There comes a time when you LOOK back and examine the things you DID and experiences you went through and hopefully... hopefully, you're proud of them.
Here are pics of my Interior Design project I did with my partner {back then} in China. It still looks as beautiful to me as it did several years ago. I am quite PROUD!
More info, this is the Interior project for a small 160m2 of space called Red Square. The owner is a Shanghainese who wanted to open a modern Russian restaurant inside a shopping mall in South China, Shenzhen, at Poly Culture Center. We worked within a certain budget but still we wanted the space to feel elegant, unique and truly Russian by embedding the MATRIOSHKA doll design into the common dining area. We had the chairs made and outfitted to look like these dolls, a lot of headache and FUN go into this project!
So, enjoy...
Here is something interesting from Michael Jason Enriquez’s (an Advertising student at Art Center College of Design). Personally, I think they all look Drag Queenish! But I remember what it was like in EAST LA, in Compton etc, all those girls hanging out with their gangster BFs, heavy lip liner, exaggerated eye liners ala Amy Winehouse {bless her soul}... Cholafied comes from the mind of an LA kid who grew up in the 90′s. It’s a throwback to Chola gangster style: Sharpied eyebrows, dark lipliner, and the fumes from a can of Aqua Net. It’s a product of LA where subcultures, celebrity obsession, street art, and stupidity are rolled up together like one of those bacon wrapped hot dogs sold on Hollywood Blvd. Things can get jumbled up living in LA. It can be very glossy and image based. The many subcultures in the city are a reflection of wanting a sense of belonging in what some consider a very lonely city. This is a town where icons are manufactured. We have the Kardashians, American Idol, and Lindsay Lohan. We root for these people, we rally behind them, and then we beat them up to see if they can stand back up again, like jumping them into a gang.
Every year, Bikaner, the largest city of the largest state in India, Rajasthan—that’s mostly made up of desert—hosts a Camel festival. As part of the annual festival, camel contests are held—where camels are decked out elaborate draping, buckles, saddles and ‘tattoos’. The camels get pampered and groomed—their coats shaved, trimmed, dyed and styled to feature beautiful designer ‘tattoos’. According to Japan-based Flickr user osaprio, Osakabe Yasuo, an engraved tattoo for each camel takes about three years to create. “First two years, there is just growing [of] the hair and [the start of] trimming,” he writes. The natives don’t use iron engraving, rather they just cut and dye the desert animal’s hair for three years—until they achieve their desired outcome of the ‘tattoo’ to parade the animal for the contest. {via Osakabe Yasuo)  So beautiful! No wonder it takes 3 years to do.
Here's a very unique one... Artist and photographer Suzanne Jongmans has been working on a project inspired by classic, 16th and 17th century Flemish and Dutch Golden Age paintings. She meticulously poses her models to emulate the era, the tone, the traditions of the works, down to costumes. Now comes the creative part — the caps and collars are all made from packing materials. Soft foam, the cheap stuff. Making these archaic, ornate accessories from modern day throw-away materials, Johnmans creates a clash. {Via Beautiful Decay}
Never before that a play of shadow and light became such a fascinating subject to me, personally! However, this artist, Kumi, she is incredibly mind-boggingly ah-maze-ingly creative and managed to put everyone in awe with what she could do by manipulating one single source of light!!! I N C R E D I B L E... {Via Twisted Sifter} Born in Japan but now living and working in New York City, artist Kumi Yamashita does incredible things with light and shadows. Kumi has an impressive list of solo and group shows sine the late 90s along with a host of permanent collections around the world. Kumi received her bachelor in fine arts at the Cornish College of the Arts in Washington and obtained her masters in fine art from the Glasgow School of Art in the UK. In her series entitled Light & Shadow, Kumi uses a single light source along with an assortment of perfectly placed objects to create incredible shadow silhouettes and artwork on walls. Please enjoy this small sample below, and be sure to visit Kumi’s official site for even more amazing artwork.
Entrance
A while back I posted some of the progress of my villa in Umalas, I named it Villa Barong and I made a simple website www.villabarong.com for those who are interested in renting a modern, bright, colorful villa in South Bali at an affordable price. So, recently due to some comments on my simple blog, I decided to post pictures of my simple new villa. Enjoy!
Livingroom with flat panel TV and cable installed
All furniture are designed by myself, from computer sketch to picking the local materials, from the bedrooms to the living and dining room.
Bright clean open kitchen
Pool
Master bedroom is located on the first floor overlooking the pool
Each bedroom comes with its own bathroom
Upstairs foyer
Guest room 1
Entering guest room 2
Desk in guest room 2
Guest room 2
The neighborhood
The advantage of living in Bali is that it's always summer, all year round. There's never NOT a perfect time to grill some steak at home on your own BBQ grill by the pool!
I think we can all agree on what our end goal is: A perfect steak should have a crusty, crunchy, well-browned exterior surrounding a core of perfectly pink, juicy, tender meat that spans from edge-to-edge. (You well-doners can go eat your hockey pucks somewhere else, just NOT at my villa). A perfect steak should be a nice contrast between the smoky, almost charred exterior and the deeply beefy interior.
However, there's a lot -it turns out- that I didn't know about grilling steak, so here goes 11 AWESOME tips courtesy of Serious Eats:
1. Start with the right cut (I prefer ribeye). 2. Check for marbling (you want plenty of intramuscular fat).
3. Buy a thick steak (at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches).
4. Bone in or boneless, it doesn't make a difference—this is totally a matter of personal choice (I prefer bone-in).
5. Get dry aged beef (unless you don't enjoy the extra tenderness or slightly funky flavor of dry-aged meat).
6. Salt in advance and salt well (I season mine up to four days in advance, but you want to go at a minimum of 40 minutes).
7. Use hardwood coal if you've got it, but briquettes will work just fine.
8. Cook your meat gently, then sear at the end (this'll give you more evenly cooked meat and a better crust).
9. Flip your meat as often as you like (the whole thing about only flipping once is utter nonsense).
10. Use a thermometer if you have one, but if not, go ahead and poke or cut-and-peek (it won't adversely harm the end product).
11. Let your meat rest (your meat should rest for about 1/3 of the time it took to cook in order to prevent excess moisture loss).
I'm so bored with any old Tees, especially here in Bali, all the tourists seem to be sporting the "Bintang" tees and wife-beaters {tank tops for guys}. Majorly G R O S S!
So, when I saw this DIY post {via Not Cot} I just had to re-blog it...
Here goes:
SUPPLIES:
Oversized large t-shirt
Washable Sharpie
Fabric scissors
Large piece of white paper
 STEP ONE: Sketch out the outline of your skull. We think the messier, the better, so don't be afraid to get a little sloppy.  STEP TWO: Turn your shirt inside out with the back of the shirt facing up. Then put your skull outline inside.  STEP THREE: Trace your outline. We chose to do dots since sharpies tend to drag on fabric and by not having a solid line we were able to deviate from the exact outline, like we said, the messier the better — and more organic looking.  STEP FOUR: Begin cutting by starting in the middle and snipping outward. *If you use a washable Sharpie or other washable ink you won't have to worry about cutting on the outside of the dots as much.  STEP FIVE: For the teeth we found pinching the fabric where you want the tooth and hap-hazardly cutting gave a nice result.  STEP SIX: Stretch out the fabric so the cuts don't look as manufactured — much better this way.  STEP SEVEN: Voila! Or you can continue to cut off the collar and sleeves like we did. By doing this you'll acheive a slinkier silhouette.  STEP EIGHT: Cut off sleeves and and collar. Take your time with it and don't attempt to do both layers at once.
Sometimes great things do come in MICRO packages. Built overlooking a lake in Finland, this Micro Cabin, nicknamed “Nido,” was designed and built by Robin Falck to enjoy once out of the military. It took a while to design and Falck consulted with a couple of architects to get everything right, but the results are phenomenal.
Proud for being or -more likely- wanting to be a well-rounded person, I'm always interested in how things are made. Especially when it comes to my favorite poison, Vodka!
So here goes how Vodka goes from grain to bottle...
{the Middle West OYO Vodka}
1. The wheat is grown and milled
First, the wheat is milled down, and the bran (outer husk) is removed. For Middle West, this happens at one mill in northern Ohio that draws wheat from farms within an 80-mile radius. They only use soft red winter wheat, which contains about 30% more starch than other kinds of wheat.
2. The wheat is fermented in a mash
Wheat goes into big fermentation tanks at the back of the Middle West facility, where it is turned into a mash, a mix of water, yeast, and grain. It is warmed and then left to ferment for about 4 days. The starch turns to sugar, the sugar is eaten by the yeast, and alcohol results. When the yeast has consumed the sugar and turned it into alcohol, this wash is transferred into the pot, the first piece in their lovely distilling equipment.
3. The pot boils the wash and creates ethanol vapor
The creamy, rough liquid is brought to a boil. Since water and alcohol (ethanol) boil at different temperatures, the water boils after the alcohol, and condenses is allowed to fall back down into the pot, while the alcohol vapor is transferred into the distilling columns.
4. The ethanol condenses and drips down
The ethanol condenses and drips down as very high-proof liquid alcohol. From this point on there is a careful process of separately drawing off what they call the "heads", "hearts," and "tails." The first 5% or so (heads) of a distilling run is very high in undesirable chemical compounds. If you taste nail polish remover (acetone) in your booze, then it is probably at least partially heads. The middle of the run is the "hearts" or good stuff. The final bit, the "tails" is lower-proof. The spirits-makers mix these three carefully to get a good flavor balance, and leave out the harshest portions for a smooth sip. The vodka is filtered, blended and set aside in tanks until bottling.
5. The vodka is bottled, aged, or infused
Middle West bottles their vodka just a few bottles at a time, in big parties where they invite volunteers to come and help in return for a bottle and a t-shirt. But not all vodka goes straight into their (very pretty) glass bottles. Some is infused; they have a totally delicious Honey Vanilla Bean variety that I like very much, as well as a newer Stone Fruit vodka that makes an excellent cocktail. Altogether, this process (not counting infusing or aging) takes about 1 week.
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