EAH Raven Queen & The Edgar Allan Poe Photography Challenge

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Dear and lovely readers, here is my second entry in the Edgar Allan Poe Photography Challenge.  For the last month, I kept thinking about the phrase for theme two : "spirits moving musically to a lute's well-tuned law."  What a beautifully eerie image.

My interpretation is more on the cute side of gothic.  Raven Queen is playing her guitar, rather than a lute, and summoning some spirits with her magic.  As attentive watchers of EAH will know, Raven Queen has been seen to have excellent control of her dark magic while playing the guitar. 

Raven Queen and her guitar were both repainted by me, the spirit faces are my BJD Supia Rosy.  The mosquito bite I incurred while taking this picture is still healing.  As always, thank you for looking. :0)

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A Decadent Gothic BJD Manicure

BJD manicures are one my favourite parts of customization.  They are much easier than face-ups, but the effect of blushed or manicured hands is almost as impactful.  Even if a BJD is always in suits or long dresses, their hands can usually be seen.

I've been wanting to update Elena's hands for a while, and just finished reading Carmilla, which put me in the mood for some Gothic, Evil-Regal-style nails.

Now, I am by no means an expert at nail art or manicures, so I started by doing an image search for inspiration.  Once that was done, I made a couple of rough sketches to test out my idea for a gothic manicure. 





I decided to go with the red, black, and silver version because Elena has quite a few red clothes.

This is what her nails looked like before I started.  These are the Dollmore Model F Vampire hands, so they come with long talon-like nails.  :-D  Dollmore painted her nails dark purple as part of her fullset-- and I liked the colour very much, but as I said, her wardrobe tends toward red and black, and the old manicure was starting to chip from three and half years of use.



First, I cleaned off the old Dollmore manicure, prepped the hands with several base coats of MSC, and then started with a dark red acrylic. 



This was probably the most stressful part.  I decided to paint the front and back of the resin nail, and had to be careful about making a clean line where the nail meets the finger on both sides.

When that layer was done, and all the nails were red, I thought the look was already quite nice.  I worried that adding more would be too much.  While I pondered whether to go on with my plans for the Decadent Gothic BJD Manicure, I sealed the hands with more MSC. 

An excellent friend of mine advised simplicity and elegance.  I considered the matter thoroughly.  

When the MSC coats were dry, I decided to go ahead with the silver cuticles.  At least I could wipe them off if they looked bad.

So I went at the cuticles with my tiny brush and silver acrylic. 



And wowww!  I love how cold, shiny silver looks against the dark red.  More is more, sometimes.  Next, I painted the black tips.

 

Now, the plan was to add some silver beads.  Even though I was already pleased at the red, black, and silver, I had especially purchased some micro beads.  Most nail art decals and crystals are over-sized on BJD hands (yes, even on SD hands with long vampire nails), and that was not the look I was after.

Once I started trying to attach the beads, I quickly gave up my notions of more than one micro bead per hand.  The micro beads were very exasperating to pick up and place on the nails.  I imagine that a more practiced person would not have too much trouble, but alas, that person was not me.

This is what the hands looked like when they were more or less finished, and at my favourite stage.



After this, I applied a very thick layer of gloss medium to secure the micro beads.  I prefer the matte look in the picture above, but that would not at all be practical for a doll whose hands will be going in and out of tight sleeves.  I'll be posting more pictures of Elena with her new manicure soon. 

Until then, that is the story of my first gothic-inspired BJD manicure.

Thanks very much for reading! :0)

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Zemeno Dark Fairy Figurine Repaint

As anyone who might visit my tumblr at any given time will probably notice, I have a decided weakness for gothy, emotive camp.  

Even before I discovered the world of BJDs, a friend gave me a little Zemeno figurine for Christmas.  Although I had seen such fairy figurines before, I thought that their appeal for me had died sometime around my eighth birthday.  On the whole, this remains true.  However, this Zemeno Dark Fairy Figurine came opportunistically packed with a black and purple flier advertising a number of other fairy figurines.

I had never heard of Zemeno.  They had an underwhelming web presence at the time, so all I knew was that I had seen one of their dark fairies, and I knew where my friend had made the purchase.  This last point acquired additional interest because, amongst the fairies advertised on the purple flier, there was one who, as a tiny printed facsimile, reminded me of an illustration by Edmund Dulac of Scheherazade.  

I went to Millenium, gothic kitsch central, and inquired about the figurine shown in the flier.  Lo and behold, the lantern fairy with the headscarf was available (her company name is 'Eclipse' and you can see her at La Table Ronde's appropriately camp website).  I recall feeling utterly scandalous as I left the store with my lantern fairy; no decent young adult in Art School ever purchases such tacky things, I thought.  Then there was the price.  These were the days before BJDs, and I performed all manner of mental acrobatics to impress upon myself that spending $30-ish on the lantern fairy would not entirely condemn me to the ranks of the hopelessly dissipated and debauched. 

When I returned home and inspected my dissipated indulgence, I discovered that the mass-manufacturing process had not been very kind to my fairy.  Part of her face was globbed onto her headscarf in the manner of a pancake.  The paint around her eyes was not very precise either.  Not having any other suitable tools, since Art School was determined to make me a large-scale painter of Edifying Post Modern Art, I used a sakura fine-liner to fix the pancake face and badly painted eyes.  At least, from a distance, she looked respectable.  However, I was never completely happy with her face.

So, a number years later, I find myself in the heat of procrastination and academic despair.  I take the lantern fairy down from her post, am appalled by the company face-up, and feel a sort of pity for my inexperienced, fine-lining self.  It then occurs to me that I have since painted on somewhat similar objects that cost a great deal more.  I can hardly imagine making my poor fairy look any worse.  So I decided to try giving her a sweeter, more gothic pin-up inspired look. 

What I discovered in the process is that her forehead is strangely bumpy.  I also found an inverted bubble in her nose, which I was only partly successful at filling with acrylic paint.  She's about 10 inches tall, so this makes her my smallest face-up to date.  I used only arcylics, which is another reason why she is not quite as subtle as my BJD face-ups.  Maybe in several more years, I'll have improved sufficiently to do attempt another repaint.  For the time being, I think she looks tolerably better.

She has azo red on her lips, raw umber and mars black on her eyes and eyebrows, titan buff on her nose, and ultramarine blue in her irises. 

As always, thank-you very much for reading! 

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