Walk A Mile In Her Shoes

Ever heard about this campaign before ? No ?
It's okay. Me neither.

But stumbled upon their website just now, and this movement is amazed me. Like seriously !
People need to do this campaign more, men must participate here.

What is Walk A Mile In Her Shoes ?

A Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® Event is a playful opportunity for men to raise awareness in their community about the serious causes, effects and remediations to men's sexualized violence against women.

First You Walk the Walk
There is an old saying: "You can't really understand another person's experience until you've walked a mile in their shoes." Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® asks men to literally walk one mile in women's high-heeled shoes. It's not easy walking in these shoes, but it's fun and it gets the community to talk about something that's really difficult to talk about: gender relations and men's sexualized violence against women.

Then You Talk the Talk
It's critical to open communication about sexualized violence. While hidden away, sexualized violence is immune to cure. Unfortunately, it's difficult to get people talking. People unfamiliar with men's sexualized violence against women don't want to know it exists. It's ugly. People that have experienced sexualized violence themselves want to forget about it. How do you get people talking now, so they can prevent it from happening? And if it's already happened, how do you help them recover.

A Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® Event is abundant with opportunities to get people talking. For preventive education, it helps men better understand and appreciate women’s experiences, thus changing perspectives, helping improve gender relationships and decreasing the potential for violence. For healing, it informs the community that services are available for recovery. It demonstrates that men are willing and able to be courageous partners with women in making the world a safer place. The Walk Event Experience provides a description of how these opportunities might present themselves at a Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® Event.

Not Just a Women's Issue
Here Sexualized violence does not just affect women. It affects the men who care about them, their families, their friends, their coworkers, and their communities. Sexualized violence is epidemic. Some of the statistics: Every two minutes someone is raped. One in six women are victims of sexual assault. That means someone you know, someone you care about, has been or may become the victim of sexual violence. It may be your mother, your sister, your friend, your girlfriend, your wife, your coworker or your daughter.

History of Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®
Frank Baird created Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® in 2001.
What started out as a small group of men daring to totter around a park has grown to become a world-wide movement with tens of thousands of men raising millions of dollars for local rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters and other sexualized violence education, prevention and remediation programs.

Who can join the campaign ?
All of us.
From USA to Arabia. From Netherland to Pakistan.
We should encourage our male friends or coworkers or families or colleagues to join this event and participate more.
You can register to their website here and starting to organize your event in your country.

I would like to organize one here in Jakarta.
You coming with me ?

Pictures credited to Walk A Mile In Her Shoes website and from other organizations who condone the same event around the world.

So..
Are you men enough to wear your red high heels and join us ?

Up All Night - Take That

As you are all aware, am a HUGE number one fan of TAKE THAT !

I practically grow up listening to their songs, mimicking their cheesy dances (although for this, you can't never get an approval from anybody. I'd kill those person right away when they blabbered out their mouth about my cheesy Take That dancing...hahahhaha..)

Last night, i got a bit in my "bring back the memory" mode with old songs and i stumbled upon this beautiful video from my favorite band.
It called Up All Night.
The video was debuted on 27 January 2009, with Mark Owen on lead vocals. The video was directed by Daniel Wolfe. It features Take That performing at a street party in Croydon, with footage of them on a lorry.
Gary Barlow does not appear in the second half of the music video because his pregnant wife went into labour whilst filming. Cute, eh..

And what i thought was the cutest is the props !

There were lots of colorful balloons, flickering tiny bulbs, colorful checkered table cloths, and those gorgeous handmade buntings.
Plus they pictured a great and friendly neighborhood, kids running around with their costumes and dancing with their fireworks in hand, lots of stylish street food stalls, and everybody seemed like having a great times with their neighborhood festive.

Yeah..great foods, friendly neighborhood, soulful songs plus a fantastic live performance from Take That.
What more can you ask, right ?

I tried to screen captured the video but i failed at being cool..hahahaha..so i googled all these still images i can get and i uploaded the coolest video ever itself below..

Enjoy !

Little Miss - Leather Bag Editions

Few months ago, i wrote on my facebook that i try to expand my business team up with my father.
At the moment, fabric material for my bags were only from cotton or canvas or linen material. Never from leather, because i don't have any skill to sew on leather and i don't have that leather sewing machine. Although some of my friends told me that they use the same sewing machine but only replacing the needle.

But i was still afraid to jump into new territory, not afraid actually, more of clueless and felt kinda blindfold.

So the solution was my dad went to his friend at Bandung and he asked him to make the sample first and after that we will see the response from our potential customers.

When those bags are arrived, i know that they will be awesome but i never expected that the labor cost for sewing 4 bags was almost 1,5 million ! Dammit ! Hahahahahaha...(speechless tears)
But i think that was kinda the price you have to pay for a new experience. You never know until you jumped into it, right ?!

So, the moral of the story is i NEED to learn to sew on leather.
Or, i need to looking for another leather sewer ! Hahaahahahaha...:-)

Below are those LITTLE MISS - LEATHER BAG EDITIONS.
I know am new in this area, so i need your developing critics, girls..

For orders and inquiries, please leave a comment below or you can text me at 0811.954469.

The Formula - or 'how to price your wares correctly'

It's crazy how often the topic of pricing comes up in conversation around here.

- It might be triggered by our frustrations with a comment on a blog about how such-and-such beautiful, bespoke, handmade item is 'too expensive'.

- We might be throwing around business ideas & offering advice to a intern or friend who wants to start a small business.

- Or we might be discussing a new venture for our own business (such as Inklet), trying to figure out if a product is actually viable to produce and sell at a reasonable price.

The thing is, pricing yourself correctly is HARD. there are so many things working against you when you're a small, local business trying to sell your wares. Like the fact that 99% of the products in your marketplace are manufactured overseas with poor ethical & enviromental standards and sold at a price that you'll never be able to match. And the fact that in your own community there are people who will operate at a loss on a hobby basis because they don't depend on the income from the business. And because people as whole have a mindset that cheaper is better and haven't been educated about the 'real cost' of their purchase.

Since the very beginning, we've always tried to price our textiles correctly. If it wasn't for the wonderful book Craft Inc., we might never have known about The Formula (as we have dubbed it), and by now we would have worked ourselves into the ground.

But fortunately we did know about The Formula (said with a reverent tone) and would like to share it with you today:

What do you reckon? Sounds pretty full on, huh? All those x2's! Well let me tell you, those x2's are there for a reason and without them we wouldn't be here writing this post to you today.

Let's break it down:

Cost price

Your cost price is the cost of your time (or someone else's) plus the cost of your materials.

Time cost
If you're doing the work yourself you need to pay yourself an hourly rate. We calculated our rate based on what we'd have to pay someone else to do the job for us. Because if we got bigger, that's what we'd have to do. Make it a realistic figure. For us it's $20per hour. You might be able to work to a lesser figure, that's fine. If you outsource, remember to factor in any time you need to spend liaising with or managing your makers.

Material costs
These are your direct material costs, not equipment or setup. For example, we factor in the cost of our basecloth, our inks and our heat setting, but not the screen exposure.

Wholesale price

Your wholesale price is your cost price, doubled. Why double it? Because you need to cover all your overheads! Your rent, electricity, equipment, etc etc etc. If you were paying someone else for their labor then you'd be making nothing for yourself if you didn't mark up the price. Update - double might not work for everyone, everyone's overheads are different, but the important point is that you need *some* markup here. If you material costs are very high then double might be extreme, though it's important to remember that high material costs come with high investment and risk, which you should be covering yourself for.

Retail price

Finally, your retail price is your wholesale price, doubled. Again, why doubled? Because retailers will typically need to mark your goods up by 100%. That sounds extreme, but a retailer also has all of their overheads to cover, plus they have to factor in losses from goods that don't sell. Update - 100% is the standard for *our* industry. If your industry has a standard markup of say, 50%, then you can work to that. Do your research and find out.

The important thing to note is, you need to sell at the retail price (or close to it) in your online shop and at markets. Even if you don't wholesale yet. For three reasons:

1) Because when the time comes to start wholesaling your goods, you can't be undercutting your wholesale customers.

2) Because there are additional overheads involved in playing the role of retailer yourself - packaging costs, shop fees, time to photograph & list items, market stall fees etc etc.

3) Because you're potentially doing the rest of the handmade industry a disservice if you don't.

That last point is a crucial one. And a tough topic. On the one hand, it's important to acknowledge that not everyone can launch into their small business selling at a 'proper' retail price. And one could argue that it's those stallholders with more affordable handmade items that help keep our handmade marketplace a thriving and dynamic one. But on the flip side, other businesses who have set their prices at a sustainable level aren't able to compete. For example, a fully lined zip purse made from our fabric with the above formula would need to be sold for around $35. How often do you see these being sold at markets for $15 or less?

One last thing
Whilst we're here, let's just take a moment to reflect on how the above formula applies to a $15 t-shirt from a large chain store. Considering that some large retailers have markups of 200 or 300%, how much did the person who sewed that garment get paid? Society seems to be more educated about battery hens than their human counterpart.

We hope this post has shed some light for both customers and other business owners alike. We figure if we're going to selling fabric for $96 a metre and t-shirts for $45 then it's important for you to understand where those figures came from. And we hope you'll think about this post when you next think of someone's wares as being 'too expensive', or when you find you next 'bargain' in the stores.

*Repost from http://inkandspindle.blogspot.com/

Crafty Weekend with Indonesian Crafter in April

Tanggal 26 April yang lalu, Indonesian Crafter mengadakan crafty weekend workshop bersama Mba Nuning Subastian dari Blessedly Blissful Craft, membuat decoupage bottle dan Mba Mega Dewi Zhang dari Mederuz Craft, membuat dream catcher necklace.

Ini sebetulnya bukan kali perdana Indonesian Crafter membuat crafty workshop, tapi ini kali perdana mereka membuat 2 buah workshop sekaligus.
Uwaaahh..bisa dibayangkan betapa hectic rasanya..
Tapi dukungan dari banyak temen crafter dan non crafter membuat kita para admin Indonesian Crafter maju terus pantang mundur...hehehehe...

Support tempat oleh Mba Mira Balya dari Sanggar Ardhanari membuat workshop kali ini seru banget, selain tempatnya nyaman dan banyak angin (membuat para peserta workshop jadi males pulang...hahaahha...), hal yang bikin seru lainnya adalah adanya potluck.
Potluck adalah membawa makanan atau snack sendiri - sendiri dan nantinya akan dinikmati baersama - sama. Intinya adalah kebersamaan dalam kesederhanaan.

Penasaran pengen tau seperti apa suasana saat itu ? Yuk simak foto - foto liputannya...

DECOUPAGE WORKSHOP

DREAM CATCHER NECKLACE

And the photo finale...hahahhaa...as always...

That's there..

Tttaaappiii..akan ada kejutan lain selain workshop ini.
Apakah itu kejutannya ?
Kalian harus sabar menanti sampai tiba saatnya yaaa..hihihihi..i knooww, admin Indonesian Crafter memang senang membuat kejutan..

See you on the next crafty weekend !
Keep on being crafty...:)

Crafty Weekend with Ace Hardware

Ace Hardware Indonesia invited us, Indonesian Crafter, to make a crafty weekend with their customers by making a key chain from used gallon cap.

Marks the date...

May 2, 2015
Saturday
3 pm
Ace Hardware Mal Balekota Tangerang

ALL FREE !

See you there, crafty peeps..:)

Back Again in 2015

Hellooo...

For those of you whose waiting for my blog update through 2015, i am really sorry because so many things happened during early 2015 and i couldn't keep up to kept writing my blog and doing house chores at the same time.

Plus my kid kinda needs more of my time cause he was in his stage of being a selfish little kid..hahahhaha...

And so does my dad. I kinda think that my dad can be a bit demanding for my spare time than my son...hahahahaha...

But, am back again now.
I tried to post once a day or twice a week for my own pleasure, but bare with me.
Cause, let's be honest..am just an ordinary housewife..:)