Businesscard holder

Last night I received a lovely email from a lady who saw my bags and pouches at TriBeCa, the pretty little shop in Bangsar Village II. She wrote to say she liked my work and was wondering if I could make something out of batik to hold her businesscards. I was so happy that someone took the time to email me such encouraging words and to make a request. I set to work immediately and sewed this little businesscard holder. I've been wanting to use my small stash of snap buttons so this was a great time to use it. 

Here's my first attempt...

Closed - W 4" X H 3"

I scratched the button in the process but it's still not bad for a first try me thinks :)

Opened - W 4" X H 5.5"

Two layers to fit in the cards.

I don't know if this is what she is looking for but I had fun making it. Thank you MM for your suggestion :)

Will let you know when I have some at TriBeCa. In the meantime, you can visit the shop and check out all the beautiful bags, clothes, homeware, printed artwork and other lovely things made by talented artisans from around the world!

Panji-Panji

My good old school friend H and her husband have built a couple of lovely little chalets called Panji Panji just minutes away from Cenang Beach in Langkawi that are now open for guests. She asked me to make some mini zippered pouches as gifts so I made a whole bunch with all the batik pieces and fabric I have left from the bags. It feels so good to see them put to use. And they make such pretty combos too.

The lovely Panji Panji chalets.

I could live here!

If you want to know more about the beautiful wooden homes of Panji Panji, click here and start making some plans to get away from the hectic city life. We are so going there soon :)

Commission

Last week my brother commissioned me to make a bag, a wrislet and a mini pouch which he needs by tomorrow. Luckily for me I managed to finish them today without any major mishap.

I used my foam stamps for the red on white pattern.

More stamped pattern on the other side.

Instead of making my usual tote, I added a pleat, a single long strap and gusset.

All boxed up and waiting for pick-up!

Matic Bazaar

Our area has been part of the water rationing exercise since March. How this works is - we only get water every two days which means we don't get water the following two days after that which means no silkscreen printing for a while :(

On the bright side it has been raining almost every evening for the past couple of weeks starting with the few days before the weekend me and my regular bazaar buddies, Lynn and Luukaleather, participated in the 360 Bazaar Kuala Lumpur at Lanai Matic. The weather was wonderful - cool with overcast sky. No hot sun beating down on us. In the evening it got a bit wet but luckily it wasn't a full on downpour!

My batik bags in new colours.

My pouches.

The Tween painted the pretty display labels. She has way better colour sense than me! 

And of course, adorable handmade sock pets, foldable clutches by Lynn and leather accessories by Luukaleather.

Thanks J, L and S for helping us immeasurably with the booth!

Terima kasih also to the wonderful 5 gadis next to us for babysitting the Toddler the whole day! 

And a Special Thank You to all who came by to support handmade. May we meet again!

I guess you could say I had a great time :)

Ruang!

The Bearded Lady has invited Timitimitonga to join them at a bazaar to be held tomorrow at Ruang in Subang Jaya. Ruang means "space" in English and it's precisely just that - a space to hold events. I've not been there but judging from this blog entry on a bazaar held some time back in January, it sure looks like it will be another fun, happening event.

Luckily I made these mini pouches and wristlets before The Man went off on a job or I wouldn't have anything to sell! See ya!

RUANG

Saturday & Sunday

8 - 9 March 2014

10 am onwards

Stamped pouch

Pouch #29

Remember this stamped print?

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who came by The Bearded Lady yesterday. I had a fantastic time catching up with my old friends R.W and C.C who came to visit and support handmade. It's been ages since we sat down for a chat. Years actually! 

A special thank you to The Bearded Lady for inviting Timitimitonga to set up shop for the day. Spent the time munching off their menu! The Nasi Lemak was lip-smacking delicious, cooked specially for the event by Aniz's mother. Me and the Tween ordered it twice. Also loved TBL's Croissant Sumbat which we will have to go again for more.

Now for some pictures...

Oi! bags and wristlets.

More bags and wristlets. 

Thanks R for the wonderful arrangement.

And... the See No Evil pillows also arranged for better photo-op by multi-hyphenated writer extraordinaire R :)

On the other side of the pillows I printed three words from the Japanese proverb of the Three Wise Monkeys "See No Evil. Hear No Evil. Speak No Evil" and crossed them out in red.

The words are in Malay but written in Jawi which is an Arabic alphabet. 

The top is lihat = see. The middle is dengar = hear and the bottom is kata = speak. 

More handmade by my very talented friends Lynn and Luukaleather. So glad I had some company :)

Sneak peek

Here's a sneak peek at some of the stuff I've been making for Timitimitonga sale happening tomorrow, Saturday, 15th February 2014 at The Bearded Lady. That blue bag is a prototype for the Oi! Limited Edition Valentine's Bag I hope to have available tomorrow. White and black silkscreen with hand embroidered French-knots all round the heart. Also for sale will be four silk screened See No Evil pillows with hand painted details in red.There are words silk screened on the back. But you'll have to come check them out tomorrow to find out what they are.

See ya! :)

Batch #2

5" X 3.5"

Some mini pouches specially made for the Post-Valentine's Day Sale at The Bearded Lady Cafe in Subang on Saturday, 15th February 2014.

Bags, pouches, pillows and wristlets in the works.

Soon I'll need to find time to stock up my etsy shop. Phew! 

Orders

I have to admit I have been neglecting my etsy shop for a while but it's all good because I've been busy with some orders. Yay! A few of my old school friends bought my batik bags and pouches and even ordered more!
Thank you all!

Here I have some pouches ready for wonder baker Indra of nodesserts, who's also started taking orders for her delectable baked goodies, and the lovely A.W. Gotta keep working on more to sell at my friend Aniz's brand new cafe The Bearded Lady in Subang. Will keep you posted on that :)

Wristlet

My friend G wanted a black pouch with a strap so I made this pouch with a wristlet. My very first one too! Hope she likes it :)

In the shop

This mini pouch is in the shop along with these three. Check them out :)

Mini pouches!

These mini pouches will be in the shop in the next few days. 

Hope you like them :)

Prototypes

Been working on some mini pouches for my Etsy shop. Made these "prototypes" from my growing pile of leftover batik, various fabric and Oi! prints.

Hope to have some in the shop soon.

Shop Debut Giveaway!

 My Etsy shop timitimitonga is now OPEN! :)

Actually, it has been open since the first day of the new year (EST) but I didn't want to announce it till I had a giveaway to thank all of you for visiting my blog.

To participate, just leave your name and where you're from in the comment section below.

You have until 11pm on Wednesday, January 15 (EST) and the winner will be 
announced on Friday, January 17 (EST). 

The winner will receive one batik tote and one matching coin purse as pictured above.

Oh. And just one comment per person please.

 Good luck!

Cheers from Malaysia :)

* Read more about my process here


*** Comments are now closed.
Thank you so much for participating :)
Winner will be announced on Friday. Don't forget to visit!

Work station

This is where I work - on the floor by my desk, cutting and ironing interfacing onto fabric where the Toddler is sitting. It's back breaking and my legs ache when I finally stand up but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

BTW don't worry. The iron's not on :)

Fabric shopping!

Japanese cotton

I took my mom fabric shopping again. The last time we went, I bought some cotton linen, these two batik and burst my budget. This time, I bought Japanese cotton, English cotton and burst my budget :)

English cotton

This is my star find. I love the border and mint green background. I think it will look great as a tablecloth, a skirt, baju kurung and even bags if only it were thicker.

Production!

Last Saturday I shared a booth at the local bazaar with my multi-talented friend Lynn. My first ever! I planned to sell some pouches but first I had to make some! 

I started by cutting up and ironing interfacing onto the fabric. That's my stack of cotton and cotton linen all prepped and ready to be sewn. Very ambitious indeed!

Next, I needed to get the felt birds ready. So, I used a template made of thick art paper and tailor's chalk to trace out the birds. And then cut them out. Not the easiest thing to do. At all. You need super sharp scissors, steady hands and good eyesight. None of which I have. Yikes!

My stash of colourful felt for more colourful birds.

About a week before the bazaar, we had to make an emergency trip back to The Man's hometown in Taiping. With all the embroidery needed to be done, I was already behind on my bird pouches and I really wanted to do some silkscreened ones but I was running out of time. The new screens we were burning were not making the grade and it quickly dawned on us that we probably just had a lucky run with our first perfect few. 

That's The Man doing a test print. It all looks pretty good from afar but there's actually quite a bit of smudging and detail missing from the designs. The new design with the three girls between the trees has been particularly difficult. We have tried about half a dozen times to get it right but we still haven't! Some parts are always missing :(

Pouch #28 & #29 with Oi! guy on the back

The Man went straight to work the night we came back from Taiping and pulled through with a couple of perfect screens. By the morning of the bazaar, I managed to make 8 pouches - 4 birds and 4 Oi!s. Not much but it's a start :)

I love how the silkscreened pouches turned out. And, yes, I am still painting on the red bits!

Silk screen printing!

Pouch #27

Hand drawn with Sharpie's Stained Fabric Markers

I love using Sharpie's Stained Fabric Markers but they get blunt after a while and it becomes harder to draw fine lines. I also want to make more pouches and drawing would be really time consuming and not very practical. 

So. it is with such immense luck that The Man's friend brought over his entire silkscreen equipment to our house for storage and let us use it as much as we like. I was super excited about finally getting to experiment with silkscreen but nervous about the mess or destroying his equipment. Every time I entered the room all I could do was stare at the containers of dye, emulsion, emulsion remover, squeegee, three specially made screens and, get this, a laser printer and huge light box with 6 UV lightbulbs! All of which had hardly been used. 

Then one day I had enough of being such a chicken and announced to The Man - "Tonight's the night." And he knew I was talking about burning a screen :) 

For our first film, we used A4 paper and brushed it with oil. Apparently, that was how The Man did it in the good old days when he would stand out in the sun and count the time it took to burn a screen. He had no idea how long it would take now that we had more "professional" equipment. His friend couldn't remember either! :) To top it off we don't have a dark room and had to wait till night time to do any work which means we could hardly see what we were doing. Suffice to say, the first night was a complete disaster .

The second night was no better. Most of the tutorials I found online recommend ink-jet to print the film. Unfortunately, not one single shop here carries ink-jet transparency. So, we settled for laser print transparency, found a photocopying shop nearby that sold loose sheets and thought that since we were there we might as well photocopy our artwork onto them. Alas, we found out the hard way that as with all photocopying shops, they don't replenish their toner cartridges very often.

Finally, we used the laser printer and printed our own film but not before running into more technical problems which The Man managed to solve. By the third exhausting night of burning and washing overexposed or underexposed screens, I went to bed while The Man soldiered on to produce our first perfect screen and promptly printed our, or rather his first t-shirt. 

It has been tough but we figured out 

A) exposure time for the light box we were using = 1 min 30 seconds 

B) we have to use double layer of film per artwork to get a nice solid black that will block out light.

I wish I could say we were getting to be experts by the time we burnt my screen but we still ended up having to redo it a couple of times. 

After many days of learning, I present to you my first silk screened pouch...

Pouch #28
Silk screened and hand painted

We have yet to figure out how to silkscreen with two colours or more, so I had to hand paint the lady in red using my Pebeo Setacolor Fabric Paint.

I absolutely love silkscreen printing even if it makes me wanna tear my hair out!

More to come soon :)

Pouch #26

7" X 6" 

Hand sewn and hand embroidered.

Cotton linen mix with felt applique.