Whimsical Baubles and Diana Craft Corner

Should have written this in Multiply, but since there is no more blog there..

I have decided to take off some of my items from Whimsical Baubles. They are not sold out, but I think I will move them out into my new shop in Multiply, Diana's Craft Corner.

When first I opened Whimsical Baubles (yes I know I just opened it in September 2012, but actually the planning of the shop has started on July 2012. I just needed to wait for my material to come first since I bought the bulk of them in USA...), I just thought of custom made jewelry.

I love accessories, and tend to make sure that my jewelry, my bag (and even my second, smaller bag for carrying water bottle and umbrella), my hair accessories, my clothes and my shoes are all compliment each other, or at least not clashing with each other. In other hand, I had awful allergic to practically everything (metal, lots of cosmetics and perfume, dust, pollution, seafood, and many more).  The only metalsI can safely wear are gold, platinum and to some degree, silver. No need to say, they are awfully expensive, and when I can afford one, it is often not on the type or style that I like.

So, I started buying pearl and semi precious gemstone to make jewelry for myself. Now, I am not saying my jewelry is totally allergy free, since I am still not using silver, gold or platinum for the clasp and crimp beads. But the idea is that first, I don't wear them all day long, every single day. I match them with my clothes and my mood, so it's like now and then. Second, I can made that the only metal part of the jewelry is the crimp beads and the clasp. The less metal, the less allergy reaction. After all, I can safely wear my watch. Also, silver plating maybe can help some. The rest of the jewelry will be made of silk or nylon plated wire, gemstones and pearl and glass. Last but not least, it will be on the style that I like.

Then I started to think about making some of them for selling and that's Whimsical Baubles.

But like the rest of the blog can tell you, I do love craft. I made doll from felt clothes and wool roving. I put my photos into digital and paper scrapbook. I used to make hair accessories for myself and I found my fingers itch when I saw ribbons. You get the draft.

At first I put some of them in Whimsical Baubles. After all, it's Baubles and not Jewelry. But lately, I found that I had made quite a number of item that's not at all jewelry. I found myself thinking that Whimsical Baubles was supposed to sell handmade jewelry, not all handmade craft that I made.

So, I made Diana's Craft Corner. I took the velvet bookmarks and hair ribbon from Whimsical and will move them to Craft Corner tomorrow. Additionally, I will ad new hair ribbons and clay charms and pendants there =)

If you have time, I hope you will came and visit either store, even if just to browse around =)

Wishing for more time...

Kind of neglecting my store lately...So busy...=( hopefully, soon I will have more time to make new items. I am already having some new designs in mind.

One of them is this crazy lace agate bracelet. I got some nice agate stones and they will looks nice with Swarovski pearls (yes, I know, pearls again, but I am in love with them). The other one is probably a mix of serpentine and Swarovski pearls. And the last one is herringbone pearls.

Herringbone pearls are unique on how they were drilled. The holes, unlike in usual pearls, are not straight, but making an L shape. So, when made into jewelry, the pearl will looks like leaves out of a branch.

I also plan to make pendant and earrings for my Blue Sky bracelet. I have to admit, it is one of my favorite. There is this crazy story about why I decided to put lapis lazuli and pearl together.

One of my favorite game when I was younger was Legend of Mana. If you play it, you will remember that there was this jewel people. One of this jewel people was Elazul, a lapis lazuli, who was searching for his girlfriend, pearl. So when I got both lapis lazuli and pearl, I though, I want to see whether they look good together =p

At first my nick name for that one was "My bracelet for going to museum", lol. I love going to museum, and the colours somehow reminded me of ancient artefacts...Like some lost civilization or some old jewel...nice, understated, but old...

Okay, probably it's just my brain...=p

Back to digital scrapbooking

Still on the scrapbooking, although now I am back to digital for a bit...

Some days, I love those kits with plenty of hand-drawn elements and some days, I love those with plenty of photographed elements. But currently, I am in love with those which has plenty of paper and less elements.

Sound strange, maybe, but I am in the mood of trying my hand on the templates and overlays and masks and edgers that I have bought and left in my hard disk for quite some times...

It's a bit tricky, admittedly, because I have to be able to adjust some settings in photoshop, but I do love the end result...

Now, a bit of quick dictionary, if digital scrapbooking is not your thing. With template and overlay, you can add texture or pattern to your paper. Mask is used to blend or add decoration to your photo or to frame it. Edger can be thought of as a digital version of border puncher.

I also have some awesome glitters that I bought some times ago. And better yet, unlike real glitter, digital glitter won't cause a mess =p

Back to digital, my current favorites are lace (and doilies) and embossed patterns. I would have post some of my results here, but I am too busy currently. I used papers, layouts and elements from different designers, and they all have their own TOU. So maybe later, when I have time to make sure that posting them here won't make me accidentally break a TOU and all designers are credited properly.

In paper scrapbooking, I have came to realize a thing: a bottle of glitter will last you forever!

Found scrapbook supplies store in Jakarta =)

I found scrapbooking supply in Jakarta!

Okay, maybe I was way too late, maybe the store has been there for a year or two, but I haven't been to Jakarta for a long, long time, except for Mangga Dua. Anyway, I found a scrapbook store in Grand Indonesia and Central Park's Gramedia also has quite a collection.

I saw Lost and Found, Teresa Collins, 7 Gypsies, Best Creation, Prima and many more. The collections in both place is quite a lot. They also have ink, gillter spray, template, puncher and so on. Price is from around the same, to about 100% above Singapore's. Singapore's price is from around 25% to 200% above US' price.

A store told me that paper's price is around 10,000 IDR to 26,000 IDR a piece. There is not yet price for every and any items - especially papers - written down, though. So, buyer has to ask the staff for price. That, or be quite sure that no matter what the price is, said buyer doesn't mind =p

Now, depend on how many things I want and what kind of thing I want, maybe I will still prefer importing from US, since the price's difference is quite significant it actually more than cover the shipping fee. Also, while the collections here and in Singapore is quite a lot, it's not as much as those in US' stores. But if what I need is just a paper or five, well, buying locally is a better choice.

Now, back to the collections I saw in Jakarta, there is a number of nice papers. In fact, I felt in love with Best Creation's. I am quite sad though, that they don't have one of my favorite brand, Coredinations. Well, maybe later.

Anyway, the biggest problem with buying in Jakarta that I saw is the transportation. If you went with private car, ignore this. There is no problem. But I went there using public transportation, which often awfully crowded. If I bought paper, I risked my paper got folded on the way. This will be more unlikely to happen if I bought 20 or more papers, because they are thicker together and therefore harder to be folded. But usually, I just bought 10 or below in one go...

scrapbooking pages

So, the other day, a good friend of mine, told me that she was interested on making one, and asked me on how to do so. I am by no mean an expert on that, but I think I will write down what I have learnt so far.

I think the trickiest thing is the price =p First time I am seeing some finished results on store, I thought: Oh nice! What I didn't realize at that time was that if it was my first time doing scrapbook, a page like that could cost me USD50-100 or even more. I am not exaggerating, sadly. A nice puncher costs quite a lot and as a beginner I had none at home =(

Admittedly, my first thought of scrapbooking is a glorified cut and paste =p. In fact, I still think that if I want to make it with as low a budget as possible, cut and paste is the best.

If you want to make a scrapbook, the first thing is selecting the pictures. I saw some people that put emphasis on the moment or the feeling or the memories of the pictures, even if the pictures themselves are not the best shots they have. Some other people put emphasis on the face, and use photos with little or no background visible, because the page is more about the person or the action said person did (like a kid's first step, new baby, etc). My preference is picture with clear background, because I associated the background with my memories and experiences.

There's no minimum or maximum number of photos that can be used on a page, as long as the picture(s) can be displayed nicely on the page.

Next is choosing the paper. For coordinated papers, those that came from the same designer usually definitely had the same style. Better yet, some designer made a set of coordinated papers under a theme. Of course, some people probably prefer contrasting or mix style. I think as long as it's agreed with the pictures and complimented said picture, there's no hard rules. Still, for the first time, using papers from the same theme is the easiest =)

If your budget is low, I think paper with patterns (maybe even glitters) is the nicest. It will give the page some decorations without needing to buy additional elements. You can also buy another paper with a lot of pictures on it, cut them, and paste them on the main paper =)

Then, there's the glue. The glue for scrapbooking, like the papers, supposed to be acid free (and more expensive than normal glue).

That's my first scrapbooking page, made in my beginner course in PaperMarket. Not only I got to know the basic of scrapbooking, I could use their puncher for the butterflies and border =)

For the one above, I was thinking of trying to use template and ink. The only ink that I have is Tsukineko's Versa inkpad, so please excuse the results, since I am not supposed to use ink pad ink with brush for that =p. I also found out that dark background is not exactly supportive to my ink =p

I love frames for my pictures, but putting my pictures on a stock card and cut it seems like a waste, because there's no need for the stock card that was covered by my photos. So I cut a few strips of the plain paper, and glued it on the sides of the photos.

This was not the end results. I plan to use a strip of paper for putting the event's name. Using ready made alphabets probably nicer and easier, but they are not cheap. I still have to buy the archival quality ink pen for writing it, though...