Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Learning progress

Making crafts has been a passion of mine ever since I learned how to use a needle and thread. Recently, I've been collecting crocheting books so I can come up with some ideas next time I plan on creating stuffs. But for now, I'm currently fond of amigurumis.

Earlier I decided to to use again the same pattern I bought. I started around 1 in the afternoon with this:
It kinda resembles a snowman. I used a 4-ply acrylic yarn which my friend purchased from a store in Quiapo Manila. This one resulted into a much larger version of the previous bunny I made here.

After approxiamtely 5 hours, here's the result:

I'm happy with how it turned out. It looks like a bunny and that's all I've hoped for.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Amigurumi noob

Few weeks ago I bought an amigurumi pattern from Amigurumeria. This pattern is a bunny stuffed toy which is perfect for beginners like me. I find the crochet stitches easy to follow. It's a good thing that Amigurumeria saw my instagram account and offered me to buy the bunny pattern.

As you can see at the picture above I haven't perfected this one yet (specifically the putting it together part wherein you have to sew the parts) so I still need more practice. I didn't put a mouth on this one because I find it cute even though it doesn't have a mouth.

There are amigurumi patterns free in Ravelry and in other personal crafting sites. Amigurumi stuffed animals can even serve as your handmade gifts for Valentine's Day. It's just few days away so hurry up and make some not just for your significant other but for your love ones too (includes parents, kids, friends etc.)


Sunday, January 26, 2014

Park quick shoot, Little Tokyo, and new crochet project done.

Last Monday, I and some friends went to Little Tokyo in Makati. This was our first time to visit this popular place that consists of different Japanese Restaurants. When Roxy, who is my long time bestfriend invited me and another friend of mine Nanz to check out the place, I immediately jump in to that idea. I've been wanting to see the place for a long time but for some unknown reason, I didn't.

Anyway, I immediately informed Nanz about the plan and of course I already know that she'll agree on this meet-up. This was also the first time that Roxy and Nanz will see, talk to each other in person hahaha. I know they'll get along well because of some similarities they have that I also possess.

Before that dinner though, I helped out Nanz do a "special project" related to "Destiel." For those who don't know what Destiel is, this is a "ship" relating to the "special bond" between fictional characters Dean Winchester and Castiel from the popular CW series Supernatural. The name is simply a combination of the names Dean and Castiel and is created by the fans.

So going back, there's this tumblr page that has a project where they accept submissions from Destiel fans showing a picture of themselves holding a banner with their name and location plus the hashtag #DestielAroundtheWorld. Their goal is to show that Destiel shippers can be found anywhere in the world. My friend Nanz, she's one of them. She's really really REALLY a hardcore fan of this pairing.

Nanz aasked me to help her out and obviously I said yes. She chose the location on where I will take her photo and now you can find her picture here.

Alright, let's go back to Little Tokyo. The place where we ate is called Hana. They have a wide selection of Japanese foods that will surely make your mouth water.
I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the food I ordered but I do know that it's a Tofu steak and takoyaki. We were 45 minutes early from their opening time (6pm) so we just sat in front of their place, talking about anything under the calamansi tree. Haha.

The weather is actually perfect, it's cold and it matches the outdoor decors they have one of them was this:
It's a snowman (not Olaf though). Isn't he adorable? I guess this is still a Christmas decor from last year that they haven't yet replaced with a new one but I don't care, it's cute.

I'll surely come back to Little Tokyo as there are still other restaurants to explore there. I wanna try different foods though so hopefully my takoyaki cravings won't kick in again.

After this outdoor adventure, I spent the whole week mostly indoors except the time I went out with my mom to pay some bills and do some grocery shopping. What I did for the rest of the week was crocheting  medium size pouch for our nail tools to replace the old and dirty one. I just completed it this afternoon. It's just a simple plain blue colored yarn, nothing special about it. Just want to make sure that our nail tools are organized in one bag.
  (Above is the new crochet pouch I did, below is the old nail tools pouch we have which is store bought).

Thank you for reading! May the odds be ever in your favor! Someone's obviously obsessed with Hunger Games. LOL

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Goals...

I mentioned on my previous post here that I'm not the type of person who make a list of resolutions everytime a new year begins. However, I am definitely someone who have dreams and goals in life. What I'm trying to say here is that, resolutions and goals are different from each other.

Resolution is, according to thefreedicitonary is the act or an instance of resolving. This means that resolution leans more on something that you shouldn't be doing or resolving a problem you already have. For example, you are a big spender and for this new year you want to minimize your bad spending habit by staying away from malls every other week or something like that. Therefore, you are resolving an "issue" you already have.

I guess the reason why most of the people who make resolution ends up not "meeting" it by the end of the year is because you will find yourself reverting back to this old habit of yours  slowly or instantly forgetting that you even have this resolution in the first place. It's like putting yourself in a tiny box but since you can't fit on it, you just gave up and remove yourself from it.

Like I said before, there are people who are successful with meeting resolutions and if making resolution works for you then by all means, go for it.

Now, my main point here is about goals. Goals for me is more of a continuous thing. It doesn't have a limit or a time frame. Goal-setting helps us to get in track with what we really, really want to have in life. It is done by outlining the step by step procedure we need to accomplish to achieve success.

Let me give you an example. My goal in life is to be rich so that I can provide what I and my family need in our everyday lives. Now, I can't be an instant millionaire the next day unless you join the lottery and you won. But you cannot just depend on your ticket right? Anyway, going back, If I want to be rich, I need to think of ways (good ways) on how I can earn money.

So the first thing I need to do is to either find a job, or start a business. Either way, whatever you choose that's one step from achieving your goal. Next step, how do I make this living contribute to my success? Well the next step is to perform well. If it's work, be punctual, show that you are reliable and efficient at the work place. Same goes if you are starting up a business. Spend time planning a "market strategy" and know how to give a quality product/service to your clients.

If you do this, you will get promoted or your business will be known to others, getting more possible clients for you.If you'll notice it takes certain steps to achieve goals but it is totally worth it.

For me, what I'm trying to do now to meet my goal is to just take it one step at a time. My target in life is to be successful. Successful in a lot of things, my business (which I started a year and a half ago) but didn't became successful) because honestly, my whole heart is not on it before. I neglected it and now I decided it's time to put my attention on it but it doesn't need to be an overnight success. As long as my business keeps on going and improving as the years go by, then I'll be happy.

Another goal of mine is to learn a lot of crafts. I'm beginning to teach myself on how to knit. I'll make a separate post about my knitting adventures here so watch out for that.

I've got a lot of goals but if I put it here, you might get bored and this post is also getting a bit long already. So dear readers, thank you for your time in reading this, may the force be with you and may the odds be ever be in your favor! :)

Sunday, January 5, 2014

My Etsy Store

I created an Etsy store a year and a half ago. I uploaded a couple of items but didn't get a sale until last week. However this first sale has a huge impact to me that it boost my passion once again to create more stuffs to sell.

https://www.facebook.com/TheWinkingFairy

The name of my shop is The Winking Fairy. My shop name was inspired by my love for magical creatures especially fairies, pixies and elves. The "winking" was just randomly added - I thought of an action word that can represent cute yet sweet gesture of a fairy and so that's the word that came across my mind.

For this shop I'll be focusing on selling BJD-related items. BJD stands for ball-jointed doll. I'm a bjd collector and I want to incorporate my hobby into business by selling accessories for bjd in my shop. But, I will also sell some items that a person could use. I started putting up mobile phone cases like this one shown below:


And since, my first attempt in doing a sock monkey hat for bjds was a success (see previous post), I made another one this time in a different color which I am also selling in my store:


Hopefully my online store will have a more number of views and sales for this year.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Crocheting and other stuffs

When I was in grade 5 (11 years old) we have a subject called H.E.L.E. which means Home Economics and Livelihood Education. In this subject we were taught on how to be a good homemaker. This includes how to cook, how to sew, how to do arts and crafts and other stuffs a typical homemaker does.

One of the things I love about this class was there's minimal amount of discussions and recitations involved because it's more on practical stuffs. My brain functions more on the artistic side and so this subject became my favorite.

However, what really made this subject my favorite was the fact that I get to learn how to do needle works such as basic sewing, reading patterns for cross-stitch and my all time fave - crocheting.

Crocheting is now becoming a huge part of my life. My passion for crocheting heightened during the second half of last year. I became obsessed with making beanies for ball-jointed dolls, and my friend even encouraged me to do a lot of it which we included in the items we sell on our booth for a doll event we attended. Unfortunately though, I only manage to sell 2 beanies on that day (my friend's clothes though were a hit and almost all of the items are sold) so at the end of the day we still feel accomplished with our mission.

Going back, my obsession with crocheting just started with beanies but I continued doing other stuffs like human-sized scarves, mobile phone cases and small table cloth. I'm trying to expand my knowledge in this craft by learning how to read patterns because I'm not used to reading written or illustrated patterns before. I'm getting there though...

Now, I'm working on another item which I will be posting on my online store as soon as I finished it. This online store by the way was created last 2012 of October but I only got my first sale last Monday! Honestly, I had totally screwed up on maintaining and improving my store not until recently due to some events that happened last year (see previous post).

Luckily, I was able to check my email and found out someone sent me a payment. It came as a surprise to me because I didn't expect someone will purchase anything from my online store (I only have 2 items posted there haha). Because of this really unexpected turn of events, I'm now trying to organize and fix my store and create more items to sell. My first sale give me a boost once again to continue in this venture.

Below is a sample hat/earflap I made for my friend's ball-jointed doll: