Ztampfilicious

Today I want to share with you about Baby Ella! I first heard about her from a fellow SBG Designer, Wendy who is organizing a super special Life is Precious grab bag to help. Many of SBG Designers – including me – are contributing something into this super special grab bag: there are mini kits, quickpages, clusters, bits and pieces and coupons! My contribution consists of a little something that is new and not available yet in the store, plus two coupons! This is such a good deal for a worthy cause!

Here’s the details from Wendy:

Ella Hollingsworth is a very special girl, with a very special family. You can read about her family, their journey and their needs on the Hollingsworth blog. A few of my designer friends were touched by Ella’s story and wanted to help, so we got together and created a small grab bag of products and coupons. It’s not much, but it’s free to anyone who donates ANY AMOUNT directly to Ella’s fund at tendoves.org. Your contribution will be tax-deductible since you are donating directly.

Just send me (wendy at scrapbookgraphics { dot } com) a copy of your receipt (minus any private information) by FEBRUARY 28th, 2011, and I will send you a direct download link to the Life is Precious grab bag on MARCH 1st. The grab bag is still receiving contributions, but will include AT LEAST 5 minikits, 1 paper collection, 7 QPs, 1 mini album, templates & coupons to a variety of designers.
Thank you for supporting Baby Ella and her family!

Go ahead and do something good today :)

This has been an unusually cold winter for Hong Kong and I long for warmth!

As some of you might knew already, I make ceramics. My main medium is porcelain which is fired to 1280ºC (2,336ºF) and the firing typically runs for 18 hours. It started out pretty dark, with faintly glowing embers which then burst forth with bright orange light, bringing with it the warmth. As the temperature rises, the light became paler and paler until it’s almost white when the temperature reaches 1000ºC (1,832ºF).Firing ceramic is perfect during winter: it gets the work done while warms up the surrounding space :). Recently I did a firing and it’s resulting not only in fired porcelain, but also in a set of Paper Pack!

So let’s cuddle up in the warmth of this Furnace Paper Pack! The papers are inspired by the progress of both warmth and light inside a kiln or a furnace. These papers are wonderful to scrap a variety of subjects/themes, from contemplative to festive, from thoughtful journaling-rich pages to passionate Valentine’s love expressions.

Available now at Studio Ztampf!:

And here are some pictures from the firing session:

Believe me, SBG Crew is THE BEST of the Best Teams there are! So go and take a chance!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Wish yours is filled with love and everything lovely!
I have a little something for you… It is not much, but I hope you will like it and enjoy using it too!

[download id=”3″ format=”3″]
[download id=”3″ format=”4″]

That’s not all! Type in SMITTENWITHSBG in the search field of the shop and you will find more items on special discounted pricing! This is an extra ‘Hidden Sale‘ :)

You knew that there is also a Hot Valentine Sale going on right now under the Valentine’s Day Section of Studio Ztampf! don’t you? Well, on top of that, you will find more items on sale by typing SMITTENWITHSBG in the search field at the shop. Enjoy!

And our next stop is Studio Baers Garten! Click this:

HOT VALENTINE SALE at Studio Ztampf!
February 11-15, 2011
http://shop.scrapbookgraphics.com/Ztampf/?catid=274

Are you subscribed to Ztampfever Newsletter? Check out your mailbox if you haven’t done so ;)

This HongBao Rabbit Envelopes Set contains 6 designs/templates for ‘Hong Bao’ (‘Red Pockets’ or ‘Lai See’ for Chinese New Year) to help you create beautiful and totally unique ‘Hong Bao’ this coming Chinese New Year! This set is created mostly with the new Year of The Rabbit Kit (coming soon!). The preview just doesn’t do justice to the rich fine details and colors of the actual files. You can see the larger, Zoomify preview at Studio Ztampf! to better glimpse how ztampfilicious they are! And I’ve decided to run the Early Birds Special a bit longer – so go ahead at grab this set now at 20% OFF!

The finished size of each pocket is 3.5″ wide x 6.5″ tall. Just insert your photos/add your own greetings, then print, trim and glue together (or use double-sided sticky tape or tape gun) – quick and easy with gorgeous results that sure to impress everyone who receive them! Simple Instruction is provided with the kit. Tips: You can also crop the front part and use it as a mini card/pages!

Warning: the actual set shows so much more ztampfilicious details than the preview images shown above!

The Chinese Greetings on the pockets read:
– “Gong Xi Fat Chai” means: “Congratulations and be prosperous” the most common greetings used for Chinese New Year (also known as Spring Festival).
– “Xinnian Kuaile” means: “Happy New Year”

All PNG format created at 300dpi for optimum print out quality.
Comments? Questions? Just contact me anytime!

So… As you see now, I have just made some changes to Ztampfilicious Blog :). The design has never been changed from the day this blog went live in 2007. It’s about time for a new look, don’t you think? Well, here it is!

I’d like to keep the free-flowing feel from the previous look, so I decided to use is as the base and then changed the color scheme, images and tweaked some details and coding as well. Tell me how do you like this new look!

New to Ztampfilicious Blog? Here’s how the old one looked like – which one do you like better?

Chinese New Year is just around the corner at February 3rd!

Send beautiful Chinese New Year cards uniquely personalized with your own photos and message to your friends and relatives! It is easy with this CNY 2011 QuickCards Set from Studio Ztampf!: 3 Designs (Cover+Inner) plus a Postcard Back. These are 2-sided tent-fold cards which you can either print on both sides of your paper, or print the inner part on a thinner fine paper then glue the spine to the fold of the front part! You can also use these cards as postcards with the included Postcard Back (just crop the front part). You can choose to have the inner part with or without photos too. Of course, you can also use these to create eCards to send online :).

The size of the cards is 5″x7″ – folded. 2 in landscape, 1 in portrait. 3 front designs: 2 in landscape, 1 in portrait – with matching inner designs, plus 2 extra options. A Postcard Back is also provided. JPG and PNG format. All created at 300dpi for optimum print out result. Questions? Comments? Just contact me anytime!

P.S. Now I am working on a set of unique, personalizable Hong Bao Set like this one – for the Year of The Rabbit!

I’ve been guilty of many of these! Can you guess which ones are my worst?
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/the-not-do-list-9-things-you-need-to-stop-doing.html

‘Balance’ is my word for 2011. It might look like a simple word, but it is a loaded one – very tricky to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain. Because guess what? It is not a static condition in which once you achieve it, you then could passively keep it. No. It is fluid, always on the move. It is something that you have to keep on nurturing in everything you do.

For myself, balance means to focus more into the process of things – of doing, of working, of creating, of living. That is, rather than focusing on the end result. Which for me means patience and acceptance of my own limitation: I am known to want to do so many things all at once and all has to be perfectly done! I tend to keep on working almost non-stop until the job is done or until I collapse. I tend to spend impractical amount of time and energy on minuscule details in almost everything I do: from washing the dishes to hanging the laundry to designing to creating art. And I do enjoy it too – most of the time! Some would  say I am a perfectionist – or obsessed. I won’t be happy with my work until everything is just so – even if it’s only me who notices it. Do people notice it in my work? Do people appreciate how everything is done just so? I don’t know. I hope at least some of them do. I don’t expect them to notice the particulars, but just that they notice that it is very well made/crafted/done. People might not be able to pin point what makes it so, but I hope as a whole my work should be able to speak for itself. Yes, it is important for me to create my work as best as I can make it – spare no efforts. And that, my dear, takes time. Plenty of it. So, I just have to accept that I will always take more time to finish my work. (You would think by now at the ripe age of 41 I should have known this already, wouldn’t you. Well, I am an optimist :)).

Which means, no more letting myself get frustrated when things take much longer time to get done – process takes time. Which means, breaks and rest and play time are necessary: they are to be fully enjoyed without guilty feeling whether I have finished a certain set of work or not. My work is never done anyway: there is always more and more coming. So yeah, take breaks often – enjoy play time. Doing nothing is needed to set the balance. But of course, there are still deadlines and commitments to meet… Now… which way is it towards balance again?

In my effort towards balance this year, I have made a commitment to join the Art Journal Caravan hosted by the amazing super woman designer Tangie McMeen Baxter at SBG! Yeah! I’m starting out late – but hey, better late than never never! In Tangie’s AJC, you can move at your own space, you can start any time and jump around to wherever your inspiration take you. The golden rule is you have to enjoy doing what you’re doing :).

So, this is my first page for the AJC 2011. Balance.

Background paper: Shades of Black (Studio Ztampf!). Fonts: Kabel BT and Lacuna Regular. The picture is of one of my works, entitled Soaring V.2.08 (2005, porcelain and wire). I chose this because the wire that forms the cage and the wire supporting the wings is one piece of wire: it is an act of balance ;).

The Inspiration to ponder for the First Week was Process – which is particularly very apt for me as my thinking of Balance has been closely linked to Process. So here it is, my 2nd page for the AJC 2011. Process.

Background paper: Furnace (Studio Ztampf!) . Fonts: Kabel BT and Lacuna Regular.

This is my latest favorite book! I regretted when I finished reading it because I wanted to read more! It is full of little stories about all those fonts whose name and look are so familiar and yet I didn’t know much if at all about their designer or how they came about into being. It is like reading about your dear old friends – so familiar – that you are so fond of, and yet knew very little about their life and history. It’s like getting to know your friends – that is, your favorite fonts – better. There are struggles, impressive feats and funny bits. You’d respect real font designers even more.

Simply put, it is entertaining and informative, a delight to behold too – set in beautiful fonts! If you like fonts, enjoy working with them, then get this book. You won’t regret it.

(Thanks to my thoughtful husband who gifted this book to me :). He definitely knows me very well!).

I am still amazed that another year has passed by! And the new year is now already a week old! How time flies!

How did you spend your new year’s eve? We hosted a small dinner at our place with some friends, my husband cooked – as usual – and it was good! We were fortunate to catch the ferry to town just in time to watch the fireworks at the pier. Actually, we didn’t know that it was one of the venues to watch the fireworks but when we arrived we saw many people have gathered there so we stayed put. I didn’t bring my camera with me, but I managed to tried the video feature on my iPhone (thanks to my younger brother who gifted me this nifty gadget!). Enjoy:

To see the complete firework display from across the harbor, check this out – it’s pretty impressive!