To celebrate my little star brooches now on sale in the La La Land website, I've reduced prices on all the brooches in my etsy store. I have gothic pvc hearts, little jam tarts and giant-sized twee vintage fabric hearts too. Check 'em out here.
Sometimes I wish I could spend all my time making little brooches. It's so relaxing to just sit and sew away. That doesn't seem likely though as it looks like I'm going to be getting a lot of work to do very soon. I don't want to say much until it gets underway properly, but it could be something really awesome. I'll keep you guys posted, but, for now, all I'll say is that it's very different from these little brooches here and involves the other side of what I do. Very exciting!
Ok, it's not really the best pizza in the world, but it is our favouite pizza to make at home. My husband or I make the base following Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's "magic bread dough" recipe. You make it up, divide into batches and freeze it so you can have it whenever you fancy. The toppings are just courgettes, green peppers, ricotta and cheddar. If you think that all sounds pretty ordinary, it's only because you haven't tasted it yet, my friend....
This is my hollow zombie eyeshadow look, something I've been wearing a lot lately. I like to wear it with a plum lip to make my skin look extra pale.
I also accidently managed to dye my hair turquoise, but I'm kind of liking it so I might keep it. I really don't want to have a different hair colour every month like it's turned out lately. I want to find the one colour I like and then stick with it - at the moment it's come down to a choice between this turquoise or the bright purple I had before. I think the purple's really pretty and feminine but sometimes it feels a bit ordinary. I like the green/blue too because it makes me feel like a sort of gothic mermaid and gets lots of stares (I think that's a good thing, right??) although I feel a bit too old for it.
I should say the reason it's an accident is because I bought Crazy Colour hair dye in Violette instead of Hot Purple. Turns out that Hot Purple is purple and Violette is somegreeny-blueycolour... Well... on my hair, at least.
Oh, and I got that necklace for a quid the other day. I think it's meant to be a wallet chain. It's a bit spiky, but I love it.
Here's a wee tutorial on the make-up if you're interested (click to enlarge):
1. After using primer, lining your water line and sealing it with some black eyeshadow, rub a thick black eye crayon over the lid and under the under the eye ♥ 2. Blend in the eye crayon a bit. I use my finger to blend the lid and a brush to blend the crayon underneath the eye. Seal with a matte black eyeshadow then blend out the edges again with a big soft brush ♥ 3. Use a metallic red/maroon eyeshadow around the outside of the black. I used Mac's frost eyeshadow in Cranberry. ♥ 4. Blend the red into the black with a big soft brush and blend the edges out. Then finish with liquid eyeliner in a small wing and use mascara etc. ♥
Incidently, here's something I can't stop listening to lately: 80s German electronic band Warning. I only heard of them because the band Pungent Stench, covered their song 'Why Can The Bodies Fly' on their Dirty Rhymes and Psychotronic Beats EP. The original song was part of the soundtrack used in an episode of Tatort, a German TV cop show (I'm not making this up). I was listening to the death metal version of it for years with no clue that the original band was involved in spooky electronic music rather than metal. I have to admit that the vocals are very death metal sounding though, which come over as genuinely creepy sometimes as well as joyfully campy. They use female backing vocals too and the music is altogether better than I expected it to be (I say this as if I know anything about music). Expecting just a novelty band wearing costumes (it's both of those things as well), I was surprised to find legitimately good electronic music, sometimes sounding more like Italian horror soundtrack music (In The Crowd) or even, in one song, John Zorn's Naked City (The Doors (Part 2)). Check out their self-titled album from 1982 and also 'Electric Eyes' (1983).
For this I used a pale metallic silvery-gold eyeshadow with winged eyeliner,cutting my crease with a little bit of MAC carbon eyeshadow. Simple, but nice and neat.
The birdskull earring is from Crimson Rich Desire and the lisptick I used is Maybelline Super Stay 24 Colour in Cherry Pie.
Finally! I have a chance to post up some of the photos from our wedding to show you guys. I hope I haven't shared too much, but we had so many photos it was difficult to narrow it down. There's a mixture of different pictures in this post including some of the ones taken by our professional wedding photographer Catriona Munro. Catriona's not only a great friend who made us feel totally at ease being photographed, but she's also incredibly professional and produced beautiful images. I'm so happy with the resulting photos and the way they don't look like 'typical' wedding photos.
The day itself could not have been more perfect. Especially considering I had a huge panic attack at the rehearsal three days beforehand (in retrospect, I think I got all my nerves and panic out the way that day so I didn't have any left by the wedding!). Everything just seemed to go so smoothly, from the ceremony, to the buffet to the (slightly embarrassing) speeches. We wanted it to be a Christian ceremony since our faith is something very important to us. We chose hymns and religious vows and, even so, I was still surprised at how lovely, personal and Jesus-centred the day was. The band playing for us was the band from my old church back home and two of my good friends gave prayers and read scripture. It was really lovely. I suppose everyone thinks that their wedding was the nicest since it's theirs, but it really was just perfect for us. Not too big and not too fancy and very, very child-friendly!
The bridesmaids' wrist bouquets, from The Flower Grove, Kirkintilloch. They did such an awesome job
Ruth, my bridesmaid, checking out my nails in the amazing gothic room we were given to get ready in [photo by Catriona Munro Photography]
And here's Culcreuch Castle, the beautiful gothic venue for our wedding... Well, the ceremony and meal were in another building but this is where we got ready and spent a lot of the day...
... It's also where the bar was. My pals ain't as teetotal as ma good self, it seems [photo by Catriona Munro Photography]
That's us! Spot the ghostly flower girl head in the window. Spooooky
My dad leading me out the building
Off to get married
As you can see, I'm papping it at this point. I was so worried my nerves would get the better of me
Annie, the only flower girl from my side of the family needs a bit of coaxing. I know the feeling, wee one
My wee nephew Angus. He's figured out the purpose of a sporran: it's for keeping dinosaurs in, duh
The marriage ceremony
Exchanging of the rings
And now we're Mr. and Mrs.
Having a seat during the sermon
Lenzie Christian Fellowship Praise Band played all our music. They were awesome
Walking back down the aisle
Tim swears he's not having a pre-wedding night peek here. I'm not so sure
Cheery couple
I think Tim was threatening to pick me up and run off with me at this point
My Uncle poked out the window to take some nice birds-eye photos
Of course most of the photos had my sister photobombing us in some way
My lovely bridesmaids
Chilling inside the castle for a bit
Cutting the cake. The beautiful cake was made by Tim's mum
My bouquet artfully placed next to some of the table decorations. I'm not even going to pretend it didn't take me weeks to paint those jars and melt all the candles
I thought I might share some recent instagram photos this time with some little numbered description below. I tried to filter out most of the photos of food I've been taking lately so it's a bit less... um... 'foody'? Incidently, I'm @xenocblood on instagram if you want to follow me and see all my uninteresting photos of make-up, cups of coffee and general goth housewife things.
1. Trying out some red/purple eyebrows for a change. 2. The first dinner I made in the flat and it wasn't a disaster! Jacket sweet potato with tuna, onion and chili. I'm never having normal, non-sweet potato jacket potatoes again. 3. Loving the Christmas coffee menu in Costa this year. My favourite is a honeycomb hot chocolate and this picture is of a black forest gateaux hot chocolate. Not my 'cup of tea', but it looks awesome. 4. 'Made' some peanut butter by flinging some roasted peanuts in the food processor. Got some monkey nuts now to crack and try making some more with. 5. The dark chocolate peanut butter balls I made with the pb. Not great looking and tasted pretty bitter compared to normal, but I kinda liked it! 6. Re-dyed my hair for my first time in the flat the other day. Happily the bath didn't get dyed purple as well so that's a relief.
