Lamenting silk thread...

I am quite anxious. I got an order where I need silk thread, and my order from Japan hasn't arrived yet.  Usually, I bought mine from USA or Singapore, and stock up more than I need, but I am out of the white one and unfortunately, that one is the one that I need =(

I do try locally, if any sell the brand that I usually used, but so far I can't find any.

In general, I do have a love-hate relationship with silk thread. While silk thread makes the finished jewelry looks nice and has a pretty lustre, they have to be stretched overnight first before being used. My first try on this, I didn't stretch the thread long enough and in a week, my bracelet has been stretched out of shape.

Also, usually silk thread is used when you want to make knots between beads. The knots has to be tight and just exactly beside the beads. Now, imagine making a necklace. Half the way to finish, you made one knot that is not exactly beside the bead. You have to cut the entire necklace, stretch a new thread and begin again. Not to mention cutting open the necklace is not easy, because there're many knots that are just beside the beads ><.

Cleaning jewelery

I often hear that  to clean out your jewelery is to send it to the jewelerer and let he or she clean it for you. But how if the jewelery is not made of silver and gold? And how if it's not an expensive jewelery, you just particularly in love with it?

The thing is, there is no metal, except perhaps stainless steel and pure 24k gold, that will not change color sooner or later. In fact, the reason I owned a jewelery polisher is because of my platinum necklace. It's a good necklace made of high degree of platinum, but it is also older than me. And after 20 something years, I noticed that some of the link has blacken. 

I considered cleaning it in the jewelerer, but at the same time, I also have a nice metal necklace, Japan made, hypo-allergenic somehow, that had became blackish instead of it's original rose gold color. And unlike the platinum one, I am not sure gold store will want to clean this necklace or that the cost of cleaning it even worth it. So I bought jewelery cleaner, and never regret it since. 

A lot of gemstones are actually fragiles, so cleaning them with ultrasonic machine is out of the questions. But most of them can be clean at home with warm water and mild dish soap, and dried off with soft cloth or tissues. If you do this, take extra care when you are cleaning pearls, because they are easily scratched. 

If the jewelery is knotted with silk thread, the thread has to be totally dry first before the jewelery was worn again. 

For cleaning off metal part, polishing clothes can be easily gain and the prices are quite reasonable as well. There are polishing clothes for silvers, golds, etc. 

Simple, but totally work =)

My herringbone pearls bracelet

Sometimes ago, I bought herringbone drilled pearl. In case you don't know, this is pearls, usually freshwater, which are drilled with one hole on the top like usual, but one hole in the side. If they are stringed, they will looks like herringbone or in my opinion, leaves in a branch.

Maybe because of the difficulty in drilling them, because I imagined it will be harder to make sure the holes meet inside and so on, so far those herringbone pearls that I found are more expensive than the usual pearls with the same level of grade and shape.

Also, those that I saw usually more on the rice shaped, or flat sided rice shaped - this is sometimes a generous approximation, because often they looks just irregular for me.

Mine, besides being rice shaped, also have natural groves on it and either C or D grade. Actually, I am leaning to D.

When I look at them individually, to be honest, they are not special pearls or anything. I got many better pearls. But since what interest me on them from the start is the shape of the drilled holes, I started to make them into a bracelet anyway.

I estimated I will need around 32 of them for a bracelets. This is actually more pearls than if I made the usual pearls bracelet. I didn't realized that the angle of the pearls mean I need even more pearls. Luckily, I have bought more than what I first thought I would need.

Halfway on making them, I found out that although individually they are nothing special, strung together, they are beautiful =)

They didn't miraculously changed into A grade, round pearl with no surface groves. But put together, they gave a nice lustre and the groves are less than visible. Or maybe that's because the first thing that caught my eyes is the fact that this bracelet has a totally different, dare I say unique, shaped than my other pearls bracelets.

It also look thicker, therefore, expensive =)

All in all, I am more than satisfied. I even started to hunt for more herringbone drilled pearls. I want a  matching necklace =p

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...

ways I can save on my digital scrapbooking supply =)

Found some ways to safe money in making digital scrapbook =)

1. This is the most obvious, hunt for freebies and sales.

So far, the one I encountered the most for freebie is quickpage. If you are new to digital scrapbooking, this is basically means a page that was already decorated, with an empty spot where you can put your picture in.  But, some designers are very generous and they often gave a small add on kits for free or even the entire big kit for a limited time. The only problem with this is that I have to check the sites practically everyday =p Some of the freebies came from newsletters, some from facebook's pages and some from the store websites.

2. Get free patterns and styles online

The other day, I want glitter. I have this page that supposed to be a bit glamorous. I have done some different pictures of that same holiday's moments in paper scrapbooking, and I want to make my digital one looks a bit like that, with glitter and dark colors. Unfortunately, while I have lots and lots of glitters, I had no glitters style yet.

Fortunately, when I tried to google for free glitter style, I found quite a lot of them for photoshop. In fact, I found a lot of free styles, not only glitters. I think they are actually made more for making websites rather than scrapbooking, but some of them actually looks just as nice in scrapbooks as the one sold in online stores.

The same thing goes for pattern. There are a lot of free patterns online that actually can be used as substitute for those sold in stores.

Granted, if I want something specific, I will still buy it in scrapbook store. But if I just want some simple styles or patterns, and not my heart set on, for example, the plaid pattern that has to be like that and has to have that color, then I just browsed around for some free one =)

3. Free brushes.

This is quite useful for a few things that I want. For example, lace. Unfortunately, these free brushes are sometimes on the shapes of a part of the whole thing. Like on the lace, it's a piece of lace and if I want to make the whole long lace, I have to use the brush over and over and over again.

So while it's free, and sometimes I found lace on the shaped that I didn't find in store, this one actually cost me a lot time and patience.

4. Making my own mask

This one is actually thanks to my friends, Luc, who studied design. She taught me how to make my own mask using brushes.

Again, like the lace thing above, this has a benefit and a downsides. In one hand, it's practically free, since I can used photoshop's own brushes or get a free brush online. The shaped of the mask will also fit my picture perfectly (sometimes the masks that I bought hide this part that I want to show or show that part that I want to hide), because I can costume made it for each picture.

In the other hand, it costs me quite a lot of time to make.

First attempt at Kirigami

Sometimes ago, I found a book of kirigami in daiso. Kirigami is a Japanese paper cutting art but of course, the book is nothing complicated. It has some beginner type of projects, printed on the beautiful papers, and all you have to do is 'just' cut it. Still, it's only 2 SGD, and I can spend quite sometimes
making all that shaped, so I count that as a good buy =)

Cutting the papers is not as easy as it looks. Some of the part that I have to cut has tricky shapes or quite small or both. The book suggest using a certain type of cutter. I don't have it, unfortunately,  but I do have it's sibling which I used for scrapbooking =)

Yet, it's also not as difficult as it seems. I think I should be able to make it neater, but I don't think my results are that bad either =)

My love affair with scrapbooking

I love scrapbooking. Sometimes, especially when I saw the content of my wallet, I hope I am not.

My first experience with scrapbooking is thanks to a Groupon's coupon. I have seen it before, and passed some stores that were selling scrapbooking supplies beforehand, but my thought was more like that it was a glorified cut and paste, and why should I spent so much money on it?

Then I got a coupon for a cheap scrapbooking lesson. One finished page with 3 or 4 pictures, and I can keep the leftover supplies seems like a good deal.

I fell in love.

At first, considering the prices of the tools, I intended to make it very, very simple: cut and paste. I can buy one patterned paper for the background, cut another paper with cute pictures for decoration, and  put the photos on a stock papers for frames.

One of the paper that's very nice for decoration

Then I got kind of bored. It's nice, but it's way too simple, and I want more. Luckily for me, I found some stores with quite nice sale =)

Now, I can of course, substitute my materials with their cheaper counterparts. I mean, paper is cheap, right? The problem came with the lignin and acid free thing. If you are familiar with paper scrapbooking, all the things for scrapbooking - papers, glue, sticker, etc - came with that writings. Over time, lignin and acid will make the paper etc, including your picture, became brownish. And this kind of defeating the purpose of scrapbooking: preserving your memories.

For tools, I tried to replace them. For example, if an embossing device is sold in daiso - plastic, not as good as those that purposely for scrapbooking, but still can be used - I bought them rather than the one in scrapbooking supplies store. But for materials, so far I can't find any cheaper alternative that's still acid and lignin free.

So yes, sale is a blessing.

It's more interesting when you can add pattern to the paper yourself by using ink or glitter and template or layout or stamp. Depending on how much you prepared to sacrifice for this hobby, you can also get a puncher for the paper edge, paper corner, an embossing machine, etc. Me, I am doing it as thrifty as possible....meaning I am hunting down this sale, and valiantly told myself that no, I don't need an embossing machine, ever.

My glitters, procured in a very huge sale. I love them

This one is a stitch piercer. Not as easy as it sounded, but made for very nice decorations =)

Some cute hanging brads that I bought online. Imagine them hanging on top of the photos =)

Cute quicklet eyelets from the same store. Can you tell that I love teddy bears?

Now, I used to love the paper version and only the paper version, because with paper version there's texture that I can touch. Even the paper itself sometimes had velvet pattern on it.

When I touched the pattern, I got velvety texture

But then, I stumbled upon digital scrapbooking and fell in love all over again.

Digital scrapbooking is way cheaper than paper scrapbooking because I can re-use the elements over and over. But I also found out that this is not including the software, so if you already have a Photoshop or something like that, it's okay. But if you are not, well, digital is way, way more expensive I guess.

Also, if you want to make a good one, you will became a very best friend with this Photoshop (or something like that) program..I am not a stranger to Photoshop, but neither am I an expert on it.  Lucky me, I got a few good friends who are really good at Photoshop, which means free, one on one tutorial..lol.

So far, one of the thing I love the most of digital scrapbooking is its ability to modify the picture itself. Granted, I can achieve the same result if I manipulated the picture first before printing it, but somehow I feel like I love to just save my result and use it.

The other thing is masking. with paper scrapbooking, I can framed the picture and I can cut the picture, but I can't made it blend into the background.

Also, with digital scrapbooking, error is okay, I can re-do it. With the paper one, if I had glued it, then that's it.

I noticed, that I can categorize digital scrapbooking kits' designers as two groups.

One is those that tried to imitate paper scrapbooking.  This group, they made paper and decoration that we can 'cut' from the 'paper', brads, buttons, and ribbons. They also made glitter style, edger which is the way to imitate edge puncher, stamps, or paper template to imitate embossing.

The other group, They still have stamps and glitters, but not so much trying to emulate paper scrapbooking. I can further divide this group into two.

Half of them relied heavily on picture. So, they took pictures of real world things, extracted them, and polished them for the embellishments. You can, of course, cut and paste a picture of flower in your paper scrapbooking, but it won't looks at realistic as in digital, maybe because cleaning picture up in Photoshop is easier than using scissor...Besides, usually when you do it in paper scrapbooking, you will use a ribbon or paper flowers instead of cutting a picture of real flower.

The other half relied on drawing. They used tablets for drawings or scanning their drawings and made the pictures into embellishments.

Of course, there are some that's into mix media... and it doesn't mean that the two big groups are mutually exclusive either. It just the things that came to my mind when I saw the kits.

And talk about digital's advantage, there's another one that I don't like to admit, simply because it's not something that I like. Digital has a quickpage, where all you need to do is inserting your picture into the empty space of the layout and voila, it's finished. I think you can probably get the paper equivalent of this in a photographer' shop, but I never saw it in stores that are selling paper scrapbooking supplies.
Personally thought, I don't like them. After all, half the fun of scrapbooking is on the making. The other half of course, on displaying  =p

Beautiful pearls

One of my favorite kind of component is pearl. So far, I have found out 6 kind of pearls, fake and real, in general.

1. China's glass pearl. This is the cheapest of all and the worst quality of all. Personally, I don't like these pearls. They are good enough for bookmarks, Christmas tree decoration, or some hanging accessories, but definitely not for jewelry. For one, they are way too light, there is no mistaking them for real pearl. For another, the coated is easily scratch. I also dislike that the hole is way too big, it's hard to make a knot between pearls, unless I used a very thick thread. Mostly, I used them for trial because yes, they are cheap and I won't cry if I destroy some in experiment...

2. Czech glass pearl. Personally, I never have or use one. But I have read that this glass pearl has better quality than China's one.

3. Shell pearl. Funnily enough, these pearls, made from the shell of real pearls (freshwater and salt water pearls) are actually cheaper than the Swarovski ones. They have nice weight, and have more luster than even real pearls. There is no mistaking them for real pearls, though. But they do provide cheaper but still nice alternative than real pearls. They also often come in colorful options..

4. Swarovski pearl. This fake pearl is the one which in my opinion looks the most like real pearl. Swarovski pearls also better in some sense because unlike real pearls, they can withstand perfume. They have nice luster, nice weight, and easier to maintain than real pearls. They are also cheaper, of course. While real pearls are not expensive if I just want pearls, they can cost arm and leg once I want those of A grade and in perfectly round shape. Needless to say, I love these Swarovski pearls.

5. Freshwater pearl. This one is way cheaper than salt water one. If I bought button or teardrop or potato shaped one, the price is reasonable, and they still look pretty. The round one is not as round as salt water one, though.

6. Salt water pearl. This is the prettiest, and most expensive of all. >< They are usually only round shape.

Salt water and freshwater pearls are divided into grade, with A being the highest.

For me, one of the trouble about salt water and freshwater is that I can't keep them on plastic storage. It will dry the pearls and made them prone to crack. ><

My new blog for my idle hands

I moved my blog for my idle hands here, because after considering, I think the old one has too many private entries related to it and it ties with too many things. So, this is my new blog. I will migrate some of my entries from my old blog here in this few days.

I am still making new beaded jewelry, but lately I am occupied by a new hobby: making clay charms. It's not exactly a new hobby, but the last time I touched clay has been years and years ago, and it was quite a disaster for me. A lot of crumbs and nothing to show for it, not to mention difficult to clean 'flour' everywhere.

As my habit, before I started again this time, I did some browsing in the net, 'researching' about it. The new and quite popular one to use currently is oven dried polymer clay. I am quite tempted to use that one. The most popular brands are USA made and the resulting charms that I saw are really cute. Unfortunately, I have no oven to be 'sacrifice' for it, as I read that it can left some smell on the oven.

So, back to the air dried for me. My old one is Japanese stone clay. It can be stored for quite sometimes, and can be used for making models. In fact, my sister love this one and she had made figurines to clocks using this one. But in my opinion, judging by seeing her work, it's too messy for my taste. I don't exactly have a huge space for all of my craft items.

There're also paper clay, which is affordable and very easily to procure, but I found out that this one is not exactly popular for making charm.

In the end, I decided on using Japanese resin clay. It was said to be very light, the colors that was sold just exactly what I wanted, and it seems good for making charm.

I found out later on, that this clay has some limitation if I want to make very complicated shapes. But, for making simple charms, especially if I want them to have texture and looks like bread, marshmallow, biscuit and the like, they are perfect. Additionally, they are very, very light. So I can use my result for earrings or as charm for bracelet or as pendant. It was also said to be waterproof, but I haven't tested this claim yet...