Category: Babblings

I’m excited to post these photos – I do believe they are my prettiest photos to date!  They were taken at Wickham park in Manchester CT.  I’m a bit obsessed with the location – although most of it isn’t antique, it is utterly gorgeous.  It’s hundreds of acres of park which seems to have been landscaped and accented for the express purpose of being as picturesque as possible!

First up, is my “Lady Adventuress” gown, modeled by  Maddy Wooding.

The addition of leather accents and accessories lends a bit of steampunk flair to the look.  I could (and plan to) also make a two tone black/brown version of this gown – accented with brown instead of black leather – which would look even more steampunk!

And the hat – oooh the cuteness of the hat!  It’s a leather fedora that I shortened to make it look more like the late Victorian era hats that perch atop the head.  I can get them in black, red, or brown, and I absolutely plan to make them part of my regular line.

This second gown is modeled by Jordan Goodrich.  It’s a new twist on my Vintage Diva design that I’m calling “Oriental Splendor.”  The fabric has dragons and phoenix’s woven into the pattern, and is oh so elegant.

It’s hard to see it in this photo, but she’s leaning against a really cool looking statue of a Chinese temple dog!  There are two Asian themed gardens in Wickham park, with all sorts of gorgeous accents placed all around.

Her hat is one of my wool “topper” styles, which I figured out how to shape so that it comes to my signature pointed front.  Mmmmmm peacock feathers!…

And here is my favorite picture of the day!  The sad thing is that I can no longer order the hat base needed to make this hat (I could do other colors but not ivory.)

The model in these photos is Alexa DaFonte, and she is wearing a gown I’m calling “Lace and Allure.”

It’ll be available for a limited time in my store – while supplies last on the blouse since it’s a piece I ordered from a clothing wholesaler.

Lauren Anne Page did an utterly beautiful job on the makeup on these ladies.  Perfectly blended, and it stayed looking fresh and fantastic despite it being a hot sunny day.  She had some kind of magic solution in a spray bottle to “set” the makeup.  It was a breeze editing these photos!

This was a group photo shoot with Trisha May Photography, and she posted very many more gorgeous photos from the day on her blog here.

It’s probably a bit too late for Christmas-y pics?  Oh well, I forgot to post them in December when they were taken, so here goes!

My sister in law Megan is wearing a new-ish design – a high low purple cloak.  It was intended to be floor length on myself or my sister, so it’s awesomely long and trailing on her:

These were taken outside the Westerly library, before the Christmas decorations came down.  It always makes me sad when the decorations have to go away, and it’s just plain old boring winter from there out.  If Christmas were in February, that would be perfect, because then when the decorations come down, at least winter is almost over!

/end rant/

XD

This is my favorite cloak picture.  I love how bright the purple satin on the inside is!

The folks at the library were AWESOME.  Megan told us we should check out the inside – that it was a gorgeous Victorian era building.  We poked our heads in, and the library staff were like OMG you look so awesome/why are you dressed up/ you match the building perfectly!

Their excitement made me brave enough to ask if they minded if we snapped a few pictures.  We did match the building perfectly.  🙂

The sad part is EVERY picture blurred out horribly.  Apparently I have a lot to learn about indoor photography.  But these I was at least able to edit to death to make them presentable.

The library had some awesome holiday themed  book sculptures there, and we snapped a couple pics of Megan with them, just for kicks.

Those did turn out quite clear.  I think the lights saved them.

Many thanks to the friendly folks at the Westerly library for letting us borrow their gorgeous building for a few!

Photo credits:

I thought I’d take a second to share a few pics of my holiday gown.  It’s a long sleeved version of “Victorian Vixen” with a matching capelet for a bit of extra warmth.

I’m still wearing lace but notice the lack of see-thru-ness?  It’s the best quick and dirty trick to make my line of very lacey clothing carry over into winter times.  Sweater leggings, a black maxi skirt from my street clothes, and then the lace skirt over the top.

And the capelet – OH the capelet!  Have you ever felt minky faux fur before?  It’s the stuff that faux fur baby blankets are made from – uber soft and thick.  The issue with using it in clothing, is it usually only comes in boring pastels.  I was elated to find it in black, and a bunch of beautiful jewel tones, from one of my fabric wholesalers.

And yes, the ENTIRE inside of the capelet is made from this softy-soft fur.  Which means technically, it’s reversible.  Me personally, I cannot allow my shoulders to part with the softness.  But in a pinch, it would give you a fur capelet on the reverse side.  I do have plans to make capelets with fur on both sides to solve this issue.

“Dark Winter” Gothic Victorian Gown by auralynne, and modeled by the same

Pics by her long suffering husband (baby do you mind doing a quick photo shoot this afternoon – Quick, I promise, quick!)

As promised, here’s the second half of the pictures from the cold and windy day.  The following photo is my absolute favorite of the day:

The best part – the look on my face was an accident – I intended to have my eyes open and staring off into the distance, but I blinked!

I had originally intended to wear a different gown that day, but fate (and my very disorganized brain) was against me.  I’m working on new winter looks and had a brand new velvet underskirt and shrug that match a velvet corset – that I had misplaced.  After spending about half an hour searching, I gave up and looked for something different to wear.

(Incidentally, much later, I found it – WITH THE KITCHEN TOWELS. Absent minded much?)

I didn’t have anything else BRAND new that I wouldn’t be freezing my patooties off wearing.  I did have this cloak:

So I thought ok – what do I have that will match this cloak and at least has sleeves of some sort??

The shrug in these pics looks like a new design, but it isn’t!  If you wear a “La Rose Gothique” shrug underneath a “Belladonna” shrug that’s what it looks like!

The skirt is also two skirts layered, as in most of my designs.  I like having a WARDROBE rather than a few costumes – and having foundation pieces that can be worn with anything makes that possible.

You may recognize this look – it’s practically identical to my “Imperial Belladonna” steampunk costume.  I’ve had several requests to sell that costume with an underskirt instead of leggings, and people always ask “will the belladonna skirt look alright with the lace underskirt?”

So I figured if I couldn’t find the parts for what I intended to wear that day, at least I’d get pictures of something practical.

The hat is a safety pin special – meaning I took a couple things I had and pinned them together for the look.

It’s a “Dark Delight Lolita Tilt Hat” with a pair of cheap-0 steampunk goggles (the ones you see attempting to overtake ebay searches at the moment) pinned to it!  Although I should note, if I wear this for real, I will either make a pair of smaller goggles, or get a pair of real vintage welding goggles, which also tend to be smaller.  I had to toss any picture where I was staring head on at the camera, because holy crap huge goggles on a delicate hat.

And my jewelry – don’t you love the jewelry? – is from Vixen’s Delight, as always.  The set is called “Fallen” and this is a perfect example of how well her jewelry lasts.  This is from Andrea’s personal collection, and it seems to be the piece most often grabbed since it’s a blend of all things gothy and steampunk that we love.  Usually one of us is wearing something that would like a touch of “gothic angel” so it’s been worn many many times.  It’s still silver and has lasted thru many shows, which is what happens when you use all steel rings and pins, and cast metal pretty parts.

And last but not least, how about a completely goofy pic?

If you recall from my last post, Andrea was wearing an all white bridal outfit.  She had brought this bouquet for a prop, and since it looked totally goofy with my look, we snapped a pic just for fun.

~Credits~

Gown designer and model: auralynne
Jewelry artist, Photography: Andrea Daunis of Vixen’s Delight
Hat: Mad Rose Hattery

Yesterday was photo day – and we had one takeaway point for the day:  The shoreline is very cold in November.

The weather man was a big fat liar – because it was supposed to be in the 60’s!  Instead it was 55 and very windy (our fault, for choosing a mansion by the coast for our shoot.)  But luckily one of my brand new items to debut in this photo shoot was this cloak.

I love the look of a long flowing medieval cloak, it’s just so elegant and beautiful.

But I also love Victorian style capelets, I mean… BOW!

What’s not to love about that level of cuteness?  I came up with this design to try and combine the two.  I make a ton of high-low skirts, so I thought, I bet I could develop a high low cloak pattern!  I’m super pleased with the result.

It was very difficult to choose a favorite from this shoot – because so many of them were so good!  But here’s one of my favorites:

These next pictures show off the gown she was wearing.  It’s a design very similar to Victorian Vixen – but in white, and I crafted a bustle skirt in satin to match.

The below photo I kept zoomed out because of the pretty setting, and I love how her pose makes it look like she’s dancing.  Photos were taken at UCONN’s Avery Point campus.  There’s a gorgeous mansion out there – and no one seems to mind two weirdly dressed girls coming to the grounds to snap photos of eachother!

~Credits~

Photography, gown design: auralynne
Jewelry artist, model: Andrea Daunis of Vixen’s Delight
Hat: Mad Rose Hattery

Dunno if I’ve said this before, but I. ABSOLUTELY. LOVE. what I do for a living. Each time photoshoot day rolls around, I’m reminded of this fact. As I’ve mentioned before, our photo taking method is pretty ghetto – we dress to the nines in my designs, go someplace pretty, and play pass the camera!

These pics are from a late October shoot.  I wanted to take advantage of both our Indian summer, and the fall colors, and get some good shots of a few new looks.  Following are a few of my favorites:

Jewelry: Vixen’s Delight
Hat: Mad Rose Hattery

We discovered pink and orange don’t mix very well – but luckily there was still plenty of green to pose Andrea  against.  The fiery tones of the fall leaves were perfect for Miranda’s olive green gown, however:

Jewelry: Vixen’s Delight
Hat: Mad Rose Hattery

Miranda and Andrea were both wearing a new jacket designed to complement my “Vintage Diva” bustle skirt.  I’d tried pairing the jacket from my “Gothic Temptation” gown with the bustle skirt, and it didn’t work very well – poofy bows on the sides of the hips made the jacket poof weirdly.  I re-cut the jacket pattern to be pointed in front with a fishtail back design, and the new design works perfectly with the skirt’s flirty bows.

In the following pictures I’m wearing an existing design in a new color.  It’s been my Masquerade ball gown this season (turns out there are a ton of fun dress-up and cosplay events in my area).  I wore it first at Rufflecon, and planned to also wear it at the Witches Masquerade Ball later that month.  Then the night before the ball, a picture popped into my head of the cutest little witch hat.  Next thought was “Can I make it?” closely followed by “Can I make it in only a few hours??”  Turned out the answer to both questions was an emphatic “yes!”  I plan to offer hats like that in my shop eventually – after perfecting my process so that the completed hat is more firm, less squishy.  I’ll continue to have most of my designs accompanied by the creations of Mad Rose Hattery – but sewn hats is something she doesn’t plan to offer – and occasionally the perfect matching hat for a gown is a hat sewn from the gown fabric.

Great pics, and a great time!  Yay for pretty public locations and yay for warm fall days.

Let it be known to everyone reading this post that my sister…

Is a dork.

Lol we usually wind up with a few pictures like this when we take photo shoots.This was the initial result of me telling her “ooo hold onto the gate and look playful!”

Several poses later, and I’m shaking my head and saying “No, that looks constipated.  Playful, Andrea, playful!”

To which she replies, “Okay, constipated.  I can do constipated!  How is this?”

It turns out she is better suited to vixen-ly and elegant lady poses, like these:

Gown by me, it’s my “Gothic Temptation” Victorian bridal ensemble.  The jewelry is my sister’s Faery Rose necklace set.  And the hat is also from another “sister” shop – the Plum Flutterby Teardrop hat.

And finally, here’s my absolute favorite shot from the day.  I took two of it – one zoomed in and one zoomed way out because aaaaaah the pretty the pretty!

Have you ever had one of those days that just won’t go right?

We had one of those recently.  I had just finished with a couple of tea gowns, and we had one non-rainy morning that would work in which to take pictures.  We decided to make our first trip for the year out to Eolia Mansion, a local historical mansion turned park that is probably one of the prettiest places in Connecticut.

You probably can’t guess this by looking at our pictures, but they are all self made, completely not professional!  We have a ghetto routine we follow on photo days, generally getting dolled up at home and piling in the car with baby, and each of us takes pictures of the other, while baby stays mostly entertained with toys and happy magic baby juice (adult translation: apple juice.)

There were minor snags in the morning causing us to be late getting ready, but the first major snag came when I realized the location of my stroller – which would be in the trunk of my husband’s car, in the parking lot of the place he works, about 40 minutes away, in the exact opposite direction of Eolia mansion.

Our best option was to stop at Walmart along the way.  Woot for Walmart shopping in full Gothic Victorian costuming.

We were nearly ready to go, and I went to put baby in the car seat, and there was no car seat.  It was also in my husband’s car, about 40 minutes away, in the exact opposite direction of Eolia mansion.

There was an old car seat in the basement, which needed to be cleaned before we could use it.  Woot for working with bleach, laundry detergent, and soft scrub in full Gothic Victorian costuming… just kidding!  Two clothing changes, one load of laundry, and a few minutes of scrubbing later, we’re ready to go again!

I won’t go into the hairy eyeballs we got all thru Walmart, and I haven’t yet checked PeopleofWalmart.com for our photos, but we made it to the park.  As always it was an utterly gorgeous place, with the mansion overlooking fields of swaying wildflowers, everything awake and alive for the warmest day of spring.

We got the brand new stroller out of the trunk.  It was very theft proof.  VERY theft proof.  And very unpack-proof unless you happen to keep a tool kit in the back of your car.  We didn’t have a tool kit.  We didn’t even have a pair of scissors.  And I do believe there was a zip-tie on that thing everywhere a zip-tie could possibly be placed.

After 12 minutes of straining, whining, and moaning, I discovered the secret of life.  Or at least the secret of opening zip-ties with only a safety pin.  The secret: insert the pointed part of the safety pin into the zip tie from the inside out.  The point is to get the safety pin wire between that little flap and the ridged edge of the zip tie, so that you can pull it out.  It could also probably be done with a paper clip in a pinch.

By this time tiny baby was most definitely out of patience.  We broke out the happy magic baby juice, and got the last finishing touches of our costumes (hats, jackets, gloves and such) in place for the photos.

The best part is, you would never know about our strained patience from viewing the actual photos.  🙂  I’m quite pleased with how well they turned out!  The first few I’m sharing in this post are me.

“Welcome to my estate, please come inside,”

(Heh… I wish!)

Such a pretty, pretty place!  Harkness (the name of the state park containing Eolia mansion) always takes my imagination right to elegant gilded times, and being there IN COSTUME feels so awesomely epic.  I <3 photo shoots.  🙂

Credits:

Gown by auralynne

Jewelry by Vixen’s Delight

Hat by Mad Rose Hattery

The clothing pieces I’m wearing are available sold as a full set – it’s called “Gothic Temptation” and it’s posted for sale here.   I also sell most of the items separately as parts of my “La Rose Gothique” and “Sweet Temptation” clothing lines.

And finally, here’s a pic of our long suffering tiny baby.  He offered up a slight smile because, well, there was a camera pointed at him and smiling at cameras is what we do.  One day I’ll post some pics of him when he’s in a good mood, he’s usually quite the ham.  😀

I’ve spent the last few days with my nose glued to my monitor, performing a much-needed update to my website.  I’m now responsive – meaning my website should work on most mobile devices and tablets!

I know a bit of internet coding – and now that geekdom is cool, it’s my claim to geekdom!  Lol…  I’m self-taught from back in the day when html was just html.  Nowadays it’s gotten so complex – it’s different KINDS of html, and you should let the browser know which you are using so it doesn’t get confused.

Which causes me to scratch my head and say wait, which kind am I using?

But I think I’ve succeeded – mostly!  You can actually see what I did in this browser window.  If you resize it to narrower the look will totally change.  I had finished mostly with the layout last night, and was totally stoked and sharing my dorky stoked-ness with my husband.

I show him the full layout, which looks like this on the homepage:

Then I drag the window in, resizing it so that the mobile layout will engage, and it pops into place like this:

And since the awesome layout poppage totally deserves a sound effect, I say “Boing!”

And I can’t resist dragging the window out and in several times, and say “Boing!” each time the layout changes from mobile to normal and back again.

My husband gives me a nonplussed look and says, “Wow, you are a dork.”

And I say, “Nuh-uh, I am the girl who makes the website that goes…”