1 Week Vacation

My 1 week vacation started yesterday! â™Ĩ Its just been 2 days, but I think I’ve done a lot already:

  • Set up the accounting sheet for our website.
  • Uploaded new works to my POD sites.
  • Updated the tags and descriptions in my existing POD sites.
  • Watched a LOT of Youtube studio vlogs (lol).
  • Started to create new art. â™Ĩ

Edit: My 1 week vacation ended, and I might as well post here my other achievements:

  • Built a shelf and a desk!
  • Bought an aircon.
  • Received my new seamiart glitter watercolor + brush and I got to experiment with them. 🙂
  • Bought an order of gold foil to try out as well!

A productive day

What’s a productive day for you? For me its when I accomplish the creative things on my list. The more I finish in a day, the more accomplished I feel. But even if I don’t get everything completed, it’s okay! There are no deadlines in my set-up.

  • Create something. (A sketch, drawing, or painting)
  • Scan artworks.
  • Post-process scanned artworks.
  • Share to Instagram my new works.
  • Upload post-processed works to the following POD sites:
    • Society 6
    • Red Bubble
    • Inprnt
  • Transfer phone photos to my laptop.
  • Sort photos and look for things I can blog about.
  • Photoshop selected photos for a blog post.
  • Create a blog post.

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Pre-pandemic, there is also an additional list specifically for conventions.

  • Look for and apply to interesting conventions.
  • Create new works for sticker and postcard designs.
  • Print new works.
  • Package new works. (Cutting stickers, adding to plastic packaging, etc.)
  • Promoting in social media.

But in our current situation, I only do one thing on the first list in one day. Sometimes I take a break if I don’t feel like doing anything. But whenever I accumulate a lot of artworks ready to scan, I try to scan and post-process everything in a day.

My 1 week vacation starts tomorrow. I hope I could be a bit productive with an equal amount of rest. â™Ĩ

Moving

Two weeks ago, during our birthday celebration art tambay with my close friends, a part of our ceiling in the room collapsed. I was very lucky that it didn’t directly fall on me and it fell sideways. The wooden grid beam that supports the ceiling were eaten by termites, and with a cat visiting our ceiling every other day, we felt that it won’t be so soon that the rest of the ceiling will fall as well. So we decided to move.

We looked for places for rent nearby, found one, paid the reservation fee, and started moving in our stuff last Friday. We bought the important furniture and home stuff during the weekend. It was a buzzer beater event, since this week its MECQ once again in Metro Manila.

Everything was so fast.

Grateful that any questions can be searched online now. We could also shop thru Shopee or Lazada for other remaining things. Food can still be delivered thru Grab.

We’re sort of settling in our new place. Its so peaceful here. Once everything is okay, I’ll blog some more.

But for now, keep safe everyone.

It’s already May

I haven’t blogged about pending events at all. But I think its okay? The whole world is currently facing a pandemic. I noticed that there are people who preach about improving or learning new skills during this quarantine. That being productive now (since most have a lot of time due to ECQ) is the best way to utilize the time. 

I think that’s toxic. â™Ĩ

I believe its okay to rest and do nothing. That forcing oneself to be productive is not healthy at all. Everyone has different ways to cope during this pandemic, and those preachers should shut the fuck up.

As for myself – thankfully I still have work. There are days where I dedicate my time sketching and painting. Whenever I’m in that mood, I produce a lot of work in one sitting. Then I scan, edit, and post them every other day in social media lol. But there are weeks that I don’t do anything productive at all! There was a week that I binged read a bunch of pending manga, there were also weeks that I used my 3DS again. I finally finished Bravely Default and Rune Factory 4 after all these years. I wanted to buy a Switch now, but then I noticed that they don’t have my favorite color yet. 

When will I blog again? I don’t know. Hopefully soon.

Small steps

When you thought January’s finally over with all the craziness of 2020, the Covid19 finally reached our country.

There’s more personal posts recently here. Here’s my summary of January to Feb:

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March is okay, I guess? We’ll get through this. Our office computers were shipped to our respective homes and they announced a mandatory 100% work from home for us days before the quarantine. Which is a good thing, right?

I just..don’t have the drive to blog. I know I have tons of pending posts. I know I still have responsibilities… just, let me rest some more. 

Small, easy steps for now. Since I bought my own scanner days before Stickercon, I now have a reason to scan new works and upload them to my POD websites. At least they’re doing well.

After all the craziness

After 2 months of preparation, our events in Komiket Megamall and StickerconMNL 2020 are done! Its finally time to rest, I hope? So sorry for not updating as often as I should. I can still see my pending blog post list on the first page. I will do them this March, hopefully! â™Ĩ

2020

Yes, it’s that time of the year again.

A chaotic year.

Compared to my quiet 2018, 2019 was full of chaos.

When I look back to my posts for 2019 – it wasn’t a lot. I lost the motivation to write. And I got busy with work and real life. Originally, the blog’s main purpose is for me to document my adventures and to look back on happy memories. 

I attempted to create an art tambay group in our office. But after numerous setbacks (different work schedules, commitments, distractions, etc.) I just… stopped. I mean, I invite people and they show up but instead of you know – creating, there are distractions and I’m the only one left committed to the art tambay. What’s the point, then? I could do this anywhere else. So I stopped. But then new people were hired with similar interests, and here I am hoping – maybe this year I could invite people again.

In the first quarter of the year, I got busy working on new artworks for StickerCon. I decided that I need to create something new – aside from my flowers. Since I already did that last 2018, I decided to continue working on food illustration. Compared to my JanMaker sister with her insane amount of details in her food illustration – mine was the complete opposite. It was loose and chaotic, definitely me. I was ecstatic that everyone loved my food stickers, some of them were almost sold out. Weeks after that was my birthday, and then we went up north to participate in an arts and crafts fair.

There were so many lows this year that were so… stressful. I cut off people to protect myself and my mental state. I wish for karma to decide their fates, but sometimes I just wish for something else. I got stuck in an unfavorable situation, so I just left. I’m just happy and grateful that I have the support system that I need â™Ĩ.

In between the stressful situations, I also had some achievements: I got accepted in an Open call of artists for an exhibition; two of my renders were accepted as finalists in an international competition; had numerous events with friends; and was accepted to StickerCon 2020 and February Komiket 2020. 

There were a lot of things that I had no control over that I hated, but needed to accept. So for 2020, I wish for a quieter and steady year creating art at my own pace. I’m so tired.

2019

It’s the time of the year again.

A quiet year.

Compared to my art-filled 2017, the year 2018 was a quiet one.

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The “seeds” that I’ve planted early last year have started to bloom and bear fruit. Surprisingly, Red Bubble was the most generous for the year. Society 6 not so much, and Inprnt with nothing at all.

I made a portfolio page on my blog. I will update this soon!

Around April, I started my job at Studio West. I was under training for 6 months. And finally last October, I passed the pre-ops training and got regularized. â™Ĩ Everyday at work is so fulfilling and fun. I enjoy what I do and in a field that I specialize in.

January Makers PH‘s only had two events this year. StickerCon MNL was an unforgettable event. I was already sold out at lunch time! We managed to get a slot for StickerCon 2019 too, so wish us luck this year. â™Ĩ We also participated in Planner Soiree around the late half of the year.

Asides from the usual flowers, I started painting other subjects as well. I plan on studying other subjects too this year, which will be landscapes or cityscapes. We also got to experience åˇĨį­†  style painting, which is a bit similar to watercolor!

The only thing that’s constant, I still had art tambays with my friends. â™Ĩ

And finally, at midnight of the New Year, Inggo proposed to me in his unique but usual way. We’re now engaged! â™Ĩ

Here’s to more happiness this year!

Birthday Art Tambay

A few months ago, we celebrated Ivy and Hannah’s birthday. We had dinner at one of my recommended restaurants near our area. Before that though, we had an art tambay first with Aira. (and a special guest!)

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I was the first to arrive at our usual meetup place. After ordering my drink, I noticed that another group was holding a watercolor session as well! It looked like one was teaching the basics to the other girl.

It turns out that Aira knew the one teaching LOL and after their watercolor lesson, Aira invited her to our table. Her name’s Paola (@paola_koala), a teacher from a school nearby.

Around this time, I was doing the #ComeFloralwithUs prompt.

After our art tambay session, Hannah and I met up with Ivy at Fishermall before going to Zaan, a sort of hidden Japanese restaurant at Mother Ignacia. I don’t have photos of the restaurant or the food, but Inggo did a review of our visit a few months back. We chose this place solely for the reason to joke about “Zaan tayo kakain?” or “Kung zaan zaan na tayo pumunta today!”. HAHA.

Dessert at Artsy cafe.

While walking back to Pantranco, the rain poured hard so we had to take shelter somewhere. We were nearby Mandarin Sky and Artsy Cafe at Panay Ave., so we decided to have dessert and coffee at Artsy Cafe before going home. These two restaurants are linked together via the Function room. Ivy was happy with the interiors of both restaurants, haha.

My coffee.

Cutie cat. But how do you pour with this thing?!

Ivy went home after this. For Hannah and I though, we were supposed to just buy milktea from Macao and go home. But we lost track of time and chitchatted the whole night HAHA. Overall, it was a fun day with my best friends. We even took a photo with Ruth (by using a cellphone). â™Ĩ