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FREE Download—‘Little Red Riding Hood’ Board Game
I’ve found that parenthood is a constant learning and growth process. Each stage of my daughter’s life brings with it, new joys and new lessons. Now that she’s in pre-school, I find that I’m also in pre-school. This is even more so because they require that parents volunteer a certain number of hours each year. It helps parents be more involved as well as unload some of the burden from the teachers. Recently my daughter’s teacher, Miss Lori, asked if I could create a board game for the class, based on ‘The Little Red Riding Hood’ story they were reading.
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My Latest Design Project—Chinese American Museum’s Breaking Ground Exhibition
As some of you may know, I’m a trained graphic designer and in addition to Sakina Design, I operate a graphic design studio called Obsessive Compulsive Designers. While I was studying graphic design in New York City, one of my favorite activities was visiting museums. I find them both visually stimulating and educational. As I leave an exhibit, I leave with a better understanding of the world in which I live, and I leave inspired!
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MONTHLY WALL ART GIVEAWAY!
We have something very special for our fans! FREE ARTWORK! We recently redesigned our entire wall art collection, and so we’re left with a small inventory of the old style. Rather than sell them, we’re giving them away to our fans as a token of our appreciation.
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Sakina Design’s Zzyzx Giveaway!
Over the past few years Pik and I have come across this interesting road sign in the California desert, an exit off of Route 15. Each time we see it we say we’ll take a picture and learn more about it, but we inevitably miss it or forget. Earlier this week we went to Las Vegas for the Home + Gift show, and Pik decided this time we wouldn’t forget.
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Islamic Art Influenced by Chinese Art
I can spend days digging through Met Museum’s collection online. I think it’s the best online museum gallery in the world. Not only do they have huge collections, they usually include great details about the artifacts you’re looking at. Of course, my favorite collection is their Islamic Art collection. Recently, I came across a Kashan (Iran) bowl/dish with a fish motif. I’ve seen something similar before and it caught my attention because it was quite “Chinese.”
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Happy Chinese New Year—Gung Hai Fa’ Choi!
It’s the 3rd day of the Chinese New Year, the year of the dragon. Since coming to the U.S., I really don’t do much to celebrate this time of year, but it’s the biggest holiday for Chinese and other Asian cultures. I have a lot of sweet memories from my childhood, so I thought it might be nice to share a little bit of my heritage today.
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‘Breaking Ground’ Exhibit Opening
On Thursday, January 19th we attended the opening of the newest exhibit at the Chinese American Museum (CAM) in Los Angeles, called ‘Breaking Ground’. CAM invited us as a token of their appreciation for Pik’s hard work designing their Exhibit Brochure and Catalog. We really had a great time working with them on this project and wish them the best!
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Simple Candy Gift
My 4-year-old, Aisha, recently received some candies from her grandparents. She was so happy she wanted to share them with her friends. And I was so happy to see her learning about sharing and giving. “What a great idea!” I told her. Then she said, “I have to make them a gift and give them to my friends,” at which point she ran off.
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The Met and Sakina Design—Using Art to Build Understanding
The last time my wife (Pik) and I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka The Met) was in 2003, the year we both graduated and started our lives as a married couple. It’s been 8 long years … since then I’ve lived in four different states, had a couple career changes, started a couple businesses, had a daughter, and even witnessed a historic election bringing the first African-American President to office.
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Custom Wall Art—You Can Do It Too!
At a recent party, my husband Jontie took a picture of our friend’s silk flowers sitting on the coffee table with a dark backyard as a backdrop. He was just taking the picture for fun, but it caught my attention. So, I did some cropping and color adjustment. It was really a minimum effort, but I think the results are quite nice.