More Than Just My Birthday

I know very well not everyone take his or her birthday seriously, but I’m quite the opposite. Birthday has always been a big thing to me. It is not only my birthday, but also a day to appreciate my parents bringing me to this beautiful world. Obviously, it is not the only day I appreciate it but it just has a special meaning.

I celebrate my birthday each year as usual, but somehow I just wanted to make it extra special last year and thus I decided blogging. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I got to know all of you my amazing friends who give me love and support through ups and downs of my life. Taking your time to read, comment, like, and even send me personal emails. I know it can be very time-consuming, but none of you never stopped doing so because of that. Your support has been my greatest motivation to keep doing what I am doing. This has been an amazing journey for me. It allows me to connect with you through art, photography, and stories. Most importantly, it allows me to stay true to who I am.

Although it is my birthday today, it is no longer my birthday. I would like to make it our birthday as to thank each of you (my fellow bloggers and Instagram friends) for all your love and support.

Let’s get the birthday celebration started!!! 😉 Shall we?

My mum started celebrating my birthday by giving me “red eggs” and red pockets for a few years already. It is a very traditional way to celebrate birthday in Chinese culture. She usually places it in front of my room door so that I can feel the joy of it early in the morning. As we are celebrating our birthday together, please come and take a bite. Don’t forget to take your red pockets! 😉

The best part of the traditional birthday celebration this year is the birthday note my mum left me. “Wish you (piggy younger sister) a happy birthday and a good health!”, written by piggy mama. I always call my mum piggy mama, but never thought she would take it seriously. How cute she is!!! 🙂

Well, it’s my birthday so how can I not to treat myself with a nice birthday gift especially when I haven’t created any digital art pieces for a long time?!?!?

I would like to stick to the birthday theme “red” and thus the art piece I created was mainly covered with a red color. Also, the color of red often symbolizes luck and joy in our culture. I think it’s perfect to wish myself/you a wonderful year with good luck and joy. What makes even more special was the original photo itself. It was taken during my Porto trip, which I see it as a trip of “dream comes true”. Using this particular photo as a base for creating this digital art is to advocate the positive thoughts of “dreams can always come true”.  With me looking up to intensify the meaning behind the art – hope is always around.  All these positive meanings were well blended in this art will sure make this year filled with dreams, hope and happiness.

Apart from birthday gift and celebration, I think it would be awesome to show you how I looked like as a baby. I don’t mind to share it, but please make a promise to me not to laugh at how chubby I was. 😀 I always ask my mum what she had when she was having me in her belly to make me this chubby. I looked more like a ball than a baby seriously lol. 😛

I was not only  a chubby ball, but also  a happy baby. I kept eating, laughing and sleeping most of the time.

I told you that birthday is a big thing to me (to my family and relatives also). Look how excited we were when blowing out all the candles before sharing the birthday cake!

From left to right – my elder brother, elder cousin brother, younger cousin brother, me

Not only did we like to celebrate birthday together, but we also liked going to the park together. Let me tell you a secret (shh…please don’t tell anyone). I saw my younger cousin brother as my future husband while he saw me as his future wife at that time.  Obviously, the dream has remained as a dream. He is already happily married.

Wish us a wonderful birthday! 🙂 🙂 🙂

*Sorry for not making this post as cohesive as I can, but I was way too happy and I had no idea what I was doing lol! But well, one thing for sure I would like to give you a big thumb up for being my amazing friends!!! ❤

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Blossoming Flower

As many of you know that I hasn’t been really happy since my mood has been dramatically affected by the loss of my uncle. In fact, I’ve become more emotional nowadays because there were way too many sad incidents happened to my family and  life struggles happened in the past few years. It is what gets me realized life is too short. I must do something that makes me truly happy. Therefore, I choose to make art to express my emotions and thoughts. To me, art is a wonderland where I can transform a blank canvas into a colorful world which I envision to see…I can express my million complicated feelings without even talking…I can paint whatever I want without being judged by the blank canvas…The creativity will always be remained in me.

The digital artwork I made this time is exactly a wonderland to me. It is a wonderland which I envision to see in my life. Although the sad incidents and my own life struggles happened in the past few years have dragged me down for a while, I believe it is not the end of my life. In fact, I believe it is a new beginning of my life. Without bitterness, I will never know what sweetness tastes like. Without failure, I will never know what success is. Without life struggles, I will never know what I truly want. I know all of these happened will never be able to stop my life from blossoming just as the Khloe you and I see from the artwork standing firm in the middle of a blossoming flower. The more the difficulties I experience, the stronger I am. The more the cruel reality turns my life into black and white, the more vibrant I will color my life. Choosing Amsterdam as the artwork background not only reminds me of the good memories I had when travelling to Amsterdam, but it also symbolizes that bad time will be flamed to dust and good time will always be here with me.

Although the artwork was initially made to encourage myself to stay positive, it isn’t dedicated to myself anymore. It is made for all of us now. I hope the artwork helps you out and puts a big smile on your face when dealing with ups and downs in your life. I also hope  to see how your life blossom as a colorful flower. Here I am sending my sincere thanks to you who always brighten my day with your love and continuous support. I love you all my beautiful souls! ❤ Hugs and kisses to you ❤

Stay positive and smile always,

xoxoxoxo Khloe 🙂

The Sweetest Love

My grandma has never changed a bit from I was a kid until now. She has always been genuine, loving and caring. She always spent a massive amount of time taking care of my grandfather who had stroke and diabetes before I was born. His physical movement had become limited and he needed to use a wheelchair if he wanted to go somewhere a bit far after having the stroke. He also needed to follow a special diet because of diabetes. My grandma knew she couldn’t take him back to the time when he had no stroke and diabetes, but all she knew was taking good care of him might prevent his case to go worse. From that time onwards, she handled everything related to him from a simple daily activity to a more complicated tasks. She helped him to put on his clothes and bathe. She was fully in charge of his diet to ensure every single meal he had was nutritious enough  to keep him healthy. She took him to a hospital for constant regular check-ups and wherever he wanted to go. Anything could help comfort him and make him happy, she would do it without any complaints.

Unfortunately, he had his second stroke which left him unconscious when I  was only 7 years old. Even though he was in a serious condition, my grandma was very strong and she didn’t cry a single tear. She just focused on praying hard for him and hope he would get better. He finally became conscious after a week something and told her to be well-prepared if anything happened to him again. Then, he passed away 2 days after. Although she didn’t cry much, I knew it was the toughest time of her life to lose someone she loves the most in a short period of time. I must say she was incredibly strong. She remained positive and went back to her regular routines of taking care of my brother and I right after the funeral. It was a time when my grandma and I started to develop a great bond between each other. One day, I told my grandma that I wanted to sleep with her. In fact, I didn’t want her to feel lonely without my grandfather sleeping next to her. She started to feel the love I have for her and taking good care of me has become one of her favorite things to do. She took me to school, made me delicious meals, buy me toys that I wanted…Gradually, my happiness has become all that matters to her. All these years, she wants nothing but to see me happy.

As her 92nd birthday is approaching, I’ve been stressing on what to buy her lately.  However, there is nothing she is lack of in terms of all the material things. I figured making her a hand-made birthday card with the digital art I made and other photos we took together is much more meaningful than anything else. Choosing this artwork with me smiling for the birthday card is most appropriate as she loves to see my smiling face. My smile is a reflection of all the hard work she put into making me happy. The messy background represents how much she protected me from all the noises that might be harmful to me in order to keep me happy. This artwork will be an artwork represented the love between us is unconditional and the love I received from her is the sweetest love I’ve ever had in my life.

I love you grandma!!! ❤

With love,

xoxoxo your granddaughter Khloe ❤ 🙂 ❤

Eternal love

Millions of shoes laying in the store,

You could have more than you ask for,

Without a doubt you only choose one that fits like a glove.

 

Billions of people in the world,

You could have more than you imagine out of the world,

Throughout the world you only see one you’ll never want to lose is what makes an eternal love.

 

 

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Inner happiness

For the longest time of 17 years without studying hard, I thought I would never attempt to study hard ever after.  However, my studying style has completely turned upside down ever since I chose to study overseas. The moment I stepped into a classroom with foreign language, I was extremely scared and puzzled. I felt like I made the biggest mistake of my life. I wish I had never asked my parents allowed me to study overseas. I knew I couldn’t take back the promise I made to my parents, so I chose to study hard to catch up with the modules. I have to admit that it was by far the hardest time of my life. Studying 80% of the subjects I had never studied before with foreign language was incredibly difficult for me, especially I was the one who had never attempted to study hard in the past. Therefore, I decided to put my heart and soul with tripling efforts on studying and it  was the time when I started to study day and night like a crazy nerd. After a few months of studying crazily, I started seeing results. I became one of the top 3 students in majority of the subjects I studied. I could taste how sweet the fruitful moment was resulted from the hard work I put. That sweetness remained in my head which pushed me to study even harder in order to taste it continuously. Somehow I was addicted to such sweetness which had become an ego of me. I couldn’t care anything else, but the results. I forgot how enjoyable the studying process can be. I forgot the beauty of daily life. I even forgot to care about my inner happiness.

It eventually took me a few years to realize the importance of inner happiness. Chasing for the results can give me instant excitement and happiness, but it can never last forever. These feelings can be very illusive just like externalities can be changed very rapidly. You can never hold it tight and make it stay the way it is forever. On the contrary, inner happiness can conquer whatever changes on the outside. Look at the digital artwork my friend and I created. We used cool tone colors which are not often the popular colors associated with happiness. However, I was incredibly happy on the inside and the feelings of happiness was very intense till a point where the cool tone colors had no effect on changing it  from a happy image to a sad image. Inner happiness also helps protect you from negativity. It is inevitable to avoid experiencing negativity in our lives. The negativity of our lives was being portrayed as the noises attacking me in the background. However, the level of happiness I had didn’t change a bit due to the fact that my inner happiness had already tuned itself into a big scarf I worn like an armor to protect me from negativity. I’m glad I can finally enjoy my life now due to the power of inner happiness and get to understand why many advocate “happiness comes from within”.

P.S. Thank you everyone for being patient with me since I took a break traveling to Thailand! ❤ I’ll try to upload my traveling photos in a few weeks. Stay tuned for that!!! 🙂

Stay positive and smile always,

xoxoxoxo Khloe

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Move on

Hi everyone! 🙂 How are you doing? I’m glad to know many readers like the artworks I posted here. It really motivates my friend and I to create more artworks. Here is another digital artwork “Move On” my friend and I created. We didn’t use a lot of fancy techniques to create this artwork the time because we want you all to see the picture a bit more clearly.

I was enjoying the beauty of the river at that time and there was a lot happening alongside the river. People were busy running errands. Taxi drivers were taking their passengers from one place to another. Some people were eating at the restaurants while some were talking on the street. The entire picture somehow made me think of breakup. Although not all breakups are heartbreaking, some of them definitely are. Those heartbreaking breakups can make us cry for hours, days, months or even years for some. seems like we are lack of energy or something… All we do is just cry and think about the memories we had with that particular person we love/loved. However, what I would like to make a note out of this artwork is not encouraging you to give up on yourself if you experience a difficult time during your breakup. All I want to say is to let go of your unhappiness and look forward to the future. It might sound cliché, but it’s so true. The world keeps turning everyday just as the way  there was a lot happening in the artwork. There are so many beautiful things out there waiting for us to explore. Keep thinking about the terrible breakup and giving up on yourself are just like blocking the river to flow. Imagine if someone blocks the river from flowing, it will create a disaster like flooding. It not only affects the river itself, but also affects everything surrounded it. The same could also happen to you. Giving up on yourself will stop you from moving forward just like the river is getting blocked. Everything will eventually get blasted creating a flood to your life. It not affects your life, but also people around you.  You will find yourself cry more than ever and feel like everything is lifeless. People around you will be under pressure worrying something might happen to you. You should do something that makes you happy and talk to friends/family about it. Just take baby steps to forget about it slowly. I know it’s difficult at first, but please be patient with it. Please don’t let your negative emotions block your vision from seeing how beautiful the world is. It’s like the purple color was being used in the artwork blocking you from seeing how colorful the original photo is. Trust me life is beautiful. ❤

Stay strong and positive 🙂 ,

xoxoxoxo Khloe

If you are interested in the artwork my friend and I created/ you have any questions, please feel free to email/comment in the comment section.

My email: fab.ur.life@gmail.com

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Gratitude

Hi everyone! Hope you all are doing well! 🙂  After finishing “The Journey of Self-Discovery” series, here I am again introducing you the latest digital artwork “Gratitude” my friend and I created.

Before I jump into the artwork, I would like to tell you something about myself. I’m an emotional person who easily shows any type of emotions  on my face. I can’t really hide anything at all. I love to smile and I laugh hard on stupid little things of daily life. If something really upsets me, I will cry like a baby.

This artwork has perfectly shown my emotional personality. I was laughing so hard after having an ice-cream for no reason at that time. I laughed too hard till a point where I had to cover my mouth to avoid disturbing others at the same restaurant because of the noise my crazy laughter made. I was very happy that a  good friend of mine captured that special moment of mine before we turn it into a digital artwork. Some people might think I’m such a weirdo who laughed so hard after having an ice-cream for no reason and now even turned it into an artwork?!?! Well it is much more special than anything to me. It not only captures a moment of my life which can be a part of my good memories, but also teaches me a lesson of gratitude and how simple my life can be. Having an ice-cream might seem like something ordinary and there might be some people having it on a regular basis. However, there are so  many people who haven’t gotten a chance to try an ice-cream. So many people out there are in need of food, clothing, water…struggling  to live…It reminds me to be grateful for what  I have. It also tells me to cherish a moment like this can make my life simpler than I thought it would be. Making my life this simple can bring me an abundance of joys. The vibrant color combinations of reddish orange, yellow, purplish pink, orange were being used in this artwork to depict the abundance of joys that I have ever since living my life simple. The purpose of making this artwork is to remind myself to be grateful for everything I have and help others in need wherever I can. Simultaneously, I would like to deliver the same message to all of you.

Hope this artwork makes you all happy and have a wonderful day! 🙂

If you are interested in the artwork my friend and I created/ you have any questions, please feel free to email/comment in the comment section.

xoxoxoxo stay happy and positive Khloe

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Entire series of “The Journey of Self-Discovery”

Hi everyone! 🙂  How are you doing?  As you know I’ve already finished an entire series of “The Journey of Self-Discovery”, I want to show you all how the whole series look like altogether. I also wonder which one is your favourite or you actually like all of them?

  

  

Please click the links below for the stories behind these artworks if you are interested:

The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 1: https://faburlifekhloe.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/the-journey-of-self-discovery-part-1/

The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 2: https://faburlifekhloe.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/the-journey-of-self-discovery-part-2/

The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 3: https://faburlifekhloe.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/the-journey-of-self-discovery-part-3/

If you are interested in the artworks my friend and I created/ you have any questions, please feel free to email/comment in the comment section. Stay tuned for the upcoming artworks. 🙂

Stay strong and positive as well xoxoxoxo Khloe

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The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 3

Hi everyone! Hope you all are doing well! 🙂 Here I am again posting another artwork which continues “The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 2”. Speaking of “The Journey of Self-Discovery”, I got a reader asking me why the series of “The Journey of Self-Discovery” seem so sad. Honestly, I wasn’t trying to make you all sad or anything. I was just expressing my complicated feelings during my journey of self-discovery. It can be miserable and difficult at times, but I still remain positive.

“The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 3” has clearly shown how positive I am about my future. It also explains the reason why I mentioned that I still remain positive even though part 1 and 2 seemed a bit sad overall. Yes – it wasn’t easy for me to deal with the pressures I received from my family and relatives, especially I’m just in the progress of proving them what I chose is right. Simultaneously, It really does take time to prove them and they are not that patient to see me proving them. Therefore, those pressures keep shaking the vision I have on my dream from time to time. However, I know I shouldn’t be affected by those pressures. In order to be myself and achieve my dream, I must be strong enough to tackle those pressures and positive enough to make my dream happen. I also need to keep motivating myself to stay true to myself and do what it takes to achieve my dream.

Moving on to the artwork, I’m sure a lot of you can see almost a complete difference in this artwork compared to part 1 and 2. As far as you remember, my friend and I used the color of purplish blue as a main color for part 1 and 2 . The purplish blue color expressed my complicated and miserable feelings created by the struggles and uncertainties I had. However, my friend and I used brighter colors for this artwork to show how positive I am about my future and how happy I am to welcome my future. The brighter green color is to remind myself to constantly refresh my mind with a brand new perspective to see my pressures, struggles and uncertainties. I shouldn’t see them as a pain. Conversely, I should make them as my motivation. The reddish orange color was also being used for the artwork. This color not only shows how happy I am after using a brand new perspective to see my pressures, struggles and uncertainties as a motivation, but also reveals the positivity I have towards my future. Using this color as a dominant color for the artwork shows the level of my happiness has dramatically increased after adopting the brand new perspective to my life. Apart from the color, you will see the people I referred as my family and relatives have become fewer. They have become fewer not because they are not in my life anymore. It’s because I chose not to let them take control of my life. Therefore, you will see me being a focal point in the artwork because I started to take control of my life. Last but not least, there is a very important note I would love to make about this artwork is the bright light on the top right corner. There was a small story behind it actually. I was on a small cruise going under a canal and there was a bright light peeking through the end of the canal. I would describe our lives are like canals. We constantly go through different canals in our lives. When we go under the canal is just like experiencing a darker time of our lives, but it doesn’t mean it is the end of the world. If we keep a positive attitude towards our future, we will always see a bright light (bright future) at the end of the day. It is like we will always see a bright light after going through a canal.

If you are interested in the artwork my friend and I created/ you have any questions, please feel free to email/comment in the comment section.

xoxoxoxo stay strong and positive Khloe

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The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 2

Hi everyone!:) Hope you all are doing well.  Here is another post which continues “The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 1”. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.

Moving on to the artwork, it was the same as “The Journey of Self-Discovery – part 1” created in a digital format. The entire artwork represents who I really am and what I should insist. I’m a type of person who needs a lot of freedom and space…never in my life like to follow what others say…As a result,  I find myself feeling disturbed when  people around tell me what to do. Ever since I graduated, my family and relatives have been telling what I should do in terms of career. Their advice have become more and more right after they got to know I was changing from one job to another. To be honest, I am very blessed to have them giving me advice. I know they did it because they love me and care about me. However, they neglect the fact that none of the occupations they mentioned is suitable for me. I do feel miserable sometimes as it’s difficult to make them understand why I don’t follow what they advised. On the other hand, I just can’t do something that I’m unable to fit in.

The people who were sitting behind me in the artwork represents my family and relatives. They created a crowded background which portrays the advice they gave me has reached a point where my mind has no more space to fit them in. I was sitting right in front of them is to remind myself that I’ll always be the main character of my life. Yes – they are a part of my life. However, they will always act as background having my back to support me continuously. No one can understand myself better, except myself. I should always stand for myself and fight for what I  love to do. No matter how hard it is to make them understand, I need to believe in myself and keep proving them what I chose is right. Sooner or later they will understand why I don’t follow what they advised.

I’m sure a lot of you have a similar experience. What did/ would you do if you have a similar experience?

If you are interested in the artwork my friend and I created/ you have any questions, please feel free to email/comment in the comment section.

Stay strong and positive xoxoxoxo Khloe

My email: fab.ur.life@gmail.com

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