Little Things 220 : Nice Surprise + Tokyo Guide 2

The next Tokiyo hunter after Kiwa was Ellianis. 

She went to Tokiyo early in April and borrowed the Tokiyo Guide during that time before sending it to the next hunter : Fatin - scheduled to go early in May :)

She bought these little omiyage for me from Japan as a token of appreciation  ♥

She also shared some nice photos through email. It is beautiful spring season and flowers are blooming everywhere. I am so-oh jealous, everything looked so nice and sweet.

She gave me a sweet pink sakura sticker + handkerchief. I excitedly showed it to Ma and she asked me why people keep giving me nice cute stuffs? =.=' I don't knowww, sometimes people are just so nice and they have beautiful hearts. Kan.

Read previous post here.

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Look at the colours ! So sweet and painfully beautiful, I asked Ma why can't she try softer colours for her stuffs like the Japanese do?

The handkerchief even have some little embroidered flowers in the corner there, look at that beautiful thing  ♥

Note :

The Tokiyo Guide book by Hello Sandwich will be available next June, if you are planning on visiting little cafes and independent crafts arts +  craft shops, you can borrow the book for you guidance. Just email me : azreen_31@hotmail.com

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Here is my current made in Japan handkerchiefs, I love it too much to use it :

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Tasya just came back from Tokiyo too. I pesan to her to buy for me Af's favorite caffè latte while we visited Japan. But I just checked online from Japanese food products halal/haram lists here and they just updated their list and confirmed that these Mt. Rainier drinks contain emulsifier based from the famous animal, pigpog. Hmph, too bad we consumed a lot of these drinks in the previous trip - I checked before and there was nothing suspicious :o

Work Related : #Wushaf by CelebrateTv

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This was a project collaboration with CelebrateTv.

I remember they called me late in the afternoon, explaining about the video project for Walimatulurus Shahrol Shiro + Anna Danisha. They asked whether I was free during that time and if we could meet and discuss more if I was interested. 

I just received the news about the second round of Freepik test that I needed to submit in 5 days time so I was a bit worried. I wanted the Freepik job and I thought the #wushaf project was also interesting as well. Talked with Af about it and decided that I should go for the meeting that week at their office to know more about it.

They asked me to come up with several test illustrations in 3 days. I didn't really know what they have in mind, and my strokes are quite limited to only the things that I'm used to *especially seeing that they are planning on the production in 10 days time. I was worried sick, I really wanted the job, and Freepik's exam was important too. So I didn't have enough sleep for several days, I woke up really early in the morning around 4-5am and slept way pass the time that I should, I didn't go out for my run, my period didn't came out and all. I was really stressed out. 

Here's what I came out with :

Originally, I thought that what they wanted was a clean-hand-drawn stroke illustrations that I always use. So this is what I sent to them for a test timeline :

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I printed all out and we set for another meeting to discuss on what they really want and need from what I can offer. They said they really like the clean turquoise-white colour combo, so they opted for that and they also really like the rough sketch-like illustration like the one I did in the test montage page. I personally didn't like that one because it looked a bit too sketchy for me, and that was even my last option in the draft. But they asked if I could produce something like that for all the illustrations and they will decide on it later. 

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I sent more of these to them and they liked it. So they confirmed with the sketchy-vector style illustration :o I usually use this for sketches only and I'm a bit visually OCD with the whole unfinished look. But, what client think matters. Ha. They extended the production timeline to 3 weeks and gave me more time to churn it the storyline that they passed me. I had 10 more days to complete all illustrations needed.  

They gave me a detailed storyline so I can read the story and a rough storyboard scene-by-scene so I can refer to it. I've never work with a production company and the exposure was a good learning experience for me.

I illustrated scene by scene based on provided storyboard so all the sizes will be consistent and not awkwardly obvious from the other. The thickness and size of each illustration are importante !

Afterwards, illustrations were saved ready to be printed on A4 paper, so clients can easily print it out. I did everything in vectors, any changes can be made easily if needed. Stroke lines are far heavier than outlined strokes so, I need to save in different file completely for all the confirmed illustrations. Example of later to be printed pages :

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Right after I finished all the illustrations for the scenes, I passed it to them and they did all the awesome work. By that time, I was too busy with Freepik task and didn't want to spoil my possibly long-time relationship with Freepik so I had to focus fully on it. I never joined in for the making of the animation and recording. Here I picked up some photos from CelebrateTv production team :

Naik moto atas cutting mat #testshot #realdeal #wushaf

A photo posted by Fauzee Nasir (@fauzeenasir) on Mar 21, 2016 at 5:34am PDT

Macro shot? No problem! Diffused top light with @aladdinlights #flexlight2 and trusted @cinevate durus FF and atlas slider #bts #behindthescenes #wushaf

A photo posted by Fauzee Nasir (@fauzeenasir) on Apr 6, 2016 at 2:35am PDT

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#behindthescenes #bts #wushaf

A video posted by Fauzee Nasir (@fauzeenasir) on Apr 6, 2016 at 2:38am PDT

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Finally several weeks later, it is scheduled to be on air : 23rd April, 30 April and 7 May at 9.00pm on Astro Ria. We don't have Astro at home, so we missed the first episode - my family and Af's family watched from their homes anyway and that was good enough. 

This is the sneak peek shared in their facebook :

I am quite happy because I manage to tell my family what I do now for living. It is hard to explain to people what I actually do when they found out that I'm currently working from home in front of the computer all the time kan. So, this helps a lot :) *My uncles and aunties especially.

Personal strawberries on the top thanks to CelebrateTv team ♥♥ : 

Shahrul, En. Fauzee, Kak Nazura, Paan, Abg. Azrai, En. Faiz, and everyone in Manggis/CelebrateTV production team.  

  

Work Related : All things printed

I'm planning on joining my 23rd event, celebrating the 6th year in this small independent business. It isn't that far off from where I started, but I definitely learned a thing or two about doing things that I like for fun and making a small income out of it :)

244 orders / 348 sales from Etsy and 22 booths all around later, here I am ❤

I was doing a stock checking of what's left in my sticker library. I need to reprint some of the sold-out stickers and cut more finished stickers from my stock. 

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Postcards are selling super slow on Etsy and I'm too latzy to do a proper photo shooting for some of the art prints, so i'm still keeping them all :

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I'm still cutting up stickers every now and then, especially when I have the latest series of Grey's Anatomy to watch. Or I can do with Breaking Bad - I'm currently watching the season 2. I still have several hundreds of this sleepyhead stickers that are still raw and need a good cutting :

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Here I'm using the left over envelopes from the postcards that I ordered. I don't think I'm going to be using the envelope so I'm using it for other things like a nice small packaging for our ESKP car sticker. So 1 envelope can be divided into 2 little packaging and we printed the small sticker to put it on the packaging as well. It looks decent enough for a hand-made packaging, so I'm going to stick with it for now :

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I printed the camera sets in mini edition. 

I kinda like them all, so chibi <3 p="">

By this time I finished all my uncut stickers stocks. I no longer have any stuffs to cut. I finished 2 seasons of Breaking Bad and I need more new stuffs to make before the events :

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Little Stories 220 : What I Talk About When I Talk About Cancelled Trip

On Flight :

Among all the plans and preparations that I did before this trip, I make 3 big mistakes :

• I didn't print up the itinerary ahead
• I arrived at the airport late
• I didn't freakin' self check-in earlier (not from home, not even from mobile)

What was I thinking? I bought the ticket 6 months ago, so imagine how I'm feeling right now. I feel like my face was going to explode with waterfall of tears when the guy at the Airasia service center said that there's nothing that they could do, except to book the next flight for another RM 900. I bought the return ticket to Cambodia for only RM 200 on promotion so it would be crazy to buy another ticket for RM 900 kan? =.= I called Ma right-away, saying that we missed the flight and so they had to make a u-turn to pick us back.

The night before, I slept for only 2 hours - pushing myself to finish up the Freepik task before going and I've prepared for everything except for the most important thing - flight ticket/boarding pass/self check-in. Everything I planned and spent time and effort on, goes back to this moment when I replaying the scenes this early morning over-and-over again thinking of other possibilities and when in the bitter reality : I can't do anything at all to make it right. 

We missed the flight.

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On Airbnb :

Right after I got the confirmation about our cancelled trip, I contacted our Airbnb host, Mr. Ajil. I told him about the news and explained everything. We wanted to cancel the booking and try to get the refund back. His refund policy stated 'flexible', that they should be notified 24 hours before the booking date and we already missed the first day. So Mr. Ajil told me that booking cancellation can be confirmed via Airbnb cancellation. I called the Airbnb center and notified the customer service about this. 

He then cancelled my booking, and I got the remaining 3 days payment back and another 24USD extra travel credit from Airbnb for being their new customer *I don't know where that came from, this is not even my first booking. But I'm thanking them with strawberries on the top for being super helpful and generous about this T^T

If you want to try Airbnb and want to receive your RM 137 off from your first booking, you can use my referral code here.

And call Airbnb call center every now and then, they might give you travel credit for being randomly awesome.

But I'm still grumpy :(

Little Stories 219 : Rest Day

Last Monday I went on a short day-out with my mom and my little sister.

I just finished my Freepik task and was waiting for another new task, and Ma has not started with her new Batik piece, so before starting our new task we make a plan to go out together. We are both workaholics, and both of us can be a bit too put up with work all through the week so I thought having 1 day off before it would be good for both of us. It's like a forced gap to rest for a day. *Lagipun I haven't gone out for awhile except to the gym plus I just started having cold and sore throat - a sign to give my body some rest.

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Movie Time :

We went out early to go to ioiCityMall not far from our house, and I checked on the movie ticket right-away when we arrived. Every one of us in the family have watched Batman v. Superman, except for Ma and Ra. So I wanted them to enjoy what I enjoyed the previous week and bought 3 tickets. Ma got a senior citizen ticket for RM 8.50, Ra got a student price ticket for RM 8.50, and I got an early bird ticket for RM 10.50. The cheapest price so far to belanja people - *I'm definitely going to do this again for Captain America next month! I went to watch the movie with Af the previous week and that cost RM 15.90 for each ticket :F

Half throughout the movie, I felt sleepy and bored because I just watched it - and I'm not really into action movie. The movie took around 2 long hours and we finished the shared regular-sized popcorn in the first 45 minutes. I remember checking my phone's watch twice. Too bad I didn't check on the movie's easter egg beforehand - that might help with the anticipation, kan.

I asked Ma later, which superheroes does she likes best?

But she couldn't decide, I notice that it makes her nervous when I ask her to guess/choose over something - in this case, I guess she doesn't want to choose the wrong superhero. She pushed the question to Ra, and mentioned that Ra probably isn't interested in both because they are both look 'older' and 'mature' - and again she mentioned that unlike my sister, I like older-looking men so I enjoyed the movie =.= I don't know how my  own question betrays me, women are so manipulative.

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Facial Time :

Later after movie and fast lunch, I had already booked for a facial session near our house the day before. For the 3 of us. It was my first time, and we've been planning for so long. I didn't even get to try it out before my wedding and all. So even though we arrived a bit late than promised, I didn't want to cancel the plan with the beautician.

What I had in mind was a nice head and shoulder massage because I am always too tensed and I want to loosen up a bit. I'm not comfortable with going to a spa and walking in a batik sarong in front of a stranger, so facial is the closest to upper body massage or so I was told. Ha. 

The beautician, let's call her Kak Ita. She asked me to lay down on the bed-like chair and relax. Again, it's my first time so I was a bit nervous about letting people touch my face. She started with cooling down my face after being exposed to the hot afternoon sun, and massaged my face with soap. Then there are a lot of processes that I kinda guess with my eyes closed : mask with beras pulut, opening up my pores with hot vapour, sanitized it before poking out the whiteheads and blackheads, washed it again, massaged with hot-like oil that she mentioned were lemon and coconut oil, later put a nice cooling mask with all natural ingredients : cucumber, mint and icy aloe vera. My eyes were closed with slices of cucumber the whole 1 and 1/2 hour so I can't do anything else than focusing on the smell and her touches. Ha. 

I finished early, so I managed to snap some ugly photos of Ma and Ra in a weird looking mask :D I think I can relate to why people do this once in while. It is so relaxing and it feels so good afterwards. I'm pretty happy.

Will I go to the place again?
Probably not, but I'm going to find someplace better with affordable price after this.

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Little Things 218 : My Washi Tapes

The Washi Tapes :

I bought 4 washi tapes on 65daigou or Taobao last month to test the website. It is like Alibaba - but it connects us in Malaysia to suppliers in China & Taiwan. So everything is cheaper and you can buy in bulk with the help of an agent. I never knew about the website until I saw it advertised in the Facebook side link but Af told me that it existed years before :D

I wanted to learn the buying process so I tried it on buying some washi tapes and sticker notes. The sticker note I ordered sold out so they returned my money in the form of credit into my 65daigou account. There were also small amount of agent fees and local postage fees to pay other than international fees. I took the cheapest international postage by ship so it took 1 month to arrive, but local postage cost around RM 8 - way pricier, but you can make an appointment for free pickup at certain location.

All in all, I think it would be great if I bought these items in bulk - because they are way cheaper. 

I found some nice things that might be pirated stuffs because what you can except from China, kan? Some of nice washi tapes printed were also supposed to be famous kawaii brand in Japan and all but sold for cheap. I can't deny that they look the same and probably quite decent as well. 

Here is my washi tapes collection in my Totoro planner. Most of the left side washi tapes were from this nice lady, Kiwa. I used almost all the washi tapes she gave me for Etsy postage items and photos on the fridge. That's why I thought buying this might give a great use seeing I use it constantly  : 

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My favorite are the flower pattern washi tapes. The remaining left :

PS : I showed the package excitedly to Ma and she made another meh face, asking me what I use these washi tapes for ? - like I'm wasting money on another kawaii stuffs. I said for Etsy items of course! But actually I just love them because they are so nice and beautiful and I'm going to use it on all my Etsy packages anyways I don't care. Ha.

Little Things 217 : Blogging and These Days

People are not into blogging anymore?

Perhaps yes. Over the years since I started blogging, a lot of blogs that I followed is either closing down, deleted, or abandoned. I remember when blogging was in its peak phase - almost around 1 in every 5 people I know own one. Now, they are more into micro-blogging : vine, twitter, tumblr, instagram, snapchat, etc. 

I think people these days are more comfortable with fast, short and straight-forward messages than long written posts. Even I have difficulties in writing things other than my routine updates and something more towards written expressions from my personal thoughts these days. I guess partly because I am still in honeymoon phase where everything is a bliss and partly because I've changed my environment into silent and calm place where I sit alone in my apartment everyday :) So I don't see drama often than I used to, so I don't have anything much to write.

But, my love for written words is still here.

I don't see the point in deleting my blog, the place I express a lot of my thoughts and personal views, the place where I put my memories and written timelapses of my life. It's over 6 years now, a lot of things passed and changed, a lot of things still remains the same.

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To celebrate this, I've made big changes to my blog. I finally added features that I wanted for quite sometime : the drop-down categories, featured posts, sharing buttons, recommendation posts and a nice clean minimal look.

I found the template in Etsy : Vefio Themes for $9.
It is way easier to buy a downloadable template, upload it and make my own custom changes than trying so hard to code it satu2. All widgets are ready to be used, just refer from the shared tutorial and walah! A nice modern looking blog for me. *pemalas mode.

This way, I can do more procrastinating in my newly improved space :

Little Stories 218 : Super Long Birthday - Af !

Af's birthday is on the 4th of April.

We had planned a long extended weekend with family and close friends. It started with a plan to makan2 at Ma's on Monday and Tokmak's birthday celebration on Sunday at my Aunt's house. And Af thought that we should invite his family to come over on Saturday and I also took that chance to do a potluck/house-warming at our small apt as well :F *because they keep on asking for it, ha.

By last Thursday I finished off all my freelance and Freepik tasks :F That was such an achievement!  ❤ My busy working schedule throughout the final March week's was so crazy - we didn't went out for our exercise routine and I didn't even have proper meals and sleep. Small pimples popped everywhere on my forehead and chin T^T On Friday, I went out with Ma to find additional groceries for my house-warming event and little presents for Af.

Af isn't really used to a big birthday celebration, but to welcome him to our family's tradition, we are having some extra fun making him feeling awkward and shy this time :D Extended celebratiooon!  ❤

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Saturday :

Af's family informed us that they will arrive probably during lunch hour from Raub. So we woke up in the morning to cook some stuffs - I prepared butter-prawn and spicy chicken and some broccoli with kewpie and a lot of white rice. I also asked ma to buy a bucket of KFC for additional food. Af fried a big pack of nuggets and he was in charge of the drinks. Af's mom cooked for us : sambal tempoyak, sambal hitam, ikan belah belakang, sambal terung, and papodom. Aja made a nice caramel pudding and Tasya brought 3 boxes of mini La Cremeria. Oh and I also bought a big box of cupcakes from Cakes de Lemari as substitute for cake. 

There were 9 from Af's family and addition of Ma, Aja, Waty and Tasya. No one ever came over to our house and on that day, suddenly the little apartment looked so small and pack and happening. We didn't receive any complains for the sudden chaos, I think my neighbour understand :) It was a successful first potluck ! You can't imagine how 2 introverts can pull-off a nice events without having panic-attacks. Ha.

We also went to Putrajaya with his family that evening. 

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Sunday :

Af's family packed back and headed off to other places that morning. We had several hours off so we decided to go to the gym in the afternoon before another open house to attend. There was only the 2 of us at the gym during that hot afternoon, we had only 1 hour so I manage to run around 5km and packed back right-away. 

By 5 pm, we arrived at my aunt's house. We makan2, celebrated my Tokmak's 85 birthday - almost the whole family members were there. It was a really big event. They also sang for Af, so Af kind-off celebrated twice for his 29th birthday by now :D I got to eat Mi Kari that I've been craving to find.

Here is a photo my dad's family. Tokmak is in the middle, in green-coloured scarf. My dad is the one hunched down on the right, in beige-coloured shirt :

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Monday :

Af took a day-off because everyone deserves to have a holiday on their birthday ! :D

I promised him saying that "we will watch Batman vs Superman together" after I finished all my March's freelance, so we bought an online ticket for the movie to watch at IOI city mall that afternoon. I didn't have high expectation for the movie or watch all the sneak-peak trailers so I think the movie was quite good. All the hype about the movie was such a disappointment and bad *as rotten tomatoes gave them only 29% and thought the movie failed? Well, for me, as not even a fan of superheroes or action movies, I think the movie itself was quite good. I guess people just wait to find any reasons to criticize something big. I enjoyed watching Superman's pretty face, *akhem.

We didn't stop by at the gym as we planned because we had a big lunch at Fuel Shack ! after we watched the movie. So we headed back, and before we go to Ma's for our final Af's birthday celebration, I finished up all my task 3 Freepik and updated the invoice to my client. *yeay for super fast work!

Ma asked both of us to come after Maghrib, so I didn't help with the cooking and all. I think only Ra & Azmi helped organize the event. I only came as a guest :D As planned, there were requested nasi lemak from ma and special additional dishes of chicken rendang and ketam masak lemak! To appreciate the effort she put for all of us, I posted some pictures here. I know she spent hours preparing all these delicious and beautiful food - for AF! and we invited close friends as well.

The red velvet cheese cake was baked by Tasya herself, and it was supah-delicious ❤❤  Tasya brought 'her friend', Aja invited Waty and Azmi invited Wan. And Awan sat at the sofa looking very grumpy - I think she used to having many people coming over for makan2 by now. Since I got married, we did a lot of that and got to be more open to people other than our family. 

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Presents galore :

I gave him some presents consisted of :

1) mini printed pictures of us because we almost have none except for the drawing Oren drawn for us both. So we can have something to put on our fridge :D I ordered this from Aja : 

2) Deck for his new iPhone in the car + screen protectors. 

3) Too small tshirt from Uniqlo - *hahaha. We are going to change the shirt to something bigger la later this weekend. Salah bajet size yong.

4) Return tickets to Siem Reap in the next 2 week. I bought the promotional tickets from AirAsia 6 months ago after our Tokiyo Trip. I hope we will have a good time there  ❤

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