Book of Gendis | Kisah Gendis

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Proyek buku spesial untuk Gendis akhirnya selesai juga! Buku yang mirip dengan milik kakaknya, Elang, yang pernah saya buatkan dahulu. (Cerita tentang buku Elang bisa dibaca disini.) Buku yang bisa dibuka kapan saja dan sebagai pengingat siapa dirinya di mata kami.

Buku yang saya buat untuk kakaknya bercerita tentang kegigihan. Sedangkan di dalam buku ini, saya ingin menggarisbawahi bahwa Gendis akan selalu dicintai oleh kami.

Saya sendiri tumbuh sebagai perempuan dan merasa bahwa menjadi perempuan itu lebih banyak tentang permainan menyiasati hormon yang turun naik. Perempuan itu selalu memiliki banyak cinta. Akan tetapi, ada saatnya dia berada dalam perasaan terburuk dalam hidupnya akibat sistem hormonal yang tidak bisa dihindari. Saat hal itu terjadi dan kebetulan saya tidak ada di sisinya untuk mendampingi, saya berharap Gendis akan selalu teringat pesan utama dalam bukunya ini.

Kami mencintaimu, Nak! Kami menyayangimu. Semoga Allah SWT memberkahi.

Isi bukunya bisa diintip di bagian terakhir tulisan ini.

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The special book project for my little girl, Gendis, has finished, yay! It is the same kind of book I made for her brother before. (Read here for the story of Elang's book. ) The kind of book that she can open anytime and be reminded of how she were in my (our) eyes.

The book I made for the big boy was about being persistence. While for Gendis, I wanted to point out the fact that she was and will always be loved, especially by us.

I myself grew up as a girl and felt that being a girl were more like playing a hormonal mind games. Girl is full of loves, but there will be times when a girl feel like they don't belong anywhere. Some kind of situations when the world seems like falling out into pieces. When it happened, and if I don't happen to be there beside Gendis to get through her worst time, I hope she can get my message through this piece of book.

We love you Gendis. I love you. Barakallah.


Please see below for the content of the book.

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Camera Origami | Melipat Kertas Jadi Kamera

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Bocah-bocah saya rewel di dalam kendaraan saat keluarga kecil kami bepergian beberapa waktu lalu. Rasanya susah sekali membuat mereka duduk diam di kursi mobil. Lalu saya teringat bentuk origami yang populer saat saya kecil. Judulnya camera. Walaupun bentuknya tidak mirip kamera buatan manusia sama sekali, bentuk ini mengeluarkan bunyi saat ditekan. Jadi mirip deh dengan bunyi shutter di kamera.

Saya membuatkan mereka sebuah dengan kertas apapun yang ada. Walhasil mereka jadi sibuk berfoto-foto. Ayah, Ibu, Adik, Kakak semua kebagian giliran difoto. Hasil fotonya langsung jadi. Semua kertas2 bergambar, brosur, selebaran yang ada gambar makhluknya pura-pura menjadi hasil foto tercetaknya. Hihi anak-anak itu memang paling pinter berimajinasi ya. Perjalanan kami pun jadi lebih menyenangkan.

Jika ada yang berminat membuat sendiri juga, silakan tengok video di paling akhir tulisan ini. Dijamin gampang. Selamat bersenang-senang!

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On one of our family trip a while ago, my kids were a bit cranky. It was hard to make them sit still on the car. Suddenly I remembered an origami shape that were hits during my childhood. It was sort of a camera. It didn't resemble any human ever built camera but it produced a 'click' sound, just like a shutter sound that made it fun enough for kids to play with and explore.

I made one for my kids with whatever paper I found. They ended up busy taking pictures. Ayah, Ibu, Kakak, Adik, all gets photographed. They pretended that brochures with human/animal pictures on the car were the printed photos output. How kids are the best with their imagination. Thank God our trip was saved.

If you want to make one for yourself, please do check the video I made on the end of this post. Easy peasy, guaranted! Have fun!

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Cutie Cat | Kucing Kiyut

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Dua orang teman baik saya tahu saya mempunyai hobi membuat boneka. Mereka lalu meminta saya membuatkan mereka boneka kucing untuk para putri kecilnya.

Awalnya saya menolak berkali-kali. Saya gak yakin bisa menyelesaikannya. Pertama, saya mempunyai dua krucil dirumah yang membuat waktu me-time menjahit saya berkurang drastis. Apalagi kalau mereka mengajak bermain lego atau meminta dibacakan buku, tak bisa ditolak. Kedua, waktu yang saya butuhkan untuk membuat boneka cenderung lama. Pakai acara bikin konsep yang sesuai, lalu bikin desain, lalu bikin pola, lalu jahit prototipe, lalu revisi pola, lalu, lalu dan lalu. Banyak ubah sini ubah sana sebelum menjahit final. Walhasil, jarak antara permintaan dengan selesainya boneka bisa berbulan-bulan.

Entah kenapa akhirnya saya iyakan permintaan mereka. Mungkin rayuan maut lewat whatsapp? hehehe. Untungnya mereka berdua itu cukup sabar menunggu dan pasrah pada saya masalah bentuk dan warna.

Salah satu boneka kucingnya akan saya ceritakan disini. Ini adalah boneka untuk si kecil Amara. Permintaannya cuma satu, bisa untuk bantal. Mulailah saya membuat sketsa bentuk yang pas (sayangnya sketsa-sketsa itu terselip, jadi fotonya tidak bisa didokumentasikan disini). Berhubung permintaannya adalah sekalian bisa dijadikan bantal, saya pikir bentuk pola dua dimensi lah yang lebih pas. Tinggal gambar, lalu dijahit jadi satu dalam sekali jahitan. Gampang, pikir saya. Tapi dasarnya saya itu cenderung ribet, akhirnya malah ditambahi ini itu. Makin lama hihihi.

Saya lalu membuat prototipenya, dua kali. Dua kali ini tidak termasuk bongkar pasang loh yaa. Prototipe pertama masih kasar memang, namanya juga percobaan awal. Sempat bongkar jahitan untuk menemukan bentuk yang pas. Kurva sempurna di kertas pola, ketika disatukan menjadi boneka dan diisi dacron, belum tentu bentuk tiga dimensinya sebagus kurva kertasnya. Karena itulah, kegigihan untuk bongkar pasang yang menentukan bagus tidaknya hasil akhir boneka.

Setelah bentuk dasarnya oke, barulah saya buat versi mininya. Pakai acara bikin ukuran mininya karena saya ingin memasukkan beberapa teknik tambahan di boneka ini. Biar makin spesial hehe. Untuk bagian raut muka, saya bordir tangan sederhana. Lalu untuk bagian loreng-lorengnya saya bikin pakai teknik patchwork. Polanya juga bikin sendiri. Disinilah saat-saat dimana kemahiran menggunakan AutoCAD berguna hahaha.

Kucing versi mini ini pun jadilah. Bahkan saat baru selesai,  si mini ini sempat di gembol Gendis kemana-mana tanpa boleh diminta.

Begitulah penampakan mereka berdua. Mereka lucu banget yaa hihihi. Sewaktu saya tunjukkan ke mama Amara, beliau menyukainya. Dadah meooong. Semoga harimu menyenangkan bersama si bulat lucu Amara yaaa. XOXO

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Two good friends of mine knew that I liked to make dolls as a hobby. They asked me to make cat dolls for their princesses at home.

At first, I refused their request. I wasn't sure I can finish it on short time. I have two kiddos at home that reduced my sewing me-time drastically. It is hard to say no whenever they asked me to accompany them while playing legos or to read them story books. Second, I tended to need lots of time to make one doll. I would make concept, then designing, making patterns, sewing prototypes, revising patterns, and so on. It was always a back and forth process before finalizing the doll. The interval between first request and sending the final doll to them could be months.

I couldn't remember how I said yes for making the cat dolls. Luckily, both of them were patiently waiting and left everything on my own desicion, including the design. The story behind one of the cat doll will be shared here.

This are the cat for little Amara. Her mother request was only one. It should've also be served as a pillow. I started by making sketches for the design (unfortunately i lost this sketches somewhere over the pile so I can't show you the picture). Two dimensional pattern was the best. All I needed to is drawing the shape and sewing the frontside and backside all together. Easy peasy, or so i thought. Everything went more complicated as I decided to add this and that :D.

I made the prototype twice. The ripping out and sewing back the pattern were excluded, of course. The first prototype was very rough. I tore apart the rough doll once I didn't find it in perfect shape. After sewing the fabric and filling it with polyfil, perfect curve pattern on paper didn't always end up in good three dimensional form. The persistency to find the best form will determine the design quality.

Once I satisfied with the basic form, I started making the mini version of the cat doll (or should I say pillow?). I needed to make the mini because I wanted to add several techniques on it. It must be a special pillow :). I used simple embroidery to make the facial expression. For the strip pattern on its body, I used patchwork. Making patchwork pattern is always fun. This was the part where mastering AutoCAD was very helpful :p.

Taraaa..here comes the mini version and the big version. Aren't they cute? Amara's mom loved it too. Yippie! Bubye pussycat! Have a good times with little cutie pie Amara xoxo!

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Ebook "Hariku - My Day"

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Terimakasih teman-teman atas apresiasinya pada project buku bikinan sendiri pada postingan sebelumnya. Akhirnya, ketemu juga cara mengecilkan file saya agar bisa lebih mudah diakses bagi semua. Ebook nya gratisan, dan mohon maaf, sementara hanya bisa diakses oleh pemilik akun facebook dan twitter. Link untuk mengunduh ada di bagian terakhir tulisan ini. Mohon ebook hanya dipakai untuk kepentingan pribadi dan non-komersial saja.

Mohon dipahami bahwa ada perbedaan desain tata letak antara versi ebook dengan versi cetaknya. Hal ini untuk mendapat tampilan terbaik pada masing2 versinya. Format tercetaknya hanya dibuat berdasar pesanan. Jika berminat silakan hubungi saya di oktazaida@gmail.com atau DM saya lewat akun Instagram @storyforel.

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Thanks everyone for appreciating my previous post on handmade book project. Finally I found a way to reduce the file size to make it more accessible. Yay! The ebook is free, but I apologize that temporarily it can only be accessed by facebook and twitter account's owner only. Download link is on the end part of this post. Please use the ebook for personal and non-commercial use only.

Please do note that there is a layout discrepency between ebook and hardcopy version as I am trying to get the best view from each version. Hardcopy is made by order only. If you interested on it, please drop me a message at oktazaida@gmail.com or DM me on @storyforel Instagram account.

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HARIKU | MY DAY

Buku Cerita Anak-anak | Children Picture Book

Dwi bahasa | Bilingual - Bahasa Indonesia & English

Untuk mengunduh, silakan klik tombol di bawah ini | To download, please click the buttons below

Copyright STORYFOREL 2016

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Puffer Fish Plushie | Boneka Ikan Buntal

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Saya selalu suka dengan ikan buntal. Fakta bahwa dia bisa mengembungkan dirinya menjadi bola besar berduri terdengar absurd untuk saya. Membayangkan bahwa yang perlu ia lakukan untuk mengusir musuhnya pergi cuma menggembungkan dirinya lalu melayang-layang di dalam air terdengar seperti kartun dalam komik. Puff! Boing! Boing! Lalu selamatlah dirimu. Saya sebenarnya berharap saya juga bisa menggembungkan diri seringan udara, agar dapat melompat-lompat untuk berpindah dari tempat yang satu ke tempat yang lain dengan mudah. Tetapi, berhubung saya merasa gak punya musuh, kemampuan super itu jadi gak penting lagi.

Saya gak sabar membuat boneka ikan buntal untuk anak-anak saya. Harus jadi boneka ikan buntal paling unyu!  Setelah berhari-hari (..hmm berbulan-bulan sih tepatnya), akhirnya saya mendapat bentuk yang saya inginkan. Ikan buntal yang bulat unyu dengan bibir tebal. Bagian bulatnya lebih mirip dengan ikan landak sih, (dan saya baru tahu ada perbedaan di antara keduanya) tapi gapapa yaa.

Saya harus akui saya gak terlalu suka duri-duri jadi saya ganti duri2 tersebut dengan pola polkadot pada kainnya.

Saya membuat dua boneka. Saya juga sempat menuliskan cerita panjang tentang mereka. Ceritanya tentang ikan buntal yang mendapati kekurangannya ternyata bisa menjadi kelebihannya. Ceritanya masih tertulis dalam bahasa Inggris. Silakan scroll ke bagian akhir halaman ini untuk membacanya.

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I always find myself in love with puffer fish. The idea of being able to inflate the body into big spiny ball seems so absurd for me. Imagining that all it has to do after inflating is just flying floating in the deep to send its predator away is so comical. Puff! Boing-boing! Et voila, you're safe! I wish I can inflate myself and -hop-hop-hop- move from one place to another easily because I will be as light as the air. But, since I dont have any predator, we have to get rid of that wish away. Fufufu

So I could't wait to make pufferfish softies for my kids. It had to be the cutest pufferfish ever! After days and days and days (... eerr replace the days word with months-I'm hard to be pleased, pardon *grin*) I finally came up with the shape I liked. Round shape with full lips. Well, It's more like a porcupine instead of a puffer, (Oh don't you know there are differences between them?) but I like the 'PUFF' part so I'll continue with pufferfish name.

I got to admit that I dont like the spiny part, simply because spines were not cute :D, so I got rid of that away. I replaced the with polkadot pattern fabric.

I made two softies. I even came up to write a long story about them. Together, they made a story about a pufferfish who found out that his weakness could be his strength. Please read below.

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There was a little pufferfish lives in tropical coral with his family. He plays happily with other coral fish all day long. One day when they were swimming between coral, catching each other, the little pufferfish slipped on a hairy anemone. He lost his balance,  and PUFF!!, all of a sudden he turn into big spiny ball. He tried to swim again but all he can do was floating slowly. He looked at his body and he felt so shocked. He's never been like this before.

All his friends swam closer. They surrounded him in amazement and curiosity.
'wow, you're.. inflating '
'My mom once told me that a puffer could actually swallow an octopus'
'Can you do bouncing? How far can you go?'
The little puffer fish who was literally not little anymore felt awkward. All of what his friend said made him mad.
'Leave me alone!' he yelled.
Everybody turned quite in a second. One by one, they swam away and left him alone.
He felt so sad. He spew the water and went home.

"Dad, I was inflating, in front of my friend." Once he's home with his Dad.
"Hohoho, finally you did it for the first time, my son. How does it feel?"
"I hate it. I became big and ugly. I think they're all don't want to make friends with me anymore. Why do a puffer has to become a silly balloon once he swallows water?"
His father smiled. "Sometimes in this life, my dear son, there'll be time in this life when you don't even like yourself. You'll wish God to transform you into others. But once you're able to challenge yourself to see things differently, you'll wish to reborn exactly the same."

The next day, the little pufferfish went swimming around coral reef alone. When he get to the end of red corals, he encountered other coral fishes from a far. All seemed happily chatting and singing. He's about to join them, but something crossed his mind. He thought his friend would think he's weird for what happened yesterday. He didn't want to accidentally inflate again in from of them. He turned his back and sadly swam away.

He was just swimming few meters when he heard mass screaming. Oh, it sounded familiar. Yes, it was his friends screaming loud. The singing and chatting has turned into loud screaming. He decided to the get back to see what happened.

He saw a big sea snake making move toward those little coral fish.
"Heeeellllppp!" yelled the gobies.
The little puffer's trembling. He wanted to help but he's afraid. He never faced a snake before.
He thought what was needed was gaining some time so that his friends could getaway and hide inside the coral reef.
The big sea snake was chasing one of the little anglefish. With his slim long body, soon he'd be able to chase her. When the angle swam to the right, she faced the snake tongue that coming out from his fanged mouth scarily. When she turned and swam back to the left, there's the snake tail ready to wrap her. There's clearly a fear on her face.
Right when the snake was about to grab her, the little pufferfish came and stood bravely in the middle of them. "Run!" He yelled to the angle fish. The sea snake stopped and felt surprise. This gave her some moment for running away.
'Aahh another little fish. Why did you ask her to run? Do you want to replace her and become my meal?' Said the snake in deep and terrifying voice.
The little pufferfish went trembling again. He's too afraid to say a word.
"Well then, if that's what you wish!" said the snake again. The sea snake come closer and ready to open his mouth.
The little puffer closed his eyes in fear. In darkness, he remembered what his father said last night.
With all the power he had, he opened his mouth. He tried to swallow as much water as he could.  What happened the day before was repeated again. Puff!! He turned into a big spiny ball. Bigger ball, and sharper spine!
The sea snake stopped.
"Aarrgh, turn out you're a puffer." He yelled in mad voice. He knew that he can't eat a puffer, not only they will clog and hurt his throat, they're also poisonous.
He's looking around searching for another little fish, but no one around. All fish has been hiding inside the coral reef. He looked angrily toward the puffer that was floating slowly in front of him.
"I'll be back!" The snake went away.
The little puffer felt so much relieve. He has just getaway from a terrifying predator.
All other little fishes that were hiding and watching from inside the coral cave, came out and swam closer.
"You're my hero! Thank you so much!" said the little anglefish.
"I never saw such bravery before." Said a butterfly fish.
"You're cool. I wish I can inflate just like you" said the others.
The little pufferfish was smiling. He finally understood what his father said. He's proud of himself.

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