MY FIRST TEAR-BEAR CARD

First time I found "Tear-bear" technique was when I search about Hanji, papercraft from Korea. Hanji paper is paper made from paper mulberry bark (latin name Broussonetia papyrifera), and it can be made for many handicraft, include boxes, lamp cap, and even fashion.

"Tear-bear" is a technique to make 2-dimensional bear (or any other objects) by tearing the paper, which can make 'fluffy' effect to the objects. Originally, the suitable paper for the technique is mulberry paper. But in Indonesia, it's difficult to find mulberry paper, even in the handicraft store. So I try to find replacement for the mulberry paper, by using craft paper/recycle paper with similar texture with mulberry paper. I found 'kertas bumi' at Crayon Craft Store Bandung, and the result is not bad. I want to try the technique with real mulberry paper, so I can find out how 'fluffy' it should be.

In Indonesia, actually mulberry paper (or paper made from plants belong to the same family of paper mulberry tree) has been produced years ago. For example is daluang paper at West Java.

This is how we made "Tear-Bear" :

1. Trace the pattern at the back of paper (you can find the sample of pattern here)

2. Wet the trace outline using water and paintbrush

3. Tear along the traceline. Be carefull when tearing the paper, don't cut beyond the traceline. If it's hard to tear, wet the traceline again. (note: for thick mulberry paper, sometimes you don't have to wet all the traceline because it's easy to tear it neatly)

4. Place the bear parts according to pattern (or as you wish), glue with PVC glue.

5. Add some embelishment (eyes, nose, ribbon, etc)

Isn't it cute?

Nowaday, we usually send our greetings for holiday through text messages, e-mails or e-cards. But greeting cards are still exist, because of its personal touch. Especially in holiday season, we still receive greeting cards, and sometimes because of its cute and unique appearance, we keep them instead of throw it away.

These "used" greeting cards can be utilized for cross stitch mount . For example, we can use blank space on this butterfly card as mount for cross stitched balloon.


By "recycling" the cards, we can present a unique gift, and also help reducing paper waste.

EARWARMER

A little strange fact about my earwarmer project : Indonesia is a tropical country, do we need the earwarmer? But, since most of the Jakarta's office temperature is colder than Lembang, then the earwarmer become one of most important things to keep our body warm (after handwarmer, of course!).

This earwarmer is made like a hairband, just a little longer to make sure the ears are covered. The (not so bulky) yarn is not too thick, but thick enough to warm the ear. Anyway, Jakarta is not a south pole, we don't need too bulky earwarmer!

Since the owner of earwarmer is a little shy to put her picture in this blog, then baby eeyore is volunteered to become the model of the earwarmer.

TUMBLER OH TUMBLER

I got this tumbler from my office outbound activity at the beginning of 2009. Since it was only "decorated" with our outbound's theme printed on paper, and I was looking for tumbler with Eeyore's theme :-), so I made the tumbler cover with vinyl-weave and cross-stitched it with Eeyore's picture. After I made the cover with cross-stitched Eeyore, I still had so many vinyl-weave, so I made another cover with horse picture. And here's the picture of the tumbler's covers (I only have 1 tumbler, so I have to take picture of it one by one!).

FINGER CROCHET

Most people maybe more familiar with "finger knitting". Yes, it's knitting yarn with our fingers! But actually not only knitting, we also can do crochet with our fingers. Just pretend our index finger is a crochet hook, we can do crochet technique to make cute stuff!

I just bought book titled "Playing with Avril's Yarn No. 1" (English version), this book is full with finger knitting and finger crochet projects. Since I am more keen in doing crochet technique (compare to knitting!), I choose finger crocheted bag as my 1st project. And here's the result : a cute blue finger crocheted bag.

Curly & Cuddly Blue Scarf

This is the result of my experiment using curly yarn I bought from tobucil online. Since the curly yarn is very thin, I doubled it using local yarn, and it became thick enough to warm your neck, but still soft enough to wear.

E-BOOKLET : ASESORIS DARI RAJUT KAIT

Just finished my first e-booklet about crochet, it will be published thought Multiply. There are 5 crochet accessories projects, written in Bahasa Indonesia. To find out more about that, please visit Rhien's Workshop.