What I’m working on right now…
… is a continuation of the update I posted on Instagram last night. ((Please pardon the dirty cutting mat… I’ll clean it this weekend!)) I made these jeepney, tricycle, and pedicab doodles ((The jeepney was especially tedious to carve because of all the detail I put! Masochist much?)) a week ago and thought of printing them on the Gocco… until I realized that I didn’t have enough screens.*headdesk* But as explained in the previous post, this is what led to my interest in rubberstamping in the first place which just proves that necessity is the mother of inven innovation (and crazy new obssessions).
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On the home front, Arn is happy that I’m spending evenings being artistic — not just vegging out in front of the TV watching J-dramas (Teehee. Now you know. ) So now I’m either carving or doodling while my iTunes blasts out J-pop. Same difference. 🙂 I’ve actually been semi-passively studying Nihongo since 2011 but I’ll reserve that story for another time…
Before I went off-tangent, I was gonna say that Arn and I have been talking about what sparked this sudden desire to create with my hands.After some thought, I had the answer: Design Festa!!!
This cheezy photo below was taken at the Design Festa Gallery in Harajuku, Tokyo in 2006. (Whattapose *cringe*)
(More photos — and cheezy poses — in my old Flickr gallery)
That was the first time I heard of it. Since then I’ve been wanting to attend the actual festival but our timing was always off. When we planned our trip for this year, I made sure to check the schedule. They usually hold it in May and November. We chose to go in the fall because Tokyo would be just as hot as Manila if we went in the summer.
So here I am all giddy, holding our pre-bought tickets which we purchased at the HQ in Harajuku (the same place in the 2006 photo I posted above). We actually arrived at Tokyo Big Sight 30 minutes before it opened.
This is not even half of the crowd that was there bright and early. See how behaved and properly-queued up everyone was though.
Inside, the place was bursting with kawaii, I didn’t know where to start!
I went bananas over all the cute stuff and even had photos taken with the very friendly and talented artists who were only too happy to indulge our whims.
Arnold, meanwhile, enjoyed taking photos and videos of the kids who were painting on the scene.
We originally planned to stay until around 4pm so that we could go somewhere else afterwards but we ended up leaving at 8pm, closing time, because there was so much to feast our senses on. Indie bands were playing outside. Strange short films were showing upstairs. A diverse selection of food carts dotted the place. At the end of the day my tote was filled with handmade puraban brooches, plushies and some stationery. Arn bought several art cards and indie comics. Ironically, I didn’t notice any keshigomu hanko (hand-carved erasers) although I’m positive there was a whole section devoted to it…
There are more photos in this Google album.
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Hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully I’ll have finished prints to show in my next post! 🙂
