Hey everyone! I'm Misha, and I'm excited to welcome you to the online home of my creative studio. Buckle up, let me take you on a wild ride through how this whole adventure kicked off.
Back at the tail end of 2024, I was deep in the gaming world as a UX/UI Designer, endlessly crafting sleek interfaces for mobile games on my screen. But something inside me was screaming for more; I needed to get my hands dirty, to feel materials, to build things that weren't just pixels. That's when the spark hit: hunt down a little corner of the world where my imagination could run completely wild. After some determined searching, we struck gold — a raw, full-of-potential studio space tucked away in West London's buzzing Park Royal Design District.
Just like that, Studio 43 turned into a real home base for me and Chloe (@octoberforteenth), our chaotic creative playground for the foreseeable future.
We dove in headfirst, slowly breathing life into the blank space, turning cold walls and concrete floors into a sanctuary where ideas could explode. Our very first big move? A massive wall mural. To speed things up (and because we're impatient dreamers), we fired up a projector and went straight to painting. No sketches, no safety net, just pure instinct and ink flying everywhere.
Then came my personal obsession: a sculptural paper mask drawing heavy inspiration from Asian vibes, manga energy, and anime aesthetics. I started prototyping at home, but it really came alive once we moved into the studio. The mission? Model the wild shape in Blender, unfold it into a perfect flat pattern, meticulously cut every piece from paper, and assemble it into something 3D and haunting. The real magic happened next, animating patterns and projecting them so the mask seemed to shift, breathe, and play mind-bending optical tricks right before your eyes. Life threw curveballs, and the project sits unfinished for now… but trust me, the fire hasn't gone out. One day it'll rise again.
The mural did its job, it turned heads. One afternoon, Mel (@melandpea), the incredibly talented fashion designer next door, wandered in, eyes wide at the wall, and casually dropped: “Hey, want to collab? Let's slap some of your art onto my clothes.” My brain lit up like fireworks. I said yes instantly… even though I had zero idea how to actually print onto fabric. I knew screen printing existed in theory, but I'd never touched a squeegee in my life.
Learning silk-screening felt like jumping into a glorious, messy battle. We hunted down frames, mixed inks, wrestled with light-sensitive emulsions, fought stubborn films, and printed on everything we could find. The deeper I went, the more I realized: for tiny runs, this method eats time, energy, and money like a beast. It was an epic education, but not the scalable dream I hoped for.
That's when machine embroidery caught my eye. Picture this naive moment: I thought I'd buy a sewing machine, feed it my artwork, and watch it magically stitch masterpieces. Reality hit hard and fast. Turns out you have to digitize every design with insane precision, choose the perfect needle, stabilizer, thread combo. Then spend hours (days!) tweaking tensions and settings because every single fabric behaves like a completely different creature.
Through endless late-night experiments, happy accidents, and “why did that just unravel?” moments, something beautiful started emerging: a growing collection born straight from the pages of my sketchbook. Every piece carries a pulse of real life, moments I lived, people I met, feelings that hit me hard. They all tell tiny, honest stories. So I gave the whole thing a name that just felt right: Sketches with Stories.
0 comments