Gothic Christmas

I decorated my study with Gothic-aesthetic Christmas decorations. As has been explained in this blog already, I don't celebrate Christmas as a religious thing, more an honouring of family traditions. It's very much a secular Christmas in our household, with the big religious celebration being Midwinter's Day on the 21st of December instead. The decorations in my study centre around the 'Gothmas' Tree - something that's part in-joke, part household 'tradition'. The 'Gothmas' Tree started when Raven and I first moved in together, nearly 10 years ago. His family are quite traditional about Christmas, and so Raven wanted to continue that. At that point, I wasn't really into Christmas very much as I came from a home where it wasn't really celebrated because it held too many painful memories and too much anxiety, it was a very simple occasion with no turkey, a very briefly apparent Christmas tree, and usually a lot of sorrow. I went to Christian schools, so Christmas was a big thing there, and I sang with church choirs when I was younger, so I'd performed in many carol concerts, and so it wasn't a completely bleak and sombre affair (and even the worst Christmas of my life ended up with me falling asleep in glittering lights of the basilica in Rennes) but it just wasn't something I felt a deep connection to, at least not a positive one. 

The 'Gothmas' tree & my tinsel on my desk. The snowflake is too big, so leans

I wanted to go for a Gothic 'Christmas' that was just a second Hallowe'en (my favourite holiday, of course) so I could still be celebrating something when surrounded by the huge cultural pressure to do Christmas, but my partner is very much into a traditional Christmas. The compromise was that we'd do both; I could have my own Gothic tree, and we would have a big traditional tree in the living room, and I could watch 'Nightmare Before Christmas' and he could play old-time Christmas songs from the '40s and '50s, and we'd get together for roast dinner with the fancy black-handled ornate cutlery reserved for special occasions I brought back from Ireland. It was said in jest that my Gothic tree was so I wouldn't 'ruin' the Yule tree with skulls and bats when Raven wasn't looking because I kept trying to 'sneak' black baubles onto the Yule tree, especially when I found baubles that were very pretty but too big for my little black tree, and they are now permanent fixtures on the Yule tree (which has a lot of more unusual decorations).

Spiky iridescent bauble, I think from B&M or Tesco, on the 'Gothmas' tree

I couldn't afford a second full-size tree on that first Christmas because I'd recently been made redundant when the shop I was assistant manageress of shut down for good a couple of months previous, so I bought a small tree, to bring a spark of spooky joy into what I feared would be a very bleak Christmas in a new country where I knew virtually nobody except my partner, hundreds of miles from my family, jobless, broke, and celebrating that festival that I usually hated. Christmas that year actually wasn't too bad, and I think I managed to even continue the pattern from our first Christmas where I bought Raven a hamper of unusual ingredients and favourite foods! Ever since then, there has been the Gothmas tree - in our old apartment it used to be in the bedroom, and now it is in my study, where being purple and black it matches everything else in there as the whole room is purple and black. 

Skull tinsel - cracked skull tinsel, to be precise, from Poundland

Apart from being very short, my little black tree is quite weedy, so I fill it with tinsel - purple, black, silver, and one that's purple and black with black cats, and another that's black and white with skulls. It looks a lot bushier once I've wound it around with all that tinsel - full length tinsel meant for full size trees, too! It's about all I can do to make it a passable Christmas tree and not a sad Christmas branch instead.

'Festive Fears' tombstone decoration from SpookyBoxCo

Some of the decorations like the glittery stars and black baubles are just ordinary Christmas decorations - it's quite common to find purple and black decorations these days, and silver is a traditional festive decoration for anything snowy. I quite like the spiky glittery stars, and there iridescent star shown at the top. I've also got decorations from SpookyBoxCo from when I used to be subscribed. Some are black tomb-stones with spooky mottos, and some are white skulls (pictured bellow).  There's also glittery purple skulls tucked into the boughs, but all the photographs that I tried to take turned out blurry, unfortunately. 

Cute skull decoration from SpookyBoxCo

As you can see in the background of the photograph above, the lights on the tree are bats. They glow a blue-ish violet, but all the photographs I've taken of them look purely blue. I promise they aren't entirely blue. They're Hallowe'en lights, I think probably from Poundland, but I can't be certain of that. I don't have many Hallowe'en specific string-lights in my house any more - I used to have several in my study when it had the more kitschy aesthetic, but I've now rehomed them to people who have more of that sort of aesthetic. I still have two strings of skull lights, one with small clear resin skulls, and one with blown mercury glass large skulls, but they are in our bedroom. I bought some purple bat miniature LED lights, which are on the edge of my shelves. 

A purple bat that looks blue. 

The rest of the string-lights in the picture below are all permanent fixtures in my study, except for the ones on the tree. The festive period is probably the only time of the year when I have all of the string-lights turned on, although I do sometimes put a few one for things like ambience while gaming at my PC or mood-lighting for D&D. I also like to put a few on when I'm meditating, and don't want the bright over-head light or stand light. I think my study possibly has far too many lighting options, and I'm saving up to get an electrician in to give me even more lighting options, hopefully in summer, so maybe I'm just overly finnicky about lighting adjustability... The lantern string lights were originally clear plastic with brown frames and I used glass-paint to make them purple and green and nail-polish to re-paint the brown plastic frames black. The skull, lanterns and purple orb lights were all from Poundland. They run off batteries. 

Lanterns, a skull, tiny bats, & glowing orbs are the tip of the lighting iceberg

In both the first photograph and the one above you can see there's tinsel on my shelf. I think they're both from B&M, although one might be from The Range, I can't remember. I've got two more photographs of tinsel and I'm not writing two more paragraphs on the topic of tinsel; one is iridescent green and purple/pink, and the other is petrol grey, and they're thick with long fronds - that is all there is to say about tinsel. I think the iridescent one looks quite magical. 

Iridescent tinsel

I think next year I will get two more strands of tinsel, so each shelf has one, as just two shelves looks a bit awkward. I'd like to get some really chunky black tinsel, and maybe some purple or some silver tinsel. 

Grey tinsel

Another element of Christmas decorations in my study are foil garlands, spider garlands, and a foil star. They are the sort that come flat, and you fold them out to expand them. I know a lot of people think these decorations are quite tacky, but I like them, and they remind me of Christmas at my grandmother's house back in the early '90s, maybe even the late '80s. I liked Christmas at my English grandmother's house, but she passed away when I was a child. I tried really hard to photograph the garlands, but I could not get a good angle. I did get a good couple of photographs of the star that hangs from my ceiling however. 

A foil star with silver, purple and blue

There's a spider garland that has a pretty similar concept - it's purple (six legged???) spiders made of tissue-paper strung along a cord - but I didn't get a photograph of that either. 

My glass-less Gothic arch former-mirror for scale and position.

That was my Christmas decorations for 2019. If by next Christmas, I have my cornice up and sort out my ceiling (maybe with two new lights...) then you might get a half-decent photo of the garlands, too. 

Steampunks Storm The Castle!

I am sad this is a tad blurry.

Ok, technically I was being Steam-Goth that day, and we didn't really storm the castle, we just stood i front of it. Inverness Castle is currently the city courts (I did jury there in the first year after I moved up to Scotland; it felt a bit surreal sitting in a Gothic Revival courtroom in a Scottish Baronial castle to attend a trial presided over by the Sherif... ), and therefore storming it would be a really bad idea. Instead we stood in front of the large front door and used it as a back-drop for this photo-shoot because I thought the red sandstone walls would be the perfect colours to accentuate the outfit. The current castle was built to replace the original medieval castle in the Victorian era. It's built in the Scottish baronial style, and was built as a courthouse, police station and prison. 

Sean without goggles on his face. Photograph by myself. 

This is another set of photographs for my project documenting the Goth and nebulous dark alternative scene in Inverness. This is my friend Sean, and he's a Metalhead/Romantic Goth/Steampunk hybrid. The outfit (and re-painted Nerf gun) he wore that day typify that - stompy boots worn with a Romantic Goth jacket from Punk Rave, a decorative top hat from Raven SDL which could easily be either Romantic Goth or Steampunk (perhaps verging more on the side of Steampunk due to the brassiness of the buckle), steam-punk paint-job on his goggles and the repainted Nerf gun... a mixture of styles. 

Sean, looking for air-ships or something. Photograph by myself.

One thing that I find differentiates the Goth scene in the Highlands from the scene in other areas is how much overlap there is in participation by individuals here - very few people in the Goth scene here like only one alternative genre of music, and participate in only one subculture, to the point where most events are mixed, and it's all one merged scene rather than a Goth scene substantially differentiated from other subcultural groups. There are plenty of Metalheads here that aren't into Goth, but not many Goths here that aren't also into Metal, or also into Hippie stuff, or Steampunk stuff. When I've been in other cities, the Goths seemed to be very much their own group, and there were specific Goth club nights, and there was less overlap. 

You have to be wary of those air-ships - sometimes they have pirates!
Photography by myself, Sean modelling. Look at that awesome jacket!

I guess the overlap here is partly because we have fewer scene-specific events and resources - our club nights are mixed, it's the local hippie shop - FarFetched - that also sells Goth clothes (after the closure of Hot Rocks and Pyramid over 5 years ago), virtually no major bands take their tours to Inverness let alone anywhere else this far North, and the scene is mostly in their late teens and twenties, with fewer elder Goths still active in the scene here, so fewer direct ties to the scene's musical core and roots. There are elder Goth here, though, however, and hopefully I will be photographing a few for later in my project. 

Sean has impressive boots. Photograph by myself. 

Those who follow me on Facebook will know that I injured my left eye this summer - I accidentally flicked the sun-shade for the view-screen on the back of Raven's camera after being startled while on a photo-shoot (borrowing his camera), and it gave me a wee nick on my cornea that was really rather painful, but is mostly over my iris so does not permanently impede my vision. It did put a bit of a delay on my processing photos - but I did finish the shoot that day, and take a second! The next day however, my eyelids had swollen shut on my left eye and I hadn't much sleep because it hurt as if I'd rubbed chillies in my eye, and I had to go to the hospital... Anyway, there are definitely more photos in this series to be poster up. I will continue to photograph my local scene in all its variety and diversity.

I hope you enjoy this photographs. Please credit me and the model (Sean M.) if you decide to share these anywhere (eg. Tumblr) and link back to me. I've seen my photographs shared about on Tumblr before, and I don't mind it - to me, it shows people appreciate it - but I do want to be properly credited. This may only be a hobby for me, but it's still my work and I spend hours organising shoots, travelling, taking shoots and then processing the images, so I'd like to be credit for that!

The Steam-Goth outfit I wore that day is the same one I wore for a shoot for Carpe Nocturne magazine, so you will get to see that shortly too! 

Highland Lolitas Tea Party Club Calendar Photoshoot

A while back, our tiny, nascent Highland Lolita community was lucky enough to get a slot in the upcoming Tea Party Club. After issues finding a photographer, Laura Johnson of ::TahDah Photography:: did our photoshoot, and the location was the tropical house of the Inverness Botanic Gardens. Sadly not all of our community could make it, so our gathering was really tiny indeed. As well as the group photographs, we each got our own individual photographs. 

Photograph by TahDah Photography

I know there are others in the area who have an interest in Lolita, and when I come across people who are interested, they are usually quite surprised to find that there is Highland community, so hopefully our increased visibility will be great for local Lolitas who might want to get into the fashion, but are a bit nervous because they don't think there is a community out there for them. We're a Highland group, not just an Inverness group, and Lolitas from Aviemore to the Islands are welcome to join our group; obviously the large geographic area may make it difficult for some Lolitas to attend all meets, but we have a Facebook page and are quite social. We're not one of those communities that is all about the photoshoots - we like to sit down and chat! 

Photograph by TahDah Photography

My outfit for the photoshoot was actually not the one I initially planned - I wanted to go wearing a hand-made skirt I'd done, but I spilled tea down it and had to do a last-minute outfit change! I wanted to do something quite elegant, and I ended up with this outfit, which is a bit 'La Belle Époque' inspired, especially in terms of the curled hair, and the cape/cloak/fringed thing and my being quite cinched into a proper corset under all the layers of dress. I am not sure how I could incorporate one of those big hats into Lolita, even if I owned one, so I went with pinning fabric flowers into the hair of my wig instead. I know I'm a bit older than a lot of Lolitas, who seem to be in their late teens or early twenties, and I feel that what I wear in Lolita ought to suit my age a bit more, so I am going for more A-line skirts, a more classic feel (even when I always wear black) or a very definitely Gothic feel, rather than a 'cute', 'adorable' or 'kawaii' feel. I don't have a 'cute' face any more; it's more rectangular and angular (useful for Ouji!), and my figure has got curvier as I've got older (even without the corset). I used to have a very boyish figure, more angles than curves, but now I've filled out a bit more. I actually quite like going for an elegant look. I think it fits in better with my overall aesthetic preferences. I feel like it is more a kuro Classic co-ord than a Gothic one. 

Photograph by TahDah Photograph. I like the visible vine pattern!

After the photoshoot, we all convened in the Botanic Garden's café, which has wonderfully whimsical mismatched vintage crockery with chintzy florals - perfect for the sweet Lolitas, more difficult for me as I looked for a plate to match my outfit! I think the best thing about our community is how we're all very social. We're a small community, so that probably helps avoid some of the issues that you get with really big gatherings and people trying to mingle between set tables or just that large gatherings can be daunting for a lot of people (myself included). 

Photograph by Keara

I had to get at least one photograph with my Restyle cathedral handbag. It is my favourite bag and my university satchel now! 

Outfit Run Down: 

♕ Head-dress: hand-made by me ♕ Fabric flowers: various including Claire's Accessories, H&M, etc. ♕ Necklace: Phoenix1900 on eBay ♕ Blouse: New York Laundry, with collar attached by me ♕ Cape/Shawl/Thing: Blue Inc. with shoulders/sleeves altered by me into ones with pouf-y gathers ♕ Velvet arm-warmers: Sinister ♕ Dress: Metamorphose ♕ Tights: Primark Shoes: ShoeZone ♕ Bag: Restyle 

Photograph by TahDah Photography

We had a great day out at the Botanic Gardens, and I really enjoyed getting really dressed up for something. I am "fancy" by mainstream standards all the time, but I felt like I was really doing something special that day. I am working on building up a wardrobe including more layers and textures, and more elegant, flowing designs, not just in Lolita, but being a student and currently unemployed - AND having spent quite a bit recently of my savings on renovating the house we bought - means that I don't have much to spend on wardrobe expansion. 

Photograph by TahDah Photography

As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting much in the way of current news on my blog. I have been decorating my study in my new house (I moved at the end of summer) and I've been really busy as a student, so I haven't had much time to work on this blog. Once I get the lighting sorted out, I will be able to use my newly built 'selfie corner' for outfit-of-the-day shots, and when I have more time to devote to writing, I will go back to writing about more in-depth Gothic things.

I really have to thank the photographer; she took on our photo-shoot at quite short notice and did a great job. Her Facebook page is ::here::, and her website ::here::. She is very professional, and does quite a variety of portraiture and family photographs. I thoroughly recommend her. 

Makeup Of The Day: Peacock Blue

I am still revelling in the ability to wear elaborate make-up to university. 

I haven't been wearing it as much as I like because I have been ill, and if I am coughing and sneezing I do not have a steady enough hand to apply my usual make-up, plus I am liable to poke myself in the eye, and my eyes are already watering and my face is all puffy. I am not going to try and cake myself in make-up to hide it, because it will make it worse. 

Selfies by HouseCat

I have been playing with making my makeup a bit more colourful to match my hair, and this look incorporate both blocks of dramatic, dark colour and my usual swirlies. As you can see by the top two pictures, I am trying to wear my glasses in my makeup photographs because that is both how I usually look (I need my glasses to see what I am doing at university), and because I think it is interesting to see how my makeup and glasses work together. As my glasses are quite swirly and dramatic themselves, my makeup has to be quite strong to still be the main visual element. 

Gloss black lipstick is currently something I really like doing, but sadly it is not something that lasts very well for clubbing, and certainly not eating out. It ends up matte very rapidly at college, but at least it remains black. 

Vampire Prince In The Lost Garden

Or at least that's how I was imagining myself in these photographs. In reality I'm neither a prince nor a vampire, and this is actually that meadow close to my current apartment that I love posing in because it's such a pretty meadow (and I am such a vain Goth!). 

I will be moving soon (very soon) and will no longer have this lovely meadow to pose in so near by, but I am sure I will find somewhere equally pretty in my new location. All the photographs are by my partner Raven. The meadow is especially pretty now it is summer and the grass is long and the flowers in bloom. I specified this part of the meadow because of how much I like the shrubbery there.

Photograph by Raven

It was a day bordering on dreich; cloudy, overcast and dull, but not quite as damp and drizzly as a truly dreich day. The skies were grey and leaden and I like how Raven capitalised on that dreariness when it comes to both the photographs and the editing. I am really grateful to Raven for his photographs. 

Photograph by Raven

I am especially happy with my make-up this day. I did deep purplish red lipstick fading out concealer close to my skin tone for an effect I have seen done beautifully both on humans and on well-painted art dolls. I think I could have done even better had I made my lips dewy with some gloss, but as it stands, it still seems quite successful to me. I think I was a tad heavy-handed with blusher and contouring, but I am still new to it. The eye-shadow was in shimmery pinks - a completely alien concept to me - and I was aiming for a look that was somewhere between natural and a bit fey. 

Photograph by Raven

I really enjoy dressing in Ouji and Aristocrat fashion - with a Gothic take on such things, of course! Most of this outfit was second-hand; the trousers are from Primark originally, and I bought them in a charity shop for £2, the pirate boots were bought secondhand on eBay, the waistcoat is vintage Marks & Spencer and I bought it secondhand on eBay, the blouse is from ZanZea and was a Christmas/Solstice present from Raven - as was the cane (which comes in useful, what with my coordination disorder), and the only things I bought new were the necklace and the gloves, both from Claire's and the Jabot. The jabot I bought earlier this year, and I know I ordered it online, but I've actually forgotten where. I have a feeling it's handmade and either from Etsy or Ebay. 

World Goth Day 2015

Official World Goth Day Logo,
used hoepfully within their permitted uses.

May 22nd of each year is World Goth Day, as the ::official website:: describes it: "a day where the goth scene gets to celebrate its own being, and an opportunity to make its presence known to the rest of the world". Considering what happened to ::Sophie Lancaster:: and that Goths worldwide continue to get harrassment and violence simply for having different tastes to the norm, I feel that a day to celebrate the subculture's existence is both necessary and positive. We ought to be proud of what the subculture is, what it has achieved (and not just creatively) and of the the sorts of people we are - eccentrics, artists, musicians, romantics of a modern sort, creative folk. Goth is a haven for the morbidly curious and weirdly interesting, it is a subculture in which we can find likeminded individuals and talk about our interests without scorn or derision, and we should be proud of Goth.

Work outfit. Selfies by HouseCat

I always try and 'get my Goth on' on World Goth Day, but this year, it fell on a work day. I almost always wear all black at work these days anyway - today's outfit of black turtleneck and black trousers is pretty standard for my work attire. I obviosuly can't bedeck myself in spikes and studs at work although I did wear this belt with my jumper pulled over it because my trousers kept falling down. It was lumpy, but less obvious and I was searching before work for my one belt that isn't studded fruitlessly (I had left it attached to my archery quiver, as I found out that evening...) and this was slightly more appropriate than the belts with bullets, skulls and othersuch on them! 

After-work outfit. Selfies by HouseCat, glasses removed to show makeup

I added a spiked bangle, a studded cuff, a spiked collar, and the belt, and let my hair down literally. Accessories such as these are an easy way to make an outfit instantly visibly Goth without having to wear specifically-Goth items, so meant I could just stash my accessories into my bag, and put these on when I went into town after work, without much bother; a very simple transition between 'work' and 'casual' modes. This is actually, as far as outfits go, a very casual one for me to be wearing in my spare time as I prefer less contemporary, more anachronistic fashion of a Romantic Goth, Gothic Aristocrat, Visual Kei and Lolita sort - as my readers will know!

In the evening I went out in Inverness with friends, and while I was standing outside the pub we were supposed to meet at, texting my friends about where they were at as I was the first to arrive (ah, the joys of public transport), two drunken men of a chavvy attitude loudly made a wretching noise behind me, and shouted some comment about "puke green hair" and "fucking freak". It disquietened me enough to decide it was a bad idea to be standing around, looking that different, on a main street with several pubs on a Friday night, so I went to go sit in the nearby graveyard, which was deserted at that point - I guess thereby doing something most stereotypically Goth. We get harrassed on the streets by strangers, but we are not in the wrong - drunken jerks who yell insults at people they disapprove of are in the wrong. Never let people's prejudices change who you are; being Goth is neither immoral nor illegal (in most places), but insulting strangers in public is immoral, and I think it might actually be illegal in some places, especially if you are drunk (but I'm not a lawyer).

International Winter Lolita Day

There are two International Lolita days, one in the summer on the first Saturday in June, and one on the first Saturday in September.  Personally, I am more of a dabbler in Lolita and prefer dressing in Romantic Goth as there's more variety of anachronistic fashion to choose from, but I certainly rather like wearing Lolita fashion, so I thought I'd put together a co-ord (outfit) for International Lolita Day. 

International Lolita Day was founded back in 2005 as a day to wear Lolita in public, raise awareness of the fashion/hobby/lifestyle that Lolita is, and to try and meet up with other Lolitas. Lolita is not a well known fashion style amongst the mainstream - its more Gothic incarnations often get confused with Goth (understandable, as Gothic Lolita is a hybrid of Goth and Lolita fashion) and the other variants are often assumed to be some sort of costume. I've heard a lot of Sweet Lolitas have people assume that their fashion is some sort of age-play fetish - while I guess it is for a minority, that's certainly not what it is for most sweet Lolitas! Thankfully Lolita does not have the same 'Satanic' and 'evil' reputation as Goth has been ascribed by the ignorant, but it's still not fun when people assume things about wanting to be a 'living doll' or that it is some kind of fetish when it isn't. 

Outfit run-down: ♕ Wig: Coscraft ♕ Headdress: handmade by me ♕ Capelet: Fan + Friend ♕ Chiffon long-sleeve blouse: off-brand ♕ Small necklace & matching earrings: eBay ♕ Large cameo necklace: Rock & Roar ♕ JSK: Baby, The Stars Shine Bright ♕ Tights: offbrand Shoes: TUK

My outfit was deliberately quite Old School and while there were certainly Gothic touches (the skeletal maidens on the cameos, the skulls on my shoes) most of it was of a more "bows and ruffles" sort of style. I wanted to make this co-ord distinct from the very Goth stuff I normally wear. I think my Lolita outfits are improving with both practice and an expanded Lolita wardrobe. The eye-swirls are not typical of Lolita, but they're sort of a signature make-up style for me, so I was not going to leave it out! Any constructive criticism is welcome. I apologise for the photo quality - usually I would get my partner to take pictures, but he was on night-shift and I didn't want to wake him up during the (very short hours of daylight) day just for some outfit picturess! As such, really bad quality selfies will have to do, and there's no full-body shot, only what I could get in the half-length mirror.

Remembering Summer In Autumn

Outside a gale is howling and leaden clouds scud across a pale, wan and grey sky. Everything is damp; there's not enough warmth between the rain showers for anything to dry. Autumn is here, rapidly turning into winter. Snow was reported on the mountains to the south, and it has been too hazy for me to see whether or not there is snow on the mountains to the north. Summer seems like it was a century ago. Currently I am wearing a scarf indoors and I am getting good use out of my trench-coat and wellies when outdoors, but right now, I'm not even thinking about being outdoors; I am indoors in the warm and more importantly to me, the dry. I love the colours of autumn- leaves of copper, gold, bronze and burgundy, skies of silver, steel and lead, an ocean like mercury - but I am not at all fond of the weather, as it seems to mostly be driven rain that comes when the wind sweeps off the ocean and across the foothills and drags the rain anywhere from diagonal to almost sideways. 

Relaxing in the garden after some summer rain.
Photograph by Raven of Chance Photography

As such, I cast my mind back to summer, when it was warmer (sometimes too warm!) and I could spend time outdoors without the wind relentlessly trying to drive water into the space between my coat and my neck (hence scarves, scarves all the time!) and I even sometimes went around bare legged. Back in July I showcased ::this:: make-up, and here is the outfit that went with it, summoned out of the depths of the external hard-drive and finally on my laptop and now my blog. 

I look grumpy when made to pose for photos!
Photograph by Raven of Chance Photography

This is probably my favourite dress - it is the 'Adare' dress by Hell Bunny, a black and white print of haunted houses, skulls, graves and ravens. Adare is a village in Ireland - near it stands one of the Desmond castles, and in it stands the Gothic Revival building of reportedly haunted Adare Manor, but the print has no castle, and the house featured looks nothing like Adare Manor, so I am not sure why it is named such. Some of the faces on the dress appear to be zombified version of Edgar Allan Poe. I love the feathers, as I am a fan of bird motifs in general. In this print they are white on black, but the dress comes in a red-on-black colour-way, and the feathers looked bloodied in that version.

Cropped by me(hence grainy)
Photo by Raven of Chance Photography

It might be raining outside, but summer can live on. Autumn will come and go then Winter, but after the Winter Solstice, the days will grow longer and summer will, eventually, return.

Many thanks to Raven, who always makes me look lovelier than I am!

Old-School Gothic Lolita Headdress

I swear it isn't green in real life. 

Back in April, I tried my hand at sewing a Gothic Lolita/kuro Lolita headband in the old-school style. These are the fabric head-dresses with lace that were an iconic part of the Lolita style about 10 years ago, but which have since gone out of popularity in favour of bows and bonnets, then more recently, floral crowns and headdresses. I quite like the old-school Kuro and Gothic Lolita styles, so when I finally got my sewing machine running again, I made this.

I hadn't sewn in ages, so it isn't perfect and I know there's several things that could have been tidier (the ribbon criss-crossing it is too loose, for a start, and the whole thing's been worn a few times before this photo was taken so it could have done with ironing flat again, the corners of the crochet lace weren't sewn the flattest, the bows at either end need to be more secure because they keep pivoting, etc.) I had to boost the photograph to make the headdress visible as it's all black-on-black; the blacks match better in real life! Other than that, I am quite happy with it. I hope to make a second one at some point, and improve on this.

Terrible Vanity (And Advice Request)

What is vainer than a post (nearly) entirely of selfies? 

I do actually have a reason for posting all of these selfies. As many of you know I am foraying into the world of Gothic Lolita fashion. One part I am struggling with is learning how to accessorise my hair and wigs. I've tried bows and clips before, and mini-hats, but I haven't as yet got the hang of wearing those in a way that really works and doesn't look tacky. One thing I have got quite fond of, and seem to be able to do quite well (I hope!?), is decorate my hair with fabric flowers.

These flowers are a mix of ones I've picked up in charity shops, and ones from Claire's Accessories and H&M. The two black roses I use to keep the front of my wig from sweeping and drooping in-front of my face are from H&M - they were very cheap compared to Claire's Accessories, which I think charges over-the-odds for fabric flowers by comparison. One of my big fabric black roses (the one I was wearing as a corsage on my dress... I think) was from Poundland. As far as accessories go, these ones are pretty darn cheap, which is appealing to me as I am on quite a small budget.

Lolita fashion is known for having quite elaborate hair decorations these days, and as this is not something I have done before as a part of Goth fashion, I am struggling. I've posted one of these selfies up to the Lolita Fashion Mentoring community on FaceBook, but I feel like it might be useful for me to open it up to a wider audience. Please provide feedback as to what could be done better, and what works as it is. I am finding it hard to judge what is too much ornament, enough ornament, or not enough ornament for the style. Compared to some other Lolitas, I feel underdone. I don't want to wear as many decorations as an OTT Sweet Lolita, because that's just not the style I am aiming for. 

The wig itself is from Lockshop, but I bought it secondhand from my friend Laura Sheridan (check out her awesome photography ::here::). It's the same colour red as my other previously-curly and now straightened red wig. It only looks like pale wine here because of the awful lighting in my bathroom as it was too dingy in the hall to take photos in the mirror I usually use. The wig has had the fringe trimmed, but otherwise I am not really wanting to style it further because I don't want to ruin the curls, which is what lead me to straightening my other red wig out entirely. 

 

Outfit Rundown: Wig: Lockshop, via Laura Sheridan. ♛ Hair Flowers: Claire's Accessories, H&M & thrifted 

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Blouse: Tesco (other Lolitas may want to note that F+F is the abbreviation for both Fan + Friend and the Florence + Fred range at Tesco!) 

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 JSK: Baby, The Stars Shine Bright ♛ Gloves: Claire's Accessoires ♛ Roses bracelet: H&M ♛ Bangle bracelet: thrifted.

I am looking for any suggestions and advice on better and alternative ways to style the wig and flowers, and for any good online tutorials for Lolita hair/wig decorations, especially those for Gothic Lolita style. Thank-you in advance for contributions. 

Black Friday Outfit

I'm not American and don't really understand what "Black Friday" is, except something to do with post-Thanksgiving sales. Apparently the shops are very busy and in some places, people go a bit mad, waiting outside shops before they open, and tussling over bargains. Beyond that, I know very little. Bane at Goth It Yourself is running a blogging event (and looking VERY stylish indeed) over ::here:: in a velvet and lace outfit. 

This is my all black outfit! I'm not wearing it today, as I'm at work and it's raining. It's my second ever full Lolita co-ordinate. I wore it into town to meet with my friend M. (A sweet Lolita) and as I was going to go shopping and wander around, I decided to go with an A-line skirt with not too much pouf as I have poor spacial awareness at the best of times and I was not being entirely used to wearing a petticoat yet, and thus its added bulk, so I didn't want to knock into things with it. I also feel that A-line skirts look more mature and suit me better as I am not as young as I used to be. I know the jacket sleeves are a bit short on me (one of the disadvantages of being tall through being long-limbed). I am contemplating sewing a wide lace trim to make them seem longer.

Outfit rundown: ⚜ Head-bow - Claire's (with gold skull painted black by me) ⚜ Hair flowers - H&M and Poundland ⚜ Wig - Stargazer, "Pulp" in plume ⚜ Lace blouse - K-Star  (at Camden Market) ⚜ Jacket - Criminal Damage (at St. Nick's market, Bristol) ⚜ Skirt - Miss Posh (secondhand on eBay) ⚜ Over-the-knee Socks - offbrand ⚜ Velvet ruffle shoes - D.E. Shoes, Inverness ⚜ Lace gloves - Accessorize

Purple Lipstick, Cyber-Goth Makeup and Goggles

I am terribly sorry for being late in participating in Sophistique Noir's Monthly Theme!

I had forgotten that this month's theme was purple. Well, when I first read it, I was going to showcase my lovely plum and black flocked bedding (as opposed to my black-on-black flocked bedding, or my charcoal and black 'damask' patterned bedding, or my piles of black cushions... I am one of those Goths whose preferred aesthetics are applied to most of what they own.) but then I forgot about it entirely and did not get around to photographing the bedroom. 

Oops.

So, something else purple! Here is some Cyber-Goth style makeup I did last summer. I'm wearing my micro-braid wig, which has a few purple braids down one side, and my goggles have purple lenses (made from an old translucent document wallet that I cut up!). 

As you can see, terrible selfies taken on my onboard webcam, again. This is what happens when I want  pictures of me and Raven is out working! All selfies taken either in the mirror or with funny out-stretched arm movements look even worse, and as Raven is quite possessive of his photographic equipment, and I'm too polite to touch his tripod without asking, I haven't got around to just mounting a camera on a tripod, sticking a cushion where my head will be to focus on, and then running back around to where the cushion was with the camera set to take a picture via the timer. 

Anyway, the micro-braid wig is self made, and the makeup was done to match. The lipstick is a metallic purple that is almost iridescent made by Stargazer. The eyeshadow is actually black and silver, but with a touch of purple under my eyes. I don't have purple eye-liner, sadly, it just looks that way in the photograph.

I like drawing elongated corner on my inner eyes, but rarely do I get them as neatly done as here. I almost always get them wrong, however much I practise. I did decorative shapes around one eye in eye-liner, and as per usual I didn't do both. This is because a) it's really hard to get the symmetry exact, and b) I think that it becomes too much and looks cluttered if I do both sides. 

I am actually wearing a 'spaghetti straps' tank top! With my braids obscuring the straps, it looks like I'm not wearing a top, but I am. You can just about see a purple goggle-lense in this last picture, and it shows the dots and lines and suchlike around my right eyes. I'm so used to doing foliate designs and swirls; the angular design and dots were a bit different. I also like how this picture shows how the silver eye-shadow goes right up to my nose, but the eyeliner from the inner corner is brought upwards with a bit of black eye-shadow to the crease, to give a more distinct eyelid, and to make my nose look narrower.

I think this post also shows a little of how varied my style can be. One day I can be all black curls and lace and frills, and another day I am all spikes and goggles and purple lipstick! I wear things because I think they look nice, and I refuse to get pigeonholed into one specific style.