Happy New Year!

Here's to another wonderful year :). Happy 2013 my friends!

xoxo
Jane

P.S: Follow my blog with Bloglovin!!!

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Happy birthday to me!

So yesterday I turned 19.

When I entered middle school, I thought about accomplishing many big things. Now I'm in my last year as a teenager and there're still many things unfinished. That to-do-before-I-die list of mine is longer and longer every year. Guess I need to step out of my comfort zone more often.

Although I don't quite celebrate my birthdays, it's nice to receive birthday messages from friends and family :). Thank you so much everyone! That means a lot <3

And here's to a brand new week! Happy Monday everybody!

xoxo

Jane

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Day Will Come

Have you ever taken an "internet break"? Because this is what I do in my "break": keeping up with hand lettering practice ;). The more I think about it, the more I appreciate Amada's idea of this pin board (check it out! There're tons of wonderful works!). It basically gives me a healthy kick to draw and to be creative with other stuffs too. Brilliant!

I love the image these lyrics create in my mind. I've always wanted to do something about it ever since I heard the song for the first time (no I didn't attend the concert. I listened to the live recording on Youtube instead because it hadn't been released then). The full lyrics should be "We dream hard. We shoot high. Sometimes our fingers graze the sky but we can't hold on."

Also, I'm going back to university this Friday (by the way it means I'll be a sophomore yay!). It has been a long summer for me and I've truly enjoyed it though sometimes I wish I could just come back to school already. Hopefully there'll be more interesting things to talk about at university.

Have a nice day

xoxo

Jane

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A birthday note

I think I should share this birthday card with you guys :). As you can tell, I love Keane's music and the band members very much (I believe a lot of you guys are very familiar with their all-time favourite song Somewhere Only We Know, right?). They've worked hard and made amazing music which really touches my heart and soul. They're also four nice men with great personalities. I've learnt a lot from them.

Today is Jesse Quin's birthday and I made the above card to submit to a birthday video for him by fans all around the world. He's the bass player, but he also provides backing vocals and other stuffs. Jesse is Keane's newest member who's played bass for the band since 2007 and become an official member in early 2011. Though he's a bassist, he writes songs and sings too. If anyone would like to hear this man's voice, don't look for Keane catalogue. Instead, search for an alt-country band named Mt. Desolation which is Tim (the main Keane songwriter and pianist)'s side project with Jesse. I highly recommend songs such as "Platform 7", "State Of Our Affairs", or "Annie Ford". 

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Hand lettering love

So I doodled a little the day before yesterday. At about 1 a.m I think...

My first love was neat and clean typography with heavy fonts. Then I fell in love with handwriting style. And now I want to practice my hand lettering. I was inspired by this post by Amanda (she's really lovely!). She's also created a board for everyone to post their own hand lettering practice, which is a brilliant idea! I've just bought some fine liners for practice as well.

Do you love hand lettering? Which type of pens do you often use?

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Love/Hate

Hello everybody!

I've been back from final exams, which were frightening :O! So the first thing I made after the exam was this spontaneous photo though it was quite irrelevant :P. About the quote, it was from Design Milk's pin board (which is brilliant I tell you). I think the sentence has explained itself completely, so, people, let's be kind. There's no reason to hate something so much.

Hope that everyone's gonna have a nice day wherever you are :) (it's 3 am. here)
xoxo
Mita

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But I was born the way I am...

It must have been AGES since I posted something on this blog :P.

You can notice that, on your right, there's a little badge (is it really a badge? Or a button? I just don't know what to call it) with a little text "Keane Vietnam". There you go! That's my new fan page for the love of my life - Keane! If you're a Keane fan or just a music lover who enjoys their music, please support us by pressing "Like" on this Facebook fan page. We're bilingual so you can chat in English. Don't worry! Vietnamese fans are very friendly! Welcome!

I've been busy with homework and stuffs so I don't have much time here :'(. Sorry! But I finally found some time to create a new poster (yay me!). It's just some simple text but I hope you like it. And since this post is dedicated to Keane, do you know which song are these lyrics from?

The original size for this poster is A2 (42cm x 59.4cm) but you can print in A3 or smaller. I've created 4 versions for printing, which are Neon River, Lilac, Chartreuse, and Old Green (you can guess where I've got the names from).

If you like these printables, feel free share them and link back to this site! I would really appreciate that :)

 

Download (it's totally free!)

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Qureen Day (a.k.a crafty day)

This is part 2 of the Qureen Day our class has taken part in last Sunday. We were asked to make some  outfits which are environmentally friendly. If it hadn't been for this day, you'd have never known how creative students were! It was so amazing! From paper to flowers, all of them can be combined and made into a beautiful outfit. Who says fashion is all about those luxurious materials?

This is the first one. I really love the flower :). Lovely colours, too! This was made from newspaper.

Ribbon fever!!! So colourful! And the bag is made from straws.

Ah, the Tangled couple. See the pan?

Tribal feeling :). This girl looks scared. Straws, plastic cups, and paper.

This IS the KILLER DRESS! Tissue paper and crepe paper. Perfect for a wedding! The designer is so talented :)

And this is our class' dress. Newspaper all the way. And origami roses :)

 Back to the nature. Only leaves and flowers. And bare feet :)

These dresses are beyond! Vegetables and rose petals. Cute colours. I love the peach (or orange) dress. It is so beautiful! By the way, the little bouquet she's holding is red chillies.

I love how they can transform a plastic bag into the upper part of this dress. Others are tissue paper. So creative!

This class uses a mix of material here. There are leaves, a lot of plastic bags, flowers, and some wrapping paper. The model has such a bright smile on her face. She's really photogenic :)

Bare feet! There's an "E" in the middle. It's for "Earth"

And that's all. We had so much fun last Sunday. And being able to know so many creative people out there was such a nice experience, too. Till next Qureen Day!

Happy weekend everybody! In Vietnam we're having a holiday until Tuesday (wow!). Time to have a real rest :D

xoxo

Mita.

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Qureen day

So last Sunday our class took part in the Qureen (Queen + Green) Day of our English Department. It was amazing. We were so excited that we were the last to leave! Moreover, our class have won some great prizes, which were unexpected. All our efforts have paid off completely :). I still remember the fashion group had to stay at the campus to fold paper and paint. It was crazy!!! Anyway, we had so much fun and I really enjoyed that :). Here are some photos from those days. Enjoy!

I was in charge of painting the banner for our little food stand. We chose the hilarious name of Red-nailed Chicken :)), so I added two little chicks there. About the typeface, I found Ribbon absolutely suitable for the mood and it would go well with the design. I could only start making the banner on Saturday evening (I was so busy with other stuffs too), so I was running out of time. It is awful when you have to complete a banner (by hand!) in just an evening. But it also pushed my little creative bird to produce something really good I think. Yeah, pressure is good for you. 

See the chick?

Then I printed out those lovely letters. I've been having this big crush on pastel colours so it obviously affected my choices. But pastels are sooooo pretty, aren't they?

A little mess before another *big* mess

I finished painting at around 3 in the morning (gosh!). I didn't feel asleep at any time. I was so into this that I completely forgot the time and everything around. When you're so passionate about things you love, you can easily get lost in them and forget the definition of time. Sometimes we call that a bad workaholic. Sometimes we don't. We see that as a little adventurous bird longing for exploring and creating. We can't be blamed for that, right?

Should I re-paint this onto a canvas? It looks quite good :) (I used a fabric pattern for this photo)

And here's the final product. I'm really proud of it :). 1BPD is our class' name. It's for Translation-Interpretation (freshman)  

The table given to us was shorter than I imagined so we had to roll some paper parts inside. However, the decoration was quite good, and lovely :). We were not selling fast at the beginning, but things went smooth later. In the end, we made some profits! Our speciality was deep-fried quails' eggs wrapped in pumpkin powder. It was really tasty. Yum!

Lovely girl! You can see the banner behind her. It was raining so we had to move inside. 

And here is our lovely model. She's super cute! The idea behind this newspaper dress is a combination of roses and ombre effects. It also relates to the warming earth. Roses were everywhere. Then they disappear due to the disastrous global warming. I really loved that interpretation.

We were folding paper roses here to make a small bouquet. We'd also folded about 70 or 80 roses for the top. It was insane!

I love this photo :). It was taken while she was stepping down the stairs.

And stopped right there. Now the speech explaining the idea for this dress starts. The speaker told me he was so scared standing in front of so many people. This dress could have been impossible without him and two other guys. So we proudly give them full credits here :'>. Good job guys!

After the performance. Say cheese!

You can look into all the details here. Those roses were not so hard to fold. You can make your own rose here. They also show you how to fold more complicated but very beautiful origami roses. I picked the standard rose (the easiest!) because our classmates who helped with the folding were not quite familiar with this. The whole dress was made of newspaper and a tremendous and laboured time to paint. We know we could use coloured paper but we sticked to painting because we wanted to express the whole idea of re-purposing.

Finally she could take off that dress (I know, it was crazy!). And the top was made into a lovely bouquet!

 You were awesome, guys!!!

And to abrll of you, happy Friday!

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Love - a free printable

Words by Hafiz of Shiraz

Here's my first free printable for you guys! I'm so in love with this quote that I've made a mini poster out of it. You can download it here. This poster is 8.27 x 11.69 in (A4 size). Please spread the words or link back if you find it lovely enough :). Thanks.

Btw, there's a love song (not actually a happy one) I want to share, too. Here's Your Love, with vocals from Tim Rice-Oxley from Keane (a rare one he sings, and we fans are just O_O lol).

xoxo

Mita

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Oreo smoothie with vanilla ice-cream

Who doesn't love Oreo cookies?

There have been a lot of recipes for Oreo cookies smoothie and they're all yummy. Today I just want to share another recipe for this lovely drink which has popped out of my imagination on a hot day. The ingredients are easy to find and the best thing is that you can improvise as long as it suits your taste. And believe me, it's real good! Here's how to make it.

Ingredients (make 1 cup)

4 pieces of Oreo cookies

1 scoop of vanilla ice-cream

1-2 teaspoons of chocolate sauce or chocolate syrup (I use Hershey's)

1 cup of ice cubes or crushed ice

Optional ingredients

2-3 tablespoons of sugar-free milk

Whipping cream

1 tablespoon of crushed almonds or cashews

Just blend all of them together. Serve with whipping cream and crushed almonds on top. Add a little of chocolate sauce or chocolate syrup for a tasty look. Yummy!

Tips

Vanilla or chocolate is better?

You may want to change from vanilla ice-cream to your favourite chocolate ice-cream. It's fine but you don't want to lose the cookies flavour, do you?

Not too much chocolate syrup!

Again, control your lust for chocolate as it will dominate the oreo flavour. Or you might just use chocolate syrup for decoration. It's still yummy as ever!

Think of the texture!

Here's when the milk comes into use. If the whole texture is too thick, add some milk (1-2 tablespoons) and blend for a little more. The thickness also depends on the amount of ice cubes you put in.

However, this drink is not quite suitable for those who are on a diet because of its amount of calories (you can see in the ingredient list). You can still make a small cup once in a while because, you know, Oreo is always good.

Enjoy!

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