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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Queen of Hearts FTW.

Is the Queen of Hearts complete and utter epic WIN? I think so, too.
These are more of my shots with Liam of Blackrose Photography. If you remember, we did a whole set of Alice, the White Rabbit, The Red Queen, and the Mad Hatter. Now, the only ones you haven't seen yet are the rabbit. :-P
Liam did all the preliminary edits. I tweaked most of them from there, and the last two are my post-production masterpieces, and are well worth clicking through to see full-size. I am the model, the makeup artist, the stylist, and... ummm, that's it.

WHERE IS THAT GODFORSAKEN RABBIT,
AND WHY HAS HE NOT BROUGHT ME MY
PROCLAMATION YET!?!?!?
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!

Give me the scroll, Rabbit.
The sooner you obey, the better for your hide and for your head.

...

Rabbit. Look at this. Are you looking at this?
CAN YOU READ!?!?
This is not what I wanted, is it now, Rabbit?

CAN'T YOU INFERNAL LEPORIDS EVER DO ANYTHING MY WAY?!?!?!?!?!?!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Excuuuuuuse meeeeee, Sirrrrr.... but
WHERE ARE MY STRAWBERRY TARTS?!

Do you mean to inform me by your
p-p-pitiful st-stammering s-s-silence...
that someone has
EATEN MY TARTS?

 ...OFF WITH HIS HEEEEAAAAAD!!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Monsters

My favorite monster ever, from El Laberinto del Fauno.
I fully intend to walk around with my eyeballs in my hands one day. :D
El fauno, del Laberinto del Fauno.
This is the sort of thing that makes me want to get good with prosthetics.


Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein.
Can you say "hair envy?"
Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I don't know if she qualifies as a monster, but... whatever.
Celia from Monsters, Inc.
Love it, yes?
Medusa, a Gorgon, found here.
The whole snake hair thing is something I need to do someday.
I'm still figuring out the logistics of that. ;-)


Dragon from here.

Chinese Dragon from here.

Kelpie from here.
I don't know what it is, but something about kelpies has always fascinated me.
Maybe it's the awesome combination of water creature, horse, and darkness that does it?
Probably.

 
I highly recommend clicking through to see this one full size. Furthermore, I highly recommend buying the book from which this image is taken. The book's text is just the famous poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, but the illustrations are by one of my favorite artists of all time, Graeme Base.  I believe this to be his rendition of the wabe, complete with mome raths, borogroves, and slithy toves gyring and gimbling.


This is Graeme's Jabberwock. Click through to see it big. You really should.

These are Graeme's Jubjub Bird and Bandersnatch.
Fall in love. NOW.

If you find yourself incessantly looking up artwork and books by Graeme Base (I often do), you should definitely try to get your hands on Animalia. It is, hands down, the BEST alphabet book ever. I'm not kidding, I still read it. It's absolutely brilliant.
Another one of his that I recommend to art lovers but to riddle-solvers especially, The Eleventh Hour. Just do it. And if you're in the mood for more artsy-fantastic book recommendations from me, pick up a copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. This has nothing to do with Brian Selznick, but is an example of the flawless execution of a brilliant idea.

This picture is from the Wizards of the Coast archives, it appeared somewhere on one of their trading cards.
This is a banshee.
Excuse me, but Irish+Woman+Undead=Badass. All three of those are also Badass on their own, and I am proud to be two of them--Irish and Undead.

How could I forget the mummy? I think this is pretty self explanatory. Picture from here.
I've always wanted to write in my instructions after death to have me embalmed and mummified in the old way, just so I could see people's expressions when they find out they're supposed to pull my brains out through my nostrils and throw them away. However, given that I'd be dead and therefore wouldn't actually be able to see their expressions, I'm not sure if it's worth it. :-)

The zombie (found here) merits a mention, and I should mention that I'm a huge fan of all the zombie pinup artwork out there. Check it out.
 I think that's all for now.
<3 Lovely

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Half Herbie

"HERBIE!! Red." I am entirely likely to shout the preceding phrase at anyone in my company (and sometimes on my own, though not usually shouted in such an instance :P) on sight of a red Volkswagen Beetle. A trait inherited from my dad, I am intensely competitive about the Herbie game--we don't punch or hit each other, nothing like that--but we count points, and I rarely lose.

Because the point is attached to the word "herbie," and not to the color, the old habit of calling the cars as "red Herbie" or "black Herbie" has mostly died out in favor of "Herbie red" or "Herbie black," except in a few cases, in which "blue Herbie," "yellow Herbie," and "silver Herbie" have become "Blurbie," "Yellerbie," and "Silverbie." Hey--you try pronouncing all of the syllables that quickly. :-)

So one day, when my dad and brother were visiting me in Waco, we went for a drive, and were, of course, calling Herbies. I was winning, by about three points as I recall. And then, to much disbelief, I shouted,
"HALF HERBIE!!"

Neither my father nor my brother believed me. Because in competition such as ours, points matter (even half points), my dad made a U-turn to go look at the half herbie that they two did not believe existed. Sure enough, they were wrong, amazed, and behind by three-and-a-half points.

To celebrate (and also to eat dinner), we ate pizza at Poppa Rollo's, home of the half-herbie, that night. Smothered in olives, jalapenos, sausage, artichoke, and many other delicious things, it was fabulous. So were the two pitchers of root beer that we got rid of without much ado. :-)

Fast-forward in time I-don't-remember-how-much:

The first time I shot with Tom Rinard, we talked about plans for more shoots afterward (of course), and the one thing that jumped out of my mouth that I REALLY wanted to do was shoot with the half-herbie outside of Poppa Rollo's pizza place... (fast-forward even more) ...and now we've finally buckled down and done it! The back half of Herbie is in front of Poppa Rollo's, and the front half is in back. Say that five times fast.

The 20 photos below (sorry about the photo overload--just imagine what I've gone through, we took 283!) were taken by Tom Rinard. I am the model, the stylist, the makeup artist. If there is any editing on the versions of the photos shown below, I did it, but most of them are unedited because his photos really are that good.
Anyway,
without further ado, here are the
photos from last weekend:











This one reminds me of the character Rizzo, from Grease. :-)







If there's one thing I learned from modeling since I started, it's that it's harder than it looks. Photographs in which I look natural and perhaps even graceful were a workout to pose for. The wind kept literally bucking me off the back of the Herbie, and more than once I was afraid the roof of the Herbie was going to cave in under my feet. However, it's a lot of fun looking back at pictures like the second one in this post and being proud not only of how it turned out but also of keeping my balance in heels on top of a thin piece of metal in 25mph wind with the sun in my eyes, my hair going crazy, and every second my knickers threatening to show their face under a petticoat that would rather be soaring through the blustery air. No, really--it's a lot of fun. :)

Anyway, everything I'm wearing was either gifted or thrifted, but nothing ever shoplifted. Yay for rhyming. :-)
For the makeup, I used a lot of different things--
  • I used three pressed shadows from a clinique eye quad that was a free sample in one of the specials they do periodically--the one I didn't use this time is called Frosted Blossom (Soft Shimmer), and the three I used are
    • Buttermilk (Velvet),
    • Beige Shimmer (Soft Shimmer), and
    • Bewitched (Velvet)
  • I also used Barry M.'s Yellow Dazzledust on the inner corners of my eyes, and
  • I think I used Mac's Copperized pigment, as well as
  • Out Back, a shadow I got in a free sample with my order from Coastal Scents. In any case, what's on my eyes is some combination of the above (I really should have written this sooner).
  • My red lips are Besame Red over a drugstore liner that I can't read the name on anymore.
  • I'm also wearing MUFE black gel liner,
  • and I lined the bottom of the wing with a very thin line of Barry M. electric blue liquid liner, but you can't really see it, so who cares?
  • My eyebrows are darkened with Bewitched (Velvet) from that Clinique eye quad I was talking about earlier.
  • The blush I used was another free sample from Clinique, their Shimmering Stripes Powder Blusher in 01 Peony.
  • Obviously I'm wearing mascara, and it's the one that was at the top of my bag. I don't remember what brand it was.

Are you as done with this post as I am? I thoroughly understand.
'Bye, now!
<3 Lovely Wednesday

Friday, April 22, 2011

Easter Nails!

I just painted my nails for an Easter picnic at Waco's Metroplitan Community Church tomorrow afternoon. Did I have too much fun? Did I ever!
Left hand:
Sinful Colors Nail Art in Worn Before
Sinful Colors Professional in Snow Me White and Black on Black
The brand on the pink has worn off the bottle, but the color is 250 "Zippy"


Right hand:
Sinful Colors Nail Art in Morning Breath
Sinful Colors Professional in Snow Me White
Sinful Colors Professional in Black on Black
New York Color 112A (orange)

Yay! More outfit tomorrow...

Much love,
<3Lovely


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Space Princess

I felt like a Space Princess today. I think it was the combination of this purple dress I love so much, and the blue lipstick.
Just a quick post today:

  • dress thrifted
  • belt thrifted
  • shirt borrowed from my mom
  • wig by... not sure who. SO much fun to wear, though!
  • Graftobian blue lipstick (fabulous color and coverage; if you wear it keep it with you because the staying power is not amazing; smells like crayons, which grows on you)
Muah!
<3 Lovely

Sunday, April 17, 2011

We're All Mad Here...

This is more of my work with Liam of Blackrose Photography. Again, he did the photography and the basic edits, I did the wardrobe, modeling, makeup, and the edits you see here (yes, including oversaturating the third photograph, but I LOVE the way it looks).
And SO, without further ado...





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