THE SHANGRI-LA SUMMER SHOW, THE 5th EDTION

I made a poster and next week I am putting up a show - come go bananas with us, our co-performers and our students at The Shangri-La Summer Show 2019!

About 1/3 of the tickets are left, get yours from our webshop via tiny.cc/SUMMERSHOW2019

TWENTY EIGHT SECONDS OF FEBRUARY

Because March is almost over by now, let us naturally (dum di dum...) look at the month before that; one-second-a-day: February 2019

These are so fun to do and I love watching other's mini videos of their months!

WONDERLAND

Tonight! At our studio starting 18hrs - Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki presents: Wonderland! Come and draw and enjoy the nice setting, music and atmosphere.

Photo by Neil Kendall.

DR.SKETCHY'S : COSMOS. AND SOME MORE SPACE STUFF.

Last Sunday we turned our studio into interstellar space -or intergalactic if you so like- they way it would look if an, umm, elementary school or some kind of vaudevillian basement theatre put up a play about space. We really wanted it to look adorably crappy on one hand with our small self made planets and things hanging by the help of string and clothes pins but on the other hand still keep it on the right side of being deliberately camp (the way we like it) as well as to function as the optional drawing detail or background inspiration.

The navigators of the ship with the brave cosmonaut.
(Our space aesthethics always tend to be rather b-movie retrotastic.)

So as you know from what I've written before, Dr.Sketchy's is a worldwide concept of  "alternative" live model drawing. There have been Dr.Sketchy events in Finland for a decade now, and last autumn Tinker Bell and I revived the Helsinki branch.

We make sure our Sketchy-playlists suit the themes as well and this time we had Bowie and Star Wars scores and such, the usual songs about space that you'd expect, but also the Nasa space recordings of planets for ecample (the ones where the electromagnetic radio waves of the planets are converted into sound waves. Space oooout man!-stuff. You can find those on Spotify too.) Some sound rather "mechanical" and eerie sounding and others sound like some new age meditation stuff or the chill out room at a trance party in 2001. (They probably still sound like that, the chill out rooms, but as we all know I don't go to those anymore. Phew.).

And while we're at it: did you know that they wanted to put The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun on the golden record(s) that are on the Voyager satellites but the record company declined? The internet has told me so. Among many other things*

Johnny posing and attendees drawing.


*) I'm a big space fan; a nightly reader of all things space.
Me: So have you seen this video where my favourite astronaut-
Johnny: Wait, you have a favourite astronaut?
Tinker: Of course she does
Some part of me will obviously always be an 11-year old kid.

(Altough, to be honest, it's more about space time and gravity and trying to grasp the endlessness, about philosophical views on cosmos fas well as random weird facts for me, rather than space ships and astronauts, Star Trek and scifi. I like reading about things I have a hard time comprehending, like quantum physics for example. But space ships and astronauts can be worth some night time googling too; and I happen to think this space water here is cool (wash my hair in space though
.)

Ok so one more space-thing, because this bothered and freaked me out as a kid (and, ehrm, perhaps at some moments in my adult life too), but: no astronaut has ever fallen off a space ship and drifted off for eternity into space. You can sleep at night now, you're welcome!
(But your fingernails might come off though. Aaaaa!)

But back to our own little cosmos in Helsinki now.

Drawing by Minka Lindfors.

Thanks to Johnny and everyone who attended! The next Helsinki Sketchy will be July 8, and that one we'll have at Mascot (and when night falls we'll continue the evening with our summer's Rubies Klubit event)! Don't miss that one.

HALLOWEEN AT THE STUDIO

Time for some self-promotion!
Or not promoting me but my business (which I suppose I really should remember to do more often) -

Both my colleague and I (plus our assistant. Yazzz, we have one that actually the employment agency pays for! Phew!) are huge fans of Halloween. So to get the most out of it we are celebrating Halloween weeks at the studio with spooky tunes and choreographies. Plus some discounts - come and try out a new class for just 10€!

You can find our studio at Facebook here: Facebook.com/StudioShangriLa
And our Burlesque School (which is pretty much the same as the studio page, but focusing more on the burlesque content) here: Facebook.com/ShangriLaSchoolOfShowgirls
You can of course find our website here: studioshangrila.fi
and us at instagram @studioshangrila
For any blogreader of mine who hangs around Southern Finland and wants to take classes with us (a whole season/weekly/once) I've made a discount code to use at the web store or at the studio for 15% off any purchase (not applicable to special weekend courses or classes with guest teachers from abroad): FREELANCERS15

You can see a little clip from last month when we did some fun and easy go-go dancing here!

While we are mainly a burlesque school I still have to add that pilates (which I teach if you've missed that) is the best thing you can do for yourself, ever. EVER.

So see you at Shangri-La, yes? BUAHAHAHAAA! (spooky laughter, you know, for Halloween)


(Not sure why I felt I still had to tag this post 'photoshop' though. In case it was not obvious enough.)

RED WINE, PENCILS AND HOURS OF GOOD MUSIC / DR.SKETCHY WENT SWINGING SIXTIES

Last Saturday we hosted the latest Dr.Sketchy Anti-Art School night at our studio, this time with a 1960's theme.

Tinker Bell and I are the hosts for Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki nights.
Picture by Aiju.


We wanted to give the night some extra psychedelic vibes so we fixed a projection with some 1969 Joshua Light show that started looping in the background when the evening turned darker, letting the music turn from sixties pop to psychedelia.







Tinker Bell drawing behind the curtains.


Dr.Sketchy has been on a hiatus in Helsinki, the first one after the break being the Marie Antoinette themed night last June. We plan to keep another evening during autumn still, so follow the Facebook page for updates, or check our studio's page. You will obviously here about any future nights here as well.

A couple of drawings from the evening by Janne Korsumäki.

And a few by Kerttu Jaatinen. (We used our red-and-white striped screen in the beginning of the night and I was happy to see it being used in the sketches as well).

After the night was over we still had the projections , some red wine and The Doors (of which the two later definitely bringing memories from my year studying painting back in 2001...) which called for some regular after work chill. Or grooving, which ever way you see it.

You can see an instagram video of one of the longer drawing sessions here, and at our studio's instagram account @studioshangrila (which you should of course follow in any case!)

DR.SKETCHY'S HELSINKI: MARIE ANTOINETTE

The other week I posed for DrSketchy's Anti-Art School Marie Antoinette-themed night that was held at our studio!



Vegan cupcakes, pastels, lots of fluff and rosy cheeks.

You may remember I used to go quite a lot to the cabaret-live-drawing evenings of Dr.Sketchy's before, but then I ran out of time and so did Tinker and Aiju who were organising them in Helsinki - this was the first night in a few years. And while we were at it we decided with Tinker Bell to start producing them over here again (Dr.sketchy Finland has mainly been active in Tampere only during the Helsinki hiatus). So be prepared for more nights of good music, some wine and most of all drawing fabulous models in fun themes!

Here are a couple of paintings from the night by Anna Kainulainen:

You can follow Dr.Sketchy's Anti-Art School Finland via blogger or on Facebook!

Read more about Dr.Sketchy's here.

BALANCE BY THE SEA / SUMMER AT THE STUDIO

I'm back from our usual three days of archipelago midsummer celebrations! It wasn't all wine-sipping and constant eating for me 24/7, I took some time to do some pilates and balance practices as well. The setting kind of calls for that; I've always liked to work out by to the sound of the sea.

In summer my pilates classes over at our studio are Monday evenings, and what better way to continue summer after the celebrations by celebrating your own strength, hmmm..? Tomorrow at 18:30! With the Elvis themed dance workout before that. (Which we also did with my mom and sisters too at the beach today. It's fun!)

I also have a morning pilates class every second Thursday, and every second Thursday Ruska has her Seasonal Yoga Body Clock Yang class. We have a summer discount for the whole season where our anytime card is only 90€, and you can buy our 10-times card for the summer season for just 100€ (normally 140€), until July 15. We're open all trough the summer except for week 29 in July!

And -woop woop!- next week we're having a burlesque beginners-intensive camp! Two days of fun and learning including stage-make up practices as well as a free entry to the Vegas-themed summer edition of our RubiesKlubit in the evening - a complete starter kit that is! The camp is in Finnish but if you speak English eller svenska we will mix! Do join in on the fun!

Plus, one last thing of self promotion (which I often forget to do, ehrm) ; do remember that we organise bachelorette/hen party burlesque classes (burleskipolttarit) too!  At our studio, or alternatively we show up to where you are celebrating (with some limitations, of course). It's is rather popular these days, having burlesque classes for the bachelorette parties, and were actually the first in the country organising them, together with Bettie, Kiki and Olivia. So we know how to keep you entertained!

But yeah, pilates, tomorrow evening -or, today by now I guess, as we are just about to tick-tock over to Monday's side here.
"Be in control of your body, not at the mercy of it." (Joseph Pilates). YES to that. So see you!

SUMMER CLASSES AT SHANGRI-LA

A little hint for any of my readers that are located in our around Helsinki; next week we are starting our summer schedule over at our studio and burlesque school and to celebrate the new season having a discount of two-for-one; two persons for the price of one or take two classes pay one!

(My iPhone made some semi-accidental "art" when I was playing around with apps and filters. I am sort of almost computer-less for the moment -which is a different and seemingly neverending story...)

 We are having lots of themed summer classes, like my Elvistellään!-class starting on Monday (which is, a dance workout with go go, burlesque and rock n'roll moves with Elvis and Elvis only on the soundtrack. Because why not! Can't really translate the Elvistellään-name from Finnish though..). And a lot more. I'm also teaching a Pilates intro class on Monday. You can find out more trough our website (so far in Finnish only) or via our FB summer event page.
Come dance and sweat and have fun!

MONDAY IS MY SUNDAY

Monday, wohoo!

During the weekend I went over to Turku with Tinker Bell to teach our posing & posture class.
Kiki snapped this unofficial photo of the class getting ready just before everyone started posing for the actual photo.

We also hosted a pin-up fleamarket sale in our studio. There has never been so many people in there at once before (sadly for us, ehrm...). There was in fact so much fuzz that I didn't have the time to snap any picture of all the dolled up sellers and their nice stuff, neither did I get any stuff myself (that I wouldn't really need anyway so yeye!). Well, apart from a gold lurex overall. Which of course is very essential, not sure how I managed without one until now.

After that I went to film day1 of a music video. This was on stage at the theatre museum and the next location and mood will be something very different. Back to that later!
Photo by Minna Lehtinen @minnaminnanen

But today I've spent my day how most people spend their Sundays. We stayed in bed long with Dag and just took it easy. Because it's Monday and that's my day.

A day when I  can have a long late breakfast and catch up with the weekend's newspapers for example. And water all my plants.

Everybody hates Mondays. Or, not everybody, but you know- Mondays are Mondays and the thought of those are usually followed with a sigh.
Not for me however - that is most often the only day that is a day off for me; as a lot of my work occurs in the weekends. It's been like that pretty much my whole entire adult life actually, the good monday-thing: when I worked in the harbour Monday was off the weekend after the nightshift, and when we did the full 7-day morning shift week Monday was the last day before the glorious six days off. Nowadays it's usually the day I can calm down after the weekend (and wash some laundry. Plus organise my papers and bills and such - although I usually spend Mondays to think about that and won't manage to start doing it until the day after.) Or well, when you run your own business you seldom have an actual day off; I do update social media sites and stalk my email as much as usual, but I really seldom have anything scheduled and that is a bliss.

Finally, after almost a week of waiting, I  got to do a good set of pilates myself, but that does not really make for a good self-taken picture and there's already one here of feet... But more still about feet here anyways - I finally also got to open up and try out the wild-mint foot bath salt my friend and student Melody from Superfiilis gave me. She has her own little well-being centre in town.
Even though it got more splashy than calm; Dag discovered footbaths, joined and stuck his feet in and splashed around like whoah.

Then we played a Lego-game for a while, where you are supposed to build what a card tells you to. I clearly will never be scouted as a builder for Legoland but my son still stands a fair chance. (That's an old-school carriage in the picture btw. And not built by me. I had to make a toothbrush.)

Then the two of us head in to town for our workweek, me the studio and Dag for his day club/play school. And now it's Tuesday already i.e, super late and I am still awake, as usual.

PINUP SNAPS AND PAMPERING

Last weekend, just before I came down with a heavy fever that forced me to stay in bed for a couple of days, we threw a small pin-up worksop day over at our studio together with Foxy Vixens Beauty Parlour.

Later Asko Rantanen come over for a photoshoot, and we created a few simple but functioning sets together using props from our studio.

Fun!

The team of the day.

Sophisticated, well of course.