What a Wonderful World

Being me, a title like this could have been posted with about 35% sarcasm but not today. Absolutely nothing groundbreaking has happened but I’m just in a wonderfully good mood. I came back from a really fantastic mini-tour to find my fake wisteria had arrived so I could finish my Zen garden, I also had a graze box AND a new book (Talking Heads) in my pigeonhole. The ducks are sitting on the roof of the pub again (which just looks bloody hilarious) and I have at last named the swans. Frank and Claire. 😛 Oh, and raspberries were half-price today.

So I made my zen garden, ate raspberries and fed my current addiction, Sons of Anarchy, which is the best non sci-fi thing I’ve seen barring Breaking Bad. (House of Cards is on a par). Disclaimer: I’m about to start season 3. No spoilers please, or I’ll go berserk. 😛
I’ll be the first person to admit I really don’t mind totally unfeminist films like James Bond and Death Race on occasion. In my opinion, not every film or TV show has to provide a teaching moment BUT… when something is done well or breaks the mould, it stands out to me and I fall slightly in love with the show/film’s creators. I’m not going to give an in-depth feminist critique after so many recent ‘serious’ blogs but I just want to mention how much I love what I’ve seen so far. While the traditional role of women in the show is either groupie/prostitute (so far, consensually) or ‘old lady’ (wife/serious partner) there IS an honour code of respect. For example, a douchebag gets punched in the face for hitting his girlfriend. (Neither are known to the gang- it was a chance encounter).
My favourite character is the matriarch Gemma, and the way the show dealt with two instances of rape in two seasons was brilliant. (And bloody.) I’ll leave the feminist soapboxing about rape as a plot device for another time (I’m in favour) but here we are: two rapes, one involving a central character and one involving someone we barely know. Both times, the rape is seen as completely unacceptable, revenge is imperative and while we don’t know the final fate of one perpetrator, the best case scenario is that he’s singing soprano with the local choir.
And the soundtrack ROCKS! It has two of my favourite songs on it. Repeat button + air guitar = the neighbours may hate me…

Oh, THAT was the other awesome thing- I bought my ticket for Wasteland Weekend! I’m now working on a couple of costumes (any photographers who want to shoot Mad Max style awesomeness, send me a message and book your shoot) and deciding what I want to see while I’m out in California. I might as well stay for a few extra days, right?

The make-up selfies are from yesterday’s shoot with Jimmy Deas. So many changes, so many headdresses (by Pixified Bootique). 🙂

Now, I have a week of writing before a shoot in a beautiful boudoir followed by a fully-booked South Coast tour and an Easter visit with one of my favourite ladies. ❤ Which reminds me, I think I may treat myself to some teeny Hotel Chocolat eggs this year! I actually learned how to make vegan chocolate myself at the Womens’ Day celebration so I will also be trying my hand at egg-shaped truffles too!

As I’m sure most longtime readers will know, I’m on Zivity and I have been shockingly bad at updating you with news about my sets! Sorry about that. If you prefer to view one set at a time (which you can do for just $3), you should know I have mermaid sets, pin-up, crazy make-up, 80s, lingerie and more. My profile is here and today’s happy blog features a photoshoot from a weekend I loved! (Dominatrix, in Holland). There are loooads more pictures from this set on Zivity so go and have a look- non members can still see the sets by paying a couple of dollars.
The photographer is fellow model Maja Stina, who you should also check out. We got all inspired by night time Amsterdam, lol!

And for a day in which I’m feeling 10 feet tall, have a couple of bonus pics from our other shoot- in which I look 10 feet tall! I’m wearing Yummy Gummy latex

You will be pleased to know I did not fall in the bath despite my legendary clumsiness (today’s ridiculous injury: burning myself on a butternut squash.)

Going to turn off the internet for tonight and investigate the hot chocolate situation…

ROSWELL xxx

p.s. All together now: I SEE TREEEEES OF GREEEEN! RED ROSES TOOOOOO…

Samhain onboard

Happy Halloween to all and Blessed Be to fellow pagans.
For the first time in a few years, I am not working on Halloween weekend so have had the chance to chill out onboard my boat drinking spiced apple tea, reading spooky stories (there are some horrors in Neil Gaiman’s “Fragile Things”) and burning the green skull candle I’d been saving. I even found a “Day of the Dead” page in my colouring book. (Yes I have a colouring book. Actually, I have three- and they rock.)

I had loads of errands to run in town so braved the scariest thing of all- Saturday shopping in Milton Keynes. BUT, as I get phone reception there, it turned out to be a good thing I did- I accidentally visited the Gothic Manchester festival while on tour last weekend and entered a raffle in aid of S.O.P.H.I.E. to win a knitted Cthulhu. As I want my bathroom to be sea monster themed, I’ve wanted one for ages. Well, I got a phone call and… look!!! The white one is mine!!! ❤

Also, the reading rooms at Manchester’s library are amazing. There has to be a secret portal in here. Right?

Samhain (aka Halloween) is the pagan new year- marking the end of the ‘light’ half of the year. The Celts believed that days began at sunset and so the new year begins now, at the dark half of the year. It’s a time for remembering the dead and celebrating the lives of ancestors. Though I love a good party and making costumes, I also find the season a time for being still and meditative. Especially losing someone at this time, it was even more important to me that I had my alone time.
As I know very little about my ancestors, I thanked them for the fact that I’m alive thanks to them and lit an extra candle, and wrote messages to the friends I have known who have died. (Luckily, there have been few.)

One of these friends died while I was at school, still living with my mum. That night, I stuck this little plastic stained-glass-effect butterfly on my bedroom window for her. It sat there for fifteen years and after I left home a decade ago, my mum tried to remove it. It resisted all attempts at dislodging it and now that my mum is moving house too, she assumed it would stay there but had one last try at pulling it from the window. It practically fell into her hand. ❤
Looking at it now, it reminds me very much of some tattoos on another very close friend. I don’t know what that is supposed to ‘mean’ but things seem to have come full circle in a way, like so many things in life. All I can do is hope that in the same way, we’ll be reunited with our loved ones who died first.

My little space on the hearth, with candles, tea, notepad and snuggly carpet. See the skull candle?

I didn’t dress up this year but as I dress up every day (even when I’m naked, I’m being a wood sprite, goddess or strange sculpture), that’s fine. I have some beautiful photos from an Autumn photoshoot with Shannon Swift and Orchid Corsetry, in which I think I look rather vampiric! 😉

It’s the first day of NaNoWriMo, which I’ll tell you about soon- so for now, I’m going to get writing. 🙂 Wish me luck!

ROSWELL xxx

Back in Black (and white)

Well, I didn’t run away and join a hippy commune (though tempting), I wasn’t pregnant (seriously??), I didn’t quit modelling (hell no) and I didn’t get abducted by aliens (oh, crazed person just outside Pittsburgh, your emails make me laugh… and fear for my life).

I’ve been busy (nothing new there) but I also had an epiphany during a bittersweet sunny morning at a beer festival in the mountains and decided that I was spending too much time trying to ride the social media beast and not enough time actually living the life I wanted to blog about. I was constantly setting myself up for failure based on numbers while ignoring the sights and experiences that are literally all around me. Just as I got all of that sorted out in my tiny mind, I had my heart stomped on and lost a friend in Afghanistan a week later. Hence, the vanishing act.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the past unless it is really necessary so I’ll move on…

I want to thank the lovely people who not only remembered my birthday but sent me messages, cards and presents! Sadly, I can’t see an address on some of the packages so I can’t send out my usual personalised thankyou cards! If you sent me a present, please, please mail me letting me know what you sent me, along with your address and I will send you a belated thankyou. 🙂 ❤

In the past few months, I shot the album cover for a rock band, met several model friends in person after many online chats, explored the forests of Norway, spent three wonderful and healing days in a hippy commune in Switzerland and achieved the splits once again. I’ve posted some snapshots of my time away below:

Switzerland. I used to read a series called “Puddle Lane” as a small child, which featured a quest for the Blue Mountains. Well, I found them! 🙂

Belgium! Shooting location and off-duty bouncing around. I CANNOT WAIT to show you the pictures from this trip… 😉

 
Norway’s forests and cyperpunk underground! 😀 Sadly I saw no moose on this trip, but maybe another time. Moose are one of my ‘spirit animals’ (I’ll tell you why one day) so I consider any time I see one to be special.

My view, the moment of realisation. And on the right, doesn’t this tree look like an octopus going “and one more thing!!”

So, back to work! 😀

I’ve been lent some latex by Lady Allura (yes that is latex on the left!) and bought myself a stripy latex catsuit that will feature in a blog soon. For now, here are some behind the scenes snaps…

That, on the right, is a shark shaped seat. The studio we worked in does a lot of childrens’ portrait photography so is full of crazy things to pose with between ‘serious’ shots.

I’m posting photos wayyy out of sync at the moment but am trying to post them in a way that fits with what I’m blogging about at the time, so here are my most recent photos- taken only a few days ago by my host “Elegia“. She has a really distinctive style and so I’ve wanted to work with her for ages! (Though I’d suggest opening the link at home- she does some very beautiful, very erotic projects).
I have always loved seeing polaroids develop and being in the mental place I’m in now, it was rather therapeutic watching Elegia place these little blank cards down, which slowly began to show my face in black and white. Like a literal representation of me returning to the world after a long absence. During the shoot, I wanted to show a slightly more ‘raw’ version of me so spent some time not posing. The results I got are exactly what I had hoped for and I love them. 😀

“An Army of Me” 😉



 

It’s good to be back. 😉

ROSWELL xxx

p.s. And one more thing…

Dawn shoot, freezing cold, worth it. ❤

Against the railings and on the steps

Hey hey!

Have you voted today? If not, the link is here and I’d really appreciate your help- you can vote every 24 hours to help me win a latex catsuit! http://www.latex.at/en/all-models-voting/?id=187

Maybe like this one? 😉 A ‘Golden oldie’ from one of my first events! (catsuit by Libidex) I just love the colour. 🙂

Ahem…

Anyway… a bigger vote is coming. Not quite as pretty as my catsuit but still, quite interesting. So have you registered? (UK people, that is!) If you haven’t, it’s too bloody late as the deadline was yesterday. 😛
I have friends who are anti-voting and politics. I’m not a fan of many of the parties either, but I always vote. Firstly because women died so that I have that right, but secondly so that my vote, no matter how trivial, will be one more little cross in a box that counts against any party I really detest- one tiny step between the parties I hate and 10 Downing Street.
A close friend used South Park to explain why he did not intend to vote. I haven’t seen the episode but apparently it goes like this:
1) The South Park kids have to vote on a new school mascot. The choice is between a douche and a turd sandwich (ah,  South Park…) 😉
2) Stan refuses to vote as he doesn’t see a difference between the two. He wants them to lose equally.
3) Something involving PETA and a cow.

Well, okay, the UK are in a bit of a confused position politically and many people here don’t see a difference between the parties BUT… there is more going on that “choose this idiot or choose that idiot”. There are the idiots in between *cough* UKIP *cough* that started as jokes but will gain more power each time someone does not vote against them. There are the frightening idiots like the BNP who have gained seats in Parliament. (Yes, they are there no longer but that fact that they managed once already is worrying). Each time somebody refuses to vote against them, they gain a fraction more power.
When the voting is over and one party has come out on top, the other MPs don’t go home and twiddle their thumbs- they take seats in parliament according to the proportion they were given in the general election! ‘My’ party may not win 10 Downing Street, but maybe they will win a few more seats. Maybe they will be able to make it a little harder for policies I don’t like to become law.

So, of course I’m going to go and dutifully put my little cross in the box. It may well do nothing, but you have to enter a battle to have a chance at winning it.

I’m not exactly chained to railings here but I being all powerful and womanly on the steps of a stunning building in Gothenburg, and with my beautiful friend Belinda Bartzner taking my picture. I’ve waited so long to post these- they appeared in Sinical Europe 2015, which features just six international fetish and pin-up models, so I was very honoured to be counted among them.

Photos by Belinda Bartzner
Styling and lingerie made by me

Speak to you soon!

ROSWELL xxx

TWO redhead models- Available on March 4th. ;)

Just HOW exciting is this?? Please share with your photographer friends… 😀

 

My good friend Anita De Bauch and I are shooting a magazine cover/ editorial together in Stadhampton on 3 March, and staying overnight, so we will be available for you to shoot in Oxfordshire the next day (March 4th)! Would anyone like to be the first to shoot us together in a beautiful, artistic duo nude, fashion, retro or latex shoot- and at a combined discounted rate??

If not, you can book either of us alone at our usual solo rates, but to book us together would be £150 for 2 hours, £280 for 4 hours and £500 for 8 hours, with no travel expenses to pay!

Anita has a car so we can get anywhere in the area, fast and punctually.
We both have excellent styling skills and can create any look you would like.

 

 

If you want to share costs with a photographer friend, that’s fine, just let us know who’s coming 😉

Anita and I are both full-time models (and writers) with years of professional experience, hundreds of positive references and specific experience in shooting art nude work with other models- just never with each other. We’re really excited to work together as we are such good friends in real life, so we have a genuine rapport and comfortable-ness around each other, having shared a million lunches, hotel rooms and life experiences together

 

As well as art nude work, we are available to shoot high fashion, latex fashion, dreamy romantic pre-Raphaelite looks (perfect with our complexions!), steampunk, retro lingerie, Golden Age of Hollywood glamour and film noir femme fatale looks… and of course, we do our own hair, makeup and wardrobe and don’t charge to sign model releases.

Get in touch asap with any enquiries.

Taking selfies of our makeup before going to Perou’s magazine launch party in London last month.