Flourishes July It’s Sketchy Challenge

I didn’t participate in card challenge for years, today I saw there is a “It’s Sketchy” challenge from Flourishes, I feel like to give it a try.

Today, I want to make a pink card.

 I used two stamps to create the background, then I used Heart circle elements Nestabilities from Spellbinders, and the Old Tea Rose from Flourishes to be my main image of the card. I colored the rose with my Copic markers, and distressed the edge with Victorian Velvet distress ink.

 I used a ribbon and a button to decorate the card, then I am done !

If you are interested to see more of the cards that I made, you are welcomed to visit my Chinese blog : http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/mandycard

  

Designer came to cosmetic the shop

The little girl, O'funkimigo designer, wants to draw a big wall picture in the shop, so people can see her characters at the first sight when they step in our shop. I was not sure, because the wall was just painted, what if she failed....















Our designer is very persistent, I can't argue with her, I can only brought her to the shop.




















It was a hard work to draw on wall, I was thinking of Michelangelo in the year of 1560, don't know how did he paint all the great art works on the ceiling.

Designer came with all her equipments, she looked at the wall and thought for few minutes, then started to sketch. Very quickly, the first line she drawed....

This project took the little girl 3 whole days to complete. It was very inspirational, we even attracted some passengers to step in and see her draw.

There were 8 characters created, every one is unique and humorous. It's worth while to come and see it yourself. The 8 characters bring the lifelike atmosphere to the little shop. It is just more than wonderful !

Mum was very touched to see the little girl work with all her attention, dedication and conscientious. The little girl is really grown up, and she knows what she wants to pursuit for her life goal.

Preparing for O'funkimigo Retail Shop

The shop belongs to my good friend Caroline, she lent the location to me for free, simply because we are good friends and she loves the characters drawed by my daughter, she is very confident on our design.













The shop was rented as storage room before, it was idled there for many years after the rental was expired. You can imagine how many works we need to do just for clean up first, then re-painting..... !

My husband was very supportive, he volunteered to do all the painting works, Caroline and I will do the clean up.

We do all the needful step by step, we don't want to give us pressure, we want to do this slowly and happily, because we don't have a deadline for this.

We want to decorate this shop in a different way, we will not use the traditional rack or shelf, we will just use whatever is available and handy, we will not invest any money in decoration.

So, all the old but useful furniture will be painted into black color. It was fun when we found out a very old and broken monitor, it also painted into black color by husband.

Caroline was very kind to help us cleaning all the way with her very high quality standard, after all the hardship, our faces, hands, feet were all dirty, but we got a very nice and shinning new shop ready.

This is a big step for us to toward to our little dream.

One step at a time !
Do it with fun and with friends !

The born of O'funkimigo

A little girl likes to draw since she was very small, her drawing was very joyful and happy.


She kept drawing when she traveled to Egypt, Italy, Spain, France, Tibet, and many many other places.

When the little girl was preparing for University entrance
exam, she wanted to major in design. The parents who were very opened at all times, were against to her decision. Sadly, the little girl got into a finance deparment in university. She became very unhappy. The university is very far away from home, she needs to commute for at least 3 hours a day. She can't attend any after school activities, and she didn't make any friends for the first year.

The little girl was very lonely, gradually she began to draw, this time she was drawing all kinds of characters, she was thinking, "I will just draw whatever kind of friends I need to accompany me everyday when I am commuting.".


A lot of characters appeared in her notebook, tickets, even tissue paper. Suddenly, the more she drawed, the more friends she got. Her classmates approached her when they saw her draw, "what are you doing ?", "oh, so cute...." Gradually, the little girl became happy again, and you can see the changes obviously from the characters she drew. Friends are so important for her !

One day, mum noticed that the little girl got so many different characters in her books, notes, so mum shared the characters with two of her real professional designers. The comments received well very positive, some said "it's not very pretty, but humorous. Impressing !", some said "it's very latin, very different from what we can see in the market now."......

The mum is really thrilled, mum was thinking, since I am retired now, I don't want to just sitting at home doing nothing, why don't I try to set up a new brand for the little girl, if I can manage it successully in two years, later when she gradulated from university, she can take it over from there. We will just do a small business to test the water, see if the design from the little girl can be accepted from consumers. And the little girl will know what is the real work about "design" by her involvement.
So, a lot of works need to do....



"O'funkimigo" is the brand name named by the little girl, it means : Oh ! my funky amigo ! The little girl insist that her designs will be all around "friends", and all the good friends need to poke together from time to time. Somehow, this beame the theme of O'funkimigo.




"Black & White" is our design basis !
"Friends" is our design theme !


p.s. Please stay tuned, O'funkimigo shop will be opened in middle of May 2009.

O'funkimigo is a new brand, will be coming soon...

O'funkimigo is a very special retail shop for designer T-Shirts, personal items. It will be opened in May 2009. Please stay tuned.