Ztampfilicious

Inspired by a couple of Pinterest finds:
1. Use an embroidery hoop to make a clock. This is such a brilliant idea!
2. The right look and colors for a clock face.

So I combined those two ideas and went on designing my own clock face, printed it on a canvas (with my Canon Pro9500 Mark II printer at home), coated it with acrylic medium for protection, and then mounted in on a 10 inches diam. embroidery hoop. The pretty clock hands are from Etsy. This clock (the large pic on the right above) is now hanging on the wall in my computer room!

Then I just to make some more… I happened to have these little circle canvases stretch over a wooden frame: one is 10 cm diam., the other is 8 cm. So they are pretty small. For these two, I used copper sheets to create the rim, held in place with several nails. The 10 cm diam. can be displayed just as is, or perched on a candle holder like a mini clock tower. It is now sitting on a shelf in our dining/living room while the 8 cm diam. one is hung on a cabinet door in my art studio.

I can’t wait to get more embroidery hoops and to design some new clock faces!

You can download the clock faces pictured above to make your own clocks if you want: just click the image above! The zipped folder contains the clock face in 8 cm diam., 10 cm diam. and 10 inches diam. – all in high resolution JPG format. Enjoy!

Here’s what I have been doing recently: making some changes to our small dining/lounge room! I have been wanting to do this for quite some time but there was always something else that were deemed more important to get done first. But finally I got to do it!

I painted the wall and did something different with it; creating a kind of wall installation featuring my artworks and a Tillandsia airplant with the swirly motif subtly hinted at the background. The swirly motif was designed to incorporate pre-existing screws on the wall where some pictures used to be hung. I plan to change up the artworks from time to time as I have several in the storage from my previous exhibitions.

We finally gave away the old IKEA single-sofabed after holding on to it for a while. We had to admit that we will no longer be able to use it anyway. We also moved the IKEA’s Klippan sofa around and change the old worn out black cover with a new one in natural color (very cheap at only HK$200!). Then we got a recycled chest of drawers to replace the ad-hoc bookshelf – a leftover from my studio that I can no longer afford to keep, and added a couple of Hemnes shelves from IKEA. I love that this way I can easily and quickly change the display too – no mess with drilling wall!

The end result is a more spacious and airy feel of the room… at an extremely economical budget :)

What do you think of it?

Another simple and easy upcycling sewing project! Found the inspiration and instructions on cutoutandkeep.net via Pinterest and I have been looking for a little cover-up garment like this for a while now without much success and here it is… Looks like it could be just the thing and it’s something that I can make myself without costing me anything! I thought I really ought to give it a try since I have quite a few very old T-Shirts anyway.

I chose this pale grey t-shirt from U2, my favorite local brand that sadly is no longer around anymore. They produced simple and versatile clothing articles, very affordable (read: cheap!) with good quality. I am still wearing a lot of mine that I bought in 2000-2002. The one that I turned into a shrug is one of these! The pale grey color is neutral to be worn over dark or light colored dresses.

And look… Now it has been reincarnated into something much prettier with a new function and look! It is perfect to cover up some of my dresses that are showing too much cleavage. I think it looks best with empire line dresses like the one I wore here. The best part is that it is so easy that even a beginner seamstress like me can do it! Since the end result is to be gathered with a ribbon, any not-so neat sewing wouldn’t be visible. Great for an inexperience seamstress like me *grin*.

Tips: Cut the decolette/neck area into a smooth curve instead of corners like in the instructions. This would make sewing the casing much easier!

So… go look into your wardrobe and find those old t-shirts to transform into pretty shrugs! You can hem the edges with lace or ribbons if you wish too! I have a feeling that another old t-shirt will be given a new life soon :).

I relocated to Hong Kong in January 2001 and in March 2001, I moved to a studio apartment in North Point. It’s a tiny apartment with awkward nooks but I love it! I furnished it 99% with stuff from IKEA – some of which I am still using in my current home in Discovery Bay, a decade later. This is how my studio apartment looked like on March 12th 2001. If you are an IKEA fan, you would recognize most of the things here:

The Wilma Curtains from IKEA was used to divide the bedroom from the rest of the apartment. March 2001.

I packed the Wilma Curtains and kept it in the storage when I moved in to a bigger apartment with my then fiancé (now belovedst husband). Recently, we decided that we need a curtain in our living room to provide more privacy. We wanted something light and airy and my thoughts went to the Wilma Curtains. I took them out from the storage and washed them. Then I went to Sham Shui Po to get a selection of pretty lace. And here’s what I did with them:

The ‘new’ Belaced Wilma on our window now:

Sewn with different colored threads. I need to practise more to sew in perfect straight lines...

December 2005. It was winter in Hong Kong and I was home alone as my husband was away and wouldn’t be back until the first week of January 2006. I was into my third month of designing digital scrapbooking and Ztampf! was basically all I spent my time on then – it was my baby!

My husband and I didn’t exactly do Christmas then, we exchanged New Year’s gifts instead. So I wanted to gift him something handmade that is not only nice and unique but also useful and practical. Then I got this bright idea of making him a desk calendar that can be collapsed into a flat booklet which he can carry with him whenever he travels – which he does quite a lot. I started to make some sketches to design the look and to work out the construction part of it. After some experimentation, I arrived at what would become the basic of all the Ztampf! CraftyCalendar Kits that came after that.

Then the digital works begun: creating the tabbed pages, the dates and months, the backgrounds, etc. Being totally immersed in digital scrapbooking, of course I made use of my own designs. I used my own personal layouts that I have made since I first started digiscrapping in August 2005 to decorate the calendar pages. I loved how it looked like as if they were actual mini pages stapled or stitched onto the calendars pages! And I was so pleased with myself to come up with the idea of unique Date Markers to mark the important dates in a way that is fun, special and practical! But most of all, I couldn’t wait to see my husband’s face when he saw it later! (Yes, he loved his New Year’s gift; it was such a super special and thoughtful gift. A total surprise too!)

The finished calendar, the first ever calendar I have ever made up to that point – turned out very well! Once I figured out the construction, it was so easy to put together I decided to make another calendar to gift to my parents back in Jakarta. And then it dawn on me that anyone would be able to make their own Crafty Calendars like the ones I just did, totally personalized with their own photos and important dates marked. I just need to provide the materials and the instructions!

So I worked on it, thinking up ways to provide my customers with as many options as possible to create the most personalized, customized calendars while keeping things easy to put together. I photographed the process of making the calendar so I can show how things are done better. The most challenging part for me at that time was to put together a comprehensive instructions, when English is not my first language and I couldn’t ask my husband (who is a native speaker) to help proof-read it as he wasn’t supposed to know about the calendar yet! But I managed to pull it off! The Instructions is in PDF format so people could print it and refer to it easily while creating the calendars. And so the Ztampf! CraftyCalendar Kit was born. It appeared on the first time on Ztampf!Shop on January 5th 2006. Obviously a bit late but perhaps because there was nothing in the market like the Ztampf! CraftyCalendar Kit, people loved it and bought it. Well, it makes a great Valentine’s Day gift… and Anniversary and Birthday – if those happened to be early in the year! So the first ever Ztampf! CraftyCalendar Kit did very well despite its late release!

This is how the first ever Ztampf! CraftyCalendar looks like.

And here is how the first Ztampf! CraftyCalendar appeared in the shops!

The following year in 2006, I made some improvements for the Ztampf! CraftyCalendar 2007 Kit, incorporating some customer inputs. For example, adjusting the size to use Legal size papers instead of A4 size because it is very hard for US customers to find A4 size papers, especially for digital prints while on the other hand, it is easy to re-size down from Legal size to A4. Another thing is to provide two versions: US English with weeks start on Sunday and Global English with weeks start on Monday. Started from this year onward, individual date layers in PNG are also provided to give people greater flexibility in creating their very own calendar pages. I also improved the Folder/Stand part of the calendar; to use thicker material so it is sturdier, and to use the then new Basic Grey magnetic discs for the closure.

Beside the more paper-crafty CraftyCalendars, I also released the Poster Calendar and the QuickCard Calendars that year!

>> To Be Continued