~~~Travel Plans~~~

Bonjourno ^_^
Thought I'd post today to announce my travel plans for 2013! It suddenly hit me the other night while I was in that place between asleep and awake that now that I (finally!) have a fairly decent job why not save up to do something spectacular!! I visited Barcelona in 2005 and thought it was great, so I've decided to do a round trip to Europe next year! :)

I'd like to visit:
Barcelona (again) and wherever else Spain may take me ^_^
Italy
Greece
The Netherlands
Denmark
Sweden (or somewhere in Scandinavia for the Northern Lights!)
Germany (for Oktoberfest!)

I'm hoping to be able to go by about August next year for 2-3 months, eee!!

Has anyone who may be reading this been to any of these countries or any other countries that are nice to visit? I'd love to hear from you if you have :) Also any useful websites would be very much appreciated, though I have joined quite a few forums already :P

Feel free to tell me any information even it seems unimportant to you :P

Hope everyone is contented and keeping creative ^_^

Buona sera!

~*^_^ Swaps Swaps Swaps ^_^*~

Hallo everyone ^_^

I'm very happy to post today as I have lots of new things to show from my swap with the fabulous Steph :)

It was (loosely) based on three themes; Alice in Wonderland, Roald Dahl and Elephants ^_^ but we each went on a personal tangent to surprise each other and I'm confident to say that it worked :)

Anywho on with the showing off:

First off a beautifully composed Alice themed card :) I love the original artwork and the teeny beads lovingly stuck next to it :)

A few of Stephs fabulosuly famous ATCs, Mavis, the Green Man and Alice ^_^ see her gallery here

Elepehants!! Steph knows they're my favourite animal, especially pink ones!! I've decided to call the chrocheted elephant Cora :) The smaller of the 2 was immaculately stitched complete with little mouse to keep her company :P

Little ellie beads! (That Blogger has uploaded sideyways for some reason and I can't fix it! ><) they have little bells in them and are just so cute ^_^ I dunno what I'll use them for yet but I'll think of something!

A llama!! Deviantart have gone Llama crazy lately and this is an homeage to it :) I've named him Dennis :D

Two awesome ami's!! An owl and the eternally brilliant Cheshire Cat! The owls name is Micky :)

Fantastic Mr Fox feltie!! and a weenie Crocodile friend :)

Steph knows all about my obsession with Betty Boop and sent me this amazing fabric! Along with a cross stitched cushion and some awesome Betty ribbon :)

Little charms! I LOVE every single one! I have a bit of a pendent fetish so I might have to find a chain to link these onto or perhaps a charm bracelett!

An adorable mini butterfly stitched cushion Steph made for my mumsie, she was very very pleased with it and absolutely loves it! :)

The back of aforementioned cushion, it reads 'May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun and find your shoulder to light on, To bring you luck, happiness and riches Today, Tomorrow and Beyond' :)

Steph also sent me some oil pastels and paper for me to do some colouring in on rainy days :) and an iron on Betty print with suitable fabric that I'm thinking of making a cushion with :) There was a wonderful Alice themed line drawing too that I've only partly coloured in so far, I'll be sure to upload it all when I've completed it ^_^

I know Steph is planning on sharing the things I made for her soon too and that makes our first official art swap complete!

So to round off thank you sooo much Steph for your wonderful gifts! I'll treasure every one of them :)

Here's to many many many more!!

Hope everyone else is keeping creative and uploading lots of things that will inspire me to get going too :)

Have a colourful weekend everyone! ^_^

TTFN

xxx

Day Trip to the Titanic Museum

Hallo all,

I've been working on my swap with Steph and paintings for the exhibition I'll be in at the end of June that I've neglected my blog a bit lately, I don't have any new artsy things to show at the moment so I thought I'd share the pictures I took to my day trip to Southampton the other day instead :)

My mum's friend was visiting for a week and he had the bright idea of taking us to the Titanic Museum, you weren't allowed to take pictures but I was naughty and managed to catch a few ^_^

Entrance to the museum :)

Pretty fragrance bottles, from the real ship! (I love scent bottles)

Engraved hip flask :)

Pocket Watch ^^

Cute little tea set

Titanic printed money

Model of the ship :)

Pretty stained glass, the boats at the top moved like they were really floating :)

I think this was a model of the Queen Mary :P

Ships wheel :)

I got to pretend I was steering the Titanic ^_^



Pretty Archway

There was also a small cinema type room that played recordings from some of the Titanic survivors talking about the night the ship sank, it was really atmospheric and daunting, but I love history so really enjoyed it :)

In other news my space at the Pinewalk Exhibition has been confirmed and I'll be displaying there for 2 days, wish me luck in selling something!

Hopefully my next post will be sharing the lovely things I recieve from Steph and the presents I made for here too :)

Ciao for now :D




Wallpapers, Exhibitions and Swaps

Hallo all! ^_^

I'm sharing today as I've got quite a few arty things going on which makes a radical change!

To start with I'm happy to announce that I've been included on the Bournemouth Based Artists websites which you can find here My friend Annika is also included and she is well worth checking out!

My website is officially up and running here. The only thing I wish I could change about it is the domain title but other than that I'm really pleased with it, Wix is also a really good web hosting site so I recommend it to anyone else who's thinking of creating their own site!

I'm working on another A2 size painting at the mo but as it's taking a while I decided to get creative digitally and created some wallpapers, a few years ago I dabbled in making some colourful fractal type images and in the past few days I decided to give it another go, here is a collection of my favourites:

Cerulean Beast

Pyralis

Rainbow Tornado

Purple Passion

Electric Wizard

Tunnel of Love

Parmaviolet

Great Tide

Endurance

Son of Ice

Apache

Scholar

Oki so I have quite a few favourites :P I do like making them though, you can find the full collection on my Picasa Album here ^_^

I have a chance at exhibiting at an annual exhibition here in Bournemouth this summer, I'm thinking of sending these images off as prints, do you think they would sell? If I don't exhibit at the gallery I may try and sell these as prints elsewhere, I'll have to see what happens ^_^

I've finally started brainstorming ideas for my up and coming art trade with Steph I'm buzzing with ideas now and can't wait to get started :)

Well I've rambled on long enough for tonight :P

Looking forward to everyones newest creations!

Until next time!!

New Website!!

Hallo!

I'm posting today to share the fact I have made myself a website ^_^

You can view it here: http://www.wix.com/kazzuya_starshine/psyko

Sadly it's got a really ugly domain title, but what can you expect for a free website builder :P

Opinions are very welcome! and if you'd like to be linked on my site please let me know :)

That's all for now!

Paintings and Things

Greetings ^_^

Thought it was time for a new post as I've just finished my first attempt at a painting in 6 years and only just got round to taking photographs of it :P

After checking out artists such as Josephine Wall and Linda Ravenscroft I've been overwhelmed with fantasy and brightly coloured themes and it reminded me of a project I did while I was studying illustration.

The brief was to illustrate a playing card without using a literal representation of the face/number or the suit. I chose the 2 of Hearts and this is the idea I came up with:

I decided to revisit the idea after seeing so many wonderful artwork by well known and not so well known fantasy artists, I changed it a lot from the original one I came out with which was very flat and just well... crap!! But the idea always stuck with me ^_^

It was fun getting back into using crazy, whimsical colours and hiding things in amongst the shrubbery, now my brain is full to the brim with ideas! :D

I'll be back as soon as I've got something else worth showing!

Untill next time ^_^

T-shirt Customising

Hallo! ^_^

I'm blogging today to share my latest creation, namely my new (old) customised t-shirt ^^
Because I always dive into everything head first and have very little patience (:P) I completely forgot to photograph this project as I was doing it, all I've got to share is the finished product, but I hope you like it anyway :)

A while ago I bought a plain white t-shirt from Asda because it came with a groovy waistcoat (can't remember the last time I wore the waistcoat!)... I don't like white, white to me is a blank canvas, so with a little time and imagination I decided to do this to it:

It's covered in my favourite imagery, quotes and lyrics, I basically poured my soul out onto it :) It felt good to let go and not worry about rules and composition as I was going for the free for all, anything goes approach :)

The quotes and lyrics include:

'A smart girl leaves before she is left:

'Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground'

'The Devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car'

'Viva Kazz Vegas'

'I wana fuck you like an animal'

'They don't give a fuck about you like I do'

'Tear a hole exquisite red, fuck the rest and stab it dead'

'If there is a hell I'll see you there'

'Be careful what you pretend to be'

'Poisoned to my rotten core, too fucked up to care anymore'

'The clouds will part and the sky cracks open and God himself will reach his fucking arm through'

'Some of them wana get used by you'

'Happiness isn't happiness without a violin playing goat'

'You may have noticed I'm not all there myself'

'Curiouser and curiouser'

'Think pink'

Apologies for the strong language :P Some of the quotes and lyrics you may recognise, but I never reveal exactly where I get my influences from so if you don't know some of them, sorry it's a secret :P

Some other pictures:

Back view, I did this by cutting up the middle of the back and cutting strips on the left and right sides, then I tied them together in double knots :)

And that's it :) I'm pretty proud of it, it's cool knowing it's the single only one of its kind in the entire universe :)

I've got loads of ideas for future customised tees but I need to get hold of some fabric dye and lots more white t-shirts!! Other projects I'm doing atm include an A2 size painting which I'll be sure to blog when it's finished so watch this space ^^

Ciao for now :D