There’s this one little girl named Rinjani, the youngest birdie (for now) in The Babybirds family who is very brave and creative. Lemon likes her so much and according to her, Rinjani is one of her inspirations. She really thinks that Rinjani is cool because she draws, she makes stuff, she plays the piano, she’s smart and nice girl. She is indeed. Together with her Mum and Popo, they are The Babybirds, producing so many cool artworks. I am pretty sure many of you are aware of the brand. Even though they don’t see each other often, Rinjani is always in Lemon’s thoughts.

As we all know, good things are contagious, and knowing someone so inspiring in our reach gives that feeling of ‘Oh I am so inspired, hence I want to do it too’, and Lemon has been wanting to do the same, making stuff. She asked us how to make a slime, how to make a book or one day she asked us how to make a stop motion (she said ‘Om Iing showed us his friend’s instagram account, there’s this drawing of a chicken that moves’ it was actually @pinot’s account hehe), or how to fly to the outer space. One of the questions that she has been consistently asking was about making her drawing into something.

Initially, I was a bit reluctant because I was not familiar with the process involved in making a t-shirt; from the designing, digitizing the sketch or processing the drawing into something printable, and to be honest, I did not have time to learn about it. Dwi has some of his drawings up on Society6 or Tees.co.id for his own experiment, the so-called “self-made t-shirt and tote bag” project. So, the first option was to go ahead to upload the very minimal design we need to do to Tees.co.id, then we made our own order. This will answer her non-stop questions and make her happy, and a t-shirt won’t hurt. It was enough for us to see her happy and proud just to know that she wears her own drawing.

A few weeks later, we got the shirt at our hand. Our first impression was, ‘not that bad’, the colour that Lemon chose was just so nicely sits with each other, it was vibrant and ‘easy’. Unfortunately, the shirt was not durable enough, after the first wash the colour became washed out, the fabric was a bit stretched until it became asymmetrical when folded. But hey, it was just an experiment, right? No big deal it was.

To our surprise, we got a couple of business inquiry (such a big words, haha) from our friends and Dwi’s colleagues, they asked about the t-shirt and willing to pay for it. Perhaps, it was because the design was just so blunt, straight, and witty, “Girls Always Win”, wow! such a statement, right? Dwi wore his shirt to work, perhaps he also wanted to make a statement about his wife micro-manage him at home (:P), but he told me that he bragged about his t-shirt that was designed by our daughter.

So, long story short, I thought that it might make sense to produce it, with some learning from the previous experiment, then I think the fabric is really important, the paint/printing quality is also not less critical. After asking around, especially to the Babybirds’ founder, Nyanya gave me some leads to the right people to do stuff for us. We then collect orders from our friends and their friend of friends on Google Form, then prepare the design to the printing guy, then in about a month time the t-shirt was produced then delivered. Lemon was very proud and called herself an artist and very famous (because so many people wear her drawing), just like Rinjani, HAHA.

Here are some photos of the t-shirts. I lost track and did not save them all so, if you have the photos of the t-shirt, please send them to me, thank you!

There’s this one particular reason why we chose this drawing. The drawing is so her. She likes rainbows, colours and she’s proud to be a girl because she said that a girl can be anything and that girls always win. It was an important realization for me, she made a statement that will probably be very important for her future. No, it wasn’t me who told her that, it was herself who came to that conclusion. I’m proud! I guess I raise her right *patpat*

Some of my friends are still asking when are we going to open for the second batch, we still think about it and need to carefully arrange the logistics because the first batch shipment was helped by Dhatu, she packed and sent the t-shirts from Bandung. I think that we can not ask her to do that again or she will sakit encok ya sis, LOL.

Rest assured, we will let you know once the pre-order is opened, maybe with some new drawings!