Happy New Year 2008!

Our warmest greetings from Bali! Shanti Seeds of Bali group would love to wish everybody for a great new year 2008. The year 2007 has given us all so much good things and we would love to thank to everyone who have given their great concern and contribution to our works. We are so grateful that we have been able to present our works to everyone around the world, and may our creations have been a valuable collection to anyone who has collected our beaded baskets. We are wishing that we are going to continuously having your support in the future. We are looking forward to present more of our works in the New Year 2008.

We were celebrating farewell for the year 2007 by going out with the beaders today, December 30th to visit the Bali Zoo Park and Bali Bersalju (Snowy Bali). Everyone was having such a great time and they were enjoying the Fauna at the Zoo park and having a fabulous time and really full of fun at the Snow Park in Kuta. Well, of course we do not have snow in Bali naturally but they were having the snow park in Kuta where we could at least feel the cold of your winter and touching the snow. Everyone was too excited about it and didn’t feel how cold the room was. Kids were sliding down on the snow trail that they have designed in the room, enjoying the ice carving.

It was really a great outing for everyone and they are still talking about it and surely it is going to be a continuous topic for the next few weeks in our workshop.

Happy New Year 2008!

Shanti Seeds of Bali.

Rattan Basket Weaving

It is my first woven small urn rattan basket.


It has been a long time that I have been willing to weave the rattan basket myself but it was really hard to find the raw material as they have to be imported from Borneo Island. I was very lucky to finally found a shop in Ubud that is specializing in selling rattan material. I was very happy to find them and now I can learn to weave my own baskets for the beading project. I have been learning to weave our own rattan baskets. It took me sometimes to figure out the way to weave the baskets from the finish baskets that we normally buying from a supplier in Lombok Island. It is going to be great to share it everyone in our village and hopefully that it is going to provide more works to the people in our village especially the farmers who have quit a lot of extra time after doing their works on the field. I have finished a couple baskets already and love to share them with everyone.

I hope that it is going to make it a lot easier for all to get stock for our woven baskets as we used to wait for a long time to have our baskets coming from Lombok. It has been really fun to do the weaving and figuring out my way around it. I am glad that I could do it now and have to practice more to get a better result for my woven baskets. I love to invite more people from my village to involve in weaving the baskets ourselves and I have got some good response from some elderly in the village that have a kind of hobby in weaving basketries. There are quit many young boys in our village who has no regular job and they mostly just hang around the village and doing nothing but it seems to be very hard to get them involve in the work. I have been trying to convince them that they have to do something that they could at the moment even trying something new to kill the free time. Many of them do not give any good response to my offer but I am going to keep trying to have them working. It is sad to see young people are wasting their time.

Well, again it is my dream to have people doing good and useful things for their life, not wasting the time.

My cousin Wayan Wartana and myself are weaving the rattan basket for the base of our beadwork.

I am weaving my placemat. it is the 4th items that I have woven.

Black & White Jumbo Cupu

It is our black and white Jumbo Cupu, Height = 40 cm and Width of 50 cm. Designed by Wayan Sueta and crafted by Ni Wayan Lasi.

Ni Made Masni

Name : Ni Made Masni
Date of Birth: July 16th, 1992
Home: Bali-Indonesia.

School : SMP Negeri 4 Abiansemal. Grade 9th.

I Wayan Susila

Name : I Wayan Susila
Date of Birth:
Home: Bali-Indonesia.

I Made Aribawa

Name : I Made Aribawa
Date of Birth: Monday, March 01, 1999
Home: Bali-Indonesia.

Ni Wayan Indah Parsini

Name : Ni Wayan Indah Parsini
Date of Birth:
Home: Bali-Indonesia

Ni Made Nerti

Name: Ni Made Nerti Supradmini
Date of birth: December 19th, 1992.

Home: Bali-Indonesia

Ni Kadek Ani

Name : Ni Kadek Ani
Date of Birth: October 3rd, 1986
Home: Bali-Indonesia.

Ni Nyoman Teriani

Name : Ni Nyoman Teriani
Date of Birth: June 3rd, 1982
Home: Bali-Indonesia.

Tinawati and Yulina are having a little joke while beading, they always light up our home with jokes and songs.
Ayu is Busy helping with the packing of the baskets for our shipment.
There are so much fun working together where the younger easily can learn from the older beader to do patterns technique, sharing is the key to create a great working environment for us all. Everyone is family and should be well taken care.
Collections of our seeds bead and the wooden tray for the beads that's used for the works.

Pictures from our workshop

Having little drink after the shootings, it feels great ....and refreshing.

Pictures of Our Activities

the road to our home.

Anta doesn't want to miss his chance to be in the photograph without his traditonal outfits.
On our way home from the rice paddies shootings. We did some shootings for the future website.

Trying to get a better shots for them, but they are just beautiful from different angle.
Kids are posing in traditional balinese outfits at nearby rice paddies from where we live. They are all look very gorgous.

Pictures of our workshop

All the boxes are ready for shipping.
Wayan is counting and checking all the baskets before packing them into the box. We put cutting paper to make sure that the baskets are well protected during the shipping.
Ni Wayan Nilayanti is cleaning up the baskets before wrapping them with bubble wrap. We make sure than all the basket has a tag and beader's name tag in it. we provide the profile of the beader, so our customer has an information of the artists who beaded the basket.
Ni Made Reti Miani and Ni Made Listiyawati are wrapping the basket with bubble wrap and preparing for the packing list.

The kids help me in packaging. I share with them to do a good packing for our works. We use bubble wraps to protect the beads from hitting each other, to minimize the possible damages that caused by the long journey that our works takes in shipping to the US and Europe.

Everyone is helping in packing some baskets for clients. We work hand in hand as a family.

On the porch of our house, we have everyone enjoying their beading and having lots of jokes

Ni Komang Ayu Nita, our new participant in our workshop and she has been enjoying her beading time and getting some small basket done. She is truly a cute little girl.

New Participants at our workshop!

There have been a few more kids who have joined us in our workshop over the last few days and they are all very excited to join the team and learning to bead from the older kids. Our home have been more alive when more kids who are coming home after school. It is wonderful to see how well motivated they all are. We hope that we are going to be able to keep the work available for all of them and having the opportunity to help all these children for a better life.

They are still studying at elementary school and they go to school at 7.30 am and finish at 12.00 PM, so after lunch and doing their necessary homeworks, they come to our home and beading together with other kids. It is nothing more beautiful in life than having so much loving kids at your home, it makes your world more alive and excited. I love them all very much.

Ni Nyoman Ayu Nita

Date of birth: May 30th, 1998
Home Address: Bali-Indonesia.

Ni Nyoman Herpinati

Date of birth: August 28th, 1996
Home Address: Bali-Indonesia.

Ni Made Wiwintari

Date of birth: December 15th, 1997
Home Address: Bali-Indonesia.