HOBIUM

Hi guys!!

Its been way too long. I know I know, things have gotten soooo crazy busy around here which makes this very timely post! A few weeks ago, Hobium (a web company based in turkey) contacted me about their site...where craft lovers can buy all kinds of craft supplies on there. They have a variety of stuff, from jewellery making to yarns to magazines. They wanted to send me any product of my choice as a gift to try out their web shop service and give honest reviews.

The Hobium team was very very helpful. I had some difficulty using their site, more specifically the checkout part...for some reason it couldnt accept my address and kept prompting me to enter a valid address. That was quite frustrating because once I went back to the home page, my entire shopping cart was emptied. So I contacted the team and told them about it, they were super friendly, understanding and fast to help. We managed to solve the problem quite promptly and my order arrived not too long after. I was genuinely surprised when I received the package because I didnt think it'd take that fast!

Thank you Hobium for these and the pronto delivery!! :)

xx

old things and being burnt

I love love love old things. Like...REALLY old things. So when I was at the Foro Romano (roman forum) questions that ran through my mind would be like :

1) what happened here.

2) what did people do here.

3) who touched/built this exact spot.

I don't have all the answers, but I bought books at the museum because I really want thorough answers, I'll let you know when I have the answers. 

but anyway can you imagine, many many many many years ago when these structures and buildings were built, they used to be completely functional home towns, and entertainment for people like you and me...and now they're all broken. If walls have ears (or eyes), can you imagine if I plugged in a thumb drive into the crack of the wall and transfer all that it has seen and heard all these many years...what kind of things would I hear and see. I am imagining EVERYTHING! Maybe I'll see someone being stabbed to death with a fork, or maybe I'll overhear love being spoken in a different language. i mean, lets imagine this together...what would have the wall seen or heard? If the wall is a hard disk, it would have stored so much memories and stories and this is completely fascinating to me.

These were built by people so many years ago, whilst they were building this...did they think or expect that many years later, a completely random 25 year old asian girl from Singapore would come by Rome and touch (and occasionally hug) these exact walls that they've built? This is why sometimes I like to speak to old walls, you know, like in Interstellar...the scene where the father was behind the library in another dimension. I would go up to these old walls and speak to them in a small whisper "hello....??.......... are you there??.... tell me what to do......... I will do it. What?? move right?? you want me to move right? Im blocking someone taking a photo? oh okok *moves right* hello...?........ are you still there??" 

In Between Two Walls. "tell me what to do.....helloo????" 

Behind the scenes of embroidering the Foro Romano. 

This piece was fun. 

I mean, all my pieces are fun, but for this piece I had such a comfortable "table" overlooking this magnificent view with a nice cool wind carrying the scent of a ripe banana blowing occasionally. Whilst working on this piece, I imagined that this place was restored to its former glory and I was a servant girl looking out of her window. I saw children running around laughing, I saw men pulling their cows and bulls. I saw a former Rome and I imagined so many stories of people who used to live and hang out here in the past. An example of a short story I would think of : My servant girl name is Selena and as I'm looking out of the window I see my master casually walking and talking with a smart man next to him. He looks up at me and waves. We are secretly in love. I have his baby, and the town people found out about this and burned me to death. The end

And before I knew it, I was already done with my piece! 

and now I can take this piece of Rome back with me. :D 

How are you? I hope all is well with you from whatever time and space you are reading this from, even if you're reading this from inside a wall. But remember, whatever you're going through...at least you're not like Selena, being burned to death for having a baby with her Master. And speaking of burning, I'm completely burnt from the sun in Italy, and prior to writing this, I set the bath running with a nice golden glitter bath bomb so before I get into trouble for allowing the water to overflow, I should go check on the bath now.

x

DIY: embroidery portrait keychain

 Hi y'all. 

I had such a weird dream yesterday. I was in a witch school and somehow I was very very very mean, I kicked another mean witch down the stairs and as  she was falling, I grabbed her hand and said "help me, I do not know why I'm like that" and then I let go and she fell. She got up to fight with me so I broke her cello bow and stabbed her with it. She didn't die!! So I locked her up in her cello case and she died. I woke up and I was like...0.0 What was that all about!?!

And then I went back to sleep and I had another dream. 

I kidnapped a man and he kept shouting "WHERES MY WIFEY? WHERES MY WIFEY?"

and I said "I don't know where your wifey is, but I have wifi here...the signal is quite strong" and I woke up thinking....damn son....thats actually quite funny. 

but anyway!! 

Earlier this week, I received a lovely gift from a Ewoodstory (instagram: ewoodstory), a creative craft store in Oregon that is a collaboration between a woodworker and a designer. Thank you Shelby~ So heres what I did with this Mini Masterpiece Pendant frame! 

LETS DIY!! 

What you'll need:

1. ewoodstory frame. (http://www.etsy.com/shop/ewoodstory) 
2. embroidery hoop (4" diameter)
3. cotton canvas
4. uhu glue
5. acrylic paint
6. soft felt
7. jump rings + large claw clasp
8. fur ball

LETS GO~~~

1) I marked out the surface area from the frame and then worked my design inside. 

2) To match the colours of my threads, I painted the wood surface light pink. While waiting for this to dry, cut out your embroidery piece leaving about 0.5 cm border around your work. This is so that we have space to sew it onto the frame. 

3) Use back stitch to attach your embroidery piece onto the wooden frame. Make sure its tight, so sew closely to the edges so that it "stretches" your piece on the frame. 

4) To hide the threads, cut a small piece of felt and glue it in place at the back of the piece. 

5) attach jump rings to giant claw clasp to large fur ball and attach mini embroidered portrait onto jump ring. 

6) add fuchsia ribbon for heightened kawaii effect.

AND WE'RE DONE! Happy crafting!! :)

Please leave a comment if you have any questions at all.

Fune No Hoteru

Embroidering outdoors by the water, and the sun accompanied by the wind. It is an absolutely wonderful feeling...except for being sunburn of course. So slap on lots of sunscreen and wear a hat if ever you want to do this in Singapore. 

Diy embroidered canvas shoes

New year new shoes right?! Nah, that doesn't work, I am totally a shoe person, it's more like new month new shoes. But that being said, I can also hear my mom yelling "THERE IS NO MORE SPACE IN THE CUPBOARD, PLEASE! NO MORE SHOES!!" 

Sorry, I digress. 

So anyway here's what you need: 

1) cotton canvas shoes 

2) pencil 

3) tapestry needle (size 22?)

4) embroidery thread 

5) scissors/ cutter 

To elaborate on point 1) cotton canvas shoes: I've tried embroidering on different thickness, Supergas (scroll down for picture) are slightly thicker so embroidering more detailed stuff will be a little bit more difficult. But it can be done. I would recommend cheaper shoes like those selling at Rubi. Currently they're having this promotion 2 pairs for SGD$30. Their shoes are totally basic, perfect for crafting, canvas is also softer... which means that it would be easy to penetrate through. 

Just FYI: whilst working on this, I pricked myself many many times. So just be careful! Also FYI FYI, I drew a smiley face and some flowers on paper with my finger blood... Which reminds me of when I was in primary school I used to forget to bring my pencil/ pen and my teacher would look at me and say "how are u going to write?! Using blood?!" 

Using blood from your fingertip to write is technically impossible, unless you are looking for a fontsize of about 30. Again, I digress. 

Here are some pics. 

Yay it's done! Personalised embroidered sneakers from Rubi. 

Embroidered Superga sneakers. 

It's very easy! Try it! :) Embroidering on the rubi shoes are easier as the canvas is thinner, I took about 6 hours for each side... So total time taken for a pair of embroidered customised shoes would be about 12 hours. 

For the superga sneakers, the canvas was too thick for the needle to penetrate consistently, so I used a punch needle... But even so it bent the tip of my punch needle ;( I will do another post on punch needle embroidery soon! :) 

SEEYA. x

All these roads lead back to home.

HIHI. 

I've been trying to keep up with typing here to keep track of my travel thoughts. But opening up my mac takes too much effort so I've been writing a lot in my travel journal, but so today I shall make an effort to blog. 

This post is dedicated to the steak in Prague. YUM YUM YUM. 

I ate steak almost everyday. Its morning! What do I want to eat? STEAK! Its lunch time! What do I want to eat? STEAK! Its dinner! What shall I eat? STEAK!! Prague is seriously my happy place. Everything is good, service is good everywhere mostly, people are friendly, amazing architecture. I would definitely want to come back here again, also to feed the swans. 

I shall leave you with some steak photos. 

My final piece for Prague. I love the castles and old buildings everywhere in this beautiful country, so now i have one piece to take home~ :D I seriously can't wait to hang everything up on my wall when I get back home.

Prague: city of dreams

The journey to Prague was such a crazy one, I don't know how I did it. 

The night before, I was at Amsterdam, and there was a storm very early in the morning. I was hoping that the storm would come to a halt or a drizzle before I have to head to the airport. It was so freakin cold and rainy. And when I woke up at 5am, it was still SUPER stormy. The hammock was going round and round in circles and the wind was howling. SO scary. But if you have a plane to catch, you just have to drag your ass out and brace the wind. 

I think because I expected it to be super bad, when I went through it...it didn't feel that bad at all. I was like...hmm, yeah, this is alright. And so we made our way back to berlin for lunch. The flight was so short, but I totally just knocked out after sitting down. I didn't even bother to remove my coat, i just slumped down on the chair and slept and woke up in Berlin. AND IT SNOWED IN BERLIN...well...kinda. It was so magical, I think I cried a little. I have never seen anything so beautiful before. I was so happy I tell you. I was SO happy. 

and then from Berlin, off we went on a train to Praha. 

I love capturing my travels as much as possible. I receive so much visual information when I'm somewhere new, and sometimes photos just don't do justice! So I observe and try to sketch as much as possible, and yyknow...even looking at a rough sketch of a building I can actually remember it visually clearer than a photograph. And its much more precious than a photograph don't you think? I feel this way even more so with embroidery, because when I sit there in the freezing cold embroidering and observing details and colour, I feel that I am imprinting all these visual information forever in my head and on fabric of course. Even when I look back at this embroidery piece, I remember the exact scene so perfectly, and its like I can take back a part of the country with me.

Its a nice feeling, really. When I'm back, of course I would miss the place, but I feel that I still have the place with me...so its not too bad. Like when I look at the Charles Bridge in Prague, I can say that I KNOW it, because well, I do! My eyes travelled through every single rock and brick and colour and moss. I know it, and its with me now, forever~