Christmas Gift 2008

Now that Christmas has passed, I can safely share this without ruining the surprise for anyone :) Last year in June (I believe), I made Hihiwai cards with my friend's gocco printer. I attempted to explain the gocco concept in a fairly recent post. At the time, I couldn't find a use for these cards and I made 30 of them too! A week before Christmas, while I was frantically searching for anything to accompany the Hihiwai ornament I made for this year's Christmas gift, I found these Hihiwai cards. So, I wrote "Mele Kalikimaka" on the cards with a pink/silver marker and attached a card to the ornament with a red/blue ribbon. I am not ashamed to say that the ribbons are recycled from gifts I received over the years. The completed product turned out so beautiful!

Hihiwai Ornament

My Etsy shop, Achoo's Mudpit, opened last week on December 6th. To welcome the grand opening of my shop, I put up a hihiwai Christmas ornament for sale. Can you believe it? The dream of having my own shop, sharing my artistic talent and creativity to the public, has finally come true! I am in awe and disbelief, because it was only two months ago that I created this art blog. Now with the shop, everything is moving so fast and I am enjoying every moment of it.  

I opened the shop with a hihiwai ornament because it is the best representation of me. It illustrates my love of personifying things that I find interesting into cartoony characters. The ornament also shows a part of me that I've just recently discovered and have begun to embrace - it is following my mom's footsteps in sewing. I remember the very first thing I ever sewed was a pair of pink colored over-sized shorts. Of course I didn't wear it, but I enjoyed the experience entirely, especially when my mom walked me through the steps - making the pattern, cutting the fabric, working the sewing machine, etc...  These past few weeks, those memories came back and the holiday spirit illuminated everything around me. I wanted to sew and I decided to make my Christmas gifts this year. With the hihiwai ornament, I applied the same concepts my mom taught me but without the sewing machine. Below are photos of the materials I used to make the hihiwai ornament. 



Some of the materials I used include: 1) Felt: champagne, orange, and charcoal; 2) Cotton string: orange and black; 3) Thread: champagne, orange, black, and charcoal; and 4) Hawaiian fiber fill.  The fill is very soft and poofy. I also bought a pair of fabric scissors that can cut fine corners. 

The completed hihiwai Christmas ornament is a success! I made 7 so far and all of them look so adorable that I feel reluctant to give out. I hung one on my crazy plant so that I could take photos for my Etsy shop. Every time I look at the ornament, I wonder how in the world I can sew so evenly. Then I thought, must be my mom :)




I also made two cards to accompany this ornament. The first card is my not-so-business-like business card that has my logo and art blog website address. My logo is Achooish with a pooping pig. The second card is an information card that briefly describes the life of a hihiwai.


Currently, I am looking forward to sewing 15 more ornaments, as well as finalizing the colors of the other two stream animal characters. Please remember to check back for more updates on my art and my shop.

Hihiwai

Do you know what a hihiwai is? How about a hapawai and a pipiwai? A year ago, I wouldn't care about what they are. Not that they are uninteresting creatures, I was probably preoccupied with finishing my research and finding a real job. When I got a job with the State as an inexperienced hydrolo-lo-gist, I had the opportunity to learn a lot about the streams in Hawaii. On my first field visit to Maui, I snorkled with staff from the Division of Aquatic Resources. They showed me some of the freshwater animals present in the stream - hihiwai, opae, and oopu. Shortly after the field visit, I bought the book Hawaii's Native & Exotic Freshwater Animals so I could learn more about our stream buddies. As with all things I fancy, I put pencil to paper and out came cartoon hihiwai.

Hihiwai (Neritina granosa) is a freshwater snail that lives mostly in the lower and middle reaches of Hawaii's streams. The hihiwai is amphidromous - it migrates between the ocean and the streams. When the eggs hatch in the streams, they flow downstream and spend about a year in the ocean and then they go back upstream. These animals are usually found in a single line. On my last trip to East Maui (which was last week), I saw so many hihiwai. I even got to hold one in my hands. They look so small and fragile, it is hard to believe that they can move upstream against the flow.

As part of our division's effort to increase stream awareness, my hihiwai was made into a temporary tattoo with the words "I'm a Hihiwai. Protect Our Streams." When I first distributed the tattoos at an outreach event, I was so happy to see the smiles on the keiki faces as they applied the tattoo. I also made hihiwai blank cards using my friend's gocco printer. I have never seen or heard of such a device and was very excited to use it. First, I printed a black and white hihiwai. Then, I positioned the print-out on the gocco screen, a cardboard and extra padding material on top, and then placed all these layers in a slot in the device. My friend installed two gocco light bulbs and ... a moment of slience. We were both very excited as we never used the gocco before and didn't know what was gonna happen. Then ... she pressed on the machine and POOF!!! out came a screen with the hihiwai outlines. We applied blue paint over the screen and printed over 30 cards that day. I know I haven't explained the gocco concept very clearly ... just think of it as T-shirt printing made easy.

I am currently working on cartoon versions of the oopu alamoo and the opae. I already have sketches of them, so I only need to digitize them. Should I tweak this hihiwai and create cartoon hapawai and pipiwai? I really like these snails.