what i've been up to / happy friday:

hi friends! friday is here! it has been a long week, i've been selling all week at uc irvine and tomorrow morning at 8am i will head out to LA for unique los angeles... it's going to be a great event :) i thought i'd post some random photos of things i've been up to recently.

firstly, with lots of help from nicholas, i've re-arranged my work room! hurray! poor nick. i am not really good at visualizing the space: i need to place the items in the actual spot to see if it works... he was such a dear and moved all those tables from one side of the room to the other for me while i made up my mind. finally we came to a great set up that we both just felt worked really well. arranging furniture is no easy task! can you guess what will go on the blue table? it's a mess right now, so i am organizing and everything. more to come :)

wedding venue searching!! ahh. this is also no easy task. my favorite was the smog shoppe in culver city. ah, it is just what i am looking for. something different and unique. but of course, it's the most expensive. :( but isn't it cool? heh. so we will see.

letterpress class! who knew they offered one right here in orange county? i've taken a class before with some friends, that was fun. but i thought i'd take this one for a refresher - plus nicholas agreed to take it with me! (in exchange for playing world of warcraft with him, hehe.) our teacher is really cool and helpful.

i hope you all have a really wonderful weekend! have you started your christmas shopping yet? i really need to .. i'll probably put it off and then really stress myself out, heh. well see you monday! xo.

oh joy at urbanic:

yesterday evening i went to a lovely cupcake + champagne social at urbanic paper. so many lovely friends were there, but the main reason everyone really gathered together was to meet joy from oh joy!

urbanic is owned by audrey (she blogs at parcel post) and her husband, joshua and they are just the best. audrey is one of the most sincere and genuine people ever and i love blogging because if it weren't for blogging, i may never have met her!

my brother and i brought a photo booth (did i tell you we are starting a photo booth business?) so that was lots of fun.

meeting joy was so cool, i was all 'starstruck' ;) i mean, it's like seriously meeting a celeb! she has achieved such success that so many of us designers and bloggers hope to achieve and she is so inspirational. i even got to snap some pictures in the photo booth with her and audrey, which was awesome!

amanda (from 100 layer cake) was also there and she is also such a sweet and genuine person. some other dear friends that were in attendance: annie (yolksy), margaret (paper pastries), monica (our designed life), and myra (double sided tape). i think another really-cool-moment was meeting max wagner and his lovely fiancee. yep, that's right. he was there photographing the event. i am such an admirer of his work so it was neat to actually meet him.

i'm posting some #ff twitter links today here ;) event was at @urbanic. celebrating @ohjoystudio. cupcakes were by @frostedtweets. photographs were by @maxwagner. flowers were by @jl_designs. and photo booth: @photobooth_love.

so here are some images i managed to get of the event! i didn't even get any pics of the cupcakes though.. but i did get to take some home! ;)

these 2 images are from the store front.
isn't is so charming? it is hard to make it through
without buying something!

annie, joy, monica, my older bro (not the same age as me as audrey thought, haha) and the best boyfriend ever, nicholas! he came all the way down after work even though he had some serious laundry to do. (we're talking, a good 4 loads minimum)

fun times.

9.11:

let us never forget, 9.11

image source from here.

michael levine:

my aunt took me to michael levine's last week: the "largest fabric shop in downtown LA" as their website claims. it was so intense! think joanns times 10. i managed to snap a couple shots before my camera died but just wanted to share this amazing store with you. it's like, fabric heaven! i picked up some beautiful ivory and mustard gold linen, $14 a yard. it was so lovely, i couldn't resist.

if you ever make it out to LA, you should stop here.
or if you live in LA, you should stop here ;)

blog social:

so last thursday, we held a blog social at urbanic paper in venice. the little backyard of audrey's shop is so lovely, it was perfect for our little gathering. it was put on by parcel post + 100 layer cake + yours truly!

these pictures are all taken by ruby from cakies - she takes the most amazing photos!


images by helen from sheer whimsy. and there is ruby, taking more photos! ;)

we had amazing gift bags donated by such lovely shops: SweetAmbs, Gabrielle Kai, LoveNit, We Collective, Tweet Heart Wall Art, Wiley Valentine, The Paper Bird, Dozi, Paper Pastries, Tiny Pine Press, and Urbanic Paper. (ps: we had some gift bags left over so i'll hold a giveaway next week for those!)

the party planners. audrey from urbanic is the sweetest and it was so fun to meet the girls from 100 layer cake!

Hurray for new friends! Helen from Sheer Whimsy, Rachel from Heart of Light, Monica from A Designed Life, and Rubyellen from cakies.

I think I'm definitely wanting to do a holiday gathering and possibly some craft meetups! You can see other follow-ups of the blog social at wiley valentine, parcel post, cakies, and sheer whimsy.

xo.

christmas recap:

hello friends! sorry i haven't been posting, i haven't really been doing a lot of anything lately, just sitting around ;)

so here is a recap of my Christmas! my older brother and i drove up to stockton to visit my mom. all my cousins live in sacramento. i have a lot of cousins, and it was so good seeing all of them. this is us, having a white elephant gift exchange. i almost had the only one good gift - a $75 gas gift card, but my cousin stole it on a technicality of whether a gift can be stolen 2 or 3 times! boo that. i ended up with a tae-bo dvd. ha!

I got some pretty sweet gifts, including the polaroid pogo from my mom, which is a super tiny printer that prints tiny pictures, and it's inkless! yea, kind of a hard concept to grasp, at least it was for me. but the paper actually contains the ink. it's crazy! i also got a cute cupcake print bag, because she calls me cupcakes. nicholas got me a GREEN sony cybershot 10-megapixel camera! i love green. he definitely knows me. he's the best.

anyway, nicholas just got back from missouri this morning so we finally had our own 'christmas' gift exchange. this is us with our stockings, i really love stocking gifts the most. they're so fun.

felt club, madness:

This was the event! At first I was like, well this image just looks crazy because of all the vendors...but no, there are a lot of people here at felt club. crazy! madness!

image from buz carter on flickr.

Some photos of my table! Sadly my full shots were all blurry. Meh. Maybe It would have helped if I turned on the flash. I didn't say I am good at photography.

holiday cards + gift packs (sold all but 2!)

gumball machine + gift wrap section!

in action! my aunt took these. the photographer in her.

nicholas being a sad bear ;)

felt club, friends:

so here are photos of the event + friends
that came out and supported!

nicholas! who was so gracious to stay all day long!

my aunt linda! she's a pro at shows like this.

aw, mye mye! my dear friend from college!
sooo gosh darn photogenic. ;)

jinny! my friend from work's gf. this is only the 2nd time
i've met her but she was really sweet to come out + support.
i think we're destined to be good friends.

karen! such a good friend, she always comes out to my crazy
things i have going on, haha. + i want her whole closet.

i forgot to take a picture with tyler + michelle but they were the first people we saw! thanks to everyone who came out! it was so much fun :)

moon festival & mr. james hong:

so i was going to create a new blog with personal posts but i thought it'd be much more maintainable to keep one blog. (yea right, another blog? what was i thinking?)

so last weekend i attended the moon festival, in which my great uncle jim was invited to receive a lifetime achievement award at the festival. he asked if i wanted to help him at his table while he signed autographs so i thought sure, why not! i hardly ever see him, and really spend time with him so i thought it could be fun.


you may recognize him (or his voice) from his most recent work, kung fu panda and balls of fury, but i think his most popular titles include big trouble in little china (a classic) and bladerunner. with 332 titles to date, he is still going strong at 80!

it was great watching people line up to get his autograph, and stand off all shy-like wondering if they could take their picture with him. being famous must be such a crazy thing! he had such avid fans there, one girl came up and was like, "we've been searching to see where he was all day!" people wanted to shake his hand, tell him they admire him, i think he has a lot of fans from the asian-acting community.

my favorite 'uncle jimmy' moment has to be when i was in england studying abroad, and a bunch of us were watching season 4 of friends. then all of a sudden, there he was! (cause you know, with 332 titles to your name, you're bound to show in in some sitcom!) and i was like, "whoa! guys, that's my uncle!" and silence. no one said anything. a little akward. then 5 minutes later someone was like, "is that really your uncle?" and i said "yep!" and they were like, "oh we thought you were just saying that cause you were asian." haha! what?

anyway, we finished the evening as he invited my boyfriend and i to dinner. it's still cool that people recognize him and his face, they may not know his name but he has achieved fame to a degree. he can still live a normal life without being gossiped and written about. i guess at the end of the day though, he is just always uncle jimmy to us. i hope at 80 i can be in as great of shape as he is.

pictures:

friend dinner!

so my friends from college decided we should have a monthly friend dinner where we can all get together and catch up! it is so weird that i'm done with college, i don't feel like i am. i guess i keep thinking i'll eventually go back to school..like i'm on a really long summer break. i guess i should just face reality. such a sad-bear!

pictured here are all the college friends: mike d (aka slacker), curtis elliot and his lovely gf - cathy, van, ryan, annie smith, britt and justin,  and of course miss mayra, whom i finally gave the gift i had for her birthday to. (sorry it was a month late mye! hope you liked it!) 

♥

on the note of gifts, i decided i LOVE pretty packages and pretty wrapping. i realized i could spend time on wrapping mye's gift because she would appreciate and notice all the loveliness of it all. here's what mayra's gift looked like all wrapped up:

that's it :) i've been meaning to post the pics so there they are.

letterpress:

so lots of pictures to show! this was our 3rd week of class! so fun.

so this is where all the metal letters are, it is intense. drawers and drawers of typefaces of various sizes, spacing, etc. it's pretty legit. there is also a dingbat drawer, which is my personal fav ;) the last picture mo took, gives you a feel for our classroom. (thanks for the picture mo!)

so the first picture is the armory for the arts center, it's located in pasadena if anyone wants to take a class there. the next picture is of monique letterpressing for real with our teacher, denise, who is super cool. there is brenda, being silly and working on her crazy project which required crazy spacing for her letters, but is going to turn out pretty sweet. then the actual letterpress, which is seriously intense cause it's really big and heavy and i guess dangerous if you stick your finger in there or something. then me! finding letters. and now, for the final project:

i used bank script 30 and garamond 24, i think. haha. i liked combining the two fonts but didn't like having to find the spacing for it, it was hard! you have to have it match exactly on each sides and find just the right spacing in between everything. anyway, i am

memories:

just some pictures from my roadtrip with sarahanne &
last weekend in san francisco with nicholas.

so this week has been pretty crazy, i'm pretty burnt out.
last night i met with some friends from college for our monthly
friend-dinner then i stayed at my friend mayra's house, had
to wake up at 6 am to get to the mall by 7 for iphone training.
tomorrow i will get to avery at 7, work till 11 and then head over
to the mall for my 12-9 shift of iphone madness.
saturday i start my letterpress class with my friend monique -
i'm super excited! sunday i work again from 1-6 then i
finally get to relax. i just can't wait till the weekend is over.
it hasn't been as bad as i thought it would be, i'm not sure
what tomorrow is going to entail trying to sell ipho