Mio x Alessa

Every Christmas, all I would ever ask from Santa were craft kits like those jewelry-making or paper-twilling sets. How lola can a 5-year-old be? But as an only child til I was 9, these art activities were my best friends. Maybe that's why I am naturally drawn to kids who love art--because I see a little bit of myself in them. I always try to give arts and crafts materials to my inaanaks on their birthdays as tools for creativity and fuel for imagination. And maybe because as I child, that's all I would look for inside those beautifully wrapped presents: paper and some paint/crayons. At 5, art was my life. When Mio was 5, he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. His mom Jasmine was a single mom then, and together with her other friends, we teamed up to form the Mio Warriors, a group with the goal of helping raise funds for Mio's medical bills. His mom would always proudly show us his drawings, so I suggested we raise funds through Mio's own art. I came up with the project: StART with Mio, which is a collaboration between Mio and other professional artists and designers. It was a huge success, and after almost two years, we decided it's time for another Mio art project. I asked his Tita Clems to guide Mio in drawing out the alphabet + things that started with each letter. After a month of this art exercise, the drawings were passed on to me and I used them to create patterns for the notecards and notepads.