[.29gifts.Day.4.]

Day 4 :-)

I created gift-tags for today’s freebie. Hmm…but I only managed to make them with two colours. Hopefully tomorrow I can add more colours for variations.



And here are the links to the pages where you can download the files. I forgot to mention that I’m afraid with 4shared.com I can not link directly to the files, you will be redirected to a download page and you need to click on the ‘download’ button in order to save or open the file.

| Blue | Pink |

Enjoy!

[.29gifts.Day.3.]

Yay! Day 3!!

Thank you so much for your kind words through comments and emails. Some of you gave me really nice ideas and guess what, I think I kind of decided that since I really need to get familiar with Adobe InDesign, I will create printables throughout this round of 29gifts project. So feel free to post your requests to this blog or just email me with your ideas. And better yet if you could include measurements for example: 4,5cm x 12 cm bookmark, A5 size note-sheets, etc.

For now I already received requests for: labels with cute borders, scrapbook tags. And a reader also gave me an idea for an e-course about making homemade graphics like mine! Yay! I keep this in mind, my friends! Let me know what you want to see more from this project and I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime I go on with this blog since I still have problem accessing my website, thus updating is delayed. Thank you for bearing with me!

Now, freebie Day 3: bookmarks with rose bears

I use the same graphic background tiles as the weekly planner  covers, in five colours, I hope the bookmarks can also compliment the planner :-))

The size is 4,5cm x 12cm. For the trial-and-error (as always) I printed out the bookmarks, glued them on a thicker paper, then cut and punched them on the middle top, made the hole nicer with an eyelet and silver ribbon (I love silver ribbons!)



And here's the link to download the planner:
http://www.4shared.com/file/194774736/cfd810e7/bookmark_bear.html

Enjoy!

[.29gifts.Day.2.]

Day 2!!

I’m so glad you managed to download the first printable. Thank you for your kind words about it :-) And for Day 2 of the challenge I made a few colour variations for the cover.

Hmmm, I think I’m happy with 4shared.com so far. At least the download has been easy, virus-tested, and I got 10GB free space. Not bad at all. Don’t you see there’s always a silver lining in every cloud? ;-)

So here are the links to the cover variations:

| Purple | Green | Blue | Brown |

Enjoy!

[.29gifts.Day.1.]

Here I am on supposedly Day 3 of the Challenge...and I'm still on Day 1 ;-)) THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your encouragement, through comments and emails, yaay, can you believe it's an adventure already??

Ok, a little summary:

Thursday: yep, that was the decision, commitment, and the start of the 29-day giving challenge at Amreta's Graphics.

Friday: couldn't stop thinking about it the whole day. So excited. Went home from work earlier. Decided on making some printables. Weekly planner to start. And yiha! I found out that I already forgot a lot of things on using Adobe InDesign. Only a few months away and I already forgot things! Up until midnight trying to figure out the program by opening an old planner...and somehow, I couldn't connect to the internet!

Saturday: you bet, I couldn't sleep. Well, a little bit. I woke up early and continued working on the planner. Finally finally! It was raining the whole morning and day, so it was nice too staying home with mugs of hot chocolate, toast bread and cheddar cheese. Challenge number one was overcome. A new weekly planner is ready. Suddenly it was an evening of big stormy rain with thunders. And came challenge number 2 (and 3..)...another internet connection problem, and probably food poisoning. For lunch I bought fish with chilly from a street food stall, because it was raining, I didn't go out to the market. Don't know exactly if it was the cause of the pain in my stomach. Then the internet connection was sooo slow (and I don't know if the big stormy rain had caused that). So I took some meds and slept. Had a dream of watching a movie on the internet with my late dad (whenever I dreamt of him, I was never aware he already passed away...). Was awake again almost midnight and had a laugh with my friend Joanna in Warsaw over Skype. "Snow snow snooooow" she said. "And here's stormy rain and thunder!" I replied. Tried again to open blogger, but it was still very slow and when finally it was open, it had a very funny display. I still had a bit of headache, so I went back to sleep. But the laugh with Joanna, and the dream of watching a funny movie with dad, did help.

Sunday (today):
Somehow I slept well, though when I woke up I still felt the pain in my stomach. I wanted to go back to sleep. But then it occured to me, and made laugh too, that maybe, just maybe, the Universe is testing me. How many times it happened that everytime I decided on something, so many other things came to surface, forcing me to find excuses or giving me reasons not to go on?

Haha, this time around, I'm so glad that I put the challenge online. Stay focus, honey, I told myself (oh, love this sweet talk to self! :-)) and only now i understand that passion could protect you from all those tests.

At first I thought that I would need to simply ignore all those negative self talk. But in any case, the Universe didn't give up. Today I was happy with the trial-and-error with printing the planner. After a few adjustments, it came up nicely. The internet was well connected in normal speed, and once I was ready with the blogger...I couldn't access my own website! Tried several times with two different ftp transfers. No result. Tried the C-Panel. Nope. Denied. Where should I upload the planner? It's in pdf format.

A few minutes googling and I found 4shared.com and decided to give it a try. Please let me know if you have problem downloading. The link is below:

http://www.4shared.com/file/193125811/b74957d/weeklyplannerA5.html

It's a weekly planner consisting of seven different spreads that you can print and mix and match as much as you like. You need to write the dates yourself, however :o)

A picture of the sample printouts:




Some sample screenshots:









So glad I can start this! And thank you so much for bearing with me :o))

(and don't forget if you want to participate in the 29-day gift challenge, go to www.29gifts.org )

[.new.year.and.29-day.gifts.challenge.]

Hello friends!

Happy belated new year...owww, I should have posted something on new year's eve or new year day! It was so strange that I still had something to work on, but I did have a great time, when the digital clock on my mobile phone turned 00:00, and the date to 01 January 2010...fireworks in the whole Jakarta sky. It was fantastic!

And now a week has passed and it's Thursday! Ha! What's so interesting about Thursday, you might wonder? The answer is simple: I was born on Thursday, and as I grew up loving this life I become so fond of Thursdays ;-) And therefore, it seems so right for me to start something on Thursday, no?

Here I'm today on the first Thursday in the year 2010, and it just occured to me an idea (for my journal - see my previous post), that it would probably be interesting to note something like "do something new" or "start one new thing" every Thursday during the whole year. Oh dear, I thought, I just challenged myself. But then, why not? Sounds like a very very nice idea, of course! Well, hello, don't you think one needs exciting challenges to stay motivated? So what will be my first "new thing" to start with on this first Thursday of the year, so I thought.

As luck would have it, my mind was thinking and thinking about it when I was at the right place: bookstore (yes earlier this evening I went to a bookstore after work while waiting for the rain to subside). I stumbled upon the book "29 gifts" by Cami Walker and I recalled I read about it somewhere in Jeannette Maw's Good Vibe Blog.



Oh my, then I knew instantly what I would do!! Yew I'll join this site, I decided. And so I went home and signed-up to 29 gifts. I felt wonderful!! Will this work? Oh, this question of mine. It's the main reason why after signing up I decided to write it on this blog :-D I need help. Your help, dear readers. For my participation in the 29-day Giving Challenge, I plan to post for this cycle of giveaway one freebie per day, for 29 days, starting tomorrow. I wrote now in my journal - since now I already moved to a new place only about 35 minutes walk from work, I should be able to plan and manage my after-work time in the evening and set aside an hour or so to create something for the giveaway. You know what, it will be a practice of self-discipline, hopefully :-D Amretasgraphics has been in hiatus for a few months now and I really really need to get my 'high-vibe' and 'creative habit' back. By making this plan "public" - in theory I will be forced to be on track as so many of you would hopefully watch my progress, and in one month, the habit of drawing graphics in the evening after work will be natural again.

So, would you help me? ;-) Thanks a bunch in advance...Happy 2010 my friends!!!

[.end.of.year.journaling.]

It's a very busy end of year for me. But at least, I can say, 2009 has been an interesting year. Tomorrow last day at work in 2009, then a long new year weekend. No I'm not going to a party. Probably some of you would prefer to hear that I'm back to creating graphics rather than about me partying hihi. Ups and downs of my life in 2009 has prevented me from having much time to sit in front of my laptop creating graphics. That sounds really baaaad, doesn't it. I always needed aloooot of time when drawing graphics, because it's been always full of fun - and rewarding - trials-and-errors ;-)

But I have one thing I'm really proud about..it's that despite the so-often-chaotic day-to-day of mine, I never gave up journaling. Sometimes only a few lines, sometimes a few pages. And I put here and there some collages from magazine cutouts. Just like any previous end-of-years, I would look at my journals again, tracking what's up and where life had taken and guided me, what has made me feel good, what has made me down. Lately I tend to write "current state of spirit:" at the beginning of each entry (describing what I feel at that time of writing) then under that line i would list anything what I did, what I read, what I ate, what I heard, etc, before that. Sometimes just by looking at the list I could instantly evaluate the process. After awhile I noticed that (for example) I would feel happier in the morning when I woke up early - or event what kind of pens that made my handwritings look better :-D

That, I have no doubt saying it now, is the kind of journal that I really like. Now that it's time to evaluate, I found it very helpful when it comes to making plans for 2010. Focus on what makes you feel good and happy. I can complain about too much work but I can focus instead on the fact that I have an exciting and rewarding job. That needs a constant practice :-)

Ah, last note, I also discovered it's so much fun creating 'impromptu' collages in the journal. Mostly my cutouts are from Country Living UK, old magazines from France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden - postcards, as well as printouts from the internet, images from blogs I like. By the way, I also learned it needs a constant practice...

See you next time with new graphics soon!

[.mobile.blogging.test.]

meet my 8 month old nephew attila! :-D

happy holiday everyone! if this mobile-blogging works I will be able to post entries from almost anywhere! wish me luck, would you ;-)

in the meantime, happy new year 2010 :-))))))

::amreta::

[.walking.bliss.][.wandering.in.books.][.091126.]

The last part of Walking Bliss series this week and we’ll see about next week. I’m yearning so much for getting back to graphic journaling but who knows I’ll be able to combine it :-)

Blogging is an exciting challenge as I’m not an English native speaker and it’s a great way to practice writing in English…if done regularly, hehe.

Walking home from work yesterday, a little bit earlier, so it wasn’t dark yet. I was walking through an open field, to the shortcut that leads to the big street. The tall buildings seen here are located on the big street, not in the business district where I took the picture from and, can you spot the street food stalls in the middle?



A closer look of the food stalls



A noodle seller (thus ‘Mr Noodle’ – because I don’t know his real name) pushing his cart pass the shortcut toward the big street. I call this narrow lane ‘banana trees street’ – can you see why? :-))




After work reading, let me wander in books, and dream a little bit... (and looking forward to a Sunday brunch)

Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights






Jamie at Home

[.walking.bliss.091124.]

Yesterday when I walked home in the evening, I took some pictures and on-the-spot realised that my camera didn’t really work when it’s dark. I tried the flash, I tried the night-mode. Failed. So I took pictures anyway and thanked Photoshop later :-)





Took a new shortcut and was ‘caught’ in the traffic jam. Such a narrow street, lots of big cars, and I couldn’t even get a space for walking. I got hungry as it was dinner time I happened to be stuck not far from a street food stall, selling chicken porridge. Looked yummy though. So decided to duck under the tent which was hooked on to the cart, which looked like an ‘emergency eating place’, and ordered a bowl of porridge. Surprise surprise, it was really good! Watching the traffic jam, I chatted with Mr Porridge (that’s how we call the seller of street food when we don’t know his name… Mr Porridge, Mr Fried Rice, Mr Noodle, and so on), about how he made the porridge. He was quite nice. I told them I happened to walk this street because the usual shortcut was closed for some repair. And he was like “ah, so that’s why you didn’t know that this street can be this crowded in the evening” Fifteen minutes later, happy for having had a good meal, I headed to the big street, and Mr Porridge showed me another shortcut, passing by the kampung (residential area with lots of houses, people around, children playing and narrow streets) across the street from the stall. I told him I was hunting for pictures and he seemed quite okay and didn’t mind when I took some pictures of his stall. He stations there every evening so I’ll pass by when the picture is printed.

[.walking.bliss.091123.]

I took a break from Walking-Bliss during the weekend. I got a visit. My mom. Oh, she almost made it to inspect the house where I live but my aunt managed to take her for a walk somewhere else :-)) Hehe, I wasn’t ready for mom’s inspection whatsoever. The house was not exactly a mess but recalling mom’s background as an interior design major combined with her strong Javanese philosophy about almost everything, my decorating-with-whatever-you-have interior would not be everywhere near her standard, I was pretty sure of it! :-))

But now today a new Monday has come and this morning I happily walked again through the market, and…



This fruit stall was located on the corner, at the very start of the market if you walk from where I live. I like to see the green bananas, the pink dragon fruit, the golden kelengkeng (kind of lychee, I think), the papayas and yellow-pink apples. Green, pink, yellow must be the theme of this stall :-) These exotic fruits are mostly sweet. The green banana seemed to be the kind for cooking. Fried banana, for example, is a very popular snack here.


And two side-by-side chicken stalls.



This chicken seller was actually watching me taking pictures of the fruit stall and she asked me whether I was also interested in taking picture of her stall! Oh yes, of course, with pleasure Mam… and thank you!



And then the other stall also wanted to be in my pictures as well :-) Lovely ladies!