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Monday, September 24, 2012

BEADING... BEADING...




For the past 2 months I have been trying to complete two commissions for a customer friend who wanted beaded lace collars, something that looks like french lace but fully beaded and worn as a detachable collar.


I sourced this beautiful handmade black lace from Poland and then proceeded to embellish all areas with hex-cut japanese glass beads in black and purple. The beads have an iridescent coat for shimmer. Decided on the tinier-sized seed beads, although it takes more time to stitch but the results will be more refined for a delicate thing like this. This took about 200 hours. However this is less work compared to a white victorian lace I am currently working on which I will post once it's done!


Saturday, July 21, 2012

SINGAPORE GARDEN FESTIVAL 2012


This year's Singapore Garden Festival, held at Suntec City Convention Hall as always. I went on a weekday with my mom, she had been nagging since the previous week but Saturday was predictably too crowded to enjoy anything so we made it on a Tuesday. Less human traffic and the flowers aren't too dead yet. The theme was fairytales with elves and Alice in wonderland type creatures. Those frogs.... I've seen them in Toad Hall. They are on the mantle-clock above Toad's fireplace lol. Love that 1980s Wind in the Willows animation.


 




 







Diorama.


This was inspired by the aurora borealis.


An entry from Sweden. Pretty colours.






  Phalaenopsis










Finally someone from Indonesia did a kaleidoscope theme!


Ooh mesmerising... if only it wasn't crowded I would stand there longer.








Seven dwarves off to mining across the bridge. You can't see it here though.


Faux cave structure, with jungle soundtrack no less.


Zen Garden


Sunday, July 15, 2012

SHOUJO COLORING PAGES DIGITAL STAMPS


My second series of digi colouring pages, Shoujo retro style! I like the older shoujo stuff. They can be purchased individually or as a set in my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonshortbread?section_id=11701773
 

It prints out nice and clear on 8.5x11 or A4 sized paper! I might be rolling out more in a bit, but for now a paper doll set is in the works.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

LOCAL MAGAZINE FEATURE


My vintage & retro jewellery shop is featured in the july issue of NEXT by NTUC media,  many thanks to Rachel Chan! This is a great timing too, because my shop is 5 this month! The lady up there is not me but one of my regular customers wearing a handmade skeleton lolita necklace, coincidentally she lives just down the street from me and is an artist too. Meanwhile yes I am still making art =)

Thursday, June 21, 2012

SWEET LOLITA COLOURING PAGES


I have introduced colouring pages to my shop and these work as digi stamps too if you like! They came about while I was sorting my old personal items and found these really nostalgic 1980s Japanese coloring books (a present from my dad which was rare) and shoujo paper dolls that had accompanied me since childhood. One of my favourite past times was tracing them over and over!

Perhaps I was too inspired by the frills and puffy skirts, so decided to design a series of Gothic Lolitas colouring books. First up are the Sweet Lolitas, I hope these will be fun to colour for both adult and children. The genre and sub-genre of the various Lolitas are a Japanese fashion lifestyle inspired by Rococo, Victorian, Edwardian and gothic elements, usually cute and conservative looking. I think the word 'lolita' was used just because it sounded cute.

There will be more colouring pages coming up. The images are all high res and can be purchased individually if you don't want to buy a set, and will print out nicely on 8.5x11 inches paper or A4.

More details on the Sweet Lolita series one can be viewed here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/102410324/sweet-lolita-coloring-pages-set-of-3

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

CHAMELEON GARDENS - PAINTING

My latest painting which took a while, this is the largest acrylic painting I have done so far, though still a modest 25 x 35cm. I had laid it aside for some time to complete other projects on hand, and decided to place more effort in detailing the background but didn't want to overpower the main character yet have a camouflage theme.


There were several changes on the colours of the dots on the chameleons and as you can see it has quite a buildup of paint. Which is might as well, because you can feel the texture now!

The sides are painted too which features even more details, the right side has the chameleon's body and the left side (not shown) has some plant details.

The original painting is available in my Etsy shop: 


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

BEACH GLASS PICKS AGAIN


Yesterday I went to the beach in the evening and the weather was urgh. (I know... always complaining about our weather lol) It feels like you could cut the air with a knife and my perspiration came in buckets. There was no breeze. On a lighter side I managed to pick up some beach glass before the sun went down, unfortunately some are still young glass which should go back into the sea but there wasn't enough light to see clearly till I got home. There was much less glass this time, either the sea has not been coughing out litter as usual, or that oil spill cleanup from last year removed most of it. There are some rather large pieces of glass, some bases of bottles, but usually the underside isn't frosted enough. Also I had more greens this time since they are easier to spot. Have you picked up any beach shells or glass lately? I'd love to see it!


At least there were nice pink clouds.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

MY SWAROVSKI CRAFT


In the last post I was talking about buying some Swarovski beads because of the cute window displays and well... I did. The above are Swarovski pendants, aren't they so pretty. I wonder what design to make? Oh and the resin roses are neat too, those will probably be necklaces too.


If you're interested other handmade jewelry, I made this necklace consisting of a large Swarovski heart in bermuda blue, it is aqua green to an oceanic blue depending which the angle you are looking at, and my camera managed to catch just the main green hues. I added some czech glass beads on the chain to match it up! This is going for S$38.00 (about USD$31.67). More details on this page: http://lemonkitscharms.blogspot.com/2011/04/handmade-altered-necklaces-3.html


This one is a simple pendant necklace in rainbow vitrail medium. I have a few of these left.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

SWAROVSKI BEAUTIES

I went to the mall today and outside the Swarovski shop there was this super adorable crystal figurine that caught my eye - Bambi!

It costs S$250. What do you think?

And then there was this large crystal sculpture of two birds on a silver branch. The black facets were dazzling! The price is a pretty penny too. About $2K ++ if I remembered right.

This makes me want to buy more Swarovski beads to work on....

Monday, May 21, 2012

FISHIES

 I changed my blog's background. Bright isn't it? But not as bright as this guy...



 A cute porcupine fish (like puffer fish). Looks like he's smiling all the time and his eyes has this bluish iridescence and moving in a way that reminds me of chameleons'.

Koi pond. These photos were taken at the basement level of Suntec City. I was there to refund something.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

COOL ACRYLIC FLOWERS


I saw these cool acrylic flowers at a store the other day. So awesome, I like them because they are so fake-looking in a good way. Their stalks are transparent green acrylic too, and the big blooming yellow roses are my faves. They cost about $25 - $28 each (can't remember very well) at King & King Wong's. The store doesn't allow photography but eh too late didn't see the sign.




Friday, May 11, 2012

FIXED MY BROKEN WACOM PEN

My wacom bamboo fun pen (CTE450) suddenly broke down, so instead of purchasing a new one right away which wasn't cheap; I thought to open it first and see what went wrong and hopefully repair it. The eraser part still works just not the nib.

If you have a wacom pen that doesn't work after you dropped it, a likely reason could be the copper coil has come apart. I did not drop the pen since it suddenly stopped working after I came back from a break and found it wet. I googled around and found a great post that helped me and you should check it out if you suspect the internal parts have broken:
http://wishidknownthat.blogspot.com/2009/04/fixing-wacom-bamboo-pen.html


Use a small screwdriver to pry under the lower blue button. The first snap should come out but do not yank the whole blue part out just yet, as the second snap holding down the button will break off. Instead after releasing the first snap, slide the blue button downwards and it should come right off.




Like this. Press it down slightly to release the catch and slide towards the right. You will have a whole button without broken bits this way.


Next would be the very annoying part. Pull the pen apart in as straight as you can. Do not bend the pen while separating the pieces as you don't want to damage the circuit board hidden inside. This is a pain to do as it requires some force since a few notches are holding the plastic together. If you can't get it apart, you need to use more strength, just make sure it doesn't fly! I used a flat nosed pliers at first to get the initial gap going and it damaged the corners of the plastic a little bit. Took me a good 15 mins and a guy to get it apart.

Update:
If you really have problems getting it apart, what worked also was a pair of round-nosed pliers (from my jewellery crafting), I grasped the round nose pliers between the parts, after I had about 2mm pried apart with my bare hands (took some strength for me to do that). Then sort of squeeze the pliers down with its fatter section to get the parting enlarged.

The circuit board is still attached to the front part of the pen so the next step will be to remove that button holding the circuit board in place. Be very careful with the eraser part since it is exposed because those copper coils are part of the ferromagnetic core that act as the sensors with the tablet. Also handle the circuit board by its sides.

You can remove the plastic nib now or before starting this project. Just use a pair of scissors and don't use any force to grab it with the blades and pull it out from the mouth. Pliers don't work as well because it slips.


Getting this button off is the next pain. First I don't want to break the plastic, second it's tightly snapped to the circuit board.


I inched a tiny screwdriver (the kinds for watches & jewellery) underneath the button (from the surface of the shell) and pried it out on its sides just get that thing out of there, but in doing so damaged a little of the plastic surface. Two snaps hold it in place. Whatever it is, it requires some force and you know it's out when you hear a snap sound (hopefully you haven't broken anything).


I examined the whole thing and found nothing wet or broken with it. Gave the outer shell a cleaning anyway since there's dust and gunk around the buttons, and used a dry, clean cotton swab (q-tip) and very gently wipe the circuit board that might have been affected by moisture.


The copper coils are intact so it wasn't a physical damage that was causing the pen to break. 

Usually when you drop the pen the delicate copper coil may have come off its solder to the circuit board (which you resolder back) or it has broken (which can be mended by super glue - just see the link at the beginning of the post). In my case it was probably moisture or it just needed a good kick in the ass for it to get working again.

If you spilled cola or something other than plain water I think you might need to actually clean the thing with distilled water to wash off any residue and let it dry completely before testing it again.

Reassembling took a few seconds and the thing works as it did before!

Update:
If the cursor works again after you've cleaned it (test before fully reassembling) but the button clicks are doing their own strange commands all over the screen, try going to the Bamboo settings and under 'Pen' tab, click to Mouse mode, test, and then back to Pen mode.