Weekend Special - 3 FREE Cards

This weekend only, from Friday to Sunday, Dec 4, 2011:

Buy 3 Handmade Cards Get 3 FREE Handmade Cards (doesn't apply to sets of cards)

 

Simply purchases all 6 cards of your choice and I'll refund 3 cards (equal or lesser values).

 

So what are you waiting for? Shop for the holidays at my AdoreByNat shop. A set of handmade cards are great gift!

Totally Nuts for You

I've been creating more masculine cards lately, including this cute Totally Nuts for You card. It's still adorable, yes, cause you can't really get rid of that from me, hehe....but a man can be adorable, can't he?


I love the color combination of blue and brown, simply lovely.

That's it for now. By the way, if you haven't entered Puresin's giveaway, you should! It ends tomorrow.

Giveaway winner of Designs by Tracy Brigham

Happy Monday, everyone! Hope your weekend was fantastic.

It's time to annouce the winner of Designs by Tracy Brigham.

Congratulations, Melody! I believe you've been contacted and you have 48 hours to get back to Tracy.

Thank you Tracy for your generosity, and thanks everyone who entered.

The Pen Place's giveaway is on now. Come and enter!

In the meantime, I'd like to share one of my cards. Sassy and chic for a girly girl!

My Creative Space: Live Life

After weeks focusing on holiday cards and tags, I thought it's a great idea to take a break and get back to my regular cards. I kinda missed my flowers :-)

I'm pleased with how this Live Life card turns out, such a sweet card to remind one on how we should face our daily life. I'll be listing this card soon at my shop.


For more creative space, visit kootoyoo site.

4 Etsy-Versary SALE

I could not believe that it has been 4 years being on Etsy. It has been Wonderful!
I made sales, yes! 811 sales so far. Received 731 feedbacks! Thank you so much to all my customers who made this happened. Thank you for your continuing support. Just the other day, I chatted with my 1st buyer on twitter. She even wrote a review on my shop, one of the first reviews I honorly received.

But what I love the most as being part of Etsy community is the friendship that I found over the years. I've meet many friends through Etsy. An extraordinary gal, owner of LeasLetters convoed me out of the blue, welcoming me to the world of Etsy and since then we we've been friends. First friend on Etsy that I'll never forget :-)

As is in a real life, not everything is all-okay. Though there were a couple of occassions where I had bitter experiences ( I hate hurtful accusations!), I will not let that stain my appreciation and love to this Etsy community.

So, enough rambling here.

SALE. Big Sale!
From November 4 to 7, everything in my adorebynat shop is on sale.

And....to top that up. Every purchase that you make, you are eligible to be entered in BIG GIVEAWAY that Etsy Greetings team currently has. For the month of NOVEMBER, purchase from my shop or from my teammates in EtsyGreetings and have a chance to win 20+ handmade greeting cards. One entry is for one item, the more you buy, the better chance you have. ASK ME for details or visit the EtsyGreetings blog. Unfortunately only those individuals in the United States can enter the giveaway. Sorry guys, you know how I love international giveaways and this time, I wasn't the one that made the rule. But you still can purchase anything in my shop in discounted price for the next 3 days :-)

Creations of the Week

It has been a busy week. I have a new wholesale order to complete along with a customized shadow box layout. I may not be able to list something new at my shop, but meanwhile, enjoy a couple of my newest cards.

Car Goes Vroom Vroom card is inspired by no other than my Ethan of course. I learn so much about cars and trucks in the past 2 years.

But it's time to go back to the girly-girl side of mine. Lol. Flowers in a card seems hard to avoid.

This flower card, for example, is a perfect way to say Thank You.

Don't forget to enter this week giveaway, win $20 gift certificate to spend at Dancing Rain Designs shop.

Creations of the Week: Flowers Bunch

These are SUPER adorable cards. Okay, I may be biased, but I'll let you be the judge. Leave me a comment whether you like it or not and trust me, I won't be offended :-)

The flowers are made from flower punches tied together with cute buttons. The leaves are handcut and I don't have a template for that....simply hand cutting and gauge the size.

I'm hoping I can list them at my shop sometimes tonight if not tomorrow, but if you really like them, simply contact me :-) If you like the papers that I use, feel free to browse my natsupplies shop where I have some destashed papers sold in great bargain.

My last note, if you haven't entered a great giveaway to win ceramic love birds designed by Orly Design, then why wait? Enter here please.

Sweet Card for Sweet Girl -- Part 2 (Final)

The past couple of days had been about cutting, stitching, and gluing. I started working on this custom order last week (read here).

Cutting papers.

Dry-embossing papers and punching.


Cutting felts and hand-stitching them. Adorned cute buttons.

Each of 45 cards are machined-stitched all around.

And it's time for some gluing. At the same time, I tried to keep the 2 years old busy, but most of the time he keeps me busy. :-)

And they're all done!! Just in time for me to move on to my other 'task' which I'll share with you soon. But don't be excited, cause I'm not. It's has nothing to do with cardmaking, unfortunately.

Anyway, going back to these sweet cards I made. Here they are....


Each is just too cute and darling, isn't it? Details ... and details ... I didn't really realize that much until I had to make 45 of them :-) The small rectangle in the right bottom corner is left blank as the client may want to put the guest names there ... or the girl's name. It's for Christening occasion by the way. Pretty neat for the Mom to think outside the box. These are not just regular cards you can find in brick & mortar stores.
And they're placed in resealable plastic sleeve, carefully packed and will be shipped tomorrow.


I would love to hear what you think of them. :-)

Sweet Card for Sweet Girl -- Part 1

This week big project is to make 45 of these sweet cards for a client based in Europe (I love international buyer!).

Papers and cardstocks will used are from my favorites brands: Making Memories, K&C, and Bazzill.


You know how I love felts!


And of course, buttons! They just add cuteness to everything. :-)


These are just raw materials right now and I'll be soon do the cutting, stitching (machine and hand stitching), punching, embossing, gluing, etc. I'll be sure take more pictures as I'm working on them.

Happy Weekend!

Hearts for Haiti

HeartsforHeiti Shop is a place where collective Etsy Shops have come together to donate their arts/ crafts in order to rebuild Haiti after its devastating earthquake disaster recently. The 100% proceed (after fees) goes to DoctorsWithoutBorders. As of 8:30 EST 1/21/10, the shop has raised $10,037.37 (after fees) for Doctors Without Borders.

I'm so touched and impressed with the Etsy artists movement and along with them, I donated a couple of items below:



They were sold in a couple of hours. You may see more of my items in the shop soon :-)

You can help too. If you are an artist, you can donate your beautiful creations. And if you're not an artist, you still can help by buying handmade goodies (jewelries, arts/ prints, cards, clothes, kids stuff, etc) at this shop. Buy a lot of them and pay no shipping. That's right! The cost of shipping is incurred by the artists and all we need is your support.

Valentine's Cards

If Valentine's day is a big thing for you then you may want to get Valentine's card(s) sooner than later.

Here are some cards that I made recently:





They certainly kept me busy :-)
Available at my shop.

Snuggly Felt Bird Cards

My felt bird cards are back!! It has been a while that I haven't made these kind of cards and you know, I missed them. They're just too darling and snuggly.

Each felt bird is hand cut and hand stitched. I love details and you can tell that there are a lot of details involved in these cards such as machine-stitching and dry-embossing.


These cards are available at my shop.

By the way, if you haven't entered my giveaway, enter now here. You can win $25 gift certificate at ModernClassicsPaper, Fine Art Photography.

Whoo Hoo! Gorgeous Card Is Mine

I entered the last Etsy Greetings giveaway for the year of 2009 here. And I won!! Whoo Hoo! What a nice way to end 2009.

The card came on the mail yesterday and believe me that it's one gorgeous card I've ever seen, full of details ... details ... and details. And the artist, it's Susan from Killam Creative. I always adore her creations and I included her in one of my Spotted Tuesdays (read it here).

So pretty, right? Now this is what I call an A.R.T.!! Don't expect to get this card on the mail from me cause I'm that selfish to keep it myself. Lol.

Getting Ready for Valentine's

Christmas is over and it means we're gearing up to another special day: Valentine's. Did you see that all the decorations in the mall are pink and h♥arts? No more Santa Claus and Snowman. Awww... Love is in the air.

So, that's what I've been working on lately: some Valentine's cards and tags.




Hope you like 'em! They're available at my Adore By Nat shop.

Not Martha Stewart . . .

Oh how I want to be like Martha Stewart. Or perhaps to just have a tiny bit of her talents.

I can cook. I actually enjoy cooking! But baking? Well, I haven't had so much time to bake. I'm talking about baking some cakes. Cooking is more a daily chore which I have to do or my family won't eat. Lol. While baking, on the other hand, is something that I don't do much unless I feel of doing.

For Ethan's birthday, I planned to bake his birthday cake. I chose to make cupcakes because I thought that's the easiest to make. Plus my Mom gave me this cupcake recipe book recently and I really wanted to make a use of it. As you know, we just moved in to our new place. I didn't even have all the basic tools and ingredients, i.e. baking pan, cup measurement, flour, butter, chocolate, icing sugar etc. I had to borrow baking pan and cup measurement from a friend who happens to be a neighbour. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) my plan changed in a last minute. We had to meet some friends the day of the party. Long story short, we decided to buy a cake and bake the cupcakes on another day since I already had all the ingredients.

So...a few weeks after that (you know, I had to make the time) I baked cupcakes. And they turned out like this (below).

Hahaha, laugh as much as you want :-) I know what I am getting into by posting this. When I took these pictures, DH asked why would I take pictures of them if they turned out bad. I said, well, I am not only sharing my beautiful cards but also my failure in baking cupcakes.

Anyway, they raised for a little while and then sunk. Agrr. I googled and found a few things that can cause the sinking. It could be the temperature that wasn't stable. It could also mean that I need to leave it at the oven a bit longer. It could be that I beat the mixed it too much or too little. It could be that I filled the tin too much of batter not leaving it enough room to expand. It could be that they didn't not have enough raising agents as well. Ironically, I intentionally chose a recipe that doesn't require the use of baking soda, thinking that one less ingredient off the list makes things easier. I learned my lesson on that one.

I made a few batches and tried to incorporate some of the suggestions above. Not much luck as you can see. The last batch was hard as stones.

But, it's not all bad. Ethan seemed to enjoy eating them just as much he enjoyed helping me beating the mix. And DH said the taste is not too bad except they're a bit too sweet.


I was planning to give some to my friend who lent me the pan and so on. At the end, I chose not too. I think it's better if I helped her throwing these myself. They are edible (somewhat) but they're just not Cupcakes.

Let me end this post with something better and more memorable, a card that I made this morning.

SALE: Buy 4 Get 1 Free

Visit my Adore By Nat shop and grab your favorite cards.

Enjoy Buy 4 Get 1 Free sale.