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.