Travel Album – Melbourne

It has been half a year since I started scrapbooking. And after so long, I finally embarked on designing an album. I dare myself to try out my very first album using an acrylic album. Acrylic album is harder than the usual album in that you have to consider the see through effect and hence you have to consider where to place your photos and embellishment and how the back of the acrylic page would look like. But an acrylic album also offers lot more interesting effect/ look.

This is an album that records our very first trip with Zachary when he was 9 months old and it was to Melbourne. Material used are largely from the Making Memories Panorama Series, which includes the stamp, ribbon, stickers, papers, tags, pins and flowers.

For the entire album, I inked the edges with teal stazon and for most pages, I lined the left edges with the tapes from Making Memories.

Front cover

I outline the edge with silver stickles. I used distress ink to do the compass masking on the PP and I pasted the PP on the back of the cover. On the front of cover, I outline the compass with liquid pearl and did that for the letterings too. I also stamped some edge stamp, travelling texts with Stazon and also added on some travel themes rub-ons. For the flowers, I also added some green stickles. For the Tim Holtz die cut, I have used grungepaper and distressed it with distress inks and rub on with distress stickles and attach the Making Memories ‘Vocation’ tag to it with metal rings. As for the acetate scallop tag attached to the ring, I die cut it from Sizzix scallop tag and emboss it with Tim Holtz texture fade. I then dab it with silver alcohol inks and drop blue alcohol ink randomly on the embossed side. The journey tag metal embellishment tied to the ring is from 7 Gypsies.

Pg 2

I used the aeroplane ribbon as a mask and distressed. The crest die-cut is from Tim Holtz Alteration range.

Pg 3

I used the PP pack packaging which shows the beautiful grid pattern with a hole cut out on the left and I insert a photo in.

Pg 4

I used the Tim Holtz edge die for the strip of PP I placed in middle. Embellish with flowers (with stickles on) and also inserted the flag pin onto the flower.

Pg 5

I stamped the left side of the acrylic page with white stazon. The stamp is travelling theme stamp from Hero Arts.

Pg 6

I left the right side of the frame with the white stamped images uncovered.

Pg 7

Used Tim Holtz edge die cut to die-cut the edge of the pp. I then stamped some travelling theme words with jet black stazon on the arcylic page and EK circle punch to punch out the photos.

Pg 8

Once again, Tim Holtz edge die for the PPs and did faux stitching. For the white space, I masked with distress inks using the Tim Holtz compass mask. Next, I also overlay the embossed acetate sheet with the Tim Holtz Bingo texture plate. The embossed area was lightly distressed with blue distress inks.

Pg 9
I used the car ‘lace’ PP I bought long time ago and mist over it with blue glimmer mist and also added some gold mist for shine. Also, I tied a string round the photo and hang  the 7 Gypsies luggage embellishment

Back cover

Stamp the right hand side of the page using some flower stamp with stazon. I use Martha Steward Punch to punch edge of the blue packaging paper from Making Memories. The ‘Journey Blvd’ was an embossed image (used Orange Zing). And the black flourish was a Maya Road rub-on.

Hope you have enjoyed browsing through with me the entire album. J

Read Full Post »

Chiang Mai – Day 3

Finally, my last post on my Chiang Mai trip. Pardon for the slow upload as there are more photos uploaded here.

We left hotel in the morning for some shopping again. There were some nice but higher end boutique stores along the road near our hotel. Could not remember the name of the road. Haha, once again, I managed to grab quite a number of nice dresses at cheaper price compared to Singapore. There’s also this café recommended by Lonely Planet and is called ‘Smoothie Blues’. We ate waffles with mango and chocolate ice-cream, egg omelette with rice and sweet and sour chicken. All very yummy and of course, the smoothies are very nice. Highly recommended place.

After lunch at the café, we went back hotel to unload stuff and also to let Zachary have a nap while hubby went for a massage at the spa next to our hotel. In late afternoon, we set off to the Chiang Mai Old City to visit Wat Pra Shring Temple, the 3 Kings and also the HQ Paper Gallery.

We did try walking within the City to get from places to places but weather was extremely humid and hot and we still need to carry Zachary. So ended up, we did take some public transport.

The papers sold at the Paper Gallery were cheaper than those I bought at the paper umbrella outlet. And there’s huge range. I am particularly interested in those with unique prints and wordings. See the papers I bought.

 The store also sells beautiful leaves. See what I got here.

 Also, there’s display of some art pieces made using these papers with different mediums. Sorry for poor photos taken as the lightings were quite dim as the shop was closing by the time we reached there.

For dinner, we went to this higher end restaurant with beautiful settings. It’s just at the fringe of the Old City. Nice ambience and we finally could find a baby chair. Ya, it’s difficult to get baby chair in any restaurants there; even our hotel ones don’t have them. It was tough to dine with Zachary without a baby chair, as he always want to get down to the floor and cannot sit still.

After dinner, we went to the Night Market. Quite a big market but most things sold at the stalls were pretty similar. There weren’t a lot of people surprisingly. Perhaps it was a Thursday and not weekends. But, there were seriously not many tourists we could see during the 3 days. I  believe the tense situation previously had deterred people from visiting. But I would say during our trip there, everything was normal and peaceful. And we had truly enjoyed this whole trip and felt so much recharged now. And for those planning to visit Chiang Mai, please also go for the adventurous water rafting, elephant riding and many other fun places including travelling further up to Chiang Rai. Believe the scenery at these places are much different and beautiful. It’s a pity we cannot visit these places since we have a young toddler. But I am sure we will re-visit Chiang Mai again!

Read Full Post »

Chiang Mai – Day 2

Sorry that this post was really late (I hope to post about Day 3 which is the last day of the trip soon; please bear with me).

I had signed up a half day Thai cooking course online before the trip. The course was conducted by the Thai Cookery School. It was actually almost a one day course but as Zachary and hubby were coming along, I thought it would be better to go for a shorter one. The staffs were nice and accommodated to the special requirement and also allowed me to bring Zachary along.

The class was conducted at this Thai International Chef’s house located somewhere quite far north of Chiang Mai (took about half hour ride from main city). Very nice and quite a big compound. Photo below shows the cooking compound.

 We first learnt some basic vegetable carving using tomato and carrots. Was pretty easy and fun. See my first attempt on making a rose, a lotus and a leaf.

 The dishes that I learnt were: Minced Pork Ball Clear Soup, Fried Spring Rolls, Red Curry with Duck and Chicken with Ginger. See photos below for the some of the dishes I had whipped up.

Very yummy dishes and the teachers speak clear English. And one of the teachers even helped to baby sit Zachary as and when she’s available. All these including transport to and from hotel and hubby’s portion of food at 1000 baht. So value for money ya. The class ended at 2+pm and we got the driver to drop us off at the Airport Plaza Shopping Centre. This shopping centre is bigger and much better than the other one and is very near to the Airport. I found a handicraft shop there that sells all sewing kits and I bought so many as you can see from the photo below; spent 3000 baht plus.

Read Full Post »

Chiang Mai Trip – Day 1

We left for Chiang Mai in the early morning and reached around noon time. We were given an hour plus for lunch at our hotel before we were supposed to head for the free industry tour provided by the agency. The industry tour was actually visit to the silverware, silk, jewellery, honey and umbrella making places. Some photos taken at the silk making outlet. The top left photo was a lady extracting silk threads from the cocoon boiled in a pot.

These are photos taken at the umbrella making outlet. First one was showing how a lady hammers the paper pulp which is one of the procedures of making paper for the umbrella. Last photo shows the mulberry papers I bought.

 After the industry tour, we went shopping on our own at the nearby shopping centre call the Central. It’s not a glamorous mall but it’s probably the second largest there. Nonetheless, I managed to get lots of low-priced tops from the shops there and also undergarments which are much cheaper than here. We got back to hotel at 6+ and went for dinner at roof top of our hotel. It overlooks the mountain. Our room at Furama Hotel was very spacious and comfortable but the location of hotel was not as strategic as it was hard for all drivers to know the exact route in.

Some photos taken at the roof top of our hotel.

Read Full Post »