Tag: travel

USK SEATTLE – Ballard Locks

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Look at all of us enthusiastic urban sketchers, please disregard the gray clouds.

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Finally, I was able to make it to Urban Sketchers Seattle’s monthly outing, and this time it’s held at the iconic Ballard Locks. The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks is a set of locks located at the west end of Salmon Bay (I love all these confusing sounding names). I’ve only been here once and I remember it being equally windy and gray.

Swagatika and I arrive a bit late, but we can already see the large group gathering from afar before everyone disperses. I anticipated that there won’t be many places to sit, so I opted for a more portable urban sketching setup (watch the video of my USK set up here.)

The lightweight foam board and the postcard-sized paper allows me to stand easily at any location without much stress on my arms. Continue reading →

2017 Hobonichi Unboxing

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It’s here! It’s finally here!

The sun was bright and the sky was clear as I happily skipped my way to the Post Office to pick up my Hobonichi order.

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“Shoes?” The lady behind the counter asked as she processed my yellow box

“Um…yeah.”

“Girls and their shoes~” She replied

Girl, you have no idea. Sometimes it’s hard to explain one’s stationery obsession with someone who’s not interested in this hobby 😉 I was grinning from ear to ear as I carry my prize all the way home!  Continue reading →

Daily Hobonichi: April 06 – 09

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I decided to start sharing some of my Hobonichi pages here along with some anecdotes that goes on in my world filled with stationery. Let’s start this series of post with my adventure to New York over the weekend for a company tour hosted by AMA Emerson.

(Since this is late night impulse post, please excuse the grayish, scanned version of my pages. Guys, daylight is definitely the ONLY time to take pictures)

The Hobonichi challenge for April 6th was peppers, so I decided to draw both variety that dominates my life: chili pepper and bell peppers. Before you ask, this was done in very saturated watercolor to achieve that marker effect!

Stressin’ out on the day before the company tour at Tumblr, Thinx, and PSFK at New York. You know you’re stressed when you start using “stress” too much in a single sentence. As always, I took a 5 hour ride on the Megabus to New York immediately after work. The journey was slow and excruciating. I feel sorry for the guy sitting next to me though, he is so tall, he literally have to contort his legs in a weird position to get his whole self into the seat. Then he stayed in that weird position for hours…

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49th Sketch Crawl in Boston

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On October 24th was the national Sketch Crawl event! Urban sketchers from all over the world are united in this special event where they try to capture the beauty of their city through sketching, water-colour, or other artistic mediums~ It was especially inspiring to know that on that day, there are hundreds out there sharing the same passion of drawing and appreciating the city with our observant eyes!

Of course, I would never miss it for the world. Together with the Urban Sketcher group here in Boston, we set out to sketch and paint downtown Boston and later to Harvard Square!

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It was a chilly morning, and my first stop was at Copley square. After a brief visit to the Boston Book Fair that was organised at the location, I quickly retreat to the warmth of Finagle Bagel. Sitting by the window, I had an excellent view of the Trinity Church, and I captured it in my sketch book~

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This quick sketch is made with the Platinum Carbon Desk Fountain Pen! The fine nib is perfect for sketching and the ink is waterproof, which makes painting it with water-colour easy and convenient.  Continue reading →

Stationery Haul from Japan Summer Trip

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This summer, I planned a special trip to Tokyo as a goodbye tour to Asia as I prepare to move to the US for the next two years (Goodbye, stationery heaven!). My friend Esther is nice enough to offer me a place to crash in Yokohama, so I had the opportunity to explore many places between the Kanagawa prefecture and Tokyo city!

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I compiled a detailed list of stationery stores I have to visit from reading various stationery related magazines in bookstores. Of course, with some help from google translation, I also found many local unique stationery stores that have interesting items. The random finds on this trip are also an intriguing experience, and you bet I definitely stock up on a lot of stationery items!

I’ll be sharing in this post my haul from my Tokyo trip. I like to get things that are practical for my journaling hobbies, pen pal exchange tools, and paints for my drawings and water-colour doodles. Another fashionable trend among stationery addicts are small toys they call Table Top Things (such as figurines from gashapon dispensers and paper weights), and I cannot resist getting some cute ones to put on my future reading desk.

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Drawing Tips – Painting with Waterbrush

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Friday was a national holiday in Taiwan because the government was compensating a day off for Qingming Holiday where everyone goes home to pay respect to the ancestors. My friends and I took advantage of this day off to go on a Picnic to Qingtiangang, a beautiful expanse of plain on top of Yangming Mountain.

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Of course I brought along my paints and sketchbook in hope to capture the beautiful scenery. I wasn’t disappointed, because the weather was super nice and I’d say it’s even feeling like summer has arrived!

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I recall when I was here last time (about two weeks ago), the weather was dreary and there was heavy mist up on the trail. We couldn’t see a thing within 10 feet, so we gave up and went home disappointed. (However, we did get to see some cherry blossoms on the way down the mountain).

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Hobonichi Flip Through December 2014 – part 2

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Continuing my previous post on my December page flip throughs, my daily entries consisted of a main illustration for the day, and surrounding it are my journaling of the day’s events! I’m not that great a writer, and I don’t want to pressure myself into writing fantastic entries that are full of meaningful thoughts or anything like that. Therefore I try to focus my art on doodling and replicating photos that I’ve taken in my iPhone for that day.

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Sometimes I take inspiration from Hobonichi entries shared on facebook pages or cute images I’ve seen on Instagram. Luckily I don’t have to rely much on prompts yet to come up with things to draw. There are too much interesting things around me that I would love to put into doodles and writing.

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Hobonichi flip through December 2014 – part 1

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I got my hands on the Hobonichi Techo planner in November last year. It was the English planner, and its December pages actually start from the 24th. Of course I couldn’t wait to start using it already, so I skipped ahead and actually started using the 2016 December pages! I figure that I would have gotten a new planner during planner season (September – November) later this year, and it will all cycle out eventually.

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My hobonichi planner set-up includes a cover page that I put on the inside of the planner cover. This one is a collection of inspirational phrases that make up the Good Life Project Creed. For those who would like to know more, the author and host of this website Jonathan Fields hold talks and conversations with entrepreneurs and incredible people. I love watching his videos and listen to his podcasts. This creed really speaks to a lot of things in life that we face, and which inspires us to be amazing everyday. I would always flip to this cover page for daily inspiration.

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8 ways to keep a travel scrapbook

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For people who love to travel, seeing the sights and snapping pictures just isn’t enough. Sometimes the experience is so powerful, that you want to carry a bit of it back with you in back home. This is where the travel journal comes in. The famous Midori’s Traveler’s Notebook is perfect for this purpose, as its sturdy cover allows protection for the contents. Some other travel journals comes with plastic folders to carry tickets or important receipts, all part of traveling and keeping notes.

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Whenever I’m going on a lengthy trip abroad, I always prefer to do some research on the places I’m going to visit. That includes Important information such as transportation and train schedules, and there are always some tips and recommendations from previous travellers that I just have to pencil in my itinerary. Before each trip, I will consolidate all the ‘research homework’ into a small booklet that I can carry and utilise when on the exciting trip.

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