In the wind of change

Yes! I finally did it! After three and a half months of juggling different part-time jobs I finally found permanent, full time job from my own field of expertise. ♥ Actually this was quite a surprise, since I just got a call from the CEO of this local advertising agency asking if I would like to come to a job interview. My previous teacher had recommended me and, well, a few days later I was there, working. :D Of course I have this four month try-out period but I just can't help but to be super-excited about this huge opportunity!

Truth to be told I was already getting a bit desperate, thinking of weather I should just find some other full time work (which basically means cleaning for me) to support myself and my little family, but I'm proud that I stayed strong and gained experience finding odd jobs that were supporting my chosen profession. Words cannot describe how happy and relieved I am! The office already feels like home to me, I really like the people I'm working with and I'm actually feeling really good and confident about the future.

Now I'm going to clean a bit and then just relax. I think I haven't felt this relaxed for months (over a year actually, haha) and I'm going to enjoy every second of it. Have a wonderfully relaxing weekend, dear readers. Good things come for those who wait. ♥

Dream Home Heartache

Ah! I have had really awesome couple of days! I got a call on Friday and it was the CEO of the advertising agency, where I used to be a trainee. I was asked to be a temp there again (I helped out a few weeks ago also) starting from Monday, so there I am once again, fondling InDesign, doing my dream job, yay! Ahhhhh what I would give to work there permanently, it really is my dream place to work. I hope I can at least be a temp there every now and then. :3

But yeah, I also have another agenda for this post! I finally got around taking photos of our new batcave, so a little show and tell can be arranged. I'm personally a huge fan of home decor, I love finding new pieces to our little home, especially second hand, and also reading and looking at pictures of other people's homes, especially gothic, victorian and fetish themed homes. If you know any good blogs, tumblrs or sites about beautiful home decor, please let me know! I would also love to see your homes. :) But now, it's picture time!

So this is what you see when you walk in! Shoes, pole, gaming Mr. Wolf... :D

And this, when you look back. Pretty bare still, I would like to get a new lamp at least, and maybe some small table on top of Béla's litter box. Then again I love the space, it is really handy when practicing burlesque routines!

A closer look of the living room/office/kitchen. We finally got a new couch when we moved in (for the cat to destroy, obviously, haha). ♥

My tiny work spot. I really need a bigger desk, but so far I haven't found a decent one, blah. I could move that one to entrance hall if I could find a replacement. :p

The kitchen. Love the tiles, the cupboard doors... not so much. But yeah, it's decent and surprisingly spacious. I would like to get more lime elements to it (haha, my secret love: neon colors ♥). 

And here's our living room from opposite direction. Got room for climbing on my pole, exercising, playing with Béla... Btw, gotta love Matlock. :D

Next up, toilet, shower and sauna. Super spacious, almost too spacious actually, otherwise really nice.Except that white floor! It get's stains really easily and I have already destroyed it a bit with hair dye... shiiiiiiiit.

Same room, another direction. I would love to get more storage spaces, like some sort of cabinet...

Last but not least: the bedroom. It's small, but I like it a lot. :3 Behind the bed we actually have a miniature fridge for storing cold drinks! :D Oh, the hedonism... ♥

Next to the door, my bone collection. ♥ And four very, very narrow cabinets for clothes! Definitely need more room for them... The cabinet for my fetish wear is actually in the entrance hall, next to our main door... u_u;

So! This is our new home. :3 What do you think? Also, I would love for you to show and tell me about your homes, rooms, cottages and, well, any house decor really! ♥

Venus in Furs

Hello, little darklings!

This is the 100th post of this blog, WOOP WOOP! Can we have some applause?  To celebrate, I finally added some personal information about little ol' me, you can access it by clicking the picture on he sidebar. ;)

Anyway. A while ago my very good friend Pauli Tavasti took some photos of me once again. I wanted to have some photos of  a few new latex pieces in my wardrobe. Somehow this set reminds me of the book called Venus in Furs (which I really enjoyed, by the way).

I was  quite nervous to purchase these latex pieces, since I could not try them on beforehand (which sucks! In my opinion latex should always suit it's wearer perfectly and there is no real reason why one couldn't try the clothes on in the shop. I understand not trying panties and such on for hygienic reasons, but come on, a skirt?? ). Luckily the pieces fit me well enough. ♥ By the way, as you might have noticed I happen to love fetishey clothes and I actually have one closet sanctified just for them in my apartment. Would you readers like to see it? It is one of my dearest possessions and a huge part of my happiness. So? A little peek to the dearest of my closets, yes/no? :3

Ps. Venus in Furs is also a song by The VelvetUnderground, do have a litsen, it's beautiful. ♥

 

Le Chat Noir

Good morning! ^w^ As promised yesterday, today I want to make a post about our newest member of our family, this little ball of fur called Béla.

Béla is approximately 4 months old regular house cat and he has been living with us a little over a month. In the beginning of the summer two of our fiends' cats had kittens, one week apart from each other. Béla was from the later batch. The birth didn't go well, however. Béla was the only kitten that was born normally, the others had to be taken out by cesarean section and all but one of Bélas sisters had died. :( Fortunately Béla and his sister were ok, even though I was worried at first that there would be something wrong with Béla, since all the older kittens and Béla's sis too were really active, adventurous and feisty, while Béla was really shy and just wanted to be left alone by himself.

Well, as the kittens grew it became clear that Béla sure was different from the others, the other kittens kept playing and fighting with each other, but Béla just explored his surroundings by himself and when other kittens came to bug him he was just annoyed and ended up biting them! But there isn't anything wrong with him, he's just a loner I guess when it comes to other cats. :) Humans however are a different matter. He just loves attention, petting and being played with! Since I work at home it's sometimes quite difficult actually since he won't allow me to work in peace, but constantly tries to climb to my lap or purr at my feet or meow for attention. :D He also licks our faces and sleeps in our bed and even comes to sauna with us. xD

I'm really happy that we got him and couldn't imagine my life without him anymore! We had been talking about adopting a cat for a while and one day Wolf was visiting some friends who have two cats, one of them still a kitten, and he just decided that now is the right time. He called to our other friends, because he knew that they have kittens to ask if they had any black ones (since pretty much all textiles in our apartment are more or less black...) and they did! Well, actually Béla has some white in his chest and under his belly and that's why we decided to name him Béla. You see his fur remids me of the costume of Dracula played by Béla Lugosi. ;) I was kind of surprised when Wolf told me that he had reserved a kitten for us, but very happy nevertheless! He had thought that this "new baby" would be a good an anniversary gift for both of us and I agree 100%! I think he completes our family. ♥

These four photos were snapped by me, but my friend Pauli also took some photos of our fur child the other day, when we were photo shooting some other pictures as well, so these last pictures are taken by him. :3 Also, I'm going to make a separate post about the human pictures, so no worries, you'll see them too eventually!

© Pauli Tavasti

© Pauli Tavasti

© Pauli Tavasti

© Pauli Tavasti

© Pauli Tavasti

© Pauli Tavasti

Béla is our first pet that me and Wolf got together, but we have had other pets before him as well separately. I love all kinds of animals, but cats definitely have a special place in my little black heart. How about you readers, do you have pets or would you like to have them if you could? :)

Release the bats!

Hello again dear readers.

As you know this blog has been pretty much on hold the whole summer. Truth to be told I haven't felt like blogging for quite a while. I haven't felt motivated and so I have been avoiding it... but I have thought about the matter.

Obviously I have had some good reasons for not blogging. I have concentrated pretty much on my new work as a graphic designer / illustrator. Another very god reason is our new furry family member, a little black cat called Béla. I'm going to make a separate post about him later, so you just have to wait but yeah, he demands quite a lot of my time, and I really enjoy spending it with him, but of course that time must be taken out of something else. :)

The most pressing reason, however, is fear, at least I think so. Last spring I realized that there are indeed people out there who do not think too highly of me and since that harsh realization my self-esteem hasn't been what it used to be. I fear to speak out, I keep thinking what to say so carefully, for so long, and finally I end up saying nothing. In fear of criticism I have put up virtually no new photos of myself during summer on my Facebook. I have spent my days in jeans, ballerinas and cardigans nearly every day, instead of my beautiful gothic clothing, to blend in with the crowd. Well, I have had some good days, but mostly I have just felt very vary of my surroundings. Living life like this, however, has made me feel like I'm losing myself and turning into something dull and grey. I want to start living again, and I will. The old me is still here, hidden away in my batcave and now I'm releasing the bats!

This also means, that I will make this blog more personal and therefore interesting, well, that's what I think at least! I love to read blogs about daily lives of interesting people, but sadly this blog hasn't been like that for a long time. This is something I really want to improve in the future. :) So, as promised next post will be about our new kitten Béla, and after that I'm going to make a post about our new apartment. :) But I will return to that tomorrow, now I'm going to watch one more episode of Downton Abbey and go get some beauty sleep. :3

© Pauli Tavasti

Hush little baby don't say a word.
And never mind that noise you heard.
It's just the beast under your bed.
In your closet in your head!

Like a bat out of hell!

Long time no see, darklings!

I am sincerely sorry that I just vanished from the face of the internet, but I had some rather unexpected changes in my life recently. The biggest one of those was a sudden change of apartment! We had been living in our (now ex) apartment for a year and this whole time our sewers kept on giving us shit (yes, literally). We have had to call plumbers to out apartment probably over twenty times during the past year, often in the middle of the night, too. Finally our landlords suggested that we should move out to another apartment, so they can rip out the floors and really find out where the problem lies. Long story short we ended up changing the scenery a bit more than we intended at first, we now have a slightly bigger apartment, which is also nearer to the town center and almost next to a really nice graveyard. :) Moving was a real pain in the butt though, since we didn't exactly plan it, but we managed, thanks to our friends & family who helped out a lot.

We also ordered a new couch, which will arrive tomorrow, whee! It was sort of an anniversary gift from us, to us, since last Saturday me and Wolf had our anniversary (we have been together six years now ♥).

Besides the moving, I have had some pretty draining deadlines and stuff, but I'm just happy I have some work! It is not easy to find work as a graphic designer, with the economy like this and all, but I hope it'll get better in time. :)

Ahem... and the real reason I'm posting now is that I finally had time to edit some photos of my paintings in the Guilty Pleasures art exhibition. Some of the works I have shown you earlier in this entry, but here's all the new ones!

Strapping Young Man, 2013

Glossy, 2013

The Sacred Heart

Divine Punishment, 2013

Heavy Rubber, 2013

Hush, 2013

My Heart Will Go On, 2013

Spellbound, 2013

The Plea (Self Portrait), 2013

These Boots Aren't Made For Walking, 2013

Do tell me what you think of them, which is your favorite, would you have something like that hanging on your wall or do you do art yourselves? :)

Rock chick & Princess

Hello little batty bats! As you might remember, I recently graduated and now that I have also successfully thrown a graduation party for myself I feel I finally have the strength to talk a little about my thesis too. :D

I wanted to do something related to comics as my thesis, since reading and making comics are two of my oldest and dearest hobbies. Last summer a girl from my school that I had previously met at fashion photography class contacted me on Facebook and asked if I was interested in illustrating her comic scripts. I was so lucky, since I'm not much of a writer and I had been so worried about my upcoming thesis project because of that! I wanted to do comics but I was lacking a good story to back up my art skills. Me and this girl, Henna, met up and soon I was already sketching up characters and first strips for the comic!

 Henna already had a title for the comic, which would be Rokkityttö & Rinsessa (=Rock chick & Princess) and as you might guess the comic is about two very different friends, pretty, sexy, wild and stubborn Alma (the princess) and serious and sarcastic over-achiever Tiia (the rock chick). For my thesis I illustrated 30 strips of Alma's and Tiia's adventures, wrapped them up in an album and made a little website for the comic (as cherry on top).

Simultaneously with the comic I started doing research on comic illustration, since I noticed it's quite different to just illustrate comics from a script than to make comics all by yourself, with your own story. Eventually I found a name for my thesis and decided that the title would be: Serial illustration - Illustrating comics from exterior script. It is supposed to be a small guide for those interested in comic illustration specifically.

The thesis as a whole went surprisingly well. I got a 4 (5 being the best grade) from it and also a little diploma from the comic book, for creating a commercially functional, style-wise solid quality comic, that also shows makers' creative handiwork.

If you want to know more about the comic Rokkityttö & Rinsessa, you can visit our website and even order your own album from there (we mail only to Finland at the moment, but if you would like to order to other countries I'll see what I can do for you ♥). The essay part of my thesis can be found here if somebody is interested in reading it. :)

All in all my life is very good right now. I have some work projects coming up (from my own field of expertese that is!) and I'm also illustrating some cross-word puzzles as a part time job. :) And continuing to draw Rokkityttö & Rinsessa of course! :D Also, some Rokkityttö & Rinsessa related art is currently on display in here, Kesä kaikilla - Oulun sarjakuvaseuran kesänäyttely, among other great comic related illustrations. ^w^

What do you think of the comic, dear readers? :) Sorry about them being only in Finnish at the moment, maybe I'll translate some of the strips for you sometime? :D Also, would you like to know more about comic-related subjects? Like some art every now and then, recommendations and so on? :) Do tell! ♥