Silence Is Golden (But The Vamps Dress In Black) - Inspiration : The Silent Era and Miss Theda Bara

Hello again, my filthy fellow nailphiles.

To any readers who saw the word 'vamp' and began excitedly fantasizing about sparkling boys and their subservient women-folk, I apologize. It's not that this post isn't about vampires, because in a way it is, but more importantly it is about my favourite kind of vamp: The Femme Fatale (for the Twilight-ians still following despite their disappointment - that means the antithesis of Bella). 

(As an aside, and so as not to discriminatorily suggest that only Twilight fans are easily confused, Wikipedia tells me that a 'vamp' is also the upper part of a shoe as well as the name of the first autonomous car to drive long distance. So my apologies also go out to any disappointed retifists and autophiles.)

What was I saying? That's right Vamps! First things first - back story (get comfortable)!

As I have mentioned in other blogs, I used to be a Goth.

I say 'used to be a Goth', but I'm not sure one ever stops being a Goth. A passion for the darker things in life never truly leaves you, no matter how many painfully deliberately 'quirky' Minnie Mouse-esque Alannah Hill headbands you jam on your noggin. Deep inside me there is still a murderous little black crystal of anti-matter that causes me to fall into a swoon whenever I see the delicious, sinister morbidity that is Theda Bara aka Theda The Vamp. (For future reference, grandiose swooning is very Gothic and I have been known to fake a swoon for dark, dramatic effect on several occasions.)

Exhibit A - Dramatic swooning 

As is probably evident from the undertones of adolescent psychological trauma featured in most of my posts, my love for Madame Bara, and silent films in general, began when I was a little girl. 

One night, while staying up late watching SBS due to an apparent complete lack of parental supervision, I stumbled across a 2am showing of a silent film (stumbling across a late night showing of Betty Blue is a another story for another day). To this day I have no idea what the silent film was called, only that is was a comedy from 1914. In retrospect, the 'gender-bending-magic-bean-leads-to-confusion-and-hilarity' story line was pretty average, but at the time I was completely enraptured by the (unintentionally) horrific imagery, jaunty rag time soundtrack and delightfully outdated dialogue featured on the intertitles. Oh, and there was a fair bit of frivolous black-face going on too. 

After this, I fell in love with the horrific spectacle of The Silent Film. Being that I was and still am a huge horror fan, I was already familiar with Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Der Golum, but my desperate search for the title of this particular film lead me to a treasure trove of books and websites and opened my eyes to the brilliant 'Silent Era of Cinema' and to Theda Bara, Patron Saint of Goths.

During the 'teen years, Hollywood was dominated by 'All-American Girls' and wholesome and loyal Civil War wives. Actresses portrayed wives, mothers, sisters and daughters who often had little to say or do. Even Mabel Normand, the famous comedic actress and contemporary of Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, only superficially scratched the surface of women's role in film. Yup, women were considered pretty boring, at least from a narrative point of view. That was until Theda showed up. With her she brought back the fierce, sexually dominant female characters that had begun to emerge in late 19th century literature such as Le Fanu's Carmilla, while at the same time conjuring a feeling of an ancient, biblical female presence such as Lilith or Jezebel. 

I like to imagine she just killed this man and boiled his flesh off. But that's just me.

 Theda was one of the first 'manufactured' stars. Her management claimed she was the daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor and that she was born in Egypt 'under the shadow of The Sphynx'. I don't know if people were easier to fool back then, but I would have called shenanigans on that straight away. In reality, Theodosia Goodman was a good Jewish girl from Cincinnati, who had never been to France, Italy or Egypt. She made her name playing harlots, home wreckers and, wait for it, Vampires! Her pale skin, and raven locks made her exotic to a public used to seeing sweethearts with blonde ringlets being swept off their feet by swashbuckling gents, and she milked it for all it was worth portraying such (in)famous women as Cleopatra, Salome, Carmen and La Gioconda. In fact, so often did she play vampires that she became known in the press as 'Theda the Vamp' and, after a while, the moniker stuck and became widely used as a synonym for any woman who showed a dark, seductive nature. Oh, and it also made her a Goth magnet.

There is nothing to say - she is truly, outstandingly Gothic perfection

Unfortunately, of the forty films Theda made, only six have survived. Of her most famous role, 'Cleopatra', only forty seconds of footage was salvageable from the notoriously deteriorative cellulose nitrate film, and is now viewable exclusively as part of a display at the Eastman Kodak Museum. 

While one really ought not speak ill of the recently departed,  this sh*ts all over Elizabeth Taylor's 'Cleopatra'.

Of her remaining films, my favourite is 'A Fool There Was' (1915), in which she plays the female lead known only in the credits as 'The Vampire'.  Her character in 'A Fool There Was' is not a blood sucker, but a metaphoric vampire determined to drain those around her of life, money, sex and status, leaving them destitute and emotionally destroyed (one poor chap blows his brains out in front of her while she laughs for goodness sake!). She is, as the kids would say, a gold digger. The film caused an uproar when it was released for one reason: the closing scene. In the pre-Bara Hollywood, harlots (skanks, if you will) always got their comeuppance. Sure, they could wreak havoc throughout the film, but come the closing credits the good guys had won and the trollops either saw the error of their ways, or met with an equally debaucherous end. 

'A Fool There Was'  ends with Theda's character lying over the corpse of her lover, whose life she has utterly destroyed, laughing hysterically while his wife and daughter stand out in the street mourning their perfect life which she so wantonly ruined. And then it fades to black. No comeuppance, no consequences, no ramifications. She just gets away with it, all the while laughing. Slut! 

Anyhoo, all this rampant feminism boils down to nothing when you consider the reason that Theda Bara quit acting: she got married. Yup, like any good girl of the 1920's, her career died the minute she said 'I do' and officially agreed to honour and obey. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

But, this is a nail blog after all, so here are my thoughts on Theda inspired nails. I feel that Theda perfectly represents the concepts of femininity and darkness, and a lot of that is reflected in the way I like to present myself, at least as far as fashion and beauty goes. And what is a better symbol for femininity than a rose? So here are my nails:

For these nails, I used a base of OPI Black Onyx with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Celeb City for the roses. The rose pattern is from Konad plate m65.

For this design I used OPI A Oui Bit Of Red for the base with Konad Special Polish in black for the pattern. Again, I used Konad plate m65 for the rose pattern. I used the Konad Special Polish for stamping as it is thicker and works a little better, but if you have a good quality black, such as OPI, it would work fine anyway.

These nails also have OPI Black Onyx for the base with OPI Funny Bunny used for the rose stamps. 

And lucky last, here is a little experiment I did using Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Strips. Everyone told me how easy they were to use, but to be honest I messed quite a few up and couldn't really get them smooth. But I think they look OK, and the lacy blackness certainly gives them a Bara-esque quality!

 Well, that was a long winded post! I just love Madame Bara ever so much!

Anyway, all this Vamp talk has piqued my interest, so I'm going to head off and try to find myself an autonomous car.

See ya!

Green Eyed Monster - Inspiration: Camouflage

Hi again!

So I have put the crackle polishes away for the time being and have transferred my obsession to green-ness. No not becoming environmentally friendly, that's far too much of a hassle, but rather painting my nails all manner of green. 

You see, I have a friend who is obsessed with all things camouflage. And I'm not saying 'I have a friend who likes camouflage' in the same way a drug dealer might say, 'I have a friend who really needs to be smuggled out of Mexico', it genuinely isn't me, it is my lovely friend Miss Caama.   

I have known her for five years now and I simply cannot imagine her without some form of couture crypsis. She wears it in all manner of colours and designs and has mastered the trend so well that at times her head appears to be suspended in space. But most importantly for me, Miss Caama's love of viriditas has become somewhat of a camouflage for my rampant spending. (See what I did there?) 

Being a (reluctantly) reformed Goth, I have a considerable amount of black and near-black shades in my polish arsenal. My absolute favourite shade is OPI's Lincoln Park After Dark. It's purply-blacky goodness is so delicious it's verging on edible, or maybe erotic, I can't decide which. But, if I were to tire of purple black, I have red black, blue black, matte black, black with gold sparkles, black jelly, black creme... every black! Or so I thought.

Perusing the nail bloggies, as I do, I came across Nars Zulu, a deep seaweed green jelly. It was then I realised that a whole chunk of the (black) colour wheel was absent from my collection: green. 

I had to have it, so over to ebay I ambled and promptly purchased the first over-priced bottle I came across. You see, I didn't quite understand how difficult it would be to get my delightfully decorated mitts on this now discontinued hue. Ebay has been a good friend to me recently, with lovely packaged surprises waiting on my door step for me almost every day after work. But all this purchasing has not escaped Mr. Rascal's attention. 

And this is where Miss Caama comes in. When she saw my crackled nail polish she remarked that it looked somewhat like camouflage (I'm pretty sure the girl thinks in camouflage!), which gave me the idea of trying to do a camo pattern on my nails. If I were to achieve this look then I would most certainly need a varying spread of green varnishes. 

Luckily for me, Mr Rascal thinks very highly Miss Caama so my explanation that I simply needed green nail polish in order to play camouflage with her went down quite well.

Ok, to the polishes!

Here I have five of my new greenies:

Thumb: Scandal in No. 8 - Green Jelly (Scandal is a bizarre Japanese knock off of Nfu-Oh)

Pointer finger: Nars in Zulu - deep black/green

Rudie Finger: OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow - solid, slightly metallic very dark khaki/green

Ring Finger: OPI Jade Is The New Black - pastel green creme

Pinkie Finger: OPI Who The Shrek Are You? - Ogre green ;-)

Nars Zulu was by far my favourite green, especially so when a co-worker described it as 'Evil Green'. Unfortunately, the application was horrendous! To achieve the level of opacity in the above image, I had to apply an unrivalled SEVEN coats! The application was streaky and it pooled at my cuticles. But, once I had applied the twenty eight thousand coats required, the colour was vivid, rich and absolutely lovely.

I decided the best way to attempt a camouflage pattern was via water marbling.

The following uses OPI Who The Shrek Are You, OPI Jade Is The New Black blended with OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow (the medium green) and Ultra3 in Wild Berry (I'm not sure where one finds cement grey wild berries).

Untidy! This is pre-tidy up!

While I really like the look of the marbling, the colour scheme just really isn't me. It's funny, Miss Caama can pull off camo-on-camo and still look lady-like, but when I slathered it onto my chubby dolly hands I just looked... um... militant.  You know who these colours remind me of?

What a stunner.

If ones nail polish must be reminiscent of a political leader, Kim Jong Ill is certainly not the one I want hanging around on the end of my digits.

Now Vladimir Putin, there's a man you can paint your nails for! I shall do a red collection in his honour soon.

Look at your boyfriend then look back at Putin, he's on a horse!

After messing around with the greens for a bit, and feeling generally disappointed, I gave my brand spanking new Konad stamping plates a go (more on Konad in posts to come) and was much happier with the outcome. I think doing the girly floral pattern in the contrasting shades was a good way to balance out the harshness of the military greens.

The elusive right hand!!!!!!

The lesson I learned from this whole fiasco was that you have to tailor colours and effects for your own style. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think the postman is at the door with a new package!

Kthnxbai!

Welcome to Epic Nail!

O hai!

Welcome to my nail blog, Epic Nail!

As the title would suggest, I try to do new and exciting designs on my nails but I often also fail at doing so and end up with a gloopy, painty mess. But that's what makes it fun.

I am certainly not a perfect nail decorator and more often than not it all ends in tears, and that's why I decided to start this blog. I love looking at other nail polish blogs, but more often than not I feel intimidated by their perfection and their constant reassurance that the designs they pull off are easy when, in reality, they are anything but!

I also found that a lot of the designs they offered were really only achievable by folks with frighteningly talon-esque acrylics, which I don't have. Also, I am afflicted with a terrible, terrible curse known in my family as "dolly hands". That's right - chubby little stumpy hands!

My hands - actual size

I can guarantee that all of my nail looks can be easily replicated, and if they are difficult or require a bit of hit and miss, then I shall be up front and honest about how many obscenities I shouted before being happy with them.

I hope to share a few nail designs a week and shall also shamelessly gush about products I love in all price ranges.

I shall upload my first nails tomorrow. Until then - BAI!