Hi there! It's Thanksgiving week! Hope that everyone is having a wonderful long weekend.
As it's been a little while, I thought it was time to share some good news!
 ***I just opened my Etsy shop!!! www.etsy.com/shop/KraskiMira. Please visit and follow me!!

Gone Paleo Crazy!

Well, to break my "blog-writing-freeze" -  I am going to jump right into it! Indeed, I have gone a little Paleo crazy. These past few months have been difficult as I haven't been feeling too great. I've finally realized that I was making myself sick with the overload of dairy, gluten, and over-processed sugar I've been consuming in the recent years. With some support from my healthy hubby, I have bought myself the "Practical Paleo" addition a few weeks back and trying my best to stick with a healthy approach of eating and living.

I have been trying many of my own recipes and would love to share a recipe of my favorite guilt-free frozen treat : the chocolate covered banana popsicle!

Chocolate Coconut Covered Bananas - Chilled/ Frozen Treats!

• 4 bananas
• 2 organic dark chocolate gluten-free bars(best 70% or higher)
• 1/2 -3/4  cup coconut milk
• Unsweetened organic coconut flakes
• 8 popsicle sticks

Peel bananas and cut into halves (will be 8 total pieces).
Prepare dish with wax cookie sheet placed on top.
In a sauce pan, melt chocolate – mixing and combining with coconut milk (for about 1-2 min).
Insert popsicle sticks into banana pieces and dip bananas into chocolate, carefully using a spoon or spatula to cover all of the banana.
Carefully place chocolate covered banana onto wax sheet and sprinkle with coconut flakes.
Place bananas into freezer for an hour and serve (will be fresh and slightly chilled).
To freeze for a longer time period, move the banana popsicles into a plastic/glass container after they have cooled off and can easily be moved from the wax paper.
Enjoy!

Pinterest.

Hi!  Hope everyone has had a great week and is excited for the weekend to arrive : -) I am overly excited as the majority of my weekend will be spent relaxing and catching up on painting. I have finally created a Pinterest account and instantly became addicted to pinning.

You can find me on Pinterest as Marusia-ARTSY  through this link : www.pinterest.com/marusiaartsy.
I would love to share in the addicting experience of pinning with you!

Updates!

Happy Monday! As always the weekend swept by like an express Amtrak train – leaving no real time to unwind from life. Life is life, but life during the work week is always a battle at 5:30, especially on Monday mornings. Well, it has been a very long time since I have written and I miss it. I have been extremely busy with work, with side art projects on the weekends, and with life in general.

It is also time I share an image of my little home studio - it's not much but it's a start :-)

Today I got myself thinking about Marusia-ARTSY and decided it was time I put a little more effort into keeping this blog up-to-date. I am also looking into possible re-design of this blog and hope to start the process the following week! 

On another note, it was my 28th birthday last week. How quickly time flies. We blink and another month, season, year goes by...Well it ended up being a day of realization – realization that as the years pass, we get older and hopefully wiser. We also get close to that time when we look at our present lives and wonder if we are living them to the fullest. Whether we are happy where we are or unhappy. Is it possible to be both on occasion? It’s normal to be unhappy, but why should we settle for unhappy, when we could reach for happy? I know what it is to be happy but to be happy and fulfilled at the same time is a different story. In the midst of working out these thoughts - I realized that I am settling in some areas of my life and I am not typically a settler. We are here to live and reach for our dreams and goals. Sometimes we get pushed to the side and forget what those dreams are, or we don’t realize originally what those dreams actually are. Yet there comes a time when we overcome the obstacles and accomplish those goals. I have reached that part in my life when I want to reach higher and push harder  without being held back by the thoughts of a settler.

Hope you keep on visiting my little blog and following me in the midst of the challenges of life and my journey of creating happy art!

Love,
Marusia

And his name is...

... Sky. A glimpse into a custom painting for a friend.

   

Finished Projects.

These original paintings and reproduction prints will be available in my Etsy store - launching soon!!!

Owls.

I have a new fascination with owls or obsession as one might call it. I have always admired this specific creature of the night – mainly due to the mystery of the actual personality of the bird with the cryptic cries in the dark adding to the suspense. What secrets do these creatures hold? What do they witness when the world is asleep?  I have often wondered and thought about these questions and only associated owls with horror films and ghost stories. However, it is not until now that I’ve gained a new perspective toward these noble statuesque birds.

Recently, I have completed a project – an illustration of an owl as a gift to a close friend of mine. As this painting illustration is intended to be hung as wall décor for her nursery, I used bright hues and repeated fun patterns to create the fitting piece for the child’s room.

I cannot recall last time I had this much fun painting. While I was working on it, I could picture all kinds of different cute scenes involving owls – an array of different colors and stories swarming  its way into my mind and slowly nestling into my thoughts. I was gone in this world of “Owl-boro”. As a result, I decided that I wanted to create a series of  small nursery-oriented paintings of different scenes involving owls. I hope to incorporate some of my other subjects (hands and botanicals) into these artworks. Planning to start work on these sometime within the next month and surely, I will be posting photo updates on progress when possible. I really want to include this series in my Etsy shop which will be up and running in mid-summer.

"You Do It Well".

Floral Gradients.

Owl Illustration Gift.

Working on a project for nursery decor.

Take me back to the Caribbean.

I miss the warm sunny days of tropical summer. On this early and brisk April day, winter’s grip is still pulled tight over us - it doesn’t really feel that spring has  crept in just yet. Most days I imagine spontaneously jumping on a plane and flying to Aruba, the island of my honeymoon – the island of the happy people as I’d like to call it.  The week we spent on the island in late September of 2012, was a week of paradise. It was a week of lingering  purple sunsets, romantic walks by the midnight water, and chilled glasses of the “Brown Lady” cocktail.

I want that time back. Right now!

However, life doesn’t work that way. We cannot rewind and go back, we can only go forward. It will take some hard work and dedication to get on that track – while keeping steady balance – but it can be done. Things happen for a reason and if they don’t, you make them happen for a reason. For now, I will just have to share these photos and rekindle the wonderful Aruban experience with my husband...or I could just  kick off my imaginary flip flops and dance like a freaktoid  to the "Kokomo" tune in our cute little  apartment and pretend I have been taken back to the Caribbean –for next 5 minutes at least :-).

Inspiration Essentials.

Carve out a small area in your home to be the focal point of your creative thoughts and push yourself to get creative!!

Favorite Item of the Day.

Natural handmade soap goodies - love this store:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/PrairieSudsProducts

Presentation is just flawless. I am adding these soaps to my birthday wish list!

Ellie.

This is Ellie - the most adorable little creature bouncing around from lap to couch, couch to lap. She belongs to my husband's family and I get to see her wet little honker and furry little ears traditionally once a month. She is the complete opposite of my family's dog, Rambo. That is actually his name. He is entirely black with an onyx hue and weighs about ninety pounds - with an adorable grin but some seriously obnoxious barking. I will not be providing a photo of Rambo as of yet - it's too much fun leaving that page blank and letting your imagination do the wondering. I hope they get to meet each other soon. I know they will fall in love and run around holding each other's tails as though they were actually holding hands.

Sweet Memories.

It's been six months. Six months since the day I became a wife to my best friend. We have exchanged vows in an intimate outdoors ceremony, promised to share our lives together, and shared our first sunset together as a married couple. I think about that sunset every day and understand the beauty of it all - how lucky I am to have someone special to share sunsets with. And so it is time that I share him with my blog and post a photo of our first sunset together as a married couple.  

Progressing along.

Magical World on Etsy.

I stumbled upon one of the most beautiful painting stores on Etsy this morning. I wasn’t able to get the imagery out of my mind all day.

I’m enamoured with the intricate romantic style, theme, and the vibrant color scheme in every piece displayed. It's always so refreshing to find current artists execute such classical compositions. I have always been more of a supporter of archival art such as the paintings from the Renaissance Art Period. To me this kind of art is truly flawless. This Etsy shop takes me back to that time period, and  this will definitely be the place I visit when I’m looking to purchase some unique gifts. You can see more of the artist creations here:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/EmilyBalivet

Chinese take-out.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world. Fortune spoken true by the cookie.

Spring Energy.

It felt like spring today. The bounce of the sun rays made me feel alive and fueled me with much needed energy which I've been missing this winter. I've been brainstorming and jotting down ideas for my upcoming art projects in the recent weeks, but something about today really made me come alive and be active. My project for this weekend is to hit up the  mega Dollar store in search of affordable packing materials and cute trim ideas. Top item on my list is affordable bubble wrap!! Anyone with ideas on where to find bubble wrap - new or used - let me know!

Matryoshka Dress.

It has been one full month since my husband and I canceled our Comcast TV service. After years and years of frustration with this particular cable company, and many stressful thus draining phone conversations about increased bills, it was time to nix them. I wish I could say that we canceled all of their services, but we kept the internet as it is a necessity for both fun and work. Therefore, this takes me to the introduction of life without cable TV and life with the Apple TV box. We can stream a number of television shows through Hulu Plus and Netflix for no additional fees other than paying a standard of $16 per month. This is where New Girl comes in. That adorable comedy sitcom with Zooey Deschanel on Fox. I’m hooked as it’s a unique little gem in night-time television. The show has everything from fun little outfits to shaved eyebrows to dating blunders.

Finally, it's time for the proper introduction of the Matryashka Dress. The dress I fell in love with. Its appearance premiered in the last episode of New Girl - worn by the adorable perky Jess (Zooey) as one of her teaching outfits.

  

The dress represents happiness - from the vibrant colors to the Russian Matryoshkas. I had a momentary glimpse of happiness when I searched for it online and found a match. Little did I know at the time that the dress found on Modcloth was $300. Not quite within my budget- especially during these ongoing tight economic times.

Hence, I am marking down this project as a goal to be completed by the upcoming summer: MatryshkaDress – Size M – for Mariya. I already found a few prints with these little adorable stockable dolls on Etsy(thanks to the inspiration of my little sister Stacey and a sweet woman by the name of Hope. I like the silhouette of the dress, but will probably change it up a bit, but haven’t decided on whether I’ll make the pattern from scratch or follow one from Vogue patterns or something along those lines. I’m excited.

Is there a project that you are excited about? If not, find one. It’s so freeing and fun!

Indeed.

"I see the world through my eyes. It's sometimes a strange world." - Keira Knightley

Utopian Dresses: Art inspired fashion or fashion inspired art...

If only I could paint these.

becauseiamfabulous.co

"Hand Swan".

Started working on my 1st piece from the Hands Series tonight. I'm calling it the "Hand Swan"...

People Are Strange.

"When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange"

Hands.

I’ve always been fascinated by hands. Simple, yet so exquisite at the same time. Gestures of the hand can be one of the most beautiful things to witness and explore. Look at ballroom dancers. Their varying hand movements - that start in the wrist and continue to the tips of their fingers - are often so crucial to the actual dance performance and scoreboard of the judges. The hand of a dancer is an art form, that tends to go unnoticed by some, yet I’m enamored by it. One of the most elegant and graceful forms of art I’ve ever witnessed - the way a hand twists and bends is like a flower fluttering in the wind.

The wrinkles planted on hand tell a story. The soft folds offer comfort and warmth to another hand when being held. There are endless descriptions and metaphors for this part of the human body, so I will not stretch it out any further , but I will state that primarily when I think of wrinkles and soft folds, I think of Da Vinci. I think of his art and the many hands he illustrated and drawings he left for us to explore and analyze.

I think of his hard and soft lines, the tone of his drawings, and how he captured the graceful beauty of a human hand.

The series I am starting to work on is mainly focused on the female hands mixed in with the floral elements of my imagination. I will post updates and photos soon...

Unwind.

Sugar High Rush - “Mariya” Style

For my second blog entry ever, I’ll pretend that I’m a normal human being. It’s been about an hour since it occurred, I must admit. Another one of those typical sugar high nights. What brought it on? Ice cream. Coffee ice cream. Starbucks coffee ice cream. Need I say more?

It was amazing. It lasted about five or ten minutes, however it felt more like twelve minutes. I rolled around on the floor (literally), did jumping jacks, barked and screeched in my Exorcist voice, words that should not be repeated by anyone but me. All witnessed by my wonderful sane husband. As such an event occurs every few weeks, he’s pretty used to it by now. One can say, it’s just one of the negatively unique perks of being married to a freaktoid.

I got my first “real” wooden art easel today, which would explain my celebratory need for sweets and the main culprit behind my sugar high dance breakdown. It’s beautiful and has functioning clamps. I’ve never had one with those before. It’s been a while since I painted and it’s been a while since I’ve painted using one of those. I miss it. I miss that feeling of freedom and expression, that feeling of letting your hands brush across the roughness of the canvas and the brush bristles getting soaked in vibrant colors that my hand chose willingly. If I’m being fully honest, this feeling comes and goes as there are other distractions that occupy my mind and time throughout the years, but somehow I always get back to painting. My mind finds its way back to the desire to create and all those other distractions do not have an impact on my perception of life in a creative way.

The sugar high has subsided, and I’m antsy tonight, antsy and excited to start working on my first piece in almost a year.

3 Things You Should Know About Me…

1. I’m Mariya with a “Y”.

2. I’m a technical designer for a fashion company by profession and an artist by heart.

3. I’m a freaktoid. If in need of a definition, the first Google search link confuses the term for “lanktoid” - which is defined as a person who is freakishly tall or a tall person with freakish properties. I must say I’m not a “lanktoid”, but I am a person, quite short not tall, but with freakish properties, hence the term “ freaktoid”. You will find out what those freakish properties are soon enough.