Doggy Weekend

My friends, Rachel and Ryan have adopted a new addition to their family, and in honor of the newly arrived puppy Dakota, we took the dogs to swim at Bullcreek. They all get along just fine! You can see more pictures here.

My Hubert is getting so big!

Dakota puppy!

Big sis, Bailey!

Vintage Clothes, Original Art

Decided to recycle some awesome, super soft vintage button downs into hip pockets. You'll probably see the the rest of the article transformed into womens wear at my recycled clothing store at the end of this month!
In other news, I've collaborated with a wonderful Austin artist, Nuclei, to make some super cool hip pockets with her original paintings! She'll be posting some of her amazing paintings and prints on Etsy, soon!

i love leather

I had a custom request to make the hip pocket in leather. I've been wanting to use leather for a while, but this request was the one that pushed me to finally make something. I have to say, it's like an addition. I'm losing sleep sewing these up. I'm secretly hoping she doesn't want them so I can keep them for myself. :) :) Just kidding!

If you want one of these, ask me what leathers I have. The dark one listed is one of a kind, so no more of that. Distressed is available and I've got lots of other shades of brown. :) I also have white (more like sand) suede and light brown split, as posted here. Love this. I even made a treasury dedicated to leather.p.s. I'm accepting custom orders on these so you can choose your leather, brass or nickel snaps, and keychain or sans keychain.

Here's the treasury I made.

Oh my, I wrote a novel...

I almost thought about not entering this t-shirt competition after the first two years, but after my dad gave me an inspirational speech about how I shouldn't feel bad about winning because I'm increasing the quality of the designs submitted and also if my design is chosen, the department will have a great quality shirt.  So then I felt pretty inspired (as I do after all of his speeches), and I submitted another design and won!  Yay!  This will be my last time, though, because I'll be graduating.  

I've always had a love for art but have not always had the encouragement to pursue it as a career because coming from an traditional Asian background, it was always "be a doctor" or "be an engineer" --hence I chose the Biomedical Engineering path.  

...going on a tangent...

This is not bad advice, given the fact that I'm a first generation American in the family and my parents understand how hard it is to move to another country and to make a living.  Making a living is hard and going the doctor/engineer route is the low-risk, high reward path.  But I think many people find success and much pleasure in taking a "high risk" path such as an art career and the reward may even be more benefitting than being a doctor or engineer.  This is now the conflict that I am running into for this year because I'm graduating.  Am I going to continue to design and sew bags and clothes and design graphics and websites?  Sure, I can see myself finding plenty of happiness in pursuing this career.  But then, I will have a pretty Biomedical Engineering degree hanging in my sewing room.  So 

then should I start applying for engineering jobs or graduate school?  Not sure, really.  

Unfortunately, I can't have it all now, and engineering doesn't come in the flavor of "on the side".  It's always "be an engineer, and do all the art on the side".  But I've been trying to find my career in incorporating all of those, and so far I found the product design field as the one that closely matches all my interests.  But then again, I also really like Marketing, and would like to get a masters in business. ;)

It never stops, seriously.

I'll leave you with the design for the 2008 BME T-shirt!

Treasure & Leather

A treasury in snowy white one, this time!  A few of my favorites.  View it on Etsy!

In the meantime, I checked out the local leather store and found some great stuff for the shop.  Look forward to some genuine leather bags coming up soon!