That Natural Beauty

For a while now I have been thinking of trying out dying my Easter eggs with natural dyes, but for the last couple of years I have been too lazy or too pressed for time to do it. I had heard that the process is more time consuming and strenuous, so I was a little hesitant, but then again, I knew it would be a nice change to use something that nature has given us instead of those artificial store-bought powder colorants. Get back to basics, so to speak.

So this year was the year! I bought some purple cabbage, turmeric and onion peels (I had to buy the onions or scout supermarkets that had more peels left over in the onion bins - now that was not weird at all :) let me tell you), and I set out to make my eggs. I did a lot of research online, and I discovered that there are many methods to choose from, but in the end I made the purple cabbage and onion peel colorant in advance, boiling the ingredients for about 40 minutes, and then storing them in the fridge. Then on the next day I boiled some of the eggs in the colorant water, then left them to cool while still in there.

The color from the onion peels was rich, but not as red as I had seen on some websites. Mine was more of a rusty red-orange, which was still rich and deep, but not the Easter red that I was imagining. For the Easter red, I used a bit of store-bought colorant on a few eggs. The blue from the purple cabbage, however, was a thing of true beauty. Such a wonderful, gentle watercolor-y shade, the blue eggs are definitely my favorite. The Rusted Ladle has a great blog post about blue eggs and ways to make a marbled or speckled egg for the Easter table, and that was a huge inspiration. I left a couple of the eggs to soak in the colorant overnight in the hopes of getting a deep blue color, like some websites suggested, but the color didn't deepen as much as they were showing. Basically, when you use natural dyes, the results are not always predictable, but they are fun and the colors are light and airy, painterly and wonderful.

As for the yellow, I made the turmeric solution while boiling some of the eggs and then added the eggs to the colorant later. If you use white eggs, you will get a gorgeous yellow color like buttery spring sunlight. Very, very nice. For green, you can soak the eggs in the yellow solution and then in the blue one or vice versa. The greens are also surprisingly nature-like, fresh like springtime.

All in all, I would say that the experiment was a success. I would still like to research more ways to make a more vibrant red, but the other colors were lovely, and my egg plate looked like a watercolor Easter rainbow.



More resources: http://www.marthastewart.com/267850/dyeing-eggs-naturally

And for an extra tasty finish - my homemade Easter bread (this year it turned out extra delicious) and my solution to store-bought Easter bread leftovers - Easter croque monsieur (pan baked Easter bread, glued together with melted chocolate and garnished with fresh strawberries and powdered sugar). Enjoy the photos because the real thing disappeared very quickly :)

  

Christmas Baking

This year's Christmas baking was very successful, if I dare say so myself. Every year I aim to try out a few new recipes - it's my thing. I like trying out new things, and since I don't have that much time during the year, the holiday season seems like a good time to finally do it. Besides, home-made cookies and candy make for great Christmas gifts.

I always enjoy home-made gifts so much. It's both the gift itself and the fact that the person took time out of their daily schedule and routine to make it that makes it twice as precious as a normal gift, in my opinion. I have so little free time that I always appreciate when someone just as busy has made something for me.

But back to this year's baking - the recipes I tried out turned out to be amazing - coffee crinkles and Oreo truffles with black and white chocolate. They were sooo tasty, I almost kept them for myself instead of giving them as gifts to my team at work.

The coffee crinkles were soft and chocolaty and coffee-tasting and completely amazing - they are easily a contestant for the title of my favorite cookies ever. The recipe is from A Baker's House.

The Oreo truffles were also quite nice and creamy, and I used some nice cooking chocolate for dipping, which totally made a difference. My advice is to use good quality chocolate for such things whenever you can. The recipe is from here: Cooking Classy.

All in all - a good holiday baking haul and an excellent selection for this year's Christmas gifts.

Easter Impressions

I am enjoying the Spring weather this year, even the rainy days. There is something very soothing and rejuvenating about the green grass growing an inch overnight, about the clouds rolling in front of the mountain outside my window, to be chased away by the sun in the afternoon, about the smell of wet earth and the sound of birds chirping. It reminds us that we are alive.

This year I am very very happy with my Easter eggs - normally I can sort of get nice colors in the end, but only after an exhausting afternoon of cursing the egg dyes that refuse to color the eggs, the blue that turns muddy or the yellow, which dyes my hands, but nothing else. This year there were a few dyes that I wasn't so happy about, but all in all, egg painting was surprisingly easy and mishap-free, and it took me only about an hour. Yey!

This Easter was also special because I have now been to Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an exotic and very engaging company team building that featured also a tour of Tel Aviv and some beach time at the Dead Sea. I brought back the 33 candles that you are supposed to light from the holy fire in the church and then extinguish, so this year I lit one of these special candles in my house, wishing for love, health and harmony in my home. I need it.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Long Time, No See

So I've been gone for a long time...I know...

Every time I fail to update my blog for an extended period of time, I usually excuse myself with my job, but this time it is only partially my excuse. I did get a big promotion, so work is taking up quite a lot of my time and, what is more important in this case, a lot more of my mental energy. But it's not just that; it's my personal life, too. Things are a bit messy, and if I'm honest, I feel like a bit of a mess myself - curly hair straightening and emotions flying everywhere. Add that to the fact that I just turned thirty, and you get what I'm going through :)

Actually, my thirtieth birthday bash was a lot of fun - three bars in one night to celebrate the fact that I've made it through three decades. It was a black and red theme, and as party favors to all those brave souls that joined me on this epic bar crawl, I made small abstract paintings in red, black and white. In fact, they turned out really great, so I am thinking of making a series of different colors and maybe turning them into an art show some time in the future. Check them out below, and wish me a great 30th year :)

My Art Shelf

I have been looking around for artwork for my house ever since I moved in a few years back, and I never seemed to have any luck. Rarely did anything catch my eye, and if it did I usually found some small detail that I didn't like or the work was simply too expensive. As much as I would like to, it would be hard for me to pay thousands of dollars for a painting. I have also browsed Etsy for hours at a time trying to find something for my living room to no avail...until this past December.

It all started with the painting in the middle, an abstract ink on paper, that I randomly saw on Etsy and loved at first sight. Because my living room is in coffee, chocolate and cream colors, this work fit perfectly with my decor and the other pieces that I have painted myself for the room. After that, it seemed that great pieces of art were simply falling into my lap from Etsy's pages, and I ended up with this small collection at very reasonable prices. I am very pleased with my new art shelf, so I thought I'd give a shout out to the artists:

from left to right

Forest - art print by Schall Eszter
https://www.etsy.com/shop/schalleszter
This shop has really cute art by the Hungarian illustrator Schall Eszter - birds in the forest, drunk foxes singing, elephants jumping rope, orange frogs and Eskimos fishing. I chose this adorable print of a bird near a cherry tree to keep up with the bird theme I have going on at home.

Autumn Treescape - linocut by Giuliana Lazzerini
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBluebirdGallery
I took some printmaking classes in college, so I couldn't pass up on a hand-pulled linocut with tiny birds hand-drawn in ink. Another must-have for my bird theme. There are also a lot of fox and hare prints on her Etsy shop as well.

Moon and Stars - watercolor by BluePalette
https://www.etsy.com/shop/bluepalette#
This is a real favorite of mine. I have worked with watercolor since my first art class when I was four, so I can appreciate the delicate beauty of this technique and the craftsmanship it requires. BluePalette's shop has these amazing circle watercolors that are truly great finds. They are little gems, and I wish I could buy a bunch of these and make a whole gallery wall with them. Not saying I won't at some point :)
I love the night sky, especially in the summer when it is full of stars and everything is quiet in the dead of night, but you are awake and basking in its serenity. This is what this painting reminds me of, so I had to get it. At 20 dollars, I think it is a bargain.

Abstract Ink Drawing - ink drawing by ComArt
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ComArt
This is the painting that started it all, and I still love it. Some people have asked me what is it that I see in it, since it is basically a splotch of ink, but I tell them that it is beautiful. I don't know what it is, but I find it truly beautiful and harmonious in its composition. This artist has some great stuff.

Minimalist Modern Linocut - linocut by Toni Point
https://www.etsy.com/shop/printwork
If you are looking for something minimalist, this is the place to go. I really like the play of shapes and positive-negative space in the print I bought. It is dynamic and simple at the same time. This goes to show that linocuts don't have to be ornamental, but they can play in the abstract realm as well.

Watercolor Illustration- glicee print by Victoria
https://www.etsy.com/shop/VictoriAtelier
There was no actual title given to this piece by the author, as far as I've seen, but I call it my "Sun painting", so that in my collection I have a sun and I have a moon (the little round watercolor). This abstract piece also looks great, and it has an incredible richness of colors. The fact that it's not all bright jewelled tones makes the depth of hues even better - the neutral background in beige, cream and cappuccino flows to beautiful little speckles of gold, navy, sea blue and aubergine. I would have loved to own the original, but since it was not available, I decided to get the glicee print and enjoy the painting anyway.

So there it is, my modest little collection, but one that I now love to look at every day. As an artist myself, I find that having art in one's home makes it cozy and unique, and I hope that you all can find something that you like out there - there are great little galleries around Sofia and abroad, and there is always Etsy.

Lilly & Alex Wedding Invitation Design

It's been months now since my close friend Lilly's wedding (you can see Lilly & Alex's engagement photos here), but it was one of those beautiful events that you won't forget for some time. As a bridesmaid and the "artistic one" in our group, I was tasked with the extremely important and highly classified mission of creating and printing the wedding invitations.

Lilly had decided that the color of the wedding (apart from the obvious white) would be purple, so it was logical that the invitations would have to follow this color scheme. At first I thought that it would be nice to create a monogram / logo for the wedding like I did for my friend Dani's wedding here, and I actually came up with some pretty good designs that you can see below. They feature the first letters of their names in the Cyrillic alphabet.

However, because Lilly and Alex wanted their wedding to be elegant in a classical way, the couple and I decided to use a more timeless approach and simply have their full names arranged together in a beautiful script. Next came the actual invitation. I created three different designs as a starting point in order to be able to give the couple some food for thought and see what kinds of styles they like.

They liked both the design with the bride and groom and the delicate flowers and ribbons design, but they ended up choosing the bride and groom. I made some tweaks to the text and visuals, we decided on a Pantone color to be used, and, finally, I had a beautiful design ready for printing.

We decided on a white pearl paper, which is a standard choice for weddings, but a really elegant one. The combination between the purple color and the pearly white turned out to be sparkly and beautiful.

In addition to the invitation and envelopes, the couple decided to give the modern version of a "mixed tape" as party favors, namely a "mixed CD" with the favorite songs of the bride and the groom. I designed the CD and its packaging in the same style as the invitation, and printed it on the same pearl paper. The guests loved these party favors - they were a big hit!

As finishing touches for the wedding I also created a label for the special wedding rakia, a traditional Bulgarian fruit brandy, as well as a label for the wish book for the bride and groom that you can see below. All in all, it was an elegant affair with elegant stationary and design.

And here we are, the bridesmaids, in all of our purple glory :)

The Good Life: Wedding Gift Abstract Collage

I was at a lovely wedding in Arbanasi yesterday, a mere day after Pavel and I got back from our Thessaloniki-Lefkada-Meteora-Paralia Katerini Greek trip, so it has been an eventful two weeks. Just before we left for Greece, however, I decided that I had to add a little something to the customary money envelope that everyone gives at Bulgarian weddings (for those of you who don't know, pretty much nobody here registers for gifts when they plan their wedding, so guests usually contribute money instead of presents at the celebration in order to avoid a "two juicers and three toasters" situation). I was rummaging through my tempera painted paper stash, and I found such a vivid piece with a warm orange and magenta base and violet and green accents that I decided it was perfect for a wedding gift collage. I added another fiery orange piece and a green accent, and the end result is below.

I called it "The Good Life" because it is colorful, dynamic and rich, and I hope that the bride and groom enjoy the best life possible together. If the wedding is something to judge by, I think that they will do just fine. I think that the guests, and especially the best man, who danced away the night and even took a dip in the pool with his clothes on, had tons and tons of fun.

Here is "The Good Life" again:

Fall Couples Photoshoot with Lilly & Sasho

Back in the fall I had the pleasure of doing a photo shoot with one of my favorite couples - my close friend Lilly and her man Sasho. It's always wonderful to see two people in love, and it was even better this time because it involved people that I care about. I have always been a sucker for romance, so I jumped on the chance to photograph them with the beautiful fall foliage of South Park in Sofia as a backdrop. 

I like South Park as a photo shoot location because it has beautiful ponds and a variety of trees that make for an interesting setting. A few years ago I did another couple's photo shoot there (read more about it here), but while that one was in the spring and featured a lot of blooming trees, this one was all about the red and gold colors of October. I never got around to posting them last year, but I came across them last night, so I thought I'd share.

I am available for couples sessions, so feel free to contact me if you'd like to request one. Enjoy some of the photos from this beautiful fall shoot!

New Oil Paintings Available on My Esty Shop

After close to a month since my last post (wow, long time), I finally found the time to add a couple of oil paintings to my Etsy shop. I have added my Nocturne paintings, which consist of Nocturne: Ocean and Nocturne: Woodland. Here they both are:

I have always loved nights and the specific kind of quiet they bring about, which is not even quiet at all, but a kind of chorus of crickets, rustling of leaves, and the movement of the clouds. I am not an early bird, and I am rarely ever wide awake enough to enjoy early mornings properly. I am more of an owl, and I have often found myself wide awake at the wee hours of the night marveling at the feeling of peace that it can offer. Indeed, a lot of my artistic inspiration comes at night, perhaps simply because the world is asleep, and I can think without the phone ringing or without worrying about all the errands I have to do right now. These paintings were a way of trying to put these feelings on paper through color and stroke. I named them Nocturnes  after Chopin's nocturnes, which are some of my favorite pieces of classical music ever. They are beautiful, and even though I used to listen to them a lot while I was going through a rough patch, they don't necessarily carry a sad feeling. Instead, they are like an embrace, rocking you to sleep.

I hope you enjoy my art, and I also hope that some lucky person would buy the pair and enjoy these pieces of the night in his or her home.You can purchase the paintings here at my Etsy shop.

Looking at My Life & Some Resolutions

The winter holidays are a favorite time of mine, and I am normally relaxed and focused on nothing else but soaking up Christmas carols and movies, reading a couple of books, and eating delicious food. This year was not that different, except for the fact that I did a lot of thinking about my life. I have felt very stressed this past year, and I'm sure that most of my posts from the last six months show that in one way or another. I have been really busy, and I have often felt like I have not a single spare minute in a day to do something for pleasure or look at myself in the mirror.

Some of the people in my life have expressed the opinion that perhaps I am overreacting; after all, plenty of people work and study at the same time and don't feel like I do. I am not sure what to say to that. All I can say is that I am usually quite hard on myself, and I am generally not a complainer, so if I do complain, it's generally for a legitimate reason. I am trying to find a decent balance of work and play in my life, but lately it has been extremely hard and it bothers me. I feel really grateful for everything that I do have: my own home, nice parents, a guy that has been nothing but wonderful to me, to mention a few. I am just trying to find a way to live more, rather than do more.



I am looking to change a few things in my life in 2013. I am not going to mention some of them here, but I am going to talk about a big to-do item that I should check off my list, which is finally finish school. A lot of the other stuff follows from this one. So here they are, my Resolutions:

1. Graduate with an MBA by the end of the summer.
This one is a definite must. I need to finish studying ASAP or else I fear my brain will begin countdown to explosion. I write down all tasks and errands that I need to complete for work, school, and for home, but I catch myself forgetting one thing to make room for remembering another :). This coming term will be the hardest one yet - Strategic Financial Management and having to submit a full business plan for a new company, so I really need to be on top of my game for these. After that it's four marketing courses, and if all goes well, I should be done by the beginning of September. The next six to eight months are likely to be the hard, but I will have to push through. 
Finishing my degree will lift a huge weight off my shoulders in so many ways that I can't wait for that day to come. Having to study nights and weekends, I've had to miss lots of fun stuff and nights out with my friends. In fact, it is quite hard to work around my schedule to meet with my friends at all. I'm lucky that I get to see my guy at home every night, or I don't know what I would do. Not only that, but I would not have to work around papers and exams when planning vacations or deciding whether I can go on vacation in the first place. Of course there is also the financial part of getting a degree; finally having one means no more tuition fees.
A mini goal related to this big goal for 2013 is to complete my degree without being a slave to the textbooks. I'm not entirely sure how I can achieve that without having a clone study instead of me, but I will sure as hell try.

2. Do more of the things I love and connect more with the people I love. 
This would follow from completing my degree, but I would love it if I could find the time to do more reading, paint more, do more photography, meet more people and hang out with my friends, my guy and my parents more even before I graduate. Life is a lot nicer and I am a lot less cranky when I can spend time doing all those creative things I like to do.
I have been working hard to build a decent body of abstract paintings and collages for an art show, and my goal is to have an art show at some point. This point could be 2013 if I am lucky. I should also finally open an Etsy shop. I'm not sure how often people realize sales of artwork on Etsy, but even one sale would be a huge deal for me, so I should do it soon.

3. Socialize
With all this time in the office and in front of the books, I have become somewhat of a hermit. It sucks. I need to expand my horizons, meet new people, find new friends. I have felt a tiny bit lonely in terms of friends lately.

4. Look well-groomed all the time, not just sometimes.
 OK, I am allowed one girly resolution for all the hard work I've been doing, and this is it :). I am usually good at this, and I have addressed some issues with my skin this past year, but I have a tendency to put the finer points of my appearance on the back burner when I don't have much time or I am too stressed, which is often lately. I dress well, but when I feel tired I am less likely to think of a great outfit or give myself a facial. I do feel better when I know I have taken good care of myself, so my goal this year would be to try and exhibit the same level of care for myself that I exhibit for studying, for example.

 Hopefully these don't look ridiculous to most of you, but even if they do, they are mine and I'll stick with them :) Did you decide on your resolutions for the new year already?

P.S. The photos are from the trip I took with some friends to celebrate the new year. Unfortunately, there wasn't really any snow, but on the upside, our fireworks were amazing.