I am truly my own WORST enemy!
Right now we are busy with preparing for the complete Visual Identity, Business Plan and Renovation for my very own Blow-Out Bar in Seminyak, Bali. It will be called Shampoo Lounge! Target date for Soft Opening is on Halloween {Oct 31st} of this year and I got so MUCH work to FINISH...

The concept is an up-market Blow Dry Salon that serves drinks while you're getting "blown". We also do mani-pedi and professional make-up, a total Beauty Makeover center. My preferred company colors will be black, white and a dash of sunflower yellow.
But I am not closed to other 'fresh'  color combos.

Below are my own design for logos, nothing screams at me yet but I am a tough client to please!

My LOVE for vintage cars and anything mobile/moving led me to blog about this cute cool juice mobile! I have been wanting to create something like this, cool simple Bar serving drinks on the go, parked on the parking lot of Petitenget beach {Seminyak, Bali}! But my creative juice got a major halt from the local govt who is NOT likely going to give me a MOBILE liquor license!

Portland-based design firm Von Tundra has just completed the conversion of a 1969 Dodge Chinook into a mobile juice and cocktail bar. Their client wanted something a little different to serve street food to the city’s public as well as host guests inside. It went from a bland old white truck to Sip Mobile Lodge, a stylish vehicle that feels right for the American Northwest with its heavy use of wood and comfortable interior.

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)

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.

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!

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