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Ugh I know, I know - I thought I'd be back to regular weekly blogging again during this break but clearly this hasn't happened! However, this doesn't mean that I haven't been busy!

I have been working on some personal illustrations over these past two to three weeks, which I have featured below and can also be seen under my Portfolio page.

Paeonia Lagoon

Iris

Intergalactica

Instagram Updates

1. Cameo the Label lily palm print top - I am in love with this.
2. Drawing Gia Carangi, my model inspo.
3. Floral illustrations.
4. Warming myself up with homemade pumpkin soup and breakfast tea.
5. Is my floral obsession obvious?!
6. Progress of a recently completed illustration.

This month I have been drawing my inspiration from musical sources, such as FKA Twigs and Lana Del Rey. Style-wise, I have been interested in the juxtaposition of bright metallic and nude, blush and muted grey shades. I'm wishing the warm weather would return soon so I can enjoy sleeping by the pool and basking in the summer sunshine. I need more Vit. D!

Until next time! x

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Not been feeling inspired, so I've just got a small instagram-based update to post. It has been a hectic week and I've had a lot of work to do in a short space of time, so I haven't really had much time to just stop and smell the roses, just lull about and not think about uni work 24/7. I have become a collaborator of Kanon's blog which you can check out here - I've written an article about Frida Kahlo and her connection to flowers as my first contribution here!

My week in pictures

1. Leather and faux fur = a good combination.
2. Some flower illustrations for a collaborative project I was working on during the week.
3. "I was sad, but then I bought something online. I feel better now." - This statement sums me up in a nutshell.
4. Lovely leaves at the Botanic Gardens last weekend.
5. The rose garden is so wonderful at this time of year - the smell from all the blooming flowers creates this amazing perfume, plus some of the roses are as big as my head and I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland for a while.

Until next time! x

New-ness

Since the time I last posted I have been feverishly working on all my creative pursuits - namely finishing illustrations - but also creating a Society6 shop which you can view here, where I will be selling some of my illustration and other design work as prints. I'll admit I was a little apprehensive at first in setting up a store here, but I thought it might be a good way to extend my presence in the great wide stratosphere that is the world wide web! The above illustration is one of my recently completed works, showing the "before and after" and is available to purchase now.

I've also created a portfolio website, where I'll upload all of my work to date as a digital portfolio, which links to other bits and bobs such as my resume and social media pages. It can be viewed here.

Here are my instagram updates of the things that have been going on in my life of late.

1. Amazeball (yes I really just used that word, but it is necessary in this context) shorts by Cameo the label.
2. A bowl of cherries always reminds me of Summer.
3. A portrait I completed of Sophia Loren for my mum.
4. Breaky of muesli, yoghurt, fruit, almonds and chia seeds is my farourite kind of breaky
5. Current progress on an Australian themed piece I'm working on, featuring Indigenous model Samantha Harris.
6. In 40 degree (celcius!) heat, all I really feel like is froyo.

Oh, and how amazing is Lana Del Rey's rendition of Once Upon a Dream for the upcoming Maleficent film starring Angelina Jolie?! I think I died and went to heaven listening to it. ♥ What do you think of it?

That's all for this post lovelies, see you next time! x

Acquiesce

*Just a friendly warning - this is an image-heavy post! I'm sorry in advance if your internet loading time is quite slow!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and a wonderful New Year! I'm so happy to be here at home with my family celebrating the silly season with our traditional food and lots of corny Christmas music and television specials (including Andre Rieu haha). ♡ I never set new year's resolutions, but instead seek to continue the positive energies I utilised from the previous year and bring that into the new year. However, my one main continual goal will be to keep up my healthy lifestyle, as I've honestly not felt this good in years after taking up running and cutting out a lot of stodgy foods that just leave me feeling heavy. It worked for me in 2013, so I hope it will work for me this year and give me all the energy I'll need for my final year of my Masters!

I've been busy working on some illustrations, which I've included in the portfolio page. It's so good to find time to catch up on personal projects! I've also been reading a lot more, this is basically the only time during the year that I can find the time to do so, sadly enough! Below is some of the illustrations I have been working on during my study break.

And here are my instagram updates of the things that have been going on in my life of late.

1. An illustration I completed of the Australian model Montana Cox, who won Cycle 7 of Australia's Next Top Model.
2. An illustration I completed of Rihanna.
3. I found these Finders Keepers Winter Bird shorts at a sample sale earlier in Adelaide and bought them without realising the zip was faulty! But I had them fixed and now I can weart them - the print and fabric are of such a high quality, I am in love.
4. An illustration of model Nastya Kusakina.
5. Progress shots of an illustration I'm working on, feat. Lana Del Rey.
6. Chili print shorts, purchased from Mombasa Boutique. ❤



II

That's all for this post lovelies, see you next time! x

White Moon

I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my back now that I've submitted all of my assessments - the next stressful part is the anxious wait to find out if I did well or not! Crossing my fingers for positivity!

I've been deeply researching the Riot Grrrl movement of the early 90's for my Masters thesis and it's really inspiring and just moving to me - I can't really express my feelings about how wonderful I think it was. I just feel that a-lot of the ideas that emerged from it still resonate in the 21st century and it deserves more recognition as a milestone in the timeline of feminism. I just feel so connected to it, I don't know - I only learned of it through Tumblr (thank the Internet Gods for Tumblr) about 2 years ago or something and ever since I did, it's been on my mind and I knew I wanted to somehow develop a research project based around it. My particular branch of research in this movement was the importance of the zine, which I feel is largely underestimated as a tool for expression and communication between young women (as an alternative outlet away from mainstream media's gaze and perturbation), even in our modern technological world filled with ebooks and e-zines. I believe the tactility of a physical zine holds such a greater feeling of power and concreteness, which cannot truly be replicated with a digitised zine (even though I adore e-zines and PDF magazines, I'll always return to the print versions). I feel such an urge to just create things at the moment - if my hands are doing something I need to be doing something otherwise I'll become so bored! I actually want to start my own zine, just for my own personal self, but I would share it with the lovely readers of my blog, of course. But now I'm just rambling again! I have too many feels at the moment. I think it's largely due to the emotional debt through perpetual stress I've stored up over these past 14 weeks that I've been studying and now all I want to do is let it all go. I'm going to start working on some illustration ideas that I've kept shut up in my journals - now I've got some time to kill I want to put them to good, productive use!

I haven't been able to access Instagram that much as the wifi in my place has issues connecting to extraneous devices except for laptops, super weird (but I did discover a way to upload via PC so I'm using that instead, it's just a-lot more cumbersome to use). The following is a digital moodboard of sorts of things that have been keeping my imagination alive this week (I need to make pretty things for my blog!):

I'll leave you with these teasers from Lana Del Rey for the Tropic mini-film (if you don't already know about it), which I am extremely excited about! (Please release it soon Lana you are my lifeblood!) The coloured lighting effects remind me of the Aurora Borealis aka "The Northern Lights", which I'd really love to see once in my lifetime, so beautiful. Keep on dreaming. ♥

Unfinished Sketches

Just a quick update of what I'm working on at the moment.

❀ Wedding from the 60's/70's, Unknown ❀

❀ Virgina Woolf ❀

❀ Karen Elson ❀

❀ Lana Del Rey ❀

❀ Self-Portrait ❀

❀ Jane Birkin ❀



And here's another playlist for you, I'm so into making super long playlists at the moment, I think I need to try and curb my addiction because it's so time-consuming! I've been listening to a lot of period film soundtracks lately and that's really helping me to get inspired and do things. I'm also in the process of trying to teach myself my heritage language, Ukrainian! So far, I'm not doing so poorly but I only know the basics really, such as yes and okay. I am learning through audio tapes as well as dictionaries and the alphabetical pronunciation lists, so hopefully I can one day speak the language fluently. x

❀ ✿ ❁ ✾ ✽ ❃ ❋ (for Beatrix Potter) from bambisvalentine on 8tracks Radio.

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Salut! ♡

I have been oh so busy these holidays drawing, reading, exercising and generally taking a break from the stresses of life. Christmas was a lovely time to spend with the family and eat, drink and be merry! ☯ I was accepted to start my Masters degree next year so that's what I plan to do at this present stage, I'm nervous but also excited as I really want to do postgraduate studies and this degree will definitely be of benefit to my future career.

The 70's is the style era which I am presently most drawn to at the moment. Think plenty of paisley prints, flares, bell-sleeves, long free flowing hair, flower crowns, batik prints, soft focus photography, floppy hats and plenty of daisies. The 1970's was a great time for fashion! The hippy look was still present and disco fever was taking over and then entered the glam rock scene of the late 70's. I loved the hippie movement and wish I could have been present at Woodstock, it would have been an amazing experience.

❀ Collage inspiration. ❀

Here are a few snapshots of things that have related to my life at this present moment. (From L-R, top to bottom):
1. The setting of the sun and the moon rising created such a lovely colour palette in the sky, plus the moon was covered in a thin veil of clouds, which was extra pretty.
2. One of my presents from Christmas - Lola by Marc Jacobs which is quickly becoming one of my favourite scents - and who can resist that bottle?!
3. My new glittery suede shoes which were also a Christmas gift. They're so high (14cm), which is good for me as I am 5"3 and can do with a boost in height!.
4. This is quite a bit too tiny, but it is the beginnings of a mini portrait I'm creating of Lana Del Rey, undoubtedly one of my favourite people right now.
5. I am now up to date with my Sims 3 expansion pack collection with the addition of this little baby, Seasons. I can't help but love the Sims, I have basically been with them since the beginning. ♡
6. Clueless. That is all I need to say.

Goodbye until the next post!

The Kinks - Lola

Languor

Wow it has been almost like an eternity since I have last posted on my little corner of the internet - my life has been extremely busy which has lead to these lack of updates. But I have been working on my personal identity for when I leave university (even though I plan on taking a Masters after this degree is finished). My own little logo took me a lot of sketching and manipulating to conceive, but I am now very happy with my outcome. On the right pane of my blog you can see my logo, the little hybrid creature who I dubbed Aura, symbolising traits I wish to possess in my professional life. Each animal amalgamated into this creature (fox, deer, owl and rabbit) are aligned with traits that I find relevant and important to my work ethics. I hope you all like her! :)

You may have noticed that I have revamped my blog layout - I was quite tiring of my old theme and decided a fresh change of colours and imagery was required. Let me know what you think of it. Also, now that I am of a little break (and it is now half over!) I have been working on personal illustrations that I have been trying to find the time to do during the semester, but just not being able to allocate any time at all to this endeavour!

This is the Boudicca illustration that I mentioned in my earlier posts, I've only started to paint it in now. I have been working on and off on this since the beginning of this year I believe! All I want to do it to finish her, so that will be one of my aims this break.

This is an illustration focussed on the theme of winter harvesting. I started this illustration just this week and hope to also finish it before the end of the break.

Now I think I will spend the rest of this night either painting or re-watching I Capture the Castle for the millionth time! Oh Henry Cavill, you are the perfect man.

Finally I shall leave you with a song I have been repeating non-stop this week.
Lana Del Rey - Blue Velvet

Au revoir, mes amours. ❤❤❤