Smiles and Trumpets

Hello fellow bloggers! I know it's been a little whilee since I last posted but school and cross country is making me extremely busy.. sigh oh well. It's all good for me, right? Or so people tell me. :)

Last Saturday, September 15th was by brother's birthday. Yayyy. So I made two cards for him.
Here they are:

 

This is the front view of the first card. I think it's sooo adorable and cute. Plus, it was pretty easy to make! As long as you have cardstock, scrapbook paper, a hole puncher, glue, and scissors, you're set to go. And also it's pretty customizable with the hair. :)

 This is the card opened up through the back. It's full on giving you that :D smile!
And it says: "You're never fully dressed..."

 

"Without a SMILE! (:"

Here's the inside, continuing on with the little phrase. I had my mom and dad and sister sign this card as well. And it's still smiling happily from the inside too :D

 This is the second card I created. Originally, the orange paper I used was just a plain strip, but since I decided it was too boring, I just added little black dots to spruce it up a bit.

I drew the trumpet a little bit cartoon-y styled and just colored it in with colored pencils. The white scalloped edge I did by using these lovely craft scissors. I liked the turnout of the whole thing!

In addition to the two cards I also made a quilled letter "G" for him because that's the first letter of his name. I'll put that into another post later.

For now, that's it. So keep crafting!

- CindyC.

 

DIY: Wire Wrapped Wrose Wring

Hey theree bloggers :) Hahaa did you like that alliteration in the title? I know you did.

Anyways, I'm here to show you guys the new accessory that I made for myself. I do love hand-made jewelry. It just adds a little touch of personality to it. It was so simple to do and it doesn't really matter what gauge wire you use. Thanks to that, since I only have 26 gauge, and usually the nicer rings end up using wire around 18 gauge. I think the ring is super cute and fun. And the silver makes it pretty cool. I lovee it <3

So here it is:

Excuse my long nails... heh.

How very artsy. I love the contrast of the metal and the rock. And also the colors. Cool.

But don't you guys think this is cute? Because I do! And I love how easy it was to make. I didn't even really have to use pliers or tweezers.

Enjoy crafters,
- CindyC.

May2012 Designs

Hi! This is going to be the second "installation" of my fashion illustration series. I know I really should design more... but sometimes I'm just not inspired. sigh. I hope I can get back to that soon. Maybe I'll try to crank something out sometimes this week.

Anyways, enough of my babbling; here are the two designs that I came up with in the month of May.

This one was drawn on May 15th. As you might be able to tell, it was inspired by penguins. She's wearing a sort of menswear-inspired ensemble. Her top is a sleeveless blouse with a coral-colored Peter Pan Collar and white buttons going down the middle. She has a charcoal sash around her waist and innocent, white, lace shorts. Her heels are also the same color as the collar, taken from the color I think of when I think of penguin feet. The shape of the shoe is also taken from the shape of their feet.

This one was drawn a couple days after the last one -- on the 19th. My inspiration was Dory from Finding Nemo because I really liked the pattern and the colors of Dory. It's such a cool graphic design and the blue, black, and yellow really go well together. This was meant to be a sporty-type dress, so that's why she has her hair pulled back, cool sunglasses and tennis shoes. I'm personally really proud of this design :).

Thanks for reading... and start illustrating! (:
- CindyC.

DIY TOMS Wallet

Hey bloggers! I recently created a wallet out of the TOMS flag. You know, that rectangular piece of canvas? Yeah. :) I'm actually pretty proud of it, and I just thought I'd show you guys.

This first picture here shows the full view of the entire wallet.

 

Here's the closed version of the wallet.

 

And finally, the inside of the (proudly!) handmade TOMS wallet.

I know there's also the other version of the TOMS flag, which is actually a little bag, but I just thought I'd use the "flimsier" one first since it was the first time and I didn't know whether it would turn out okay. If you can tell, my stitchwork isn't exactly the cleanest and the neatest. I just got lazy and I'm just generally bad at sewing!

At any rate, I hope you liked the wallet. :)

Create your own!

- CindyC.

Summer Vacay 2012

Hello hello! Yes, I know it's been a while! I've been off in Hong Kong for two months. I have relatives there so I go there every couple of years. I'm sorry I haven't been able to post anything. I do still have a few things to show you all though :). For now, I'll brief on the trip.

There were so many things we did there. The best part about Hong Kong? Family that I rarely see. A close second? The food of course :). There are so many delicious desserts to eat in Hong Kong. I ate mostly the asian-ified desserts since I can easily get Western desserts in the U.S. anyway. There was a lot of walking around in street markets and town centers and parks and all that. Even though Hong Kong is so small, there is so much to do! Here are some key days/points of my "journey."

July 1: This year was the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China from Britain so it was sort of like the Fourth of July here. I happened to be out with my cousins that day in Causeway Bay, and there were beautiful (and colorful!) fireworks. One of them had the number "1" in the middle!

July 5 - 10: My family and I decided to join of those tours to Korea for five days. We had a lot of traditional Korean food there and had little snacks at the street vendors. We also went to KBS -- which is the place where they broadcast tv shows from I think. Next was the Seaweed Museum where the guide went through the process of making seaweed. There were also a bunch (9 to be exact) of different flavors that we could sample. There was also this new thing with seaweed mixed in chocolate. It was quite an odd taste. Then there was also a lot of shopping and walking around involved and sightseeing from the tour bus. We went on one of the trains as well and it was so slow but I guess the view was nice. After that, we went to some sort of park with a lot of funny-looking totem poles and little clay sculptures and things like that. We then went to the Suncheon Bay Eco Park and spent some time there walking around and using sticks to pick up tiny crabs and such. The next day, we spent at the Yeosu Expo. It's a much smaller scale of awesome compared to the Shanghai one, we were told, but I thought it was pretty cool. The theme that year was based around water and the sea, and how it's so crucial to life. That was pretty much the main point of the trip.

August 3: My cousins and I went to the Disneyland in Hong Kong. Even though it's pretty small, the rides there are nice and the lines are wayy shorter! We went on some of the better rides twice or thrice in a row! That was how short the lines were. We stayed from early morning until the firework show... even though it was raining pretty hard! Super fun trip with the lovely cousins :)

So yeah. That was a "briefing" of my trip haha. That was a little bit long, don't you think? Oh well. It was two months after all.

Stay crafty and fun my artists!
- CindyC.

January2012 Designs

Hey! :) So I've decided that I'm going to share some of my fashion illustrations/designs here that I draw on my moleskine. It's one of those 3.5inches wide by 5.5inches tall black ones with the leather-y covers. I do love it a lot, but I don't put it to use very often. I really should illustrate more in them.

So for this "series" I guess I could call it, I'm going to split the designs by month. This post will be about the designs I drew in January. I know, way back, but as always, better late than never! :)

This is the first design that I drew in my little notebook. It was drawn on the 24th of January. Wow that's a long time ago. Well, my inspiration for it was a Christmas tree. The yellow part is kind of like the star on top while the green is the actual tree. The red is just for symbolizing Christmas. I was actually pretty proud of this one afterwards. :)

Now this one, was for celebrating the year of the dragon in the Chinese Zodiac. I have no idea what the mark on the mark is and I can't get it off! But anyways, she's wearing gold and red, the two lucky colors in Chinese culture and I was hoping some of the structure of the dress symbolized a dragon -- the back representing the tail. I feel like it's a little bit on the plain side and I should have added more detail. It was drawn on the 28th of January.

For me, this one was a little bit difficult to draw. Her legs seemed a little awkward and the hood was a little hard to get right. Well the color of the coat/cape is a light tan that is like the hide of the polar bear and there's white fur lining on the edges of it. The inside shirt and skirt represent that the underside of a polar bear's fur is black. I thought it turned out successful enough and I like it :) This one was drawn on January 29th.

Well I hope you liked them... feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think. Give me something to improve on! :)

Thanks,
- CindyC.

Blooms on Lace

Hey! I am finally uploading the card I made for Mother's Day!

I know, I know. It's really pretty late considering that Mother's Day was exactly two whole weeks ago, but I just hadn't had a chance to take the picture and write the post so here it (finally) is :) Besides, it's never too late to appreciate mom <3

This time, unlike last time, I didn't really follow a template. I just combined different ideas seen on the internet and went with it. I'm actually pretty proud of this card. It'd be nice to play around with stamps some time though.

So since my mom bakes, I just stole one of her doilies and cut two quarters of the doily out. I think the effect it has against the light pink paper is pretty cute and soft. That became a sort of a background for the bright flowers. I hand cut them so they looked a little rough and casual and I crinkled the edges of each, well, petal I guess you could say. I really like the color scheme. I thought everything matched really well. The browns enhanced the brighter colors and make it pop. The grass I also hand-cut and the "Mother" part I wrote myself as well. Overall, I'm happy with it.

Keep crafting,
- CindyC.