Musank’s Projects

Trying Denim on Denim look at Battery Boutelle

Posted on Jun 25, 2012 in Featured, Musank's Projects, Photoshoot Projects, Travel Adventures | 0 comments

I’ve never been a fan of denim on denim look, although that particular trend always finds itself back year after year after year. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but denim on denim look is best suited for a person with solid physical stamina and strength, slaving under the sun daily at a gold mine somewhere.

Me? Well, let’s say I’m currently very much removed from that concept :) Therefore, I was ready to dismiss the entire thing once and for all.

My San Francisco City Hall Wedding Outfit

Posted on Jun 9, 2012 in Musank's Projects, Photoshoot Projects, Thoughts | 4 comments

It has been six months since we tied the knot at San Francisco City Hall. The practical city hall ceremony that I wanted, I got. Wish came true; thank you God. Since summer wedding is coming in full swing (and you’ll want to look great even if you’re not the bride), I’d like to share details of my San Francisco City Hall wedding outfit in which every piece was less than $100. Of course, it helped to have great friends, perfect natural afternoon light, and Arlene Coleman’s help in make-up and hair. They’re, naturally, priceless.

DIY Project Agnes Headband

Posted on May 31, 2012 in Do You DIY?, Musank's Projects, Photoshoot Projects | 2 comments

There are times when you’re left with a lot of leftover holiday decorations that you just ended up staring at for the longest time during spring cleaning (or summer cleaning, or fall cleaning, or winter cleaning — it’s up to you). For me, it was a sparkly silver branches decoration leftover from last Christmas.

So one day, I thought about making a headband from the branch’s sparkly silver leaves; a little bit Grecian and girly, but a bit more grown up. I named it Agnes Headband.

New Fafafoom 3.0

Posted on May 26, 2012 in Musank's Projects, Thoughts | 0 comments

When I was finally fed up with the previous server fafafoom was in, I didn’t realize how much work need to be done. For starters, fafafoom is very heavy on image attachments, and apparently moving to a new Cloud server, for this particular instance, required a database rebuild. That means, all of the images and their attachment ids from the previous fafafoom iteration didn’t mean a damn thing.

Determined not to let these kinds of problem happen again in the future, I was advised to use a photo album plugin and host the images somewhere else. I picked Google. So for the first one week and a half, after I get off of my day job, I re-upload all of the image albums on Google. 150+ albums, 100+ posts editing, and several mishaps later, there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel.

Fafafoom in 2010

Fafafoom Now

However, there were new events to review, new experience to be had, new pictures to be edited and uploaded, and new content to be written. Honestly, I don’t mind doing this because this is a “fun” work – building fafafoom, that is. So fast-forward another two weeks later, and fafafoom is ready to view with its latest four no-longer-in-queue posts: Academy of Art 2012 Graduate Fashion Show, Tuan Tran’s OriWear debut, Ahead of the Fashion’s May 8, 2012 event, and California College of the Arts 2012 Graduate Fashion Show. And what luck, this is a long Memorial Day weekend with lots of free festivals going about, the biggest obviously the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th Anniversary! What joy!

DIY Project Convertible Fabric Clutch

Posted on Feb 24, 2012 in Do You DIY?, Musank's Projects | 2 comments

Clutches are all the rage nowadays, and it’s hard to see fashionable gals without a clutch or two in her possession. The thing is, it’s actually pretty easy and fun to make one yourself!

Quite a while back, I made this convertible fabric clutch using instructions found on page 63 of Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader’s Hip Handbags book. This book is full of highly customizable projects, and the instructions are quite clear and concise. Even though the customization examples highlighted in the book tend to go towards the older crowd (the term “hip” here might result in snickers for Generation Y and below), but the basics definitely open so many doors for the creative minds.

Versatile Sleeveless Blazer

Posted on Oct 17, 2011 in Do You DIY?, Musank's Projects | 0 comments

Let me just quickly share how versatile a piece of sleeveless blazer can be. I certainly did not expect it, but now I have three long sleeveless blazers that work in heavy-duty rotation every so often since late August.

Of course, this item’s hike to popularity has been in public’s eye since late spring / early summer this year, but I personally tend to skip the wear-it-as-a-dress route and personalize it more towards late summer / early fall, this awkward in-between season we currently live in :)

I wear variations of all three looks since late August.

Three Girls, One Camera

Posted on Oct 12, 2011 in Musank's Projects, Photoshoot Projects | 2 comments

It was Friday night and a house party was held for a good friend of ours that were leaving SF Bay Area for good to be with his sweetheart. My lovely boyfriend Christian Hadidjaja thought about having a photo session at the apartment when the opportunity presented itself.

“If we have time,” he calmly said as we’re preparing to leave.

Later that night, when we started to celebrate at our friend’s apartment, he set up some lighting close to one of the white walls of the apartment’s living room. After a short testing period (during which everyone was complaining about having “lightning bolt flash” indoor), the group just spontaneously started to take turns posing in front of the camera. No fancy direction or choreography, just pure joy and fun (and perhaps narcissism) and a little bit of childish curiosity.