Friday 28 February 2014

Moscow Part 2









































I can't seem to stop posting images from my trip to Moscow and St Petersburg, I most have taken hundreds of images! Here's a little collection from my Instagram page. The cat in the picture is Hek and I love his knitted green jumper with two humping deers, brilliant! Me looking serious in a Russian hat by a desk was at a very random party at the museum of everything from Soviet Union, have you ever been at party in a museum before? And for the opening of our exhibition I had a special offer on my Animal Kingdom Bear T-shirt and to make it a bit more fun I put it on my man Ted, a giant bat that I doodled late at night. Thanks to everyone who came to the opening night, I had a great time and it was lovely to meet you all!

Wednesday 26 February 2014

WIP10 over at The Wallery

























Psst. The Wallery has written a nice little blog post about my work that you can read over here.

Tuesday 25 February 2014

Zoology museum, Moscow Part 2

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Here are some more images from my visit at the amazing Zoology museum in Moscow. Moscow felt very polluted, before I went there I used to think that London is polluted but now London feels like a fresh walk in the Alps! My friends said that they have some amazing sunsets in Moscow, pink and purple and all kinds of colours but its not very amazing as those colours come from pollution… I had a really good time though and got addicted to Russian strawberry and mint toothpaste and Nikolaj's pie's - they have three pie cafe's in Moscow, very good ;)

Time for tea.

Saturday 22 February 2014

Zoology museum, Moscow Part 1


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Wow, from Children's room monster vinyls to sinister looking images from my last museum visits…

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During my trip to Moscow and St Petersburg in Russia I also went to the Zoology museum in Moscow and once again I was blown away, they had three different sections - the alcohol section with various species in jars; shelf after shelf with various snakes, lizards and fish stored in glass jars - the skeleton section with everything from fish, to elk, mammoth and giraffe skeletons - and then the last and third one with all the stuffed mammals and birds. The collection is very impressive and I wish I could show you more but it was dark in the museum and very hard to get good crisp photos without a tripod but if you have the chance to ever visit then please do, the place is amazing.

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The museums bird collection is enormous and I wish I had photos to prove my point but for now these will have to do. The museum also had a very large collection of insects and flies, some so small that you could hardly see them.

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PS. Try and find the walking sticks!

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PS. Thanks for the comments, its nice to get some feedback now and then and to know that there's someone out there dropping by and taking their time to read this blog, thanks! ;)

Thursday 20 February 2014

Meet the Monsters! Now Available as wall vinyls at The Wallery

Meet the monsters! Set of 6 wall stickers by Swedish Designer Åsa Wikman



























Yeapp, the Monsters are now available as wall vinyls over at The Wallery! 

They come in a set of 6 together with the door to their secret world and are available on sheets in three different sizes; 60cm, 100cm and 200cm.

 Meet the monsters! Set of 6 wall stickers by Swedish Designer Åsa Wikman


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The Wallery ship internationally and if you would like more info or to get your own Monster crew then please click here.

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Good Night!

Санкт-Петербург - St Petersburg

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I am a designer and a illustrator but I never sketch when I travel or go to museums, my camera is my companion and I love taking pictures so while my illustrator friends are drawing, I am clicking away and here are some more photos from my trip to Russia.

At 1 o'clock on Tuesday night we jumped on the night train to St Petersburg and I was excited and felt like a kid again, if you ask me there is something magical about trains, and the older they are the better - I love the wound, the atmosphere, everything. We had traditional black tea with lemon and then we tried to sleep but it must have been about +25 on the train so it was bloody hard. The corridor was packed with sleeping men but to my surprise, no one snored.

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About 9 in the morning we were there and stepped out of the station, walked a few steps and passed the square where the Russian revolution started! Amazing.

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St Petersburg is Russia's second biggest city and has a remarkable history that I could go on about for ever but this is not a history page so I will keep it short - the city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great 1703 and yes, it was here that the Russian revolution started.

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The central parts of the city is filled with impressive buildings that look like palaces and castles and some of them actually were palaces belonging to various tsar's - this one is the most famous, the Winter Palace, which belonged to the last tsar before it was plundered and burned as the revolution started. Today its a heritage museum;

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The city itself feels more bohemian and opened then Moscow and I had some really amazing food and had a great time - even though I was very disappointed when we tried to enter the Zoological Museum  but that they for some weird reason were closed on this day.

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I tried some traditional Russian food when I was in St Petersburg, this was called (help me MinaMilk, I can't remember?), normally its filled with juicy meet in some kind of sauce but I am a vegetarian and had the veggie option, delicious.

PS. Notice how street lights in Russia often are attached with wires and hang between buildings, at places where they have trams its cable mayhem.

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If I would have been a foreign tourist in Sankt Petersburg I would have missed 80% of it, my friends took me into back alleys and up stairs into buildings that looked like private homes but then, voila, suddenly there were an art center with hidden designer shops and rooftop restaurants with amazing food, cool bars where you could get a haircut while enjoying your drink and some really amazing restaurants with no signs on the street. So I was lucky to have my two brilliant guides who showed me a great city, thank you ladies!

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Wednesday 19 February 2014

Budgie Love now available at The Wallery!


Budgie Love wallpaper  by Åsa Wikman available at The Wallery














Yes, my Budgie Love wallpaper is now available over at The Wallery for all you Budgie lovers!

The design is available in sizes from 200 x150cm up to 400 x 300cm and is printed on FSC certified paper which also contains 10% recycled content from post-consumer waste - and The Wallery ship internationally!

Whoop, whoop.

For more info please click here.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

Moscow's Underground Part 1

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I have wanted to explore the beautiful underground stations in Moscow for years and years and now finally I had the chance and was over excited and dragged my poor friends around in the underground very late at night trying to see as much as possible, and you can see why, this is Dobryninska station on the circle line, just one of many stations that resemble a palace more then a underground station. The platforms are much wider then in London and Stockholm and the ceilings are very high, lot's of marble and on some stations like this one there is old USSR propaganda art.

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Monday 17 February 2014

Moscow - The State Darwin Museum Part 2

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Well, hello you. Look at those teeth!

Ever since I was a kid I have loved watching documentaries about animals and nature but still today I find out about new species of animals and the mind-blowing diversity on this planet, some of these guys I had no idea even existed and I wish I would have written down there Russian names and asked my friends to translate but I was to excited in the museum to even think of that, maybe you know the English name for these little guys?

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Some of them look like horror film creatures.

Moscow: Darwin's Museum Part 1

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MinaMilk knows that my favourite museum in London and Stockholm, is the Natural History museum, so when I came to Moscow she immediately took me to State Darwin's museum - and I was completely blown away.

State Darwin's museum explains the theory and work of Charles Darwin and focuses on the evolution and how animals have evolved and adapted, there was unfortunately not any signs with information in English which was a minus but the museum is mind-blowing and has a large collection of animals and I really liked how they displayed them. Here is a small exhibition about the various kinds of guinea pigs that made me laugh quite a bit as these normally quite cute guinea pigs look like an army of evil fur balls or what do you think?

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The next exhibition is showing how wolfs were domesticated and evolved into one of our favourite pets, the dog. I like how the museum also is displaying art in the exhibitions that shows the animals behaviour, habitats and evolution.

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That's it for now.