For the love of...print?

Wow.


Where do I start? Like so many colours of the rainbow there are so many patterns of print, not just any print.


I'm talking - the jungle kind.


For every boy and every girl, as we grow up our tastes change. For the girls it starts with pigtails and frills in our childhood, moving onto the likes of black and white only in our tweens. It is then in our mature adult emergence, we discover that much like our growing desire to experience every single delicious shade on the colour chart we could lay our hands on in our teens - one must eventually begin to unleash the animal within.


Am I peaking this phase? Boy am I ever.


Much to the displeasure of my fellow friends and family, despite my natural heritage (being of european descent) denoting that I should of course like bright colours, shiny/bedazzled/bejewelled glittery things (all of which sadly...i'm lying. Brilliantly I do) Europeans tend to always have a natural instinct that draws them to ANIMAL PRINT.


Of all; kinds, shapes, sizes, hues and the pieces that they are attached to.


For instance...


What started as quite a normal collection has burdened many... *ahem* blossomed for me into so much more.  It's literally gotten to the point where I can not walk into a single shopping centre, let alone store - without eyeing off all of the seasons latest peieces. This can come in the form of...urm *most recently*...


*Underwear - this includes both bra's and undies. Last store I walked out with a total of EIGHT items covered in glorious print. Needless to say that even though I probably helped the girl behind the counter achieve her sales target for the afternoon, she probably thought I had taken my purchases to the "beyond a normal scope of ok" parameters when I purchased only print items.


* Pajamas. They are genified pants, which I have absolutely detested since their invention. However, as soon as I saw them covered in black and purple cheetah print... we found an unbreakable bond.


*The deadly trio - wallet, skirt and nail attachments from the same store. Girl behind counter and boyfriend both eyed me with the "are you serious?" look.


Can I help that i'm developing this unnecessary burning desire to experience all that print has to offer me?


Of course not. It's lodged inside me genes, festering away deeper and darker. Pecking at me every time I see a fleck of unusual spots, or stripes in various shades from orange to black.

            ***So beautiful.... rooowrrrr.***


My current conquest is to seek the perfect pair of print shoes... in any colour and any hue. Only problem is no one i'm with will actually let me purchase any that I see. The problem is no matter how hard they try, like any addiction - they can't just stifle the print cold turkey out of me, and i'm not going down without a fight.


*P.S No animals were hurt or disturbed in the making of this blog. All animal print discussed is of fake creation only and not actual furs etc.


Love and respect your print ladies and gents.


Forever yours,


yoursirensong xox

Travelling

I never believed in the saying "bitten by the travel bug" much like being bitten by "the love bug" I suppose. Who are these travel bugs? Why are there so many of them? Where do they come from and why the hell am I always getting bitten by a different strand of their species?

My lack of bites and all other manner of itchy feelings, probably had something to do with having done very little travel other then family holidays or road trips, until I ventured to Europe this year. Every day was an adventure and I travelled to some places that not only had I fantasised and read about my whole life, not just on a travelling scale -but a spiritual one. 

Europe is really the birthplace of everything fantastical to me, all of the Royal Dynasties that stood there thousands of years before me and breathed the same air as I had. Their birth places, their death places, their brandished and now fallen castles... all of their spirits overwhelmed me. 

One particular place above all that really spoke to me and captured all five of these elements I have been speaking of was our trip to Scotland, and our following visit into the depths of the Isle of Skye. 

Although this picture captures a beauty so magnificent and pure, you can't really fathom what you see in pictures and how you view them in real life. So in some ways, I guess you could say as beautiful as this picture is, it does no justice for the feeling you get inside when you are standing amongst one of these glorious glenn's with mountains as far and as high as your eyes can see.

Our tour driver told us tales of how the folk on the Isle, believed heavily in faery or elven lore, and did not appreciate anyone that joked about or did not follow in the respect of these customs. Everyone on the bus of course laughed, including the tour driver, whilst I sat there waiting for him to tell me more. 

Some of the tales involved the way in which all of the folk on the Isle feared many things included being tricked/fooled by the faery folk, which seemed silly to my companions yet rang true to me.

One particular tale told (to which we also later visited the tale place) of the "Old Man of Storr" a married couple who climbed every day to the top of the mountain, to drink in the glorious views surrounding them. Slowly the mans wife gets so old she cannot climb the mountain and they are visited by a faery who makes a deal with them to be able to see this view forever. Of course they hastily agree, and the faery turns them both into craggy rocks. Set atop this mountain for centuries one day the wife cracks and fall to her death below. The man is so upset he too cracks and in his place, falls a waterstream - tears from the heartbreak for his lady love lies the Old Man of Storr.

Picturesque beauty, art, realms, travel and dynasties encompass the whole of Europe. One day if i'm lucky enough I will get to traverse the whole of it.

That's it for now,

yoursirensong xox

Royal Dynasties

Fantasy, art and era's before me engross my very being.


So it would make obvious sense that in Royal Dynasties I would see several pasts that do not just depict tales of greed and lust - so much more?


Like everything before this, I can not really explain where my love or obsession more like comes from these elements or why I have chosen to study them so. I suppose like the previous topic before this "era's other then my time" I have always had a fascination not just with the land and the tales of my previous centuries, but those who lived within it.


I know all Royal bloodlines like the back of my hand, whom married who in what year, for what realm to which country. All of these may seem like useless information to most, the tiny little historian in me is intrigued by every moment of it. 


Every dress and every scandal, every palace and every beheading... what lies beneath the castle walls? All of which I find hauntingly magical, and annoyingly surreal as I wish I had been a part of these dynasties as opposed to leasing Real Estate in a technological soon to be 2012.


How do we get through these text riddled, Facebook stalking days?


Read about another life, a real life... so distant from your own.
The russian blood (in amongst, English, Scottish, Irish, French & Armenian - what a confused breed I am...) in me drew me quickly to the story of the Romanovs and their untimely demise, the last Dynasty of Russia an empire lost in heresy an revolutionary upheaval. To that of my fellow rulers before me, Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scotts, King Henry the VIII and of course infamous tales such as the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn. 

View adaptations of other lives...
Series such as the Tudors (or Tudor Boobie - a ridiculous amount of nakedness, as my partner and I so fondly call it) happily and quite easily take us away from our boring realities. 


In this world, and another one can only dream of what was and has past, to what our now can be. 


Boy do I wish for a ground hog day. A ground hog day about... 600 years ago?


Living in yesterday,


yoursirensong xox

Era's Other Then The Present

Much like fantasy for as long as I can remember I have felt like I was born in the wrong time, perhaps even the wrong body I guess. I relate more to the medieval days; with fair maidens tossing about their well groomed hair dancing in gloriously silky dresses at all of the gayest parties, drink in hand and dashing lad in sight... dreaming about a romantic tomorrow. Perhaps its the romantic in me? The believer in all things dazzling but at the same time imperfect? 

Nothing grabs my attention more then a good book or a heart wrenching movie, with gushing ladies pondering about handsome stable boys that they know they can never have. One of my favourite series would have to be "The Luxe" so kindly introduced to me by my cousin, who apparently knows me all too well. 

*No spoiler alerts here! I'll save that for a book review.

One day i'll get to be a part of that imperfect and serene romantic tomorrow... until then i'll dream that dream.

Forever yours,

yoursirensong xox

Art

Growing up with a famous artist as your grandmother is pretty darn cool, it also rubs off a little. Art runs through my vains, much like candy into my open mouth (fuelled by my fist of course), so it's no surprises that I started doodling pretty pictures at a young age. As I slowly began to colour inside the lines it became apparent that I only drew particular things; horses, faeries and... mermaids. To this day not much has changed... I still as above am heavily into all facets of fantasy, and I guess this has been reflected in my art. 

No, unfortunately as much as I wish I had the skill to do so, I haven't carried on in my grandmothers footsteps, However I did pay strong attention to detail, and have studied her in her art classes, and fought with my sisters several times over who got to put the pegs in all the easels ;)

Nor have I painted great artworks in mediums such as oil; acrylics or drawn in pastels. I chose at this point in time, to create my works on watercolour with graphites and felt pens. 

However I did pay strong attention to detail, and have watched aminously, and been a model for several of her art classes.

Some of my greatest influences in art would have to be;

David Delamare and his adaptations of everything fantastical, especially his mermaids in oil...

Selena Fenech an Australian artist who concentrates on mermaids and faeries equally...

Another artist that I have stumbled on recently is Olivia De Bernardis. She focuses mostly on pinups and sensual art (secret favourites of mine) and pays great attention to detail on every corner of the female body. Although that may sound dirty to some, it normally would have disturbed any mother when I slowly bought all of her works in the form of coffee table books - thank goodness mum like myself has been exposed to many different forms of art. I like Olivia, take great interest in studying the female body, and enjoy recreating adaptations of simple scenarios into something more playful and sometimes more sinister.

Images such as these only feed my thirst to create and be something... more I guess? I know the art that I am currently producing is quite good, and I have managed to grasp the female form quite well. The only thing I am missing though is connecting the two. I want my work to be more life like, and I feel through studying Olivia's work I am already getting better at this. David & Selena's works however, open my mind to new possibilities and new ways to engage with what I am thinking, and how I place it on the paper.

In time I hope to be any measure of a combination of the three, and I need to spend way more time then I have available currently to do so. When is the right time though? Never, really.

In between now and never works perfectly well for me :P

Forever yours,

yoursirensong xox