TRADE SCHOOL BOOKBINDING CLASS

In December, I attended a bookbinding class taught by Ian from The Thistle Bindery and organized by Trade School Singapore. Bookbinding has always been interesting to me, and I have made quite a few notebooks myself too, but I got to pick up some new tips and tricks from Ian. But before I go into that, I just wanted to talk about Trade School Singapore for a bit.

From their tumblr, "Trade school singapore is an alternative learning space that runs on barter. Modelled after trade school new york, teachers share their knowledge and skills without taking a fee. Instead, students respect the teacher’s time and effort by fulfilling one item on the teacher’s wish list. This creates a collaborative space where students and teachers barter based on a coincidence of wants." 

Basically, this means classes are free, but when students sign up, they are required to pick something on the teacher's wish list, whether it is to donate to charity, bring something from home, or agreeing to do something for the teacher. Its a fantastic idea, because classes can get really expensive these days, and this provides the opportunity for people to come together as a community and learn from each other. 

Because classes are proposed voluntarily by individual teachers, you can guess that Trade School has held quite a diverse range of interesting classes, with topics including floral arrangement, coffee tasting, conversational cantonese, calligraphy (a class I really wanted to attend boohoo), beatboxing, and these are just during Season 2! During Season 1 in 2012, they had self defense, friendship bands, an introduction to typography, and much more! Sounds pretty exciting doesn't it? It sure is!


For Ian's bookbinding class, he told us more about the different types of book binding techniques, the tools that were best for the job, types of materials that were best for bookbinding, and we were taught the pamphlet binding technique, which is kind of the same style I have been binding my small notebooks with.


One thing different was that he taught us the method of making a cover that allowed us to hide the binding instead of having the thread visible along the spine. That was something new to me.


He also taught us how to make a cover closing that allowed the notebook to held shut. I have never made such a closing for my notebooks before and always end up worrying that the paper or corners of the cover will get squashed in my bag. Here's a possible solution for that problem!

And because it was the festive holiday season, Ian got us to add christmas trees to the centre of our notebooks. Its a cute little touch.

The class was great, Ian was really helpful and funny and everyone there was friendly. I felt quite out of place for a bit because everyone there had professions and I was the only one still in school but once we got busy with the bookbinding it was pretty fun.

Now that I've been to one class, I'm looking forward to the next season sometime this year, and I'll be sure to remember to keep checking back, because class slots run out really fast on the Trade School site! Maybe next season we can take up some interesting classes together, how about it? :)

Eunice

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PLAN FOR ESCAPE

With the cancellation of my exam yesterday morning, I found myself with nothing to do (or rather, nothing that I felt needed to be done) and so I pretty much ended up spending almost the whole day scouring the web for anything I could find about things to do in Sydney (and as seen above, plotting them all on an offline map app) ... because I'm headed there for 11 days in two more weeks!!! *whoop whoop!* I really can't wait to leave and forget about school for a bit, before it starts all over again the week after I get back, such a drag.

I've probably read more than 20 websites and 50 blogs about the food, attractions, events, and everything else that popped up on google search about Sydney. If you have a blog talking about Sydney, chances are that I found it. Hahaha After all that reading and ogling at pictures, I'm getting really excited to actually be there. Mostly for the food, and the weekend markets. I was telling my friend Gen, whom I will be staying with in Sydney, that theres just so many things to be done on the weekend but I only have one weekend, and man, that just gets me down. But hey, I'm glad she's there to tell me whats good and what isn't. Heehee

Anyway I did find a few really interesting things online while doing my research:

The Sydney 360 is wayy cool. After seeing the price to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I told Joash, my trip buddy, that he can go climb it on his own if he wants to. Hahaha Instead, I'll just make do with the view the Sydney 360 provides me. Like seriously, you can look at the view all around "you" (even the floor) as "you" climb up the bridge. You can even -virtually- visit Taronga Zoo, surf at Bondi Beach, cycle at Manly, or kayak under the bridge at Sydney Harbour, like, right now. Try it right now for a five minute escape through your computer screen.

Art & Life Work-Shop is a little place in Sydney that offers a range of short courses that focus on art, crafts and life-skills. This reminded my quite a bit of the idea behind the classes of Handmade Movement SG, and I'm always up for learning something fun. So you can imagine that I was psyched to discover this when I did, and got more excited when I saw the Logo Design, Hand Lettering and Intro to Stencil Art courses they were currently having. And then my bubble burst because neither is available during the time period that I'm there. WHY. Sigh. But it would be a lovely place to check back with if you do stay in Sydney. This month's courses look fun; they had Screen Printing, Book Binding, Illustration in a Digital Age, and Flower Crown making! Fun stuff.

City of Sydney 101 Workshops are workshops/seminars that focus on giving small business owners an idea of where/how to start with their new projects. The workshops go from general (starting up a small business, food business) to specific (food trucks, small bars, pop ups), and are presented by the staff, state government agencies, industry representatives or people who have been successful. I think its a really really good idea. Everyone needs to start some where and the fact that Sydney has this platform to reach out to those who need to know more is gonna be very encouraging to aspiring small business owners.

These were just some of the things. Some other things I found included the opportunity to meet some of my favourite Masterchef Australia contestants who I have been watching on TV every night (I kind of want to tell Audra and Mindy how awesome I think they are...) at the Masterchef Dining and Bar Pop-up Restaurant (which is way out of my budget so *sob*), and also the Magnum Pleasure Pop-up store which totally psychs me up but is quite ex for what essentially is a Magnum... Other than that, I guess the rest will have to wait until I get on the plane and fly off for my little escape trip! I can't wait!

Eunice

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COMMUNITY QUILT CRAFT PARTY

Last Saturday Handmade Movement Singapore held their first craft party of 2013 and I am so thankful to have been invited! For their first craft party, they decided to have a community quilt sewing session. Each person sews a quilt square to contribute to the quilt that they are planning to display at their next craft fair in December. Sewing is definitely something I'm pretty terrible at and I haven't sewn much before, so I was initially apprehensive, but decided that it would be fun to try!

I attended this craft party with my lovely friend YeeShan who went around taking all these photos with my camera while I was rushing to finish my project so its thanks to her that I have pictures to show you this time! Yay!

 

There were TONS of fabrics all laid out, super coordinated, on the table for us to choose from. I think everyone was totally spoilt for choice that day. These were the fabrics YeeShan and I picked out for our projects! We didn't really know how to start at first, but once we started to get into it we just winged it. While everyone was working on our quilt squares, Lindsey (who's part of the HMSG team) gave us a live demo of her impressive finger knitting technique. Have to remind myself to try that soon! 

Everyone was done by this time. I'm not sure why I'm always so slowww. Haha

These were our finished quilt squares! (Rectangle in my case) YeeShan had an impromptu moment when she decided to stuff her leaf with extra felt, making it like a little poofy pillow. ^^

 

 

Look at all the quilt squares! And these two really pretty ones made by lovely ladies who were at the craft party. Cute and creative!

 

All in all I had a good peaceful afternoon sewing with YeeShan and I hope she enjoyed it too! I can't wait to see what other craft parties HMSG has planned for this year while they build up to their Holiday Market in December! 

You can follow them on Facebook here it you don't want to miss out on their updates. If you want to read more about their craft parties, you can read about the first one I attended here, or check out their blog or Facebook to have a look at the other past events! :) Eunice

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FABRIC PRINTING

On the 23rd of February, my friend Gen and I attended Fictive Finger's fabric printing workshop! Gen enjoys getting crafty too so I was psyched that we could spend some crafty time together before she had to go back overseas. If you remember, I attended another class by Fictive Fingers back in December but under HMSG (if you don't you can read about it here!), and that one was about carving rubber stamps and printing on paper. In the one I attended recently, we learnt more about printing on fabric using silkscreens and rubber stamps. I guess its quite obvious that print making is quite interesting to me. Haha
(This time, the official in-class pictures were available! Yay!)

credit for the above 3 images: taken from Fictive Fingers Facebook page, taken by Abigail

Because I've been carving stamps myself, the highlight of this class for me was learning about making homemade silkscreen designs. The whole class was pretty interesting, especially with Aisah and Hani giving in-depth tips and advice on the different products that were available out there for printing, also sharing and demonstrating their experiences with different techniques. They actually made what we were supposed to do look really easy! But to be honest it sure wasn't easy. The technique itself was simple enough but I think I struggled with the implementation. Hahaha Gen and I didn't manage to finish in time (2nd class, and the 2nd time I'm holding Aisah and the team back. Sorry!), but we had fun, and now we have a blank silkscreen to play around with at home!

We both decided on hot air balloons, but with a different concept. Gen wanted stamped hot air balloons amongst silkscreened clouds, I wanted hot air balloon outlines stamped onto silkscreened circles. Left: Gens, Right: Mine.



These are the designs we silkscreened onto the fabric provided. Its such a pity we didn't get to stamp our hot air balloons on it during the class, but it still looked good! Love Gen's clouds. <3 



After taking my uncompleted project home, I decided to stamp my hot air balloons but I found out I only had red fabric paint (and from a long long long time ago) so I had no choice. Instead of having brightly coloured hot air balloon outlines on dark grey circles, I had to use dark red on dark grey, which didn't exactly turn out the way I wish it did... Hahaha So above is a picture of my end result, but in black and white. Just so you get the idea of what I was going for. ^^

By the way guys, Fictive Fingers just put out a whole range of new workshops, so if you want to treat yourself and learn more about the different techniques of print making this March, check out their workshop page here! :) Eunice

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CARVE, PRINT & WRAP

image source

So I was really excited to finally be able to attend one of Handmade Movement Singapore's craft parties - Carve, Print, & Wrap! The stamp carving lesson was taught by the two sisters of Fictive Fingers, one of whom was my netball senior in Crescent, which was how I got to know more about their work. Their ability to carve precise and detailed stamp designs is intriguing and I've have been admiring their work for quite a while, so I'm glad that THIS is the class that was to be held during my school holidays. Hooray!
(Sorry that I don't have much photos of the class itself, I brought my camera along but didn't get the chance to use it. Besides I think there was an official photographer there so I'll wait for those pictures to come out! You can check out some snapshots on HMSG's Facebook page though! Link given below.)

These were the two stamps I carved! The reindeer was from one of the templates that were provided. The option to create my own design was offered but knowing myself I would've taken half an hour deciding, and besides the reindeer was too cute to resist! (credits to Aisah for the super cute reindeer!) 

As for the other half of the rubber block, I decided to draw a speech bubble, cause it can be used wherever and whenever!
We were given wrapping paper, paper bags, and stickers to print on during the class. The huge piece of wrapping paper was really intimidating, especially with my really small stamp, but they persuaded me and I completed it! :)

Name labels! ;)

My DIY silkscreened tote bag.

Had my turn at the silkscreen booth yesterday! I've always wanted to try silkscreening, but it isn't as easy as I thought. (Notice all the faded patches here and there?) Nonetheless still loving it!! Loving the quote as well.

Instagram shots of carving during class and all the items made.

I attended the class with Michelle, and I think it really made a difference. It would have been pretty awkward if I went by myself like initially planned so thanks Michelle!! Had a wonderful time getting drenched in the rain with you, I would've been really mad if I had to walk in the storm by myself. Hahaha

All in all I had a wonderful time at the craft party, so its quite sad that this was the last one for the year. But I'm really looking forward to the main event: the craft fair on the 19th of January! Eunice :)

Guys, if you want to find out more about Handmade Movement Singapore check them out on Facebook or their website. Same for Fictive Fingers: Facebook and Website. ^^

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