Happy September!

So it's September, and autumn is on its way. It's starting to get cooler outside, and I'm looking forward to keeping warm in cosy, luxurious clothes.







Images from Elle and arashmazinani.com

Thanks to a typical washout of a British summer, I have in fact been looking forward to autumn since mid-July - wanting the temperatures to match the grey sky. This seems to happen every year. With autumn comes Halloween, so I tend to start looking forward to Halloween in the middle of the summer. Which is rather premature. It's September now though, and, with less than two months to go, I can stop feeling guilty!

Autumn has already arrived in my little Etsy shop - I've had a Spooky Sale on since mid-July (I told you I get Halloweeny around then!), giving you 20% off selected items. Clicky the piccy to go there:



I've opened a Halloween section too, making the rest of my spooks easier to find. Click the Woolly Bat to go there:



Talking of Woolly Bats, I do believe I've mentioned them before in a previous post. As I mentioned there, their design was inspired by Honduran white bats, little flying balls of fluff. They're made of felted balls and wire, and would look gorgeous hanging in your home.



^..^

Happy Autumn!

It's officially autumn now (the TNBC calendar says "Autumn Equinox" so it must be so), and I can therefore stop feeling a bit premature for talking about Halloween :) So, with only five and a half weeks, or 38 days, to go until the big day, I've been adding lots more spooky goodies to the Etsy shop.

After buying some wonderful Halloween-themed supplies, I created a little collection of beaded dangles:

The little bells I bought were used in creating these three pieces:





My favourite is this one, because the large orange bead looks like a big chunk of candy :)



I'd also bought some glow-in-the-dark beads, both round and bat-shaped, which went into the making of these:





Pop into the Halloween section of my shop for all of the above and more!

I've also been working on a commission for four silver pieces:



You can't tell from this picture, but the bat on the bottom right is huge! 16 inches wide in fact, double the size of my usual bats. Was awkward but fun to make :)

Looking forward to autumn

Rather than wanting the funny weather we've been having lately to go back to proper summer, I seem to be in the odd position of wanting it to get colder. At the moment, in the house at least, I'm trying to keep warm, which puts me in mind of cosy yet stylish clothes. I want it to be autumn so that I can wear my little tartan skirt with opaque tights and a big chunky cardi, or snuggle up in similarly lovely warm clothes, such as the two H&M cord jackets I now own (one's a rich purple, the other's a mossy green, in case you wondered). This is partly the fault of fashion magazines such as Elle. I'm reading all about a/w fashions, my favourite being Goth of course, and wanting to wear them all.

I love this photoshoot from Elle:



I love tartan, and the way they've styled it there is great. Dark, playful and glamorous all at the same time.

I read a lot of fashion mags and sometimes the fashion does not inspire me. I'm not really a dedicated follower of fashion, so the fact that summer's all-in-ones and nauticals didn't interest me was not really a problem. But when what I see in those glossy pages strikes a chord, I'm all over it. I'm loving this new Dark Romance trend. That kind of feminine-with-a-hard-edge look that says Goth to me is one of the strongest themes that runs through my work, so the fact that this look is in fashion is a bit of a bonus.

I've dedicated a large chunk of my moodboard to this new, darker mood in fashion:





Inspired by this, I have created this Gothic Rose charm necklace:



I love the combination of black and red, as it always looks striking. Plastic stars and skulls add a bit of fun to the piece, while a vintage Lucite rose adds a little old-fashioned romance. Find it for sale here.

For more Gothic pieces, search Goth in my shop. Also, for more work from my fellow Dark Side members and myself, search etsydarkteam on Etsy.

Thank you for reading.