Behind the scenes: My personal assistant

My personal assistant ^-^, originally uploaded by desireux.

Meet my adorable personal assistant, who plays a very important role at Pop-Up Central- where all my pop-up cards come to life. She is barely two inches tall, but is crucial in ensuring all of you get your pop-ups safe and sound. Anyone care to guess what she does?

Watching the inauguration

Lying on the Quad, originally uploaded by desireux.

Today, the sixth floor gathered in the seminar room to watch the inauguration of the 44th president, Barack Obama. It was rather memorable moment.

Year of the Ox

Year of the Ox, originally uploaded by desireux.

My friend has been asking me to make him some Chinese New Year cards with a cute ox because it's the year of the ox based on the chinese zodiac. So I sketched out the ox, gave it a lil' touch-of-cuteness, and even gave them either a flower or bandana depending on if the card was for a girl or guy.

On another note, I would like to give a shout out to Wanwisa from the blog Modern Vintage Designs who did a lovely (and huge!) feature on my pop-up cards. Thank you very much! The concept of her blog is very cool, and her "About me" page tells a very interesting story of she went from planning her own wedding to actually making the switch to the wedding industry, and is having so much fun planning more celebrations.

Updated: My Portfolio

Hi dearest readers. Hope you are warmer than I am over here :)

Anyway, I've just updated my custom pop-up card portfolio to include my latest wedding projects and a few other fun ones over the past months. To visit me, click this link. I would love to hear what you think so feel free to leave me a comment here. It'll be very much appreciated!

It's getting cold in here ...

Looks like a gnomes playground, originally uploaded by desireux.

I stopped by the oriental store today to get something for my Tom Yam noodle soup. Ended up buying some frozen raw oysters, and they tasted so good in the hot broth, especially in the cold, cold weather.

Outside the oriental store, they have these tiny lamp posts, about 2 feet tall amongst miniature pine trees. Even though it was freezing, the whole area looked like a playground for fairies or gnomes with the warm glowing lights. So pretty!

My fingers are so cold now typing this. Even with heat on (and I'm wearing 5 layers of clothes!) it is still very cold inside my apartment. It's now 2 F (-17C) and the feel like temperature is -17F (-27C). How crazy is that? There is a wind chill warning and it's only going to get colder tomorrow. Oh dear.

Boy meets Girl

, originally uploaded by desireux.

This is another new design from this year's Valentine's Day collection.

Somehow, this pop-up card really reminds me of the 1991 movie My Girl starring Macaulay Culkin. Have you watched it? It remains one of my favorite movies of all time even though I watched it only once years ago! It's that memorable. I remember crying and feeling so touched. I love the song too, also titled My Girl by The Temptations and have it on my "making cards" playlist.

Hummingbirds

Fluttering here and there, originally uploaded by desireux.

So here it is, the final version of my fluttering hummingbirds. Definitely looks much cleaner and less cluttered. With the previous version , I kept feeling that something was not right, but now I'm very happy with it.

As for photographing the pop-ups, I'm experimenting with using a plain white backdrop for a fresher look. I've found it works well for some cards but not others. Anyway, now my Etsy store has a combination of photos using both the new backdrop and my usual black/grey gradient one.

This card is part of my Valentine's Day collection of pop-up cards, which you can find here.

More color, please ...

, originally uploaded by desireux.

This year you'll be seeing a much more colorful me.

I'll use more colors in my pop-up cards.

I'm going to include more color in my outfits, right now I'm loving reds.

and shoes.. oh yes, colorful shoes :)