Upcoming Projects

Hello everyone,

How was your week? It has been snowing in Toronto for about 12 hours and counting! I love fresh snow because it’s so soft and fluffy and kicking it sends it into flurries of falling snow again. I think I now understand the wonder about snowfall.

In other news, I’ve been working on a new set of products for As Told By Caro. I’m planning to sell button badges! I’ve got some draft designs done up already, I just need to add the colours and clean up the sketches! Here’s a sneak preview of the designs, let me know what you think!

Christmas is coming, I hope everyone has awesome plans for the holiday season!(:
Take care and stay warm!

Lakeview Market @ Harbourfront Centre!

Because this week is special, here is another quick post about my experience being a part of the City of Craft’s market at the Harbourfront on Thanksgiving. So for those who don’t know the back story yet, this is it:

On Sunday evening after coming home from the library, I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I came across a post by City of Craft calling for last minute vendors at the Lakeview Market. Some previously allocated vendors had backed out for various reasons and they really needed people to fill up the slots. I was so excited, this was totally an opportunity I could not miss; I had applied for City of Craft’s winter market (which is their most popular and well attended, I think) and had gotten rejected, which was a little bit of an expected disappointment. So I sent them an email and voila! I got in.

I stayed up on Sunday night making brown paper bags for the cards and also fished out stocks of earrings I had made in the Summers of 2011 and 2012. I made makeshift business cards and a makeshift banner, packed everything into a box and headed off to my very first craft fair.

 

It was a good experience and a very interesting one at that. I think I experienced first hand the diversity of Toronto – there were so many languages and ethnicities and quite a few I didn’t recognise. I also got to see two corgis (firsts in TO) and so many other cute fluffy dogs. Most importantly, I got to meet other artists and admire their work. There was knitted stuff, handmade soaps, hand stitched winter hats with viking ears attached, and this amazing card shop that made me want to buy everything they had! Super cute stuff!

I sold my cards for $2 each because these ones were slightly defective – my printer made a mistake of not centralising the image and so there’s a white strip down the side of the card. I also sold my earrings for three dollars a pair, bracelets for five and necklaces for eight. Someone came up to me wanting to buy a bracelet and she said, “Is this really only five dollars?” I laughed. Used bananagrams tiles for item listing which encouraged kids to come along and play with them, resulting in many apologetic parents. It was fun, sitting there for six hours, essentially watching people and experiencing what it was like to be part of a show.

I didn’t have a lot to show because it was last minute and I only have three of my card designs printed and about 30 pairs of earrings to sell. Nonetheless, I’m still super grateful for the chance and opportunity that came my way and also thankful for the support that my friends showed all the way from Singapore. Art really is greater than life eh?

My next post should be about the magazine that I’m making art for and some work I’ve done for them. In the meantime, have an awesome week guys! October is a special month indeed(:

P.S. If you want to order cards, you can order them here!

As Told By Caro is now on Etsy!

After about ten months of contemplation and planning, it’s finally here: my online store.

I’ve only ever sold cards once before and it was a fundraiser for a farewell gift to someone. That was about three and a half years ago. Since then, I’ve been encouraged by my friends in many ways and have grown in my exposure and understanding of visual communication and graphic design. Using social media, we stay in touch, sharing links and portfolios of other amazing art and artists around the world. I never always understand what things necessarily mean, but I get to tap into a visual culture I would have never found without my supportive peers.

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2013 was to start selling my craft just because I enjoy creating it and love to hear feedback from those who have come across my work. It’s already October, but I’m keeping this resolution.

I’m especially thankful (it’s Thanksgiving in Canada after all) for Jethro who provided capital, and Emma who was the one who really persuaded me and pushed the whole As Told By Caro gig into realisation. Also for Jonathan and Cassie who pepper my life with bits of amazing advice and design tidbits. Finally, I’m really grateful to each person who has expressed interest in what I do because you validate a lot of my work and you are the ones who provide me with inspiration and encourage me to be better. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!(:

what I’ve been up to:

Since school started three weeks ago I haven’t really been posting things that I’ve been doing in terms of hand lettering and/or photography so today I decided I should share a few of my work so far and also clue you in to other things I have been doing.

At University of Toronto, the Arts & Science Faculty’s student population is divided into colleges such that administration and student interaction can be better and more easily facilitated. I was recently hired by my college – New College, to provide and produce artwork for their official student publication, The Window. Our first issue comes out on Friday, 4th October and features interesting articles ranging from etymology to the Argonauts game in Toronto earlier in September. They also have an advice column and Tumblr and their guru is the window washer (get it? haha).

I’ve also been working on a logo for Skule’s (UofT’s Engineering Faculty) SCORe club. They are a community of engineering students who come together to participate and organise non-profit and volunteer activities through the year. And most recently I’ve been working on a friend’s project called Project Happy Apples (PHA).  A friend of mine in medical school at the National University of Singapore asked me to hand letter some information title sheets and header titles for his presentation that is coming up. PHA is a student initiative that seeks to educate and increase awareness of palliative care and this is occurring on a close-to-nation-wide scale. I’m excited to see where the project goes and how my work will feature in it.

In whatever free time I have left, I doodle; the above two lyrics are my more recent works. There are nights where I really just need to relax and unwind, and I do so through these letterings. I’ve also begun to force myself out of referencing in a bid to see how comfortable I am without the constant imitation. Looking back on past work, I’ve definitely learnt to incorporate more relevant graphics and images into my lettering. What I want to master is blackletter/gothic typefaces – I still need to refer to online sources for those.

I’m glad to say that this has been the more exciting part of life in the past three weeks. My next couple of posts will probably revolve around the first The Window issue and/or the beginnings of an As Told By Caro store! October is an exciting month indeed(:

Nikon D7000!

Last week my dad gave me his Nikon D7000 because my Nikon D200 is getting old. As a result of which, I’ve spent the past two days combining photos with typography and hand lettering. The result?

 

The first quote is by Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series. I recently got introduced to Hogwarts and it’s fabulous wizards and witches and I have to say I like how Rowling has empowered the individuals with very human strengths. The second, with the biscuits baked by yours truly, is a quote by one of my favourite authors, Jeanette Winterson. I’ve always been a fan of Winterson’s writing especially her semi-autobiographies ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ and ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’. She has really inspired me and reinforced my belief that literature and art in general really could save a human mind from destitution.

On a lighter note, I’m so excited about what the new camera means for me – I get to take better night photography and also have increased control over my colours. This is a huge step forward for me because with my D200, I had to convert my photos primarily to black and white because the colours were so terrible. Also, I get the chance to experiment with the HD 1080p video on the D7000!

School is starting again soon if not already and I’m going to have less time to dedicate to my art in general. Nonetheless, I promise I’ll try to create something new every two to three weeks. I also have my usual list of goals that I wish to achieve during this academic year and this year’s includes learning Photoshop and improving on my Illustrator skills. More specifically, masking techniques for the former and textures for the latter.

It’s going to be exciting!

twitter & other work!

Hey everyone, just a little bit of a logistical update here, but I finally got my Twitter account started and have also set up my photography and hand lettering portfolio (albeit works in progress). My photography page also has a link to my Flickr account if you’re interested in seeing more of my photographs; the hand lettering page has a couple of my older works that I haven’t posted up here or on my Facebook site. I like looking at them when I start work on a new piece to see how I have evolved as an aspiring artist.

Do follow me on Twitter for a casual feed of information about things that interest me (and you!). Things to expect include anything that might fit the likes of a Singaporean girl living in Toronto who is thrilled by brilliant ideas, art, music, literature and cats.

I know that I’m starting out very, very small, but I really believe that passion will ease the bumpy journey ahead.

And if you’ve read everything up to this point, here’s something interesting I came across a few weeks ago that I can’t stop thinking about: an iOS app called Highs & Lows. I love the idea of stripping down your day into a best and worst moment and most especially, being able to look back at it. The colours and layout is so clean and neat too! Too bad I don’t have an iPhone.

National Day 2013

Singapore’s National Day always calls for nationwide celebrations and cheer. Every year we have the National Day Parade (NDP) which involves the Singapore military groups,  non-profit uniformed groups and many other performers. Making this graphic made me think about Singapore in ways I hadn’t previously. Suddenly I realise just how paradoxical it is that it is geographically so small yet it somehow holds the weight of so much ambition and history.

Being born in the 1990s, I’ve seen Singapore undergo quite a number of changes, especially landscape ones. The old national library that was made of brick where I used to go to read as a kid is gone and has made way for a modern glassy structure; King Albert Park was sold last summer for $150 million to build a condominium (goodbye McDonalds, we had good times when I was still in MGS); and the building that held some of my fondest memories – the old Kallang Stadium. I was fortunate to have participated in the 2007 NDP representing my Girls’ Brigade company. It was an experience I treasure very much because I always feel privileged to have stood in front of hundreds and thousands even if I was only a blur in the crowd. But what I remember most were the rehearsals leading up to 9th August. Every Saturday for three months I would count the curves of the roof in the stadium whilst watching the clouds tip toe quietly across them. I would watch the army contingents march in and out with perfect timing and during breaks I got to meet other girls whom I would otherwise have never met. I enjoyed it.

So much of Singapore has changed, even in the past two years I’ve been away, and I suppose it will only continue to change. Watching and reading from afar, I know Singaporeans wrestle with numerous issues and many say that they cannot remember when they were last satisfied with their lives. Work ethics, stress, expectations and amibitions have stretched us both ways. Yet somehow I find I was once happy in that place and I still look forward to going back because I associate Singapore with comfort, friends, familiarity and above all, the place I would call home. Surely then, there is comfort in the knowledge that home is about it’s people; I might hold a different passport or value system, or perspective, or opinion but I will always have these experiences and those are what make me Singaporean no matter where I go.