5 simply heaven for me : 06122011

Today is the Finnish independence day so almost all the shops and public places closed. It's a nice experience also for seeing the first snow today. It still not huge snow, but it's still great to see all turns white here. My partner said it was quite warm and unusual this year since it should be already snowing more and more colder.

So, let's continue shall we to the list?

1. it's beginning to look like christmas, my first time seeing the real winter!well, the beginning of it. I really can't wait for more :D

2. heart-pattern-by-tires, i'm surprise when i saw this in the parking lot. It was made by the car tires accidentally. how cute is it? :D

3. lappish ( lapland's ) bread, or they call it rieska ; this is new for me. I think it looks like a indian pita bread or mexican tortilla. This was made from potato ( perunarieska ; peruna means potato ). It was really nice with the tomato-basil-shallots-salad i made. :D

4. game addict this month ; dungeon defenders, we can't stop playing this everyday! we even stayed overnight just to play this. I even got a dream about it quite many times, still playing this in my dream, OMG. It was fun that my partner is a *serious* gamer also like me. For all gamers out there, try this game for sure. It was super-awesome!

5. big-bad-(but tasty)salmon, this maybe sound exaggerating but this is my first time handling such a big salmon to clean and cook. It was awkward and puzzling, took quite time to do it but the end result are *tempting* so i need to bear with it...lol ;D

greenery babies.

Now its almost winter so there's no way you can plant anything ( except if you want to torture them to death-freeze ) outside the balcony. So i bring this awesome babies inside.


Why I want to keep this babies?

For me, it give you tons of benefits ;

like *relaxing* mood to see them around, they are cute, pretty, unique ( like this venus flytrap of mine ), a bad-ass as it cleaning the air inside ( yes, they happily do it for you ) and you can even get source of foods ( like fruits, herbs, veggies ).

For now i keep myself only an indoor plants. The nice things about them, they don't need extra-hard care that you need to struggle with. Next year in spring i will try to keep more *harder* plants outside. I'm thinking of making some small veggies garden for fun.


oh my, aren't they are such an awesome buddies to keep? ; )

guilty pleasure ; most dangerous food in the world.

It must be bacon, at least in my world...pure, simply, bacon!

forgive my sudden-joyous speech, if there's something in the world that really dangerous to eat are these bacony stuff. Almost all food can be taste wonderful to combine with this streaky one. I *try* to rarely buy this because i know it was-not-so-good-for-your-health, admittedly.

Other food that i though it is dangerous also, is cheese. Melted cheese especially are always *kick* your taste out.

How about if we combined that all in one package?

it turns out to be this ;
a homemade all you can stuff burger! plus soft boiled runny egg as a bonus ; )

Well i know its not a healthiest things to indulge, but not too often its ok. Just make sure to put a LOT of veggies as a companion please.

°picture : hmmmmmm...bacon...

freak show-artwork.

Some week-ago, i bumped into some post talking about a really old movie called freak (1932). No, i don't think i have guts to watch it somehow it's seems too gore-ey-bloody movie ( i have a weak heart for this kind a movie ). 

But then i get interested to search for the screen pictures of it and fascinate with how human can be like that. You see, all the actor and actress in there are a real people with bizzarre unusual features.

Freak show are like a normal circus with animals and flashy tents and so on. The differences are they mainly displaying this bizzarre *freak* people. You can read the article about it more here.

It may seems cruel, but this is one of the *fast* way for them to get a job, partner, friends and most of all, being famous. I read from some articles, not all this people surprisingly feel bad working like this, they actually enjoyed it being famous and how people interested on them.

This inspired me for making this artwork, how they are uniquely fascinating and strange at the same time, i pick the idea more from the cheerful side of the freak show. 

For my personal opinion, they aren't *freak*. They are gifted people with unique features they got in one package. 

Being different is awesome. :D

sushi party girls.

Once upon a day, there's 3 girls who works in the same company. 

They always work together as a team of designers and when they not working they have fun time hanging out for culinary adventure ( other things like shopping and more eating, of course ). 

°picture : trivia ; somehow they always spent +/- 150 thousand for 3 of them 

Some people told them they were look alike and though they are sisters. They have a different style and taste, but somehow they can still enjoying doing things together. One of them love drawing a lot, the other love fashion and socialize, and the last one love travelling and cooking

The last sister always making breakfast for the other, especially japanese foodie like sushi. Everybody know that she'd be happy to make something for them and always put a lot of effort to do it. She like to experimenting on anything ( who know she'd probably make the other some guinea pig for her cooking...whoopsie :p ) like making this cutie crabby-style-sushi ;

This are typical-normal-breakfast for them in the morning. A full set of fancy sushi, along with the wasabi, sushi soy sauce and set of hot tea plus 3 doggies that always waiting ( looking with puppy eyes-mode ) for some snacky-snack dropped. 

Currently they separated by situation, each of them choose a different way for life. It's a really sad situation to be. But a day later when they can met again ( corrected ; a must :p ) it will be the same like the ways they usually do ; culinary adventures, shopping, gossiping, etc. 

After all they are soul sisters.

The end, for now...or should i say, to be continued : )

5 simply heaven for me : 11112011

Wow i just notice it its 11-11-11 today, it's a really unique eh? Many couples do their wedding today so they can get a *lucky* date. My mom said she got 4 invitation for today and more of my friends complaining they even got more, lol ; )

back to the post ; p

1. christmas comes early , we bought a hanging christmas lamp for living room and get a christmas calendar from a girls scouts. Pretty!

2. dottie angel book, finally arrived! i fell in love at first sight when one of blogger showed this in their post. I love how detailed they put the design and using lot of whimsical stuff. Just lovely.

3. pack of cutie dried mushroom, my parents in law dried the mushroom we picked and it was awesome to have this for whole year ahead. They will *poof-ing* out when you put them in water. My partner *jokingly* said in the wild they will pop out from the ground with ploop-ing sound after the rain! ; )

4. strawberry plant, strawberry plant to keep indoor from my partner's dad, i hope this baby will thrive here so we can get a tiny-weenie-berries later.

5.  recreating famous painting, doing american gothic painting with my partner! We took photo first then he did the repainting on it. it turns out really nicely don't you think? make me want to recreating of other famous painting also ;D

enlightenment and new kitty scarf.

Recently i've been having a heavy artblock and felt that i'm bad at everything, I felt lazy.

I saw peoples are more fond of a high-end-fancy-complicated-tech-painting-you-know-i-paint-this-for-long-long-hours-y-know! 

No, not that i said its a bad thing, i think effort plus hardworking are always the winner. 

But every person have their own strength and weakness, and it's natural for it. A quote said that you can do anything, but not everything. You can't be good at everything, that's a thing that every person need to understand and accept it. 

I just realize that until yesterday when i talked with my partner and remember a tutor said that than you try to "fix" your weakness, why not trying to grinding your strength instead? 

There's must be some reason why you good at something, that you enjoy it more for doing so. 

I know we always been taught that we need to fix our weakness and not showing it to other peoples. To be sarcastic, we must--can-do-anything! that's weird and unrealistic. Its true that its nice to tackle your weakness. But if you don't like or enjoy it however you try to fix it it wont be 100% nicely. 

why?

it's simple, 

because you don't enjoy it. 

It's good to try and learn new things, try to get out from our comfort zone. Some of the new things will fit nicely into your enjoyment.

but what if the new one didn't fit? at some point it will frustate you and it will ended up making us feeling down, starting to blame ourself. 

I learn that it's more better to trick ourself for "covering" our weakness by make the strength point more, that so good that people won't notice it. 

How many artists there that we can recognize easily by their style? Do you realize that usually they have their own distinguish style that we make us say, hey thats his/her drawing! i know it! 

All of this make me to think again and give me an enlightenment, to accept this. It leads me into new point of view, to make my strength more and "covering" the "weakness" while learn to fix it bit by bit, but not taking so much time and my energy for one that i didn't enjoy. Find some style that really suits your personality the best. Artworks should representing yourself, otherwise it's just a piece of lifeless works.

And i don't want a lifeless artworks.

And to be simple, 

isn't drawing suppose to be enjoyable and as an act of expressing yourself? : )

**I've ended up with drawing one of my muse for the whole of my time ; cats! I got the idea for this drawing when i played with my parent in law's cats. they look really fluffy to cuddle and getting warm to hug! so here it is, a kitty.scarf :p

yudhisthira the wise.

For my final project back then in University, i decided to make illustration for wayang kulit ( Indonesian shadow puppet ) storybook with the Mahabharata epic story as the base. It's been almost 5 years since, and a couple days ago i decide to redesign one of the character.

( the full set of the characters of Mahabharata )

( the five of the Pandava brothers )

This is Yudhisthira, the oldest brother from the five brother of the Pandava.
You can read more of it in here.

He is one of my favorite character in the story. He's wise, gentle, patient, and it said he never get angry ( ever! ). It's a really good character to idolize and follow eh? hard to be like that, especially for me :p

This are the progress before taking the final form of it. I took the style from the form of flat 2D shadow puppet and stylize it more modern looking.

So here is the final one that i used in my final project 5 years ago ;

And the final redesign that i made a couple days ago. I'm making it more detailed for the ornaments and accessories because in the real shadow puppet they usually have a decorative part really detailed.

you know your designers bored if.

They started to take A LOT OF crazy-hangky-pangky-random-photos with any objects and anything available. Even if it not available they still CAN make it ( hail to Photoshop ).

well after all they are designers anyway... :p

warm greetings from Jarvelä.

A very warm invitation from my partner's auntie came to us a couple week before, asked us if we can come to their home in other city. It was a really exciting and lovely invitation for us.  

After some arrangement to make, last Saturday we went to Jarvelä to visit them. It took about 1 hour to reach here from Helsinki with local train. It was a country side, peaceful and serene place. It was a lovely moment to share with, meet new relatives, looking at photos album ( she showed me Tibet trip! it was breathtaking ), laughing, eating wonderful home cooking, and even though some of them didn't talk in same language we can still share the moments together, how awesome is that?

Sometimes i was sad because i still can't speak their language ( well "Rome wasn't build in one day" anyway ). But human are wonderful creature to begin with. Even we don't speak same language, a genuine kindness, smile, and caring act are always a winner. I still remember my dad in law, talking Finnish with a girl who talked in Indonesian, asking for some photos taken together but "strangely" they can still laughed together and have fun. 

it was heartwarming.

Some random though, just realized a thing that there is a true-real-life cooking dash person here ( yes! that time-management-game-that-make-you-crazy ). I was surprise how people work, like one of my partner's auntie who is a cook, she manage a canteen for about 50 people everyday ALONE! suddenly the picture from that game playing in my mind...LOL... O___o

Anyway, I want to share some photos that i took from lake there.

enjoy!

barista coffee shop in Ambon.

Couple month ago, my dear friend Evy & Victor who reside in Ambon, Indonesia, are going to open a coffee shop in there. They asked me to design a simple logo for their shop. We did a lot of brainstorming about the name for it since Ambon is a small island so the name should be easy to understand for local peoples. A complicated and uncommon name will make it hard to know what is it. 

We came out with "barista" for the name ( A barista (from the Italian for "bartender") is a person, usually a coffee-house employee, who prepares and serves espresso-based coffee drinks - from wikipedia ) and decide not to make the logo too complicated also. Evy once a barista also in Starbucks. Along with Victor they both is a hardcore-coffee-lover, so the name really suit them.

A couple times exchanging the ideas, sketches, rough design, we both finally got the look for final design of the logo. I'm really pleased with the outcome and curious to see how it was later the logo in their shop.

After a lot of preparations, they finally open the shop this November the first. I am so excited and really happy for them, too bad i can't be there for the opening since i'm far away here ( next time ok! ). Sending love and prayer all the way there ( and lots of hugs ).

I love how they do their interiors for the shop, you can see their shop in Evy's blog here and how she felt for this exciting new experience here.



oh, and before i forgot to mention it, the miss barista herself is there with red apron, 

say hello to Evy! :D

5 simply heaven for me : 28102011

1. autumn color, my first autumn in here! the trees have a really pretty color :D

2. noodle, my comfy foodie, easy to make just anything . from easy to hard one. 

3. small library, dream come true ; small library and comfy small bed to read.

4. glögi, it's my first time trying glögi and they taste wonderful, heart warming. oh, and we found a really nice glögi glass in recycle shop. What a nice find! 

5.  kitchen green shelf, added more green and more cute glass bottle also there.

°picture : the colorful autumn

°picture : noodle noodle...hmmmm

°picture : comfy to the maximum

°picture : starry glögi glass

°picture : kitchen green shelf

bringing the forest inside.

Our bedroom seems pretty boring and plain. I was wondering what to do with it until i found this cute DIY tutorial here.

Birch tree ( it's called koivu here ) are one of the many tree in Finland, i said, why not bringing this also inside? and we still have quite lot of the paints left.

°picture : masking tape

°picture : masking tape and tape mess!

We started working by making the sketch on paper, and transfer it with pencil in to the wall. The most painful and really long process its the mask-taping it. Took more longer than I expected that i realized that I made the design way more complicated...LOL...

After we painted over the tape, and remove it, we still need to paint some of area with hand painting so its more nicer and neat. I love this process because i can freely paint it what i want.

But in the end the hard work paid off : )

We even add the cat and arctic fox silhouette! it's my signature with my partner :D

°picture : with Hayden my teddy :p

°picture : the outcome :D