[.going.tartan.]

Wew! I love tartans. And I got inspired by my youngest sister, a crafter by profession, she was here last week, and crafts and crafting seemed to be the main subjects of our endless conversations. It seems like I still need a lot of practice. But hey, it's fun! I covered an 'ordinary' plastic folder with fabric - oh, tartan - that I found earlier while exploring the 'junk market' in central Jakarta. So you see, it's one of a kind! :-)

[.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.]

[.mom's.batik.goodies.]

Psst. It’s a ’guerilla ad’. My mom has just started her home business, but she really wants it to be ’quiet’ until she’s 100 percent ready to launch herself into business life. The reason is, she found that her ”creating time” is still pretty much unconsistent. An artist is an artist, if you understand what I mean. She draws the designs, patterns and illustration, then her business partner makes them into batik. As the goods are all handmade, each of them is unique. Mom made tote bags, bed sheets, table cloths, wrap skirts (and probably blouses as well, but I haven’t seen one yet). So far, the marketing is done through word-of-mouth and sometimes mom gave away some samples as gifts, slowly testing the market’s interest. Still no website either – mom is still not sure about it. Hopefully she’s having a good starting-phase and that she’ll be encouraged to continue her hobby-turned-into-business activity. Because this makes her happy. I keep my fingers crossed :-)

[ my mom’s batik bags. the black and turqoise bags are from my collection, and the blue one is my friend Joanna’s ]

[.new.journal.]

When it comes to journaling, I have tendency to always recreate pages I really like from my previous journals: pictures that moved me, words that encouraged me, articles that enriched me. My latest journal’s just finished - and now I arrived to the first three pages of the new one. At home, I have the habit of keeping old magazines and, during long weekends, when I don’t play the violin, I could spend hours and hours leafing the mags and cutting images that inspire me. Then I sort them into different categories, each in one plastic box :
 living/sitting/working/hallway
 dining/kitchen
 bed/bath
 fashion/beauty
 outdoor/flowers
 details/objects/crafts
 food/recipes
 travel/places
 health
 words
 reference/unsorted

But, speaking about recreating some favorite pages from my previous journals, I have one particular entry that I really like in the last journal. It started with an ad for Princess Cruise (I don’t remember from what magazine I took it), it says ”Sometimes, you take a ship to get back to where you started”. A few days before, I received from my sister two scanned pictures of me on my first travel at age nine with Dad. They were the only pictures that could be found from that special trip. I was on a boat with Dad to Bali. Preceding those two ’findings’, actually, in June last year, I was onboard a ship - a real sailing ship, and those 3 days at sea sent me back to the memories of my first travel with Dad. Where it all started. I took a ship.

Sometimes, I’m just amazed at how the universe reminds us about the wonderful things we have in life :-)



And below is the handmade ’sequel’ of the dream home I wrote in my previous entry – this time the images are cut-outs from old magazines.

[.in.love.with.paper.cutting.]

As far as I can remember, I had fallen in love with paper cutting since I was in the kindergarten, that very fateful day when my teacher taught us 4 or 5 year old kids to fold paper and cut the edges to make cute shapes, or we’d peep through the holes and had laughs.

And since then the love of paper cutting continued to grow; thanks to print+pattern I discovered the loveliest art of folk paper cutting from Poland, called "Wycinanki"

So, for sure there's no other answer to my Polish friend Joanna's question about what I wanted her to bring to Indonesia when she's visiting me, but: "wycinanki!" [.tack.joanna.!.] :)

Here it is...



Some links to Wycinanki sites:

Polish Paper Cuts
The Art of Polish Paper Cutting
Lowics cutouts

[.saved.from.the.flood.]

Yesterday after work I went to my house (at the moment I'm still staying at my aunt's) and I'm so glad the house is already repainted. Clean and fresh. But certainly needs a touch of redecoration. Plan for this coming weekend.

I went to my room and tried to rearrange some things I managed to save from the flood [two months ago] by putting and piling them on top of the tall cupboard when the water started to come into the house. Some ‘aaaawww’s and ‘youhuuuuu’s followed. I found some precious books I thought I had lost. And…my [until that flood in February] latest journal!

It’s the kind of journal I really like, actually. It’s not a ‘dear diary’ kind but I put ‘founds of the day’ which were mostly cuttings from magazines or the internet [articles, pictures, words] that caught my attention that day. Then I put some notes about what I experienced that particular moment I wrote, and my own drawings. Such a precious scrapbook from my bygone days.

[.weekend.crafting.]

When it’s Sunday afternoon and raining so hard outside, you can make sure I’d be sitting nicely in my desk working with papers :-) I love reading books but sometimes inspiration strikes and all I want to do is cutting nice pictures from old magazines and sticking them to papers, making small collages.

I like using A5 loose-leaf papers and put them in one folder, and the size makes it easy enough to carry. I call this folder 'idea notebook'. I also have big folders to accomodate bigger pictures (sometimes they are so nice I just can't cut them!) But more often the big ones only stay on my bookshelves, for comfy time at home, while the small ones travel alot!

This weekend I covered two folders with fabrics: one with purple vintage cotton that I 'inherited' from my grandma, and the other with Chinese fabrics. I run out of nice papers to cover the inner side of the folder covers, so I decided to cut-and-stick pretty small pictures from an ad in an old Ariadne at Home magazine. After several trial-and-errors, finally they turned out to be really nice :-)












The images for collages shown below are from
Country Living UK edition, October 2004