Books for goths with kids, or just for goths who enjoy picture books

After a small hiatus I am going to introduce two books of Stanislav Marijanovic. These are picture books for children, or people who generally enjoy picture books. They both introduce a cavalcade of monsters and House Monsters, who are lurking in the our world.

A Manual of House Monsters

The first book is A Manual of House Monsters. The story is, that the narrator has made a research about House Monsters, small monsters who could also be seen as little devils or fiends, who produce all inconvenient things in peoples lives, like runny noses, narcissistic behavior, or if somebody is being really impatient.

In this picture you can see on the left the monster who makes you feel impatient and on the right is the monster who makes you feeling like you do not want to share anything, whether it is candy or toys.


The second book is A Family Guide to House Monsters II, and it depicts some monster you could find in a ordinary household. I have the Finnish edition, so I have no idea what the names of the monsters are in English, but these monster try to affect peoples lives or make little tricks to make things inconvenient for human inhabitants of the household.

In this picture you can see the Sugar Sisters (Sokrusiskot) who have a sweet tooth and make you too crave for cakes and candy! Of course this book also gives tips how to handle all monsters and how one can even enjoy their company every now and then.

Sugar Sisters

In the picture below one can have a glimpse of a Stress Monster, who mainly attacks adults and from this book especially children can find useful advice, how to make the adults notice, that too much stress is not good!

Stress Monster

I myself had these books as a kid, but I do enjoy them still. Actually I have found new things in them every time I read the books! The pictures of the books are extremely cute and one could see these imaginative characters as art, in the same way other novels are art.

Gothic Art in Spotlight: Hugo Simberg's Death and Devils

It has been a while since I posted about art, but no worries, I have not stopped my dear hobby called art completely. In this post I am shortly introducing Hugo Simberg's paintings, which I find to fit the idea of Goth I have.

Source

Hugo Simberg (1873-1917) was a Finnish painter, whose work is mostly categorized as symbolism. Simberg's works are mainly from the era of National Romanticism in Finland and as I have mentioned before, at the same time in Europe decadence was rising, especially among Parisian art scene, where inspiration and role model for a nationality was searched. Finland was not independent during that time, the idea of Finnish people as a nation or at least something more than a part of Russia or Sweden was on the rise.

Simberg's art divided people, because there are some decadent aspects, or even touch of macabre, which was not wanted in the patriotic and romantic point of view. A huge problem was also, that some of Simberg's work did not go that well along with the traditional christian symbolism and way of depicting things.

For example The Garden of Death, which was painted for the cathedral of Tampere year 1896. As you can see, there is no traditional symbols of afterlife, the heaven or skyline. As a consent, there is a small path in the background, but the viewer can not see where it is leading. Therefore there is no christian salvation in the painting.

Source

The Garden of Death is open for so many interpretations, one can see the skeleton characters maleficent, waiting to take the lives of those little flowers, or one can see them caring and loving those plants. Also, are those flowers souls of the living, which death harvests, or are those the afterlife state for the soul? What if the heaven is to became a flower in Death's Garden?

Simberg has many other fascinating artworks in which the skeletons dance and make people feel uncomfortable both in the painting and the viewers. I shall not talk about them, instead I am drawing the attention to another frequent motif in Simberg's work: the Poor Devil.

Simberg's devil is not a powerful and evil creature. He is more like a poor little wretch, trying to do his part as tempting people to sin, but failing. My personal favourite of Simberg's devil painitings is Piru ruusupensaassa (The Devil in a rosebush). It was painted 1907 and I believe it is at the moment in another famous Finnish artists atelier museum, at Ruovesi. It is the old atelier of Gallen-Kallela a painter who acted as a tutor for Simberg. At least I saw the poor devil in that building last summer.

In this painting I think the little poor devil is adorable, playing his little flute. But I'll leave further interpretation to you.

DIY: "Doctors & Drug Addicts" Party & Make Up Inspiration

Last Friday I had a party with my friends and in this post I am showing what snacks and other fun factors I made for the party. I also tell how some of them failed.

I had blood red punch, including an ice heart, which was also shown in a previous post. I also made a heart out of jelly. It was rather difficult to get the jelly out of the cast, but after some rude words and a tiny bit of violence it came out just fine.

I was also serving some other alcohol to the guests, but I replaced the bottles labels. On the other side is a sign of poison and on the other side reads "Tincture for Gout".

I had this great idea of making drug-like candy, but unfortunately my plans failed. As you can see from the picture below, I found some really colorful candy with the perfect shape and they actually were the original inspiration for this party theme.

First I tried to make a white frosting and dip candies so that half of the candy would be white and the other half some other color. The frosting was not concealing enough. Then I tried to saw candies in half and mix and match them.

They became more like Frankenstein's Creature, so I ended up serving candy and other "pills" the usual way. I guess some fancy cake paint from a special store would do the trick, but I did not have time nor money to go and get one at that point.

My other nifty idea for a party of Docs and Drug Addicts was to shop at an apothecary. I decided to make cocktail sticks, so what would be more macabre than to use hypodermic syringe!

I am pleased to tell that people thought they were really wicked and cool.

When having a theme party, it is no surprise people were wearing costumes. We had many addicts, a male nurse form an asylum, another nurse clearly gone psycho herself with blood all over her clothes and of course Doctor Who! I myself was just a heroin addict. An hour before the party was starting, I noticed my latex horror skin had dried up, so I had to improvise with make up.

This infected needle mark is made with wine red and black eye shadow, black eye-liner and skin color concealer. I have not done this sort of masking before, so I was really pleased with it. I have heard, that one can fix make up to hold better, if one sprays some hair spray on it. Well, I tried it and did not notice any difference on how my needle mark was preserved, but did not care that much, it was so fun a party. :) Of course some new people were moving to the block of flats that night, so my new neighbors saw me with this arm, since I had to go a few times down stairs to open the main door for my guests.

DIY: Edible Heart Transplant for a Party

This post is about a cool thing I found for parties. I was shopping in Helsinki with a friend and I ended up to the Heureka Shop which is a little shop of this Finnish science museum and exhibition place Heureka. I bought a cast of a human heart, not moulded with a help f a real heart, I would imagine, but it is still quite realistic.

Think of all those theme parties I can host! Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart is on the list, but before that I am hosting a party in the end of this month and the theme is "Docs & Drug addicts" You know, like "Vicar & Tarts" but my party is about the practitioners and abusers of Medicine. I know that is not that gothic a theme, but I wanted to show my new heart-maker and later some other ideas, because one can use them in a more goth party if one chooses to.

In this picture I have tested the heart-maker with the help of juice and a freezer. I am very pleased with the way my icy heart turned out! The cast is not flat from the bottom, so it is a bit tricky to make it stay in a position to manufacture ice, or jelly for that matter.

I shall make a post about my other party tricks after I have hosted the actual party, but this was just a little peek about my plans and funny food I am going to make.

DIY: Death Caps and Arsenic Cake

As featured in a previous post, I made death caps and arsenic cake for my Mad Tea Party. Now I'm going to reveal the recipes.

Death caps are made of eggs, covered with a carved tomato. The instruction said one should use mayonnaise to make them stick together and make the little white spots on top, but I forgot to buy it, so I just used pieces of cocktail sticks. I broke one in half and it kept the death cap in fine condition.

The middle layer

The arsenic cake is a lemon cheesecake-ish variation I made. To make it one needs a packet of some cookies (200g) and butter (100g or something), to mix and make the bottom part. One just crushes the cookies and melts the butter, mixes them and makes a flat layer in the baking tin.

Then 2 deciliters of whipped cream (before the whipping part) and two packs (2dl) of fromage frais / curd (do not know the terminology of baking in English) of lemon or another flavor one might prefer. and 4 leafs of gelatin. And of coarse, to make that beautiful color of imaginary arsenic, green food color. 

Candy worms

Not for least, I added some worm-shaped candy at the bottom. The maggoty wine gum tasted really nice. On top I added some skull-shaped candy too.

It is quite possible I added some freshly squished lemon juice in it too, but can't remember. But I did squish three lemons to make the darker green topping for the cake, and there I added some sugar and a lot more of the green color. I used about 5 gelatin leafs to it. Unfortunately the baking tin I used was one of those you can remove the bottom, so of coarse liquid like the topping just run down and on the table. -_- Luckily a part of it remained, so the cake was not completely ruined.

Cake, before the topping started to run away on the table.

Now, my main point with this post is, that if one has a basic recipe for something, one can alter it to be more gothic or to be suitable for a theme party. My basic recipe is the cookie bottom and the whipped cream + curd + gelatin. After that everything else is optional.

There is plenty of green color left over after this party, so I am planning on a next opportunity to use it. At the moment the party idea is something like "Decadence <3 Absinthe: Grab your top hat and hide a bottle of the Green Fairy in your pocket and join the frantic rampage on the edge of degradation!"

The cake, already half eaten.

Mad Tea Party 2013

This is a magical day indeed! A wonderful lady Vanessa from A Fanciful Twist is hosting her sixth annual Mad Tea Party. Tea and Alice in Wonderland are delightful things, even if it might be rather a jaded era we are living here. More accustomed are we with Edgar Allan Poe and his grim tales, so with a dash of The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart of Poe mixed with Alice's Adventures from Carroll I sent some invitations to my dear friends.

You are cordially invited to Mad Tea Party

Please join me and enjoy 

Tea, hot and sweet as Death 

and Tender Arsenic Cake 

with some Luscious Death Caps 

So many friends came, some grinning like the Cheshire Cat. 

But alas, poor March Hare was not his talkative self that day! 

Many a young lady was wearing the fashionable color.

Other details of ornaments were too beautiful!

Tea was indeed sweet and hot, so warm golden color and velvety feel on one's tongue!

My dear guests were delighted with a new experience of Arsenic, the lemon-like freshness of poisonous delicacy! It was almost half eaten before I had the chance to exclaim "Off with their heads!"

Tea time passed, but Madness continued, so we opened a nice bottle of wine. 

Evening proceeded pleasantly and later, when everyone had had their death cap, we became a bit dandy and decided to gamble a bit. 

So off I went to fetch a game called Biribi, a lotto-like French game from the 18th century.  

Oh, the excitement! Winnings and losings were grand, but the rivals stayed benevolent towards each other.

We had such a nice little tea party, we did not stop to look at the time. Finally my old clock started to feel  abandoned!

So, with Lady Time irritated, we had to end our Mad Tea Party. With some good luck, we might get her on good humor again, hopefully before next year's Mad Tea Party!

5 things - AKA Weird Questions and Answers

Now, I was tagged by N. Finsternis of Deus Ex Machina and 1666 x 30 of The Mutant Stomp Friends at the same day, so apparently I am obliged to do this. ;)

Rules:

• Link back to the person who tagged you.
• Tag 5 blogs with less than 200 followers.
• Get them to tag more bloggers and keep this thing going.


5 things you need every day:

1 A morning coffee, sipped in solitude.
2 A bra. My breasts are large, so it actually hurts, if I walk around without something supportive.
3 Something to make me laugh. A book, a picture, a friends status update.
4 A mirror. I am slightly ashamed to admit this, but I am really vain.
5 Dancing. I have this tendency to make dance-like moves, sometimes even when there is no music.


5 books you would recommend:

1 A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen This is a play, but I have read it and loved it. The play was critical about 19th century marriage norms and it is still interesting to reflect Ibsen's play to our present society.

2 On Blondes by Joanna Pitman. This is a non-fiction about the history of blondes and how the Western civilization has been obsessed about them from the ancient Greek to Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. It is greatly written and a real eye-opener about our culture and also about some things of the WWII.

3 The Wolf's Bride by Aino Kallas. It is a Finnish-Estonian werewolf story. Kallas wrote it 1928, but the story is situated in the 17th century. A really good story and it was translated in English soon after it was published so it might even be found if somebody is interested.

4 Hell Hath No Fury by Ingrid Noll. A wonderful, slightly twisted book about a woman's obsession and how that obsession turns into murder. Or two. Or more. Also Noll's Head Count is great, with two lovely ladies who know how to seize the moment and dispose a body. I've read those two books a dozen times.

5 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. A wonderful novella that contains a huge amount of Greek mythology and love for beauty and youth.


5 materialistic wishes for Christmas presents:

1 A pinstripe jacket that would actually fit well.
2 A flight to Paris, October 2014.
3 A whole lot of contact lenses in different colours.
4 New wigs, blue and white and purple seem good at the moment.
5 A collector edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.


5 places you wish to visit:

1 Paris, and I shall do it soon. I've even studied the language!
2 Budapest. Not planned as long as a trip to France.
3 Some distant paradise island in Borneo or some other place. I want time, leisure and solitude. And colourful drinks and fruits!
4 Great Rift Valley of Africa. I saw a series of documentary about it and it's biodiversity and I was sold. There are so many things to see! Of coarse that trip would take several months but this is about dreaming, isn't it?
5 Lapland. I want to experience a night that lasts for months.


5 Adjectives that describe you:

1 Witty
2 Bubbly (with laughter, there is a fine line between amusement and hysteria.)
3 Tired, but I am working my way out of that situation. I used to be exhausted.
4 Mischievous (in the most positive way.)
5 Pretty and sometimes even beautiful.


5 things you'd say to people about life:

1 I consider life to be stories one tells to oneself and those stories are constantly transforming and blending with other stories. Therefore all other four things about life are quotes from stories other than my life.

2 It is wrong to mess with people's hearts. Unless you are a licensed professional.

3 I may not share your illusions, but I am no happier without them.

4 Don't pretend to be dead. It's bad manners.

5 You are a special kind of monster.


People tagged:

Petit Lutin
SkeletonOrchid
Blithe
Magda
MmePolaire