Seriously 'ATC'ed.

I made this ATC last night. She will be used to make sticker and stamps (will make a post about it later). This is my first time using sponging technique (for the background).

Speaking of ATC, I have 5 ATC group trades in my list. All submissions ending on 31st August.

1. Peaceful Places theme ATC - atcsforall (3 cards)
2. Leaf theme ATC for Diladi - atcsforall (another 2 cards)
3. Singapore theme ATC - Monday Artday (3 cards)
4. Independence theme ATC - Special blogger group trade (3 cards)
5. Ocean theme ATC - Monday Artday (3 cards)

Total 16 cards to finish, including another one for Rizal and Yazmin (Singapore) each. My scheduled is packed nowadays, but I challenge myself to get them finished before midst of August.

Mangosteenskin Stamps' New Look

Since a couple of months ago, I've been begging my husband to take me to wood factory and hardware shop. I still can't drive. I keep on delaying and avoiding my JPJ test because I'm still unable to overcome my fear of driving on the highway.

Yesterday my husband had a safety inspection at a fabricated steel factory. There's a wood factory at the same area, so he just dropped me by the road side and I walked myself to the factory that he suggested.

This morning, we went to his friend's hardware shop and I bought myself a small, cute handsaw. I'm smiling and can't stop talking all the home because I'm so happy and can't wait to test my new tool.

My handcarved rubber stamps now come complete with wooden backings. I couldn't believe myself, holding something which only existed in my head before. Months ago, I don't even know that I could carve. To my own amazement, I found myself can carve quite well, atleast on erasers. Seeing these completed rubber stamps, I feel satisfied as everything is worth the effort. Once again, it's worth trying, even if it's something totally "alien" in our lives.

Cupcake or not?

I designed a cupcake stamp for Bakedecorate2u (Rani's home-bakery), but I made some carving mistake because I was chatting with our new employee. When I show it to my hubby, he thought it was for ice-cream shop or something like Coffeebean.

I've shown this stamp to Rani, she likes it but I feel guilty if later people get confused and thought she runs ice-cream shop! Let me know what u think about it. I know I'm lack of experience. If it's not suitable for Rani's home-bakery, then I'll make a new one, and this time it would be a cake. How about the sketch below?

Carol's Stamps and Stickers

At 2.30am, I manage to finish carving, printing and cutting stickers for Carol.

Carol request for the same stickers like Fliffy's, with the name and URL changed, but I decide to make a new one for her, using her favourite colors; pink, white and baby blue, and the heart-shaped candy is inspired by her current blog header. The design is really simple, as I don't have any drawing or photo-editing software, I have to draw it on paper and scan. The process is so time consuming, tiring and unflexible method as I can never undo any mistake. In fact, the drawing I made for the stickers are ATCs (maybe I can trade them one day, hehe). Please bear my limited design till I get myself a compatible laptop and appropriate softwares, namely CS3 and Illustrator.

I'm working hard for it, haiyahh!

My Carving Tools

People have been asking me the tools that I use to carve my stamps. They're art knife and wood carver (see above pic). And the stamp? It is just ordinary eraser. Yes, the same one like you have in your pencil case.

I just start to use the wood carver a couple of week ago when I start to receive custom made orders, just to make the removal of the outside area of an image a little bit faster. But without the wood carver, the art knife alone can still do everything. The knife has a few different type of blade, but the one that u see in the picture is good enough for me.

Yesterday, my husband told me to wait in the car as he need to meet someone at the person's site office. He did not tell me the meeting would take so long (maybe he also don't expect that). I waited about an hour an half in the car, and I tried so hard to be patient and restrain myself from turning on the aircond (fuel is so expensive nowadays, remember?) I tried to occupy myself with some sketching job for my recent orders. My neck and lower back start to ache and I felt like having a sauna eventhough the windows were widely opened. I could get moody anytime, but I tried to be rational and took out the knife and an eraser instead.

The above stamp is the one that I did in the car yesterday.