{welcome 2009}

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I've been thinking and thinking what would be the best for my first entry to this blog in 2009. I was re-arranging my graphic site too this morning, so I came to see this quote by Cate Blanchett that I put on the 'about me' page. I like this saying, it rings really true to me. I like it I like it, so much. So why don't I gather some dreams for 2009, and a little bit of re-introduction perhaps?



First when I made this blog, I wanted to use this to post updates on my graphic site, Amreta's Graphics. But then I use it to post just about anything that I had in mind. I'm a dreamer and love to get inspired by what I see and meet on travels (and often it means 'armchair travel' through books, magazines and the internet), which I think is necessary as I live in a hectic, crowded big city like Jakarta, with a schedule that goes from full time job, to practicing the violin, playing with the amateur chamber music ensemble, drawing graphics, crafting, hunting for second hand magazines, fabrics and papers, to attending cultural activities, family gatherings, going to book stores, etc etc...so much to do, so little time! But I heard loving all that you're doing is a sign of an exciting life so I have no complain :o)



There are times I got so lucky that I have the chance to travel (real travel) and it is my favorite time to get inspired. Back to Cate Blanchett's words: my first trip was at age 9 to Bali, joining my dad's art class in a study tour, discovering the work and life of Balinese artists. My first time abroad was as an exchange student for a year in France, living with a french family, 'forced' to speak french, went to high school, simply lived like the french. Those first experiences really set my idea about travels. And somehow the next thing I know, similar 'arrangements' just fall into place with the other trips. I love it. There has been a big number of synchronicities playing around. In 2009 I wish that it will continue :o)



My dream? Traveling to Bhutan. It's intriguing. I heard about their Gross National Happiness concept. I saw articles about traveling to Bhutan, with focus on the art and design such as in Elle and Vogue, on the culture in National Geographic, and on the well-being in Yoga Journal and Yoga Plus.



Oh yes, they are some of my favorite magazines. Let me tell you about my another 'hobby' when it comes to magazine. Imported magazines are quite expensive in Jakarta, so I opt for buying second hand magazines. Old magazines, sometimes only a few months old, but recently I found Elle Decor that dates back in 1996! And much to my surprise it doesn't look old at all. And for some new ones, I subscribe to digital magazine through Zinio. It's worth it, good price and I can 'bring' the magazine everywhere in my laptop, very practical especially when traveling.



And though I live in a big city, I love the countryside and country style. Country Living has been my favorite magazine ever since I knew about it. My host families in France and Sweden all live either in a very small town or in the countryside, in their lovely homes surrounded by beautiful nature. And during my stays with these families I learned for the first time about decorating and entertaining 'the country style'.



And you know what? I love decorating 'the country style', though in practice what I do is 'decorating with what you have'. But I think, that's also what country style or junk-market style is all about. Currently I attempt to reorganize and redecorate my 3x3m2 bedroom cum work room. It was a necessity so I decided to blog about it, to be able to track the progress - and to motivate myself. I found the internet and my collection of decorating magazines to be very useful. Inspiration is everywhere!



When it comes to photography, I'm mad about taking pictures of flowers. I'm not a pro and am only armed with my 6.1 MP Kodak digital camera, but I have had so much fun with it.



The violin has been my passion since I was 13 year old, when I saw on TV Maestro Henryk Szerying play the Beethoven violin concerto, and then locked myself in the bathroom until my parents agreed to buy me a (cheap) violin and to send me to a violin teacher :o) I've been listening to classical music since far longer than I can remember, but am also really drawn into folk music recently. So don't be surprised if there are some posts about music as well.



I'm also a fan of flea markets and traditional markets. And hey, I'm an Indonesian and still deeply impressed by my Javanese childhood. When I have the chance I would also like to post entries about folksy things from Indonesia. Folksy things make me feel at home somehow. And it reminds me of the cultural richness of the world we live in.



So, basically, this blog is about my artwork, hobbies and things that inspire me. I love getting inspired. I hope you, too. Thank you for visiting and reading my blog, I've been enjoying putting together my thoughts in my entries and I appreciate all your comments and support. Let's hope for the better in 2009 :o)

[.member's.creation. + .inspiration.board.]

Amy sent me her creation :-) I'm so glad she gave me permission to post it here :-)




And I'm certainly very happy that many of you like the frames {blush}. Turned out I make alot of frame backgrounds using my tile collections. I will upload them all very soon. And just today I was thinking of also making bigger (800x600)frame background and I call it 'mood board' or 'inspiration board'. I find it more convenient using this bigger background tile to create scrapbook-like inspiration board.

The step by step is very much similar to creating frame picture. I inserted the 800x600 background to MS Power Point, then inserted pictures and arrange them freely - resized them, sending them backward or forward (using the 'draw' function), then select all, and copy and paste it to MS Paint.

On MS Paint, I decorated the board with my graphics (see the tutorial on previous entries), saved it as PNG, and voila! An interior design inspiration board with pictures from Jonathan Adler. I really love his design! Especially his decorating philosophy: "Happiness is Chic". I can't agree more! :-)



This picture of course looks very small on the blog...click on the picture to see it at it's real size.

And, ok, what do you think of the mood board? Is it a good size, or too small? I'd love to hear your opinion :-)

[.contest.idea.1.]

Well, I'm so excited about the contest idea :-) Tomorrow I will upload many blank frames and frame backgrounds to the member area, and all members will be able to participate in the contest. The rules and entry to be announced probably in one or two weeks from now, in order that there is sufficient time to have trial-and-error-and-tweaking with the graphics.

The first idea that came up to me for this contest was photo blogging. Participants will have to create several framed photos in sequence and to put text / comment / story to accompany the pictures.

Probably something like this imaginary conversation between my two little sisters, when they were small. I love looking at these pictures, and they had these cute little-rascals-ish sparks in their eyes as if they had been plotting something :-D




WELCOME BABY SISTER... "i've gotta tell you we've got a big sis, and she thinks she's our boss, but together we're stonger than her!!"




"...okay, do we stick to our plan? we're both bigger now, and chubby as well!"


Sometimes, when I got remarks from people that I'm an upbeat person...I just thought of my little sisters, you may guess where the surge of energy often came from :-D


Well, this is the first idea, let me know what you think and let's have our first contest soon! :-)

[.i.heart.helen's.]

Ask me who my favorite illustrator is…and no doubt I will answer that it is a difficult question! I am a fan of many illustrators, especially children-book-style illustrators, but lately I’ve been letting my eyes feast on Helen Dardik’s artwork. I love everything about it. Her illustration, her patterned designs, her paintings…and especially her colours! Helen is also an avid blogger, and it’s just gorgeous. Orange-you-lucky, it’s called. Sounds like I can relate to it. I love orange, and I feel lucky to find her blog :-)

[.new.school.graphics.part.1.]

Dear friends,






Thank you for being so patient with my lousy updates lately! I think I should have been able to manage my time more efficiently :-)

The fact is, I haven't been able to finish the whole new school graphics yet, but since you've been waiting so long for this, I thought of publishing the first part of the set with letterblocks, signboards, some tiles, dividers, etc.

There will be three or four parts in all (I haven't yet divided them) - they are almost ready but there are some things that I need to give some 'retouch' here and there. You will find the bears, boys and girls, and more cliparts and more tiles and more letterblocks (I started to really like letterblocks... that's why I just keep creating some now :-)). They will be up as soon as they are ready. Check it out in the member area.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the first part :-)

Have a great day!
Amreta

[.happy.birthday.jakarta.]

22 June 2008...Jakarta is 481 year old! And I can tell you it's always quite an event here when Jakarta celebrates its birthday. I will check later what's up in the city.

I made two scrapbook-style photos for blog and will upload the templates tomorrow. And more templates in the members area. Now it's just so late and I need some good night sleep....so stay tune :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKARTA!!!



Visit Jakarta



This 2,5 meters-tall giant puppet is called "ondel-ondel", traditionally parades the streets of Jakarta during a celebration, accompanied by traditional music from Betawi (native Jakartans)

[.on.Zinio.and.the.most.beautiful.flower.]

Guess what, I'm featured on Zinio's latest email newsletter :-) As you might know I'm an avid magazine reader and I'm so glad I found Zinio - from whom I can subscribe various magazines in digital format (view my entry about it here). They also have a great collection of literary classics, digitized and you can read them online. For me it's really convenient!

Anyway I've been sick these past few days. I don't know why it's always like that when I finally take a rest after done with a big project at work. The newbies are on the way, I still need to check this and that (for example, I just found out that the font "Tropicana" I used to decorate the book of quotes is not 'acceptable' when I transfered the InDesign file into .pdf). But I thought of giving a small preview on the weekly planner, the cover and the first two pages. If you see only days and weeks, no dates, it is intentional. The other book will have only dates, no days or week. Let me know what you think when they are uploaded this coming week.







And euh, talking about my favorite quote (notice that on the weekly planner preview... and some other pages in this blog :-)) - "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all" - it is from this inspiring movie "Mulan", the words by the Emperor of China toward the end of the film - and somehow, while leafing one of my favorite magazines, Asian Geographic issue 3/2007, I saw this photography by Masako Imaoka "Portrait of Courage". And I was moved by this particular picture taken in Nahrin, Afghanistan in 2002. Don't you think, this perfectly illustrates the Emperor's words above? I cut and clipped the picture onto my inspiration board on my desk - along with the quote. They give me extra strength and courage :-)

[.more.creative.space.]

Finally, my hosting subscription is upgraded and now I don’t have to worry about storing more graphics and projects in the server. Wew! :o)

Today I love: herbs price tags

[.a.little.progress.]

Finally the web sets are up in the members area. After hours and hours of uploading. And after checking them again, set by set, I could always find that a graphic, or two, or three, were missing or not properly uploaded, in each set. I noted down all these missing graphics’ file names and came back to step 1 with the FTP Commander. What a practice!

Three tall glasses of jasmine tea later, last night, I finally had the guts to send the registration page to the new member list :o)

Welcome!


This time scrappy-bloggie-pics:

Little me again, in 1979, a few days after the birth of my little sister, with her and grandma



Dad (1930-2004), Mom, and us the three sisters

[.HAPPY.2008!!!!.]

Happy New Year everyone!!!! I would like to wish you all a very happy, beautiful, exciting, creative, inspiring, lucky, full of love and nice surprises 2008!!!!



And here’s the news: though delayed, the new site is almost ready! You will see that it’s organized quite differently. I can tell you, it’s been a constant trial-and-errors in the process! But I do think that’s the exciting thing. Now I know more, and I really enjoy each moment of it.

From now on in this blog, I will also write about the new projects at Amreta’s Graphic Corner. It’s baby steps toward running my own ‘graphic shop’ :o) so here I start with two of my scrapbook-blogging pictures – 6 month old me with mom, dad and great grandma :o) such a precious memory!

[.flower.field.webset.]

'tis the season of beautiful things...and finally the flower field set is now ready to download....my huge apology for those who have been waiting for it since end of september when i first announced it *blush* - or those who have been so far wondering "where's the update?"

i realise "flower field" doesn't sound christmasy nor wintery, but hey, our friends in the southern hemisphere is enjoying summer now :-) and in any case, i love drawing flowers...in or out of seasons ;-)

you can download the webset from here. it is in zipped file to protect the graphics from direct linking. this webset will also be available to download from its original home www.amretasgraphics.com in a few days.

the sad news is, this is probably the last webset that is available for free. i may start charging for my future graphics in 2008. besides the fact that i've been very dissapointed by the misuses and direct linking, running my graphic site has grown too pricey for me lately. i understand this could be unfair to those who cannot afford, and i will still have free graphics for everyone, but well, to be very honest, earning something no matter how little it is from drawing graphics will keep myself motivated :-))

well, more about it later, but in the meantime, i hope you enjoy the flower field set! :-)

download the flower field webset

screenshot of what you can find in the set below:

[.feel.good.frames.part.2.]

Here’s the second dose of this week’s frame series. Let’s see if you also like the idea of layered frames. If so I will experiment with more tiles that I have in my collections. The blank frame can also be filled with your own photos. Below I also include a sample with a picture of me :-)









You can also then put together the two frames side-by-side into one graphic, like this:

[.feel.good.cards.]

Let’s see if you like cards with ’feel good’ sayings on them.

[feel free to save and use them - just please provide a link back to www.amretasgraphics.com]






Some of you might also remember I made the Irish Blessings graphics below for my Saint Patrick’s Day sets.





I found it very nice to print the cards (in colors, of course), then edge-cut and stick or clip them to my journal. Choose positive affirmation to brighten your day :-) I include further below the ‘blank’ cards. You can put your own text or saying on them, digitally, or simply print them and write the text using markers.

Somehow, given very limited time, making cards is easier for me than creating new graphics from scratch :-) If you like it probably I will make a special card page later, with instruction on how to put together the graphics and to add the text, the simple way.

[.little.friday.notes.]

A little graphic (yes, you can right-click on it, save and use it), a little note, and a little collage to wish you a happy friday, and have a nice weekend, too! :-)

[.more.graphics.on.my.graphic.site. www.amretasgraphics.com.]

[.free.graphics.070704.]

Laughter is the best therapy! I was sick and had to stay in bed for a few days last week, and besides undergoing several therapeutic sessions, I noticed that my condition improved after having lots of big laughters as my cousins and I marathonly watched Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the Quest for the Holy Grail, and The Meaning of Life. Whoever gave that statement, I couldn’t agree more, laugther is a great therapy! My good health’s back and I feel terrific! :-)

Anyway, here come more free graphics as promised – earlier in January I planned to draw the second set of rose bears, now with red roses, but then many things happened, including the big flood – and as you might see, these seven graphics stayed in the folder. I can’t promise when the set will be ready, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy parts of it below :-)

ps: If you decide to use one of these graphics, please do not forget to provide a link back to www.amretasgraphics.com

Thank you! :-)