My order came in the mail! Yaay!
These are from a sweet creative young lady from Yogyakarta:





IDR 5K each
material : print on concord paper (probably 220 gsm)
contact puryani88(@)gmail(.)com / https://www.facebook.com/fvkefine

8 cards!! I can no more trust the mail collection box that is outside of my office anymore, so I went to the nearest post office across the street on my lunch time.

I hope they arrive at their destination soon :)

This weekend I rushed through writing my cards for RRs, one for a tag, and a card I promised someone to send. The hardest one was the Handmade RR Group 135 - Collages. I really really want to make a great, perfect, arty collages but I do not have the time nor I have the ability to make one. Julie's class on collages will start on December 1st and I can not wait any longer. It seems like a super fun and useful class to take.

Aaanyway, I managed to somewhat make the cards in a relatively short time span, and here they are:



For Alienne in Germany, I made a collaged background from a physics book and added her favorite subject : mice. I forgot about the rat thing (she asked us to draw it on our cards) in my last card for her because I was too excited about joining the RR.

For Vicki in Russia, I made a quite simple one, I hope this still counts as collage, I personally like it, but I'm afraid the person didn't see much effort in the card. Anyway! I made it based on a very interesting tutorial I saw online (I forgot where...), but the technique is to cut a page (of advertisements) in rectangles, and put them back together in random order and direction. I love the result! It has this modern art feel to it. I added a black sticker lace for accent.

For Heidi in The Netherlands, I made quite a scrapbook-y card. It was from a basic grey 6x6 pattern paper pad that I've had since forever. I cut each patterns in random strips, put them together, added some torn book page, paper lace, washi tapes and finally, some sentiment.

So I don't necessarily super satisfied of everything, but again, considering the time, they are pretty good and interesting :)

This is stupid, I know but I'm really worried about the stack of 4 official postcrossing cards I sent back in October. There are 4 of them being sent to different countries and yet after 32 days of traveling, none has reached their destination. Even the one to Netherlands, which normally don't take that long. I'm worried something had happened to them and they got lost/stolen/damaged/unrecognizable somewhere :(

I started to doubt the reliability of that post collection box in front of my office (-___-).

My life feels so empty.

#firstworldproblems

The second batch is! Rainbow cards with stars... Or whatever. This was actually the first batch I finished. And I've sent them all out yesterday! I hope they get to their destination soon and safely. I sent them out for my first Round Robin group ever. It's Handmade Cards RR for a group with the theme Abstract. I hope this is abstract enough, eep!



My personal favorite is the second card, look at this beautiful delicious details!



I got an idea to cover the whole surface of a spraypainted card with crackle candy, a clear crackle paint from ranger which I rarely use. And then when it dried I sprayed it again with Glimmer Mist and Maya Mist, leaving the pearls on top and the paint absorbed in the exposed space left by the crackle paint. I love the result.

The first has gone out to Russia, the second to Germany, and the third to The Netherlands. I hope the receivers loves them as much as I do :)

Julie's classes really polished my art sense and techniques. Last weekend I made what feels like TONS of cards ready to be sent. And I love them! I feel satisfied with how they turned out. Here's the first batch. I call them the 'Love Life' batch because I put the same sentiment on all of them.



I did all techniques that Julie taught me, with Julie's stencils and I am in love with the beautiful mess. I'm also happy that I finally made use of the things that has been sleeping on my cupboard (perfect pearls, stamps, etc. well I bought a bunch of new stuff, too, guilty as charged).

( details under the cut! )

I think these will be sent for the next handmade RR group that I'm participating in :)

Last Friday I went to Alun Alun Grand Indonesia with Dhani and we went berserk when we saw a set of shiny, new collection of postcards there. I love it when young people in Indonesia managed to follow through their passion and creative hobby into something productive and applicable. Like this! The pictures are gorgeous and the quality is very good.



IDR 15k each/IDR 50k per package of 4
Alun Alun Grand Indonesia
Impressive Postcard / Alcibbum Photography / Indonesia Story

I have loved dried leaves since I was in elementary school. I remember trying to make them myself, asking my dad to take some Soursop leaves, which I then put in a big bowl of water for weeks. My mom hated it, because the longer you kept it, the bowl of water let out a bad scent to the whole room, lol. Not to mention mosquito started to lay eggs on the water. My mom never supports me for anything that I like anyway, but I remember being so happy and satisfied when the epidermis fell out and uncovered the beautiful, beautiful veins. Hmm. Now I wonder where they are, my old art masterpieces. I do remember making a bookmark using a colored bougainvillea flower petals, which in the end looking like leaves.

Nowadays, it's very easy and cheap to get them. Stationery stores have them for a very cheap price, about 40 - 80 cent for one pack of 8. When I started my postcrossing and mixed media journey back in July, I searched through my old stuff to find my old postcards. Among them, I also found a plastic package of colored dried leaves I've hadn't have the chance to incorporate in my art, and has been there for years. So then I started to explore. These are some of the somewhat successful attempts.

This was the first one I tried making. Distress stains on watercolor paper, dried leaves white glue for the coat plus some magazine punches and markers.



I made this for a lady in The Netherlands for official postcrossing card.



Now this, is a beautiful accident. I usually make very loud art, very messy, colorful and full, but this one is so gorgeous in it's simplicity I decided to leave it like this.



This was the latest one. For my THIRD art exchange with Kriss that I have sent out on the 12th. I couldn't decide what to send her, because I wanted to send different things than I have sent her before, so I made this with the leaves. I think it's beautiful and I had a hard time letting it go in the post collection box.

Ever since I joined postcrossing, I feel like my world evolves around it. One of the things that bothers me so much, is the lack of good quality postcards out there. The cards I can get at my local bookstores are the same things I've seen my whole life. The photos came from the 80's, they are OLD with no design, creativity whatsoever and they need to retire. Sadly, because there are not much choices for us Indonesian postcrossers, we are forced to buy and send those old, ugly postcards. Whenever I visit the postcrossing gallery of cards sent from Indonesia, there are little variety to it and it is sad.

So lately I've been seriously thinking to start my own line of postcards. It could cover a lot of different themes like photography, illustration to vector art. I've been discussing this seriously with my sister who is a graphic designer, and she even started to make drafts and sketches for the project. But we are facing major problems though; 1) the lack of time to focus on the project because we both work full time (and more) 2) the lack of experience. We can't predict how successful this project can be, how much we can make from it, what kind of strategies we need to apply and even simple things like how to get your stuff to be sold in major bookstores and get spotlight.

I have so many ideas, and so little time.

I went to Hellofest 9 with my sister today. Soo happy to get varieties of cards this time. I'm happy to support many creative young people in Jakarta.

A while ago we got a variety of senbeis from Japan with a very cute packaging :



The packaging was made of washi (Japanese paper) with some very bright Japanese traditional patterns. I just couldn't let it go into waste, so when it's empty I brought the packaging home and transformed it into ... what else if it's not POSTCARDS! It was quite a simple process, despite the fact that the washi packaging had a layer of plastic on the back of it which makes it hard to glue.

( step by step process under here )

And ta-dah! Here is the end result :

I made several postcards with washi tapes, they are very easy to work with and with small effort, I could get cute cards to send out to my friends! :)


I sent one to Chachic in Singapore and she asked me how many washi tapes I got. I actually never count them ... but here's a picture! I love the box, I got it from a 100 yen shop in Japan, but it no longer could fit all of my tapes, some has to sit on top of the others.

So lately because of postcrossing, I've been sending a lot of postcards - handmade or not - to many other postcrossers. Dhani, my colleague at work said that a lot of people are posting their pics of card they offer on instagram and doing swaps from there. She convinced me to make an account to post my cards, and I did.

I was too naive though, I wrote that I would love swaps and I post my best handmade works, thinking that they would attract people with similar hobby/interest/art style. Turns out, so many people wants to swap with me. But the catch is ... they don't make handmade postcards. I doubt they make handmade anything. One of them even called my cards "DIY cards" which ... is not a term I'd prefer. Now I've abandoned the account and kind of regret making one :/

Different case, but similar - on postcrossing. As a crafter that I am, I feel offended when people say they don't like handmade cards just because we don't spend money buying it at the store. "I spent money buying cards, and I should receive something equal in return". Well here's the deal; handmade cards are far more valuable than your store bought cards because not only the supplies to make it could be very expensive, it also involves time, energy and LOVE to make. It definitely needs more effort to make than just going to your local bookstore to buy some standard touristy postcards. I, for one, would NEVER send anyone a shitty card. I will tailor it according to what the receiver might like, I will spend a whole lot of time trying to think of the design, the concept and the details. And there would be only ONE of them in the world, I just don't get why some people seems to really hate handmade cards.

Two postcard-sized art for art exchange :)

Yesterday I went to Scoop Grand Indonesia and I found this blank postcard book!!! I was so happy to find it, it's just perfect for me. Can't wait to play around with it :)



It also has some non-blank pages that I can send out. Price is IDR 76k.

I was happy to find out that one of my cards has arrived at its destination in Netherlands, but what made me tear up was the message from the person. It was Marjo, a woman who lives with his wheel-chaired son and enjoys painting.

This was the card I sent her :



And she wrote this message for me when she received it:

"Hallo Nathascha! Thank you for the great frog eh....chameleon! :) You write you can't draw? Your writing is so beautiful and regularly! You need to search for fine pen drawings, draw anything from an other artist and give it something unique! I think you can manage that fine. Start today! You will be amazed. :) And what about writing?? You write very nice! Start a book!! I prefer to paint portraits, realistic, acrylic. All nationalities. I have made Sharbat Gula from Afganistan, Young and 10 years later. And more . Family, friends. There is one painting on Google Netherlands Marjo Blom- van Damme. :) I'm autodidact, just like you shortly?? Enjoy, dare! Success, Marjo"

That is the most positive, most encouraging, nicest message I've ever gotten from a total stranger. I've never felt like anyone ever believed in me, and sometimes, nice people come by and tell me, that I can do it if I believe in myself.