Winter's Bride

As I mentioned, I made a trip to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden with a friend. We went to see some art exhibitions, shopped and generally acted like tourists. Except we made a little photo shoot too. Since it was almost Winter Solstice (18th of December), we decided to do a Winter's Bride. In the pics I am wearing a wedding dress my friend found from a second hand shop and some vintage furs of my own. Lipstick is Make  Up Store's Black Orchid.

We took these photos at the garden of Royal Library and some dog-owners and joggers apparently were a bit amused by our behavior. I'm just happy if we brightened somebody's day.

Once again I'll mention that the furs are heritage from my mother's side and the creatures were skinned before I was even born. Also, a poor student like me could not afford furs. :)

Have a happy Christmas, Yule and slightly late Winter Solstice!

Gothic transport: a funeral vehicle

I was on holiday with a friend in Stockholm, Sweden and when we were walking from the harbor 6.30 a.m. we saw a lovely funeral vehicle. It was clearly altered to transport other than corpses.

This made me think how utterly cool car it would be, when and if in the future I would need to have one. I'm pretty sure that The Addams Family had had a funeral vehicle if it had not been so impractical considering the size of the family!

I tried to google where could one buy a funeral car but I only found american websites. No mention in my home country but that is not a surprise, since this country's population is so small. Here is one of the websites I found: http://thefuneralcarstore.com/preowned.php?type=Hearse

Do not know if they sell for private persons, whom are not in the business.

Web comic with a sinister and sometimes absurd sense of humour

A friend of mine introduced to me a wonderful thing: Tragedy Series. These one frame stories are delightedly morbid or tragic. The maker of these depressing situations is Benjamin Dewey, who is a professional comic book artist. I did not want to brake the copyright, so you just have to trust me on this and open a link.

Here are some of my favorite tragedies, I hope you find yours!

http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/post/10035771842

http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/image/30596138619

http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/post/10690639839

Gothidays 2012 Day 4: metal covers of Burton's Nightmare before Christmas' songs

I believe every little goth has at least at some point watched Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas during the Holidays, or even held it as a tradition to watch it every year. I must admit that for me the magic of Nightmare before Christmas is wearing off during the years, but I do enjoy the songs. Especially the new versions of those songs, made by well-known artists.

This is a relatively new Christmas thinggy for me, since I just learned about it a few days ago from a friend. Here are some of the songs on youtube and an article in wikipedia. They can also be found in Spotify. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=popPQmikR9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3WM6sFfsvk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Revisited

Gothidays 2012 Day 2: Black Christmas Tree

Lovely Professor Z's Gothidays 2012 are on, so check it here and participate! I for one am very interested to see how other goths do their Christmas decorations, and maybe apply those witty ideas to my own Holidays.

I do not have that much decorative stuff for the Holidays, since I am a student so there are many other things to invest my money than cookie-jars that look like Santa Claus. But some things I have bought and one of them is a black Christmas tree. I found it from a random shop two days before Christmas and I was thrilled. Since it was so close to the Grand Day, the tree decorations were at least -50%, so I bought silvery and purple-y glass balls to go with the tree.

Oh, Joker is peeking behind a tree!

After that I have slowly bought more Holiday themed stuff, but always at the after-X-mas sales. 

Sophistiqué Noir's monthly theme post: maxi skirt

The winter has arrived to my home town, so maxi skirts are a sensible way to dress against the frost and ice.

I went to a nearby park to take some pictures of me and the amazing weather. In the pictures I'm wearing a winter coat with fake fur collar. The hat is mink, but it was inherited from a relative so I do not have a bad consciousness about it. The maxi skirt is a product of Raven and it is some weird fake material. Though sometimes it looks like leather and sometimes like PVC.  I bought it 2006 or something, so it is a good product, there is no abrasion or anything.

Here are the other participants of Sophistiqué Noir's Monthly Theme.

Pearls from Finland - creepy graphic novels

This post is about two graphic novels from my home country, which I think should be translated but probably never will. I thought it would be nice to talk about artwork, which normally would be left unnoticed outside the linguistic area (meaning Finnish speakers). The stories are creepy, despairing and beautiful. These novels deal with jealousy,  fear, greed and fear, so the themes are quite sinister so they should fit to a blog with gothic aesthetics.

First one is Alinka, Stories from the town of Sleepy Crane (a rough translation) by Ville Pynnönen. It was published 2004 and it tells about art school, it's pupils and headmaster. The world is slightly twisted reality with a hinch of fantasy. The story could be described as a psychological thriller. I consider all the characters to be borderline  insane, because the world the live in starts to turn into a creepy and dark place. On the other hand, the darkness seems to flow from some characters personalities, but it can also be seen as something alien that intrudes their minds.

Alinka also deals with the question what is an artist, or what it is to be an artist. I think that is a very interesting question, since these days we have so much celebrity novelists and visual artists, for example Andy Warhol or Salvador Dalí though they are kind of old but still a good example of modern society and its heroes.

The second graphic novel I'd like to introduce is something I got as a birthday present two weeks ago. Lauri and Jaakko Ahonen's Pikku Närhi, which can be translated as The Little Jaybird, was published 2012 and it is literally a graphic novel. I am too lazy to actually count, but in 150 pages there are about 15 speech bubbles. The words are simple yet very powerful, the pictures do the storytelling so it would not be hard to translate.

The Little Jaybird is a claustrophobic story about a little bird who lives with his mom in a creepy old house full of old portraits of dead relatives. The mother is paranoid, she believes the outside world is full of evil others, so she has nailed all windows shut and barricaded doors. Her son has never seen the outside of the house and now the mother is old and sickly, unable to get out of a bed. She has raised her son to be as fearful towards others and poor little jaybird is alone, trying to take care of his mother and the big old house. Here is a little sample of the novel.