Doodle : " Explore ! " Totebag

Hello !

I am so excited the tote bag I ordered is ready for the pick-up today ! 

I asked my mom's help to collect those bags far in Sungai Buloh, a place we both were not familiar with, using Maps in iPhone *well, it worked fine. But we were 2 hours lost in the factory area, a very crammed disorganized place indeed. Thank you Ma, for being very-very helpful.

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This time around, I made something very personal for me.

I wanted to create something that I'll remember, as part of my 3 months - Reckless Life phase. I doodled a lot of random things in the past, not much of something that I really plan to do. So this time around, I tried to focus on illustrating something that I wish I did, solely on the personal passion of mine and random interests. 

As much as you can see, I really love to go to places. So I took a theme : travel, places, adventure, explore, etc. I love the emblem-vintage style, like the old badges they did in my dad's years *my dad used to collect badges and pins. So I did a lot of research on that as well. My research ideas came from a lot of Behancers and Tumblr posts. I printed several examples that I found and loved, and sticked it on my wall. I even watched the Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom again so I can 'feel' it.

I drew it on my current favorite A4 Marker Pad by Daler Rowney, I love the smoothness of the thin-layered paper (70g/m) and I used my favorite Pentel mechanical pencil - because it worked as thin and dark as I wanted it to be. 

The illustration took several days, because I was stuck on things to add, and I had several arguments with myself whether certain part was needed or not, or should I draw raccoon or a bear, or whether I should draw local trees or whether the totem should be there or not, I asked several people around for their opinions as well on the little items, and finally post it on my instagram :

This is the first version of my attempt on drawing a simple compass, but I changed the design after my brother said he thought it was a water-flask. Phew.

I didn't want it to have local touches much, hence the fox and bear, also the same as the arrow, the totem, the flag with a pine tree picture and definitely the bon-fire. What is the purpose of exploring if I draw things in my area, I wanted to go as far as I can go - *or so I thought.

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Next, was the scanning and the outlining phase, it took longer than I planned, because of the detailing part. I used Photoshop CS4 and an old wacom bamboo tablet instead of Illustrator, I am not going to argue about why I did not just vectorize it right away. I just love freehand drawings.

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After the long phase in digitizing the illustration, I made a test print. I gleefully showed it to my mom, my sisters & brother - and shouted "Look at thiss !". I am nothing as cool as other super-awesome-illustrator out there, the child in me is ridiculously annoying sometimes. After several seemed-like encouraging words and "mehhh", they continued with their works. But I was still gleefully-excited and posted in my Instagram, again.

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After that, I did some research on local printing company especially canvas tote bag - because I wanted to print something for so long but never had the courage to spend a bundle of money on one shot. I did it anyway, I found several companies, contacted them and asked for the rate and stuffs, chose one that I found reliable and trustworthy, asked for invoice,  used my little saving to pay half of the total amount, confirmed on the designed with digital mockup and waited for like 10 days before the pick-up day. 

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So finally it is ready !

The illustration was screen-printed on a 40 x 36 cm hand-made canvas tote-bag.
It smelt like a totebag baked in a little lost factory in Selangor.
The material is a bit thick, which what I intended it to be.

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And they are currently up for sale !

Price : 
$10 usd (International) / RM 30 (Malaysian)

Postage :
- International (depends on the location)
- Malaysian (RM 3), normal postage, or Poslaju by request (RM 6)

Payment :
Via Paypal or bank transfer Maybank2U

How to buy? :
Send a PM to my facebook page or ,
send me an email : azreen_31@hotmail.com or,
reply to this post with your email address as well or,
check out my Etsy.

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Explore !