Gifts with Your Purest Love

Closed & Moving

2010-06-13T06:32:00.008+08:00

Your Purest Love had officially closed. We'll be moving to a new site: E-In Gifts. Old tutorials/resources/information/etcs will not be removed due to readers that has been supporting us. Please still kindly donate at your own free will ^^. We thank you all for supporting & stay tune for updates on our new site! Meanwhile, please kindly be patient with us & do expect much more wonders/surprises coming your way at our new site ;)

Christmas Card C001

2009-12-05T01:18:00.000+08:00

Colors & Meanings: Cool

2009-11-29T01:00:00.002+08:00

Cool colors make people and environment feel cool and stylish? Let's see the their meaning for a clearer picture and better understanding.

Blue
Blue is a very popular color and can be found in many places; sky blue, ocean blue. It shows the vastness, calm and wondering feelings, yet also deep and complex. Darker blue brings out the wisdom, maturity of a person. In design, too much blue give a moody and depressing emotion. No wonder we have “Monday Blue”.
Blue symbolizes calmness, expansive, vast, reliability, dependant, trustworthiness, wisdom, maturity, depression, moodiness, spirituality, sacred, deep, complicity, sophistication, mysterious, dreamy.

Green
Green is also another popular color used, especially in design. Leaves are in green, so is money. Green is favored by many people as it represents harmony and luck; the green four leaf clover.
Studies suggest that it improves vision as well, so look out the window to your garden after too much eye stressing. But do not wear too much green as it shows the strong jealousy and the envy in a person; sour lime or the green eye monster.
Green symbolizes nature, environmental, health, growth, renewal, fertility, refreshing, smoothing, monetary, luck, jealousy, balance, harmony, stability.

Purple
Purple is a combination of red and blue. Red a warm, focusing, active, driven energy in contrast of blue, cool, calm, expansive, Purple is often relaxing and in relation to nature. It helps releasing of mind, which allows inspiration and imagination, which is favored by many artists. Royal and noble classes are represented by purple. Is that how we come to have purple gold in this modern century?
Purple symbolizes spirituality, nobility, royalty, luxury, creativity, imagination, inspiration, freewill.

This is the end of our color sessions. Catch us again soon on other tutorials or guide.

Colors & Meanings: Warm

2009-11-22T01:00:00.002+08:00

Most of you must be eager to know the rest, so not to waste time, below are the warm colors and their meanings.

Red
Red is the warmest color in the palette and is attention grabbing. It produces a biological response by quickening the pulse and increasing respiration rate. Thus, it is an emotionally intense color of passion and love, which defines the red in hearts and roses.
Wearing red will show power and confidence and brings out the sensual look in a woman. As red defines power and its association with hot, fiery and danger, avoid red when it comes to anything in relation to fights, violence, quarrels, confrontation, etc.
Red symbolizes sexuality, passion, love, lust, desire, confidence, power, leadership, anger, aggression, danger, violence, vitality, survival, prosperity, joy.

Pink
Pink is a gentle, calm, quiet and relaxing color. It shows the innocent of romance and brings out the charm of a female. Pale pink is a wonderful color to wear on date as it relaxes emotion, making its wearer more approachable. Brighter pink is an energy stimulant and draws attention, often wear by younger girls.
Pink symbolizes youth, fun, excitement, friendship, love, romance, charm, tenderness, femininity, sweet, relaxing, calm, peace.

Yellow
Yellow is the sunny, bright and cheerful color. Brings happiness and improves intelligence of one self as it enhances concentration. Due to its brightness, yellow can be overpowering at times, alerting and cautioning warnings; caution signs are in yellow.
Pale, shallow yellow gives a filthy, dirty feeling and also represents cowardice and deceit, so don’t be yellow. Yellow symbolizes cheerful, brightness, dirtiness, cowardice, deceit, intelligence, alertness, caution, overpowering.

Orange
While bright orange can be attention grabbing, orange shows the youth, cheerful and energetic side of a person. Orange always reminds of the autumn leaves. It is very appetite and emotions stimulating. Unlike red, orange is less aggressive and much more smoothing, not overpowering; cools down aggression and stimulates drive when necessary.
Orange symbolizes mood-lightening, cheerfulness, youth, energetic, enthusiasm, fun, healthy, attention-grabbing, sweet, tasteful, adventurous, sporty, outgoing.

Now you know about neutral and warm colors. Stick with us for the cool colors next week.

Colors & Meanings: Neutral

2009-11-15T01:00:00.004+08:00

Have been using and playing around with colors for years but for this tutorial, this is the first time I truly feel deeply in relation to these colors. So there is it...

Black
Black absorbs light and traps heat. Like white, black goes well with any colors too but oppositely, black is a color that hides and conceals, while white reveals. Black makes other colors appear brighter. Too much black makes people feel empty and depressing as it evokes strong emotions.
In fashion, wearing black can visually make you look slimmer and is often worn in huge occasions or by people of the higher status. Black symbolizes sexy, mystery, power, authority, sophistication, elegance, classy, seriousness, formality.

White
White goes well with any colors and is considered a summer color. It is perceived as a brilliant color by the eye and is difficult to keep clean as dirt or stain is easily shown due to contrast.
Wedding gowns are usually in white as it brings out holiness and purity in the event. White symbolizes innocence, purity, cleanliness, light, simplicity.

Grey
Grey is the perfect neutral and balanced color. Often used by designers as background. It produces a cool and conservative feeling instead of evoking strong emotions although it is seen as a gloomy and moody color.
Grey has a stabilizing effect which make vibrant colors stand out while muting their vibration. Grey symbolizes gloominess, cloudiness, moodiness, misty, sorrow, conservative, dignity, refined, classy.

Brown
Brown is the earthy color of nature and is also associated with dirt. It represents stability and structure, making it an ideal shade to wear in office. Often matched with green for a very nature-like environment.
Brown symbolizes earthiness, richness, friendliness, stability, nurturing, reliability, structure.

More colors next week with warming effect.

Consistency on Color Mixing

2009-11-08T01:00:00.003+08:00

Today's tutorial will be more interesting. Hmmm... consistency on color mixing, what do I mean by that? Basically, like I've previously mentioned in my tutorial, the primary blue, red and yellow colors have different saturation strength. Thus, when red + blue might not be the purest of purple that you're expecting.

In situation like this, we'll be thinking... how are we going to remember and make sure that we'll get the same exact purple that we've earlier mixed? Fear not, let me guide you through in this tutorial. First of all, we'll need a set of tools:
- Pasta Machine: Can be purchased in Art Friend at Takashimaya Shopping Center or Bras Basah Complex. (SGD$39)
- Shape Cutter/Cookie Cutter: Follow my tutorial on Handmade Cutter or purchase the cutter set personally made by me here.
- Polymer Clay [red+blue+yellow]: Purchase either from me here (SGD$3.50 each) or you can also purchase from a few places. [Art Friend][Art Frenzy @ Vivo City][Google Polymer Clay ;D]

Start off by conditioning your clay. Then, roll out #1 thickness of clay using your pasta machine. Next, using the same cutter, cut out a piece of blue and red. Mixed them together for results.
(*Note: The cutter set of 5 are of measured proportions for easy mixing and color tracking.)

Roll out #1 thickness using the mixed clay. Cut a strip and poke a hole near the end of the strip. Baked the clay strip and once cooled, write the color recipe on the back of the clay strip using a permanent marker for recording. There you go, you'll never forget how you got the color mixed.

Now, with the different size of cutters you have and the number of times that cutter is used, you can start experimenting and create your own color wheel. Just remember to arrange and string them up at the end of the day. More importantly, remember to note down the recipe on the baked clay strip.

Bye bye! Coming up next will be Colors & Meanings.

Cookie / Shape Cutter

2009-11-07T17:30:00.004+08:00

Click on picture for larger view.

Last Update on 07/11/09.

Measure Set Measurements:1cm(height)
A set 3 of Cookie or Shape cutters.

Measure Set Measurements:1cm(height)
A set 5 of Cookie or Shape cutters.

Donate at Free Will

2009-11-01T01:31:00.003+08:00

Hi to all my supporters around. Kindly do a donation at your free will if you find my tutorials useful. Will not be charging or creating paid-to-read tutorials. I thank you for your generosity if you have made a donation. Thank you for support & have a great day ahead!

Handmade Cutter

2009-11-01T01:00:00.007+08:00

Phew~ D.I.Y Pictorial is hard when there isn't someone to assist. Going straight to the point, as you all may know, the title said it all! We'll D.I.Y a shape/cookie cutter today. Isn't that great? First of all, below are the things needed in order to make a cutter.

Hobby knife, Cutting mat, Aluminum sheet, Strong super glue, Metal ruler

Decide your standard width measurements for all your cutters. Personally, I recommend 1cm as it is easier to work with. For others that feel it might be too short, you can use 1.5cm.

- With your metal ruler, use your hobby knife and mark the measurement lightly on the aluminum for precision. (Do not use other material rulers, please use metal only as the hobby knife is sharp and will cut off scraps of your ruler.)

- When all the measurements are done, use the hobby knife and slice it a few times over the same line to leave a deep impression.

- Bend it to and fro till the measured strip chipped off from the whole aluminum sheet. Using the metal ruler this time to hold and assist you, bend the strip accordingly.

- Lastly, drip 1-2 drops of superglue on the edge, paste them together and let it air for a minute or so before holding on and sticking them together.

Ta Da! Now you have your own handmade cutter. Do not throw the rest away, keep them to make other shapes & sizes cutter. You might not know, there may be other uses for this sheet ;D

Color Basics Foundation Part 2

2009-10-25T01:00:00.002+08:00

Now that we have a basic idea of some definition of words commonly used when describing colors, we can moved on to colors itself.

The most basic colors are the primary colors. In this current century, primary colors are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, mainly use in printing and ink world. I personally prefer to stick with the old style of primary colors which are Blue, Red and Yellow. This set of primary colors will be what I'll be using for the rest of the tutorials relating to color mixing.

Secondary colors are produced when two primary colors are mixed together. See the table below. The produced color might not be the purest expected color due to the strength or saturation of the primary colors. Eg. 1 portion of red + 1 portion of blue might not always result in pure purple. So experimentation is needed to be done.

Secondary	=	Primary	+	Primary
Purple	=	Red	+	Blue
Green	=	Blue	+	Yellow
Orange	=	Red	+	Yellow

Tertiary colors can also be created by mixing the secondary colors together. Most often, the results are brown, rust and mud.

Now with your basic color knowledge, start off by selecting your color palette and create your own color wheel. Opps! I almost forgot about color palette and color wheel.

Color palette actually are comprised of a selection of red, yellow and blue hues from which you start off to mix to get your own secondary, tertiary, tint, tone and shade hues. E.g. You can use Yellow, Cyan and Red or Yellow, Turquoise and Magenta as your own "red, blue, yellow" color palette.

Color wheel are any representation of primary, secondary, or even tertiary hues of a color palette. You can also include tints, tones and shades too. Best of all, color wheels help to see and differentiate the relationships between colors.

Now you've got it all up and ready for mixing experimenting. So long~ See you again on Consistency on Color Mixing.

Color Basics Foundation Part 1

2009-10-18T01:00:00.003+08:00

As you may know, before you can start mixing colors to produce more variety of colors, you'll need to at least know and understand your basics first. In this tutorial, we'll first touch on hues, tints, tones & shades.

Before we start off, let me introduce a few words that will be frequently used in this or the next few tutorials on colors. Beginning with "Hues", which can be a property of color or certain colors of an object.

"Tints" result when any hue is mixed with white. The more white added, the more it fades. Usually, adding white does not lighten a color but it actually gives a fading color effect.

"Tones" are produced when any hue is mixed gray. Mixing gray into any hue will result in a more muted color than original. Of course, do not think that it will produce boring colors. Try it and you'll understand.

"Shades" comes in when any hue is mixed with black. Do be informed to be careful when adding black to any hue as tiny amount will results to deeper and darker hue. You'll not want your resulted mixed color to be of no difference from black since black darkens a color a lot instead of making it more intense.

That will be all for today's tutorial. Stay tuned to understand more on colors next week. =D

Mickey's DogTag

2009-10-14T03:40:00.001+08:00

My good sister had a black and white fur male Maltese dog, named Mickey.
Had made Mickey a dog tag out of polymer clay. See pictures below.

Happy Teacher's Day To You~

2009-09-01T22:59:00.002+08:00

Teacher's Day Special!
This is a meaningful day in Singapore. At least, very meaningful to me. Had met the greatest teacher of my life. He inspired, motivate and assist me a lot till an impression so deep was left in my heart. I'll always remember him, am grateful and thankful that I knew a teacher like him. Thank you Mr. Chui !!!

Below are photos of a figurine that I handmade for him. Although not as perfect as it should be due to my lack of experience in sculpting but definitely did my best.

My first Ooak Baby

2009-07-27T18:27:00.005+08:00

Had actually tested out making a mini Ooak baby boy without my proper sculpting tools. He's measuring about 8cm in height.
So please give your comments.
Will be trying out a few more when I get the correct tools for sculpting.

Necklaces / Pendants

2009-05-05T03:41:00.002+08:00

All necklace comes with a velvet cord.
Click on picture for larger view.

Last Update on 20/06/09.

Dazzling Heart Measurements:1.5cm(height), 1.5cm(length), 1cm(thickness)
Red heart-shaped pendant with Swarovski crystal on front & back. The perfect gift for your girlfriend.

Chocolate FadeMeasurement: 3cm length, 1cm width, 0.5cm thickness
Chocolaty Personalized/Customized Pendants for Unisex

Earrings

2009-05-01T03:37:00.004+08:00

Click on pictures for larger view.

Last Update on 20/06/09

Orange Whirl
Measurement: 1.5cm(height) * 2cm(length including the glass beads) * 1.5cm(length of chain)
Blend of dark & light orange bead with small pinky glass beads at the sides.

Murky Pearly
Measurement: 2cm (length excluding the hooks) * 0.8cm (thickness)
A set of milky chocolate with lovely orange pearls at the side ends.

Part 4

2009-04-23T22:19:00.007+08:00

Here is the content for this week's 'The Website Essentials'. Now, you have already included so many information in your site. What else could you possibly add on to catch potential customers to your site?

13. FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
This section is good to have as it's proven to save lots of time for many companies and helps in removing another obstacle in making sales. The main point here is to add as many information as possible to help address customers' common concerns and questions. In that way, time will be saved on emailing and waiting. With answers already provided to your customers, they wouldn't have to hesitate on buying or to wait for an answer to their question via email.

14. Response or Subscription form
It will help a lot by keeping your customers updated and to help you on building a mailing list. As customers usually provide as little information as they can to protect their privacy, ask only for the basic information, like name and email address. Keep in touch with your customers and send them information of their interest. You can do it on a regular weekly or monthly basis.

15. E-zines or E-newsletters
A great marketing tool to use. This can help you to keep in touch with your customers as well as to provide them with fresh content or information on what you have or your latest events and promotions. Do it on a regular basis in two ways. One is to email them, or have it published on your site. There are many software and programs online you can search for to help you with this, some are even free.

16. Resources or Articles
Add value to your business by providing relevant information on what you do. Add links, tutorials, videos and anything you can find or think of that your customers will find it useful for them. Let them know that you have a good background knowledge of what you are selling or promoting. Include experiment results or projects that you may have done as this will built up customers' confidence in purchasing your products.

That is all for The Website Essentials..be sure to catch our next tutorial soon.

Earring for Formal Occasion

2009-04-23T14:34:00.008+08:00

Just made a set of earrings for my mom to allow her to match it with her dress that she'll be wearing to my cousin's wedding.

It's made up of 4 little long twists with golden glitters with colored glass beads in between, connecting to the earring hook.

Part 3

2009-04-16T17:13:00.005+08:00

Now with benefits given to customers, they will start wondering how true of what you state on your site can it be. Will it be another scam case? Here are a few more other points to provide to your online customers.

9. Feedback / Testimonials / Product Reviews
Always keep a space for this column to allow your past customers or current customers to leave their point of views, critics or comments. Be it in a survey form or email, a product review poll or a posting/commenting board. These will act as an advantage to your potential customers, showing your trustworthiness, reliability, efficiency, great services and products. Add only real testimonials. For email, you can make used of screen shots as evidence. Find ways to make sur that your potential customers know that these are real instead of a made up.

10. Surveys
As said from the above point, surveys can be a form of testimonials from customers. Make used of online survey forms and compile them into results of charts and others. Survey can include questions like service and product rating, your website's user friendliness, etc. Surveys can also help you in collecting information from customers what related products or services they wish to see from your site.

11. Contact us
This is a must have page as it allows customers to contact you. Include this in many pages as possible so as to make it easier for customers to reach you. It should include information like your business name, email address, telephone or mobile number, etc. In the main 'contact us' page itself, do remember to include a site map for your customers (if you have a physical company location).

12. Events Calendar
For this part you can try to find ways to relate it to your business. Taking gifts as an example, you can add occasion dates of which people will actually purchase a gift. Dates of your company's anniversary can be added in as well so that customers will know when you might be having a promotion or what to purchase before hand. Or you can add dates of when you are holding a stall in a flea market, etc.

Find out more about what to add on next week to help keep your customers to your site ;)

Part 2

2009-04-09T19:48:00.003+08:00

After you give all your brief information of your company and products, as well as prices, the next important thing is to fill them in with the advantages and benefits they can acquire or gain from purchasing with your company.

5. Search feature
When selling your products online, you can't just have only one to two products or services. In the majority, companies usually have tons of products or services catagorized under different headings of a menu bar. Example, like gifts, a very general term for products and you can be selling many different kinds of gifts for different occasions or even for the different age categories. At times like this, shoppers or customers will find it hard to navigate if they are indecisive of what to purchase from your site. This is where the search feature will become useful for them to type the keywords or phrases of the particular thing that they are searching for.

6. Guarantee
Usually companies that have services and some expensive products offer a money back guarantee to catch the insecurity of a customer and the longer the guarantee, the more effective it will be. This will be good for securing customers' worries of what if your product happens to be faulty only after some time of use.

7. Refund or Return Policy
Customers will feel more comfortable purchasing from your site if you provide them with this return or refund policy. When stating the points, do ensure that it will be simple for customers to understand and that there will be not possibility that customers will misunderstand what your points are, else it will be tough to handle a miscommunication.

8. Privacy Policy
This part is very important. It seems that even up to now, be it online or some offline shopping, privacy still poses as a major issue for customers. Especially their concerns on their credit card information or personal information like name and address, etc. Thus, when it comes to online shopping, trust is to be built on a long term basis. Privacy is the first step and the most important ingredient when building up trust.

Continue on to next week for part 3 and we will touch on customers' feedback and more.

The Website Essentials: Part 1

2009-04-02T22:01:00.009+08:00

For this part, I might already have some points written in one of the post (Setting up a blogshop) of the tutorial (Tutorial on creating an online business). Yet these points are very briefly described in the content. Thus, here will be a more elaborate version.

This will be a list of important points or pages that you must have them included in your website. Always remember to plan and brainstorm what's your content before including them in your site ;-) Here it goes:

1. Home Page/Welcome Page
This is the part where you tell your customers what you can do for them or a brief description on what's your site selling and whether they are on the right site.

2. About Us
This page will tell customer all about you, who you are, your business background, why should they purchase your products or services and trust you and your organization. You can include your operating hours, company's motto or mission, staff under this organization, who are your partners, awards and certificates that you have.

3. Products & Services
It's good to have a separate page or post on each product that you have on sale and each service you provide. This way, you can provide as much information and details as possible for the consumers. When searching for information through online, people like to know as much as they can now then having to wait for an answer tomorrow. Else you might lose a customer as they might already found another site to purchase their item.

4. Pricing
Pricing is one point that you should never miss out. Be it in products or services, even if you are not sure how much you'll charge, depending on the project or item, you can at least put a price range or a roughly gauged price for your customers. This will be helpful for you and for your customers.

Stay tune next week for Part 2. ;)

Handphone / Mobile Charms & Keychains

2009-04-01T03:37:00.001+08:00

Click on pictures for larger view.

Last Update on 14/08/09

Naughty Night Measurement: 1.5cm (length), 1.8cm (width), 0.8cm (thickness) Romantic couples, glancing at each other, laying in their heart shaped bed.	Little Ciggy Measurement: 4.5cm length * 0.5cm diameter This cool 'Little Ciggy' actually passes message of smoking kills. Present them to friends that you care for their health.	Snowbear Measurement: 2cm(front), 2.5cm(side), 4cm(height) This little 'Snowbear' brings out your sincere love with his arms to the ones you care.	Ooak Donut Measurement: 1.7cm, 1.7cm, 0.7cm(thickness) Special edition one of a kind donut with a white metallic gloss.
Fantasy Love & Kiss Measurement: 2cm(height), 1.5cm(width), 0.3cm(thickness) Limited Fantasy Love & Kiss. Only has 4 pieces per design.

Maintaining Your Customers

2009-03-26T20:02:00.001+08:00

Last week, we were talking about doubling your profits. Then in the discussion we also talked about following up with your customers. Today, we'll go more into maintaining your customers to your blog.

Like said, customer service is very important factor when concerning your customers. This will also help them determine which blog to purchase their items from. Aside from that, put up regular updates on your site to keep your customers up to date, else allow them to subscribe with you for the monthly newsletters or e-zines. You can also create tutorial to keep them with you. Knowledge based article or post is important especially for customers that are new to your items.

After you have been much established, you can consider creating membership cards or system whereby regulars can actually enjoy further discounts or benefits from shopping with you. This factor in one way or another, can also help you in your sales and profits.

That will be the end for this tutorial on setting up an online business blog shop...
Thanks to all who have been reading and following up to this tutorial. We hope you enjoy them. Be sure to catch our little guides and tips of the week for the next few weeks.

Double Up Your Sale

2009-03-19T15:59:00.001+08:00

Now, let's see. You have all the traffic that you want coming into your blog. But now you found that there's another problem - You have No Sales! Lots of traffic driving into your blog but yet not much profits gain at all. What should you do?

Create some promotions for items that you have. Pass out attractive give away items to your customers. If the promotion slogan don't work, change or rephrase it till it works (E.g Bags @ 20% Off For 1st 20 Customers Only! / Free Purse Give Away For Purchasing more than $30 in an order!) These should help out in doubling your sales.

Next, follow up with your previous customers or new leads. Maybe they don't wish to buy your items now but doesn't mean they don't want to buy in the future. Follow up with them from time to time. Let them know your latest promotion going on.

You'll find that they will come back some day to purchase the items that they had enquire weeks or months before or even other items in your blog. Cause these is the work of customer service. Customers always like to be service but do take note that some might find you irritating, so know where are your limits for that certain customers.

Up next week will be discussing more on maintaining your customers and to keep them regularly to your blog.

How to maximize traffic for blogshop

2009-03-12T16:34:00.001+08:00

Today, we'll talk about maximizing traffic to your blog. This will be a great help for blog to drive traffic from all around the world.

Firstly, for local bloggers (Singapore), please check out my links tab and either submit your website to them or register with them to get your site listed.

Next for a simple start, get yourself a tagboard from Cbox. Purpose is to allow other bloggers to advertise on your site at the tagboard. Then, start promoting or advertising your site, promotions, event, etc on others' blog as well. Look for their advertising tagboards and post your ads. If you want to save the trouble, get others to do the posting for you. Many bloggers actually offer a service for tagging.
Keep a page empty for allowing exchange of links & banners between you and the different bloggers.

Aside from that you can submit your sites to the different search engines. Goggle is one of them. Freewebsubmission.com also help by submiting your sites to search engines. Also search for sites with free classified submittion and submit your articles.

Promote you site link everywhere you can msn messenger, after your email signature, friendster, facebook, bebo, tag, etc. Tell your friends and colleges about your site. Get them to help you on spreading a word about your site. Word of mouth is very important.

If you surf forums, check out places where you can post your items for sale. Add your site to your signature and post on forum topics that you often look about to increase awareness on your site.

There are more than 101 ways to maximize traffic to your blog site. Above are only some that you can make used of. For more, do a search on the search engine, list and record down sites that will help you drive traffic to your blog.

Up next will be focusing on driving sales and maintaining your customers. :)