Silhouette: Monogrammed Multi Purpose Zippered Pouch

A friend invited me for a kenduri kesyukuran for her daughter who did well for her UPSR recently. She has been accepted to MRSM Ulul Albab Gemenceh. I whipped up a simple zippered pouch. It looked plain despite the rainbow coloured dots motive and I was in the mood to play around with my Silhouette Potrait.

I didn't want to make it too complicated so I decided to add a monogram on the pouch.

This was my 2nd attempt to cut fabric on Silhouette and the first with PixScan mat. Unfortunately, it didn't go as easy when I used the original mat. Maybe the mat was stickier compared to PixScan mat because my fabric moved. I had to repeat the process 4 times before I got it right. So, for my future reference and to benefit other Silhouette users, here is my how tos:

1. Prepare the fabric. I sprayed the scrap with starch spray and iron it until it is relatively stiff. Then I lightly sprayed some adhesive on the wrong side of the fabroc so it sticks to the mat. Then i secure the edges with masking tape.

2. I then took a picture of the mat and imported it into Studio.

3. I typed the letter M and fitted it within the scrap.

4. Once I am happy with the font, I sent it for cutting.

5. The cut out letter M after I removed the excess fabric.

6. The monogram.

Initially, I glued the letter M onto the pouch with fabric glue but it needed some dimension to it. So I finished the monogram by hand stitching around the edge with blanket stitch using a contrasting embroidery thread colour. i like the finished look, don't you?

Silhouette: Experimenting with PixScan Mat & Vinyl Starter Kit

This is me when I get a new toy; I would browse the internet and Pinterest on projects using Silhouette and my head just started to spin with so many things to do. I gave in and bought 2 additional items to add into my Silhouette collection; the PixScan mat and Vinyl Starter Kit. I ordered them here on Tuesday, 10 March 2015 and they arrived the next day. That’s what I like about Online Shopping.

I tested the PixScan Mat first. It was fairly easy to calibrate my Iphone to the software. I have some pattern paper with some designs that I can immediately use to cut out so I took a picture of it on my iphone, transfered the image to the software and send it to cut. Easy peasy huh? NOT! Well, not after several attempts. The trick is: TAKE THE PICTURE IN A WELL LIT AREA WITH AS LITTLE SHADOW AS POSSIBLE AND TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE WHOLE MAT.
There’s several videos on YouTube teaching you how to calibrate the camera to cutting the scanned image. Here’s my demo of my PixScan test:

Then I tested the vinyl. I know Teacher’s Appreciation Day is somewhere in May. With two kids in school, there’s no harm in starting early on the gifts. Again, with things around the house (hoarder extraordinaire) I made these coasters from MDF boards bought from Daiso. They came out extremely well. Just love the clean lines Silhouette cut on the vinyl, making the result so professional. (I sprayed 2 coats of clear acrylic sealer over it so that it’s water proof)

Oh, I didn’t just shop for my Silhouette stuff, I had a tough time at home on Monday that I resorted to more online shopping. I had some credit owing to me from an Online Shopping site when I returned a faulty item sometime last year. They gave me some store credit and it was a good time to redeem it (the GST thingy again) So I redeemed it for a huge powerbank. It came on Wednesday afternoon and before I left to pick up Danial from school later that evening, I’ve already pimped it, hahahah!

Having great results from my rather emotional and impulsive purchases, I am glad to report that I have little if not, no ‘Buyer’s Remorse’ hahahahaha

Have a good weekend everybody!

New Item on my Wishlist: Brother V3

While I love my Brother NV900 to bits and made a lot of embroidery work with it, I can't help but yearn for a machine with bigger hoop. Recently, I visited Brother Malaysia HQ in Petaling Jaya and got the change to drool over the V3. It’s priced at RM8,999, just RM1 shy of eight grand!

There’s something working in the pipeline with Brother and I hope I can bring this baby home with me in the near future.

I might want to sell off my NV900. Wonder if anybody is interested... If there’s any interested party out there, drop me a line and name your price, I might sell it to the highest bidder.

Throwback: New Craft: Wire Jewelry

Picture credit to @rimaumanja’s Instagram

Last year, I took up wire jewelry class with Mastura Mustafa aka Rimaumanja. Seen in the picture above, me in class with Danial photobombing the picture. You can follow Mas on her Instagram at instagram.com/rimaumanja

Mas is an excellent teacher and I fell in love with this new craft. This is what I made in my very first class: 

This is Arwen wearing it as a pendant:

After the first class, I went to beading.my and shopped for my pliers, craft wires and beads. I think I have easily raked up more than a thousand in terms of purchases made there. I have shipment every week and practically chew up the wires. You'll see in a minute what I mean from the gallery below:

I replicate the first pattern I learned and made a hijab pin for myself.

Then, I made more for practise.

Then, I played around with different shapes

I like this stylized kitty cat, don't you?

Then I start selling the hijab pins, to recover my initial investments in materials. Alhamdulillah, they were well received.

I made these too, dubbed "Hearty" which is pronounced "Hati" which is a malay word for "heart" (shish!)

Then Mas went away for holiday in December and left me highly addicted to wire craft. She suggested that I purchase her tutorial on Etsy. Go here to check out her Etsy shop. So, I purchased a whimsical butterfly brooch pattern because I wanted to learn how to make the brooch from wire instead of fixing the finished product to a brooch back. This was my first Butterfly which I made to be lefty friendly: 

and I made some more. All these lovely butterflies have flown to their owners.

I expanded some more on the product range for my wire craft but that will be in another post.

In the meanwhile, if you fancy taking upwire jewelry, you can follow Mas on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/whimsicalnquirky to check out her class schedule. 

New Toy: Silhouette Potrait

I finally took the plunge and bought a Silhouette Portrait. It has been on my Wishlist since last year and I kept putting it off. Since the implementation of GST is due in April, I went ahead with the purchase for fear that the price might increase after the implementation. I got it last Friday, 6 March 2015 and picked it up from the vendor. I ordered it here: Silhouette Malaysia

I only got the chance to unbox it on Sunday which is so unlike me. But I guess people change. I didn’t buy any other kit or tools and managed to use stuff at home to experiment.

This is my first cut with the Silhouette. The Silhouette Studio software looked daunting at first and I was eager to just cut something. So, I chose  a ready design from the 50 pre-installed designs. The mat was extra sticky. I used the normal copy paper and couldn’t peel it off and just ripped it. The second try, I used a thicker craft paper and adjusted the setting somewhat. It came out beautifully and just with one pass. I read some saving tips, to prolong the life of the blade, don’t tick the 2 pass box. 

After the first 2 experiments, I got more confident and searched out for some free patterns. Obviously I know what to look for; Iphone cover template. The picture above, the before image is a manual cut template. the straight lines wasn’t a problem but I didn’t have much patience to cut out the camera hole. I purposely bought a clear Iphone5 cover so that I could change the designs when I get bored with it. Guess what, that Palestine flag design was the only design I made. Fast forward to the present. I found the template here. The after picture is the one i made using pattern paper. The pattern is actually a fabric pattern from Grand Revival’s, Tanya Wheelan. Good thing I’m somewhat of a hoarder (I used to deny it but the fact remains), otherwise, I won’t have anything pretty to cut.

My Iphone didn’t only get one new cover in one day, but two! I experimented with fabric. I mentioned that I didn’t buy any materials or specialty media so I had to work with what I have. I experimented with the tip shared here and successfully cut out a hexy, a circle and the iphone cover template from fabric.

Having said that, I have to confess that I blog less and less these past few years. I guess I’m more into micro-blogging via my pictures on Instagram. They say "a picture is worth a thousand words”. See how easy that is for me to post pictures? If you like the things I make or would like to see more of what I make, do follow me on Instagram here: instagram.com/madebyrozirahman/. 

With that, I part with one of my favourite quote:

Start where you are; Use what you have; Do what you can

New Year, New Resolution: 52 Week Saving Challenge

Happy New Year 2015!

Gosh! My last post was somewhere in June2014. Seriously, does anybody follow my blog anymore?Blame it on Facebook and Instagram for the sad condition of my blog.

Anyway, I am on a mission to get my life and work/crafting more organised. I’m afraid I’ve been slacking over the past couple of years (OMG!) and let a lot of things slide. My apologies. I have even let this blog go unattended for 6 whole months and missed a lot of comments.

Anyway, in my quest to work on getting things more organised, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration (where else) and I stumbled upon a 52 weeks saving challenge posted in diycozyhome.com. It was an “AHAA!” moment for me and I worked on the 2015 calendar and localised the currency to Malaysian Ringgit.

This is Danial’s 52 week saving challenge based on MYR0.50 increment

The basis is a RM1.00 per week saving with RM1.00 increment every week. Which means, you save RM1.00 in week 1, RM2.00 in week 2, RM3 in week 3 and so on until RM52.00 in week 52. By doing so, at the end of week 52, you would have accumulated RM1,378.00.

I halved the base saving to RM0.50 for my son to get him started on his saving goal. So, at the end of the 52 week, he would have accumulated RM689.00. Not to bad for a start, isn’t it?

If you think that it’s a good idea and wanted to take on the challenge, I’ve included a template for the RM0.50 and RM1.00 increment table for you to print out and stick it onto a container and start the challenge.

The pdf file is here.

Drop me a line in the comment box if you are taking up the challenge and how you are progressing. I hope you can benefit for this little something that I share here. Best of luck for all of us. May 2015 brings us the best that life can offer.

p/s: I’ll work on the 2014 round up and post it in my next post.


Lots of love,

CARIF Be Frank Pink Aprons

I took up the most of May to complete 30 pieces of aprons for CARIF (Cancer Research Initiatives Foundation) for their Be Frank Outreach Hairdressers Programme. This is the second year where I was given the honour to collaborate with them on this project. Do check out their list of hairdressers participating in this programme and improve public cancer literacy here: www.carif.com.my

Here’s some of the pictures I took throughout the process of making the aprons. Running a production line single handed is tough and you have to find creative ways not to bored. I break up the process in small steps so that I can handle things one day at a time. 

First, it was the embroidery process. This time, I appliquéd ‘Be Frank’ logo to the apron. A good friend of mine, Gee RMS digitised the logo for me. Visit her page on Facebook if you wish for some digitising work done: https://www.facebook.com/sulamandanlogo. Though the machine does most of the work, I had to be nearby to change the thread and cut off the excess material for the appliqué. To embroider one logo, it took me 20-25 minutes, that is if there’s no hiccups ie. run out of bobbin thread, top thread snapped etc. Thank God there was just 2 thread colours to change.

The finished embroidery process:

I made my own bias tape with Simplicity Bias Tape Maker. This nifty gadget is heaven sent when I have to make yards and yards of bias tape. It took me like seconds to make 10-12 yards of bias tape and on average one apron require approximately 1 yard of bias tape. That means I made 30 yards of tape for this whole project.

Close up of the finished product:

All set and ready to go:

If you go to CARIF website, you’d see the first batch of the aprons worn by the hairdressers. I did those too :)

Do check out their other programmes too. There’s one I had in mind to sign up after the school break: “More than a Mammo” programme where you get a mammogram done at a subsidised fee of RM50 at Sime Darby Medical Centre (normal fee RM230).