Imagine Nation

21 enthusiastic boys and 2 energetic girls from KDM shared their passion for drawing with me. Drawing is a universal language that breaks barrier between people. Every Saturday morning we speak in language of lines, shape, color, and dream. No translation required, no limitation, just us and our imagination. 

Pay It Forward

A warm cozy fuzzy soft feelings that tingles from my toes up to my nose is what I get every time I receive a random act of kindness. A Donna Faust threw kind words of my work in her blog. Thank you Donna! As a tribute to her I'm giving away this handmade blank journal to the first person who comment on this post and yes I will have it delivered free of charge anywhere in the world.

9 January

An interesting start of twenty twelve already. My mom suffered a stroke on her 75th birthday last Monday. I'm thankful my brother got help on time, I'm thankful the doctors and the nurses at Siloam Hospital were resourceful, I'm thankful Dena was with me to help me absorb the shocking news, I'm thankful for my sisters and brothers in IES, I'm thankful for endless support and love from family and friends. God is awesomazing! Everywhere I turned I was comforted and strengthened by his amazing love through his words, through family & friends. It's a long road to recovery with many challenges ahead. I'm just glad & humbled she made it. I love you Mom! You are one tough cookie.

Grade 2 Heroes

According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary a hero is a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability. 

Last semester Grade 2 picked Ibu Magda, Ibu Elsa, Ibu Bambang, Ibu Niniek and Pak Oky as their inspirational persons. These people are not mythological but they are divine creation and all of them are blessed with great strength and unique ability and more importantly they use their talents & passion to be blessing for others. Ibu Magda looks after stray dogs, Ibu Bambang & Ibu Niniek recycles & takes care the environment, Ibu Elsa & Pak Oky teaches less fortunate children for. 

Grade 2 interviewed them and worked on the story in Language Art class, in Drama class they work on voice projection and articulation and recorded their voices, and in computer class they created drawings with KidPix and learned to scan their art works. It takes a village to raise a child.

Journal Tag

I love vintage. Library books used to come with a pocket and a stock card on the inside of the front cover or the back cover. The librarian would write on the stock card the borrower's name and the due date. I imagine the librarian and the borrower would engage in small talk about the weather or something because it probably would take about 15-20 seconds to take out the stock card from the pocket, fill it in properly and store the stock card for each book. Now it takes less than 5 seconds to scan the bar code of library books.

To pay homage to the extinct library card I adopt the idea as the tag for my journal. The tag become part of the journal; which means my friends don't have to throw away the tag, which means I know my tag has longer living expectations than most tags. Double yay! 

Twenty Twelve

No resolution. It's going to be an interesting year; the year my daughter Dena is graduating from high school, the year she is leaving for college....

Tag, You're It!

When Dena was an 8th grader she liked to keep cool and awesome tag mostly from clothing item she bought. That lasted about a year then she threw everything away. I don't even pay attention to labels, for me they are obstacles that keep me from using the product. Now that I'm on the other end as a maker of a product I can't help but thinking about label, but judging my own experience as an end user I use materials I already have so I don't have to be so heart broken when I find my label somewhere in someone's trash. Not very practical & very time consuming I suppose, but there is nothing practical about hand made product. All items are cut, glued, drawn, assembled with love :-)

Tante Nelly

4 simple designs + 4 colors of paper + 10 types of ribbon = 100 one-of-a-kind-invitations; cut, glued and tied by hands with love. A tribute to Tante Nelly who left her footprint in my heart: Maleos-leosan, Marendem-rendeman, Wo masawang-sawangan {Love one another, care for one another, help one another}. You are always be remembered!

Angry Bird

It's okay to be angry. What you do with your anger is what matter. Anger can be a positive force instead of a destructive force. It's not easy to be angry assertively: one need to learn to say the right thing, at the right time, with the right attitude and with the right tone of voice. 

Last week I went to this caricature shop to order three drawings for a gift. The artist insisted that I should pay cash 50% of the total cost, I didn't have much cash on me and the guy refused other form of payment, which meant I had to go out of my way to find an ATM and went back there. So I went home instead and decided to do the drawing myself. The next day the guy called me (silly me for leaving my number) and asked if I still wanted him to do the caricatures.  When I told him no,  he got mad at me and said that he already did the drawings, he stayed up all night to finish the drawings and he refused other jobs to finish mine on time....basically trying to put the guilt on me. I took lots of  deep breaths and said calmly, "I'm sorry you took the initiative to do the drawing & worked all night, but I haven't made any commitment yet, I haven't even given you the required down payment." The guy hung up on me. 

Rob & Corrine

 

Eager Beaver

It's almost the end of semester. The grade is already in, all projects are done. What to do, what to do? When stuck with ideas I ask my students, they are endless source of cool ideas. Derek from grade 5 suggested enthusiastically to make a silhouette. So I took their side-ways-mug-shot-style photos with my mobile and teach them how to create silhouette with Photoshop. Awesome idea Derek!