebooks like these were just RM15! Offer was 4 for RM50. Not bad, quite competitively priced must say. Often, we use too pricey materials to make our albums, unlike this one, materials used are fairly priced (cheaper). The slightly thicker notebook was only going for RM28! Made from different sizes of ribbons and sweet colours. I am still figuring out if they binded the thicker book themselves, or did they just do the cover. They also had scrapbook albums made from hand, i think, going for RM128! With these kinda pricing, hmm..gotta really look into using cheaper materials or maybe even looking for way cheaper resources altogether. Also they have a website, www.saltbqe.com although think they are still constructing it. Sigh*

Mini Yummy Cupcakes

Mimin and Nadia made this today.. They are determined to make more beautiful cupcakes such as these. They are just too pretty to be eaten! Recipe was for a chocolate cake but Mimin improvised and made it into kinda like a cupcake. It's yummy, i tell you! Icing is not too sweet just right! Think they did a great job with trying. Not bad at all for a first attempt! Keep making more!!!

The American Bazaar Day

Started the day so earlier than usual. Managed to get Nadia out of the house by 7am for school, had to be at Crown Princess Hotel before 8.20am way before the door closes for vendors. When i got there, there were heaps of tables being set up and ofcourse Michelle, the early bird, was standing at ours, preparing for our christmas sale. This time we didn't get to prepare too much, we wanted mainly to market for the new shop in December!! Must say, we did pretty well with that! Managed to make known what the shop will be selling and teaching classes too! People were thrilled to hear that it'll be in Bangsar Shopping Centre by December. We were giving out flyers and name cards, believe it or not we ran out!! We both had fun, most importantly.

Boxes

Gayn attended a making boxes class last month, enjoyed the class so much that she ended up buying additional 2 more box making kits from Laines. So when she came over for Raya, we actually had time to make them. We decided to make boxes in christmas themes to keep little tringkets from the holiday season for memories. Boxes are really cute, brads are used to make boxes look like little suitcases and ribbons as bag straps. The blue box is the one Gayn did in class, the other is done by me. Real easy to do, willl definitely do more. Now am scouting out for empty brown boxes to paint over, until then will i definitely make more. Fun Fun Fun ...

Baby

Scraplifted this layout idea from Ali Edward's blog. Love it! Took the photos of Ariff's crib the day before we were admitted into the hospital. The stickers are Jolees Boutique from Laine's Paperterie, Singapore, day trip in August.

Friends

I absolutely love this photos of us, if frances was in it, it'll be perfect! Another simple layout but here i try to incorporate more my own handwriting. Also what i did was i distressed the pink patterned paper with tim holt's brown distressing inkpad. Find that distressing parts of the layout gives the page a more complete look.

Love

I love this layout. Love the photos! While scrapping this layout, was listening to Andrea Bocelli & Christina Aguilera - Somos Novios! Miss you ning. Wish we could spend more time together. Wish i was closer to home..sob

Extraordinary, Delight, Whimsical

very simple layout. sort of scrap lifted from the mag. love the swirly thingy. i really like to make my very own embellishments just like this one. Ariff's very first jungle gym. he loves playing with his new toy, sometimes both the kakaks fight over this. so funny.. patterned paper from basic grey and rub-ons from k&co

My Boy, My Prince

Another Bohemia design paper. Love them! This time i added thier rub-ons. Absolutely love them! Easy to use! A highly recommended product. The 'milestone' rub-on is from Phrase Cafe, bought from littlescrapbox.com. It was going for US$1.70! A must have. No more cracking head for journaling.

Monster Doodles

The Monster Doodles! I believe this was the first ever Dira drew something. She said that its a monster with eyes and a little bit of hair and smiling too. Dira was drawing this for a while. One after another. This picture was taken in Port Dickson during the Chinese New Year school holiday. I was heavily carrying Ariff at 7 months and decided to pack more of the girls' colour pencils and paper for the trip.

Glow

Another simple layout featuring the glow in the dark eyes of a Koala from Australia. Grandma bought this for Ariff and yes it does glow! It is so cute. Coincidently found glow in the dark alphabets at Toys r us, Midvalley. Only RM15.90! I am pretty ok with sticking non-acid free embellishments if its not directly on the photos.

Shop til' you drop

Just pulled out my 'old' brand new making memories (MM-according to Aning) circle cutter and made my first cut. Easy to use, hassle free but doubt it'll cut well if material is too thick. Love the Basic Grey Girly Elephant paper.

SuperHeRo

Nadira a.k.a 'SuperHeRo' to-the-rescue.. Bought 12x12 paper today, could not wait to scrap it. Its the new Bohemia paper. Absolutely love it! Love how its got te flowers and the curls and swirls round the corners too! Absolutely an easy design to use. As you can see i have added minimal embellishments onto the page, so full concentration is on the 'SuperHeRo' to-the-rescue face.

3 babies

Here i wanted to show how my 3 babies are so different from one another. Nadia the reserve type, Nadira the expressive personality, Ariff the noisy one! They all look pretty some what different from each other, yet they all have the mother's eyes, almond shaped eyes!

This layout was pretty difficult for me to coordinate. I didnt want it to be too feminine or boyish. So decided to go with red. Love red must say!

To Have & To Hold

This is the most ever simplified layout i ever did. Wanted to experiment more with buttons. Used Bazzill buttons here, unfortunately, it is very expensive to buy buttons here in KL and really there is not of a choice either. So here it is my most simple layout of them all. Wanted to show how Ariff loves playing with his legs and toes! This photo was taken when he first started discovering his legs. Buttons, buttons, love buttons!!

Baby Aqiqah Favor 2

Mimin's first attempt to handsewn bags turned out very well. Ended up making one bag (nice bag must say!), few favor bags, and a sachet. Good job, min! Each little favor bags are of different material. The blue is slightly smaller and cheaper than the brown. Price of each favor depends on preferred material. Price ranges from RM15 to RM20 each bag. Great for small gifts and a few other teeny tiny thingies.

Baby Aqiqah Favor 1

Every time i use felt, it reminds me very much for a 'baby-ish' purpose. Using felt to make into a bag was my very first idea! the favor bags are in baby blue with white cloud shape on the front of bag. Have a small selection of other shapes such as little lamb, baby aeroplanes, cars, bus, sailboats, etc to choose from. Satin white ribbon as a handle. Hand stitched the outline of bag with white embroidery cotton thread. The inside is filled shredded floss with customised short notes individually wrapped chocolates and cookies. To top it off, i attached a tag with baby's initials on it which dangles from one of the ribbon handle.

Each bag costs RM15 with contents mentioned. If need to change colour of bags, tags, wordings, etc we are happy to do it. Thanks for looking!

Baby Aqiqah Favors

My sis-in-laws, i must say, they love me, they are always looking out for customers for me. Thank you. They often encourage handmade gifts to their friends and not long after, i get orders for cards or invites or favors. They are ever so sweet, thank you. Yesterday, Intan (sis-in-law) called to ask if i could do baby favors for her nephew in November, to my excitement, "ofcourse" i shouted. Straight away my ideas were swamping my head!! Today, went out to gather materials for making the sample favors. I want to do something different this time, want to go more in detail of the contents in the favors, etc personalised wrapped chocolates, lollies, and anything and everything else that is yummies. Check back to see what i have come up with..

Mini Book inspired by Creating Keepsakes Oct 2006

This mini book only took me half a day to finish. Its so simple thanks to my new tool, Crop-A-Dile. This tool makes punching holes through the ever-so-thick chipboard, easy without a sweat! When spotted this mini book in the Creating Keepsake October issue, could not help but to get right to it. Headed straight to the kitchen to get me-self an empty cereal box, cut it before even finding out the measurements of my chipboard remnants (silly i-know), got too excited there. Darn! so had to make the cover from stratch! No biggy.. did it in no time.. although i still have to re-look into my measurements again. This mini book is a keepsake for adding in a collection of my fav inspirational quotes. After having decided the theme, covering each of the 10 pieces of chipboard with Anna Griffin 12x12 patterned paper with glue stick, stacked in the order i preferred, then punched holes with me-fav Crop-A-Dile, so easy! And it's done. Please have a look, think its a real simple book to do. Try it!

Up, Close and Personal

A friend photographer, Simone, came over to the house snapped pictures of me-kids. A week later, the photos were ready. I was so excited to scrap them. Oh, and the photos were taken in our very own garden. Must say Simone made it look great. Great photos, Simone! I did my very first kids' accordion album titled UP, CLOSE and PERSONAL for both my daughters, Nadia and Nadira. Basically, the album focuses on the different personalities of each of them. Included photos of the different faces of each child and wrote a short note about each face. The idea is to include all the different faces that each make. The theme of Nadia's album is more of a flowery girly kinda album so hence the colours of the album are soft, greeny, pinky and that sort. Nadira's album however contains more of the stronger colours describing her stronger character as compared to her elder sister, Nadia. Both a 8x8 accordion album made out of 10 sheets of 8x16 size of acid free plain white paper, folded in half and scored. This time i glued the pages together. Previously, i used glue stick and double sided tape. More expensive that way. Both the albums, i used King's Bond Glue -Best Japanese Glue- Multipurpose. Unfortunately, the glue does not dry clear and once dried, causes paper to crumple. So, not that great after all. I have also used it to glue the cover pages together. Must say it is pretty strong. Says on bottle 1.1kg costs RM9 bought it from Carrefour. Definitely worth the money and very usable!