New Illustrated Business Cards!

 Just went to pick up my new business cards at the printers, never felt so legit in my whole life! I love how they turned out, which is a relief because I got them printed at this squalid little booth near my place manned by one very grumpy women. I was skeptical but the price was right so I endured the yelling and had 300 cards made for $180 HKD. The illustration is a self-portrait (I use portrait loosely, it's more like a super flattering caricature) I drew last week especially for the cards.

Here's how they turned out, what do you think?

 These are the deets if you want some sadomasochism with your cheap business cards: Tsu Hing Tong Printing Co. 45, G/F Ma Tau Wai Road, Hung Hom, Kowloon. 

Want some personalized business cards for yourself? 

I do portrait commissions. Email me!

Wearing | Hawaiian Skirt and Cropped Tee

 I bought a whole bunch of these $10 skirts while I was thrifting with my friend Hester last week, so now I be wearing skirts errday. The weirder of our finds was this knit Hawaiian photo-print skirt and today I wore it with a Silence + Noise cropped tee and a whole bunch of accessories that I bought on a sugar-high spree after a Mad Hatter Tea Party. Then I was off to meet up with an old university friend. Though I must confess, I didn't actually wear those heels out, it was wet and gross so I wore my lesbian Birkenstocks.

Getting our dumplings on. | Denim on denim: Michelle finds the perfect umbrella for her ensemble.

 Desserts at 五代同糖. | Sara's Henna from the Mad Hatter Tea Party.

Michelle is here with her boyfriend Tim, and like modern day better dressed versions of Jake and Lady Brett Ashley, the couple are on a whirlwind tour around the world South East Asia. They are the coolest, after lunch at Din Tai Fung we went trolling at the I.T Outlet, where we tried on the largest and most ridiculous parkas we could find. We refueled with some dessert and then finished the afternoon with some thrifting. Perfect day.

New/Old Illustrations - And a Commentary

 You know how when you get something from the thrift store and you show you friend and you're like "hai this is the new skirt that I just got, I mean it's old but it's new, it's an old skirt but it's new to me but it's like actually old." Well these drawings are like that, I made them last month for the Terracotta Warriors Inspired Fashion Design Competition (phew, long name). So they are old to me and new to you.

These didn't get picked but I thought they were cute enough to share. But looking back at them, they do seem kind of flat and lackluster. I can see how they wouldn't be too appealing to the judges. I actually quite like the green outfit in the middle, the little bomber jacket with patent leather sleeves and the stiffly pleated olive skirt. That's another thing, I think these illustrations could really benefit from some arrows and written commentary. The boards which I actually sent in did include fabric swatches but I think it needs more than that from a presentation standpoint. At my old job at Li & Fung as the assistant designer, I was mainly in charge of visual communications and I spent a lot of time making presentation boards for buyers and we never would have sent these out: first of all the image needs a background (a muted complementary tone with some texture preferably), the figures would have had a shadow and the clothes need texture. Even if the clothes were boring we would have wowed them with the general presentation, and that's what I'm lacking here. I think I got a little lazy and fancied my drawings could speak for themselves. But you learn.

This week I've been snail-making that DETOUR 2012 piece (but really mostly drinking Baileys and watching Bones). Here's what I've been working on? Frankly I'm a little majorly embarrassed to show you. It's so hideous you're going to hate me and think I'm a total hack, but it's just the armature and it's all going to be covered, but still. Well, let's just hope Dan Savage was right when he said "It Gets Better".

I've created a monster/
So hideous I didn't even Instagram it/
Imagine my horror.

How to get your work into Detour 2012

What's in this moderately heavy box?

 I've been entering contests and competitions like a madwoman this year, living on my desert island slipping messages into bottles and right now it's starting to feel like a few of them have been washing back each filled with a little bit of love and I'm so so grateful. Last week I got a call from Ambassadors of Design letting me know that my proposal had been nominated!

My installation along with the other nine winning pieces will be displayed at DETOUR 2012 this November. In case you didn't know DETOUR is Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design's 17 days flagship event and it's pretty totally sweet, held at the Former Police Married Quarters last year, it was one of first things my friend Wing Sum and I did together, the art was cool but really at that time I was more excited about finally having found someone in HK to go to designy things with.

Yesterday, I went to the Ambassadors' office and lugged a huge cardboard box home from Wanchai wearing totally inappropriate clothing - namely a Pierre Cardin top that I got at HK's creme de la sleaze thrift store Mee & Gee (secret: my favourite one is the one on Fa Yuen St, Mong Kok. But, please don't go there and buy all the cheap nice fringey things because that is not nice and I need them for my body).

Below is my proposal, the theme of the competition was Growing Up with Hong Kong:

My nominated design! You go Glen Coco!

"A Celebration" is inspired by imagery associated with growing up in Hong Kong, created in the style of traditional Lunar New Year posters, the child is riding triumphantly atop of the crocodile, clad in her school uniform and clenching test papers. The airplane badge on her dress symbolizes the pre-1997 immigration rush, which affected most children whether directly or by seeing their friends and family move away. The child is surrounded by treats from her childhood: birthday cake from the local bakeries, egg waffles and tea eggs from street vendors."

A photo from my elementary school days that I used for inspiration.
I love how the 'treats' were hard-boiled eggs and apples.
Also, is it irony if you put an Instagram filter on an old picture.

DETOUR 2011. Photo: Ambassadors of Design

This little guy was inside the box "Decorate me. Rawr."

The installation will be made mostly of paper and paper mâché along with some embroidery and found objects. I was thinking of doing the figure like those Chinese funeral paper dolls, but I'm not so sure about the connotations with that since it's supposed to be about celebration. Anyways, stay tuned this month, I'm going to be blogging about the process.

Green is Chic at the 2012 Ecochic Design Awards

Sabrina and her covetable earrings.

Nibbles from the afterparty at Assaggio.

I went to the Ecochic Design Awards last night, it's a sustainable fashion competition organized by Redress and I was lucky enough to be able to participate this year as one of the semi-finalists. Although my part finished in April I still got to attend the final judging/fashion show as a general fashion lover and supporter of fellow independent designers. And the show did not disappoint, each designer had such unique style and personality which was really evident in their designs but it was Wister Tsang's avant-garde denim focused collection that won the judges' favour. So congratulations to Wister and to all the other 2012 finalists!

I was going to sit by myself (the horror! No, just kidding, I'm a strong independent Black Asian woman who don't need no man.) but through the magic of twitter I nabbed a seat next to my friend the stylist/social media maven Jasmine Webster and she introduced me to the gorgeous photographer Sabrina Sikoura. 

And for some much needed illustration practice I decided to draw some memorable moments from the night. And below are some more photos from the event, enjoy! 

Wearing all the flowers.
ps. this the shirt I made for the competition!.

Wister Tsang's winning collection.

The Redress founders, Christina Dean and Cherie Wong.
Cherie is wearing a zero-waste dress!