Rosalie Hurr, Author at Things&Ink

October 18, 2015

Choose Happiness with Miss West End Girl

Lynsay Neil is a 30-year-old writer, podcaster and creator of Miss West End Girl blog, from Glasgow. We chatted to Lynsay to find out how she started her blog, her style tips and tricks and her colourful tattoo collection…

How did you get into blogging? I’ve always had a deep love for writing, ever since I was a kid – when all my classmates wanted Tamagotchis (remember them?!) I was asking my parents for a typewriter. It seemed like a natural progression for me to start a blog as a platform to share my life and stories. I used sites like Livejournal and MySpace when I was younger, like most people – but it was when I took the plunge and got my own domain space that I considered myself to be a blogger.

How did you start? I started blogging under the name Miss West End Girl about five or six years ago. It started off as a fashion blog, because I was reading a lot of fashion based blogs at the time and also because I love to have fun with my own personal style. But over the years, it’s evolved into what I consider to be a lifestyle site as I love to write about all manner of things that make me excited, so much so that I have to share the details with my readers.

What can people expect to see on your blog? My blog is essentially a guide to living life with joy and style, and embracing what makes you unique. You can expect to find guides to Glasgow (my home city), personal and blogging advice, DIYs, interiors, personal style, beauty, food, travel…the list goes on! In a nutshell, it’s the things that make me smile and that I think will make other people smile or feel inspired.

You have a lot of positive messages and upbeat posts, how have you cultivated this mind set? Any important life lessons for our readers? That’s very kind, thank you! I think that happiness is a choice and it’s one that we make each day when we wake up. Negativity is pretty toxic stuff, and even though it’s easy to feel dragged down, I try to concentrate on the things that should be celebrated. We only get one shot at life, and I firmly believe we should make the most of it! Be adventurous, be kind, look after yourself and believe that you can do anything (because you can!).

Do you have any advice for people either thinking of starting a blog or who have one already? Think about what inspires you and go write about it. There is no right way or wrong way to blog – that’s the beauty of it! If you’re writing something that you don’t care about, or for the sake of it, it will show. Don’t put pressure on yourself either – some of my favourite blogs are only updated once in a while, and when a new article drops I get super excited! You’ll find a rhythm and routine that suits your writing style and your life.

How would you describe your fashion style? Where do you shop? How has it evolved? Sometimes I feel like I’m permanently dressed to attend my own birthday party – I love to wear bright dresses and statement accessories. I’m rarely seen without something on my head – be it a flower crown, a glittery slice of pizza or a massive bow. My personal style has been described as ‘cartoon-like’ which I take as a compliment!
I shop in a variety of places because I don’t tend to stick to whatever is ‘on trend’. An average outfit could be a mixture of indie designers, vintage, thrifted, high-street and high-end. I love discovering local design talent and people who are thinking outside the box. I like to have fun with fashion and dress for myself!
When I was a teenager I was a bit of a sulky goth, all black jeans and kohl eyeliner. This has massively evolved – particularly as I studied film and media at university and feel very inspired by some of my favourite colourful characters.

Does your home/homewares reflect your style? Absolutely! After eight years of renting beige nightmare flats, my boyfriend and I bought our flat last year and have been having the BEST time decorating it. I love sharing home tour posts of the flat on my blog so I can document our little interiors journey! After I posted pictures of our living room, an interiors magazine wanted to run a story on our bright and cheerful home – we ended up getting a 12 page feature in a magazine and I still can’t quite believe it! I’m proud to have created a happy home that I can relax in. It’s somewhere I can write my blog and record podcasts, as well as hang out and entertain friends.

What are your beauty secrets? Any tips or tricks for our readers? Finding products that work for you and make you feel amazing is my number one tip. I’d feel lost without my eyeliner flicks and a pop of bold lip colour! The best way to get comfortable with make up is to get in front of a mirror and practice – it’s also fun to experiment with products until you find what’s right for you.
Skincare wise, I am all about the classic advice. Look after your skin so you don’t end up looking like a second-hand handbag! Wear sun protection (minimum of SPF 50, especially on those tattoos!), drink water, moisturise plenty and always remove your make up before bed. Some advice never goes out of style!

What inspires you? I feel inspired by lots of things, but if I had to pick one thing it would be meeting other people that are passionate about what they do. That kind of feeling is infectious and you can really feed off of each others’ good vibes.

Can you tell us about your tattoos? I have 14 tattoos, and have been getting tattooed for just over 10 years. My very first tattoo was my stocking seams, which run from my achilles heels right up to the top of my thighs – go big or go home, eh? They were inspired by my love of vintage glamour and pin-up culture. This was the only grey and black work that I have had done, every other tattoo is very bright!

My tattoos don’t have too many meanings or tributes behind them – with the exception of two! I have two tattoos that are matching ones with my boyfriend. We got them on our fifth and ten year anniversaries.
I like to think that my tattoos are a reflection of my personality, as they are very feminine and colourful with a rock n’ roll twist. On one arm, I have an old fashioned perfume bottle, a Russian doll, a spider web (bright pink, of course!), a cupcake, a sugar skull, love heart candies and a lipstick. On my other arm, I have a swallow, a strip of pink leopard print and a lucky cat. My legs have identical stocking seams and I have a heart-shaped locket on my foot.
All of my pieces have been custom designed, via consultation and brainstorming with the artist so that we get it just right. I’ve never regretted a tattoo and put a lot of planning into each idea.

Do you have any future tattoo plans? Always! I think about getting tattooed all the time, and with so many amazing artists posting their work on Instagram the only question is, who to book with? I feel like a kid in a candy store.

October 16, 2015

Film Review: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward:

A Girl walks home alone at night, 2015, 18, dir Ana Lily Amirpour, 3/5

I’m not a big fan of vampires movies, unless they’re done well. I dislike the way certain films and TV shows (cough cough Twilight cough) have portrayed vampires as surly, sparkling love interests. I’m more a fan of the old fashioned kill-them-first-shag-them-later variety. I also dislike the fact that vampires have been done to death. But I guess vampire films are like any other genre. Out of the majority of over-clichéd, over-sexed muck rises a few gems that dare to do things differently and show everybody else how it’s supposed to be done.

There was Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In in 2008. I liked its original premise of a young girl vampire making friends with a human boy. However I don’t know if it was the film’s sparse, sombre tone or there was something wrong with me when I tried to watch it but I just found it a bit dull. This was certainly not the case with the subject of this review.

This year’s vampire flick (now on DVD and blu-ray) is the most striking and unusual of its kind I’ve ever seen. For one thing, it’s set in Iran with dialogue faithfully in Farsi while remaining an American production. Elijah Wood is one of the executive producers and he features in the special feature interviews.

Watch these interviews and you will understand exactly how an Iranian vampire film came together. The director Ana Lily Amirpour has an Iranian background and comes across as a female version of Quentin Tarantino. She swears a lot and chatters enthusiastically about her favourite things, which include spaghetti westerns, pop music and vampires. She set out to write a screenplay that brought all these elements together. She had already shot a couple of shorts set in Iran and when she tried on a chador veil one of the extras was wearing, she knew her vampire had to be Iranian. Of course.

But she’s not just planted a vampire in Iran. She’s planted a vampire in a fictional desert town named Bad City , home to various social misfits including a prostitute, a pimp, a transvestite, an urchin, some spoilt kids, a junky and his son Arash (Arash Marandi) who dresses like James Dean and drives a hot vintage car. Even when his beloved ride gets taken as payment for his father’s drugs and he breaks his hand punching a wall in anger, he still looks cool with a cast and a bicycle.

While he’s trying to look after his father and cat, make money and keep on looking cool, the vampire simply named the Girl is prowling the streets at night, looking suitably menacing yet somehow cute in a black flowing chador as she preys on scummy men, terrorises children and steals their skateboards.

The actress Sheila Vand gives an astonishing performance. She never smiles and her lines are rare too, but she communicates so much menace and loneliness through her expressions you don’t know whether to be scared or feel sorry for her.

The sparse dialogue in this film is a merit. It’s clear that Amirpour has learnt a lot from her favourite Sergio Leone. Her movie runs on the less-is-more principle, relying on the actor’s expressions and actions to tell the story rather than dialogue. She also makes heavy use of atmosphere and suspense rather than gore in the horror scenes, which is refreshing regarding most blood-spattered horrors today. In fact for a vampire movie there is very little blood, except for one nasty scene and even then the film is in black and white.

It’s clear from the start that this is not a straightforward horror. Amirpour is more concerned with giving her audience a visual feast. She is also a big fan of David Lynch. With the film being black and white and featuring various long shots of industrial scenery, as well as being an urban nightmare populated by sad freaks, I couldn’t help being reminded of such Lynch films as Eraserhead and Blue Velvet.

However, while the film is a banquet for the eyes and ears (the soundtrack consists of Iranian and Western pop mixed with spaghetti western-style music), perhaps the film is too concentrated on style and trying to be hip. For example, amidst all the culture references the plot boils down to a love story between Arash and the vampire. It’s the film’s presentation of romance which gets on my nerves. These two very good looking people meet, are instantly attracted to each other and their lovelorn talk consists mostly of comparing life to music: ‘don’t you wish you could live in a song?’ etc. I’m sorry but this fantasy does not match my past awkward, bumbling attempts at dating and thus I believe it encourages unrealistic romantic expectations. Then again the film is just that, a fantasy.

Nevertheless as cool and fun and imaginative the film is, I couldn’t help feeling a little underwhelmed at the end. The film bends over backwards to satisfy you superficially with stunning visuals. When it comes to the plot however, I feel the film could have gone for more emotional impact with the dramatic events it depicted. It’s cool that the film opted for a less-is-more approach concerning the dialogue and emotion depicted, but there’s never any real conflict between the characters. So as dark as the film gets, it doesn’t really pack a punch. Still, it’s worth seeing for the cat Masuka’s performance alone.

This is still the coolest and most genre-busting vampire movie you will ever see and I applaud Amirpour’s unique vision and cinematic enthusiasm. I’m looking forward to her next movie The Bad Batch, a love story set in a cannibal colony in a Texas wasteland. I hope she does a western.

Images from IMDB

October 16, 2015October 16, 2015

Tattooed Pig Heads

For his latest collection titled Pigs, New York photographer Peter Garritano asked tattoo artists to decorate real pig heads with designs of their choice as part of a project to show the relationship between tattooists and skin. Peter got the pig heads from a butcher in Brooklyn who sources animals that lead happy lives on local family farms. He wanted to show off the talent of tattooists in New York, the creativeness, strangeness and difference of the tattooing scene.

Bieke Depoorter: Night journeys in Sète

Bieke Depoorter is a photographer and associate member of Magnum Photos. She works mainly on autonomous projects, including travelling through Russia and photographing subjects whose houses she had stayed in for a single night.

Christian Caujolle (associate professor at the National Superior School Louis Lumière, specialising in film, sound engineering and photography) explains that in Night journeys in Sète Bieke does not follow routes planned out for her, but instead makes her own path. He comments on her subject matter, her form and the ways we can interpret her art:

Faced with images that are free, enigmatic or descriptive, but which can never be limited to one single interpretation, we stop, just as the woman visitor had to stop.

No stereotype, not even an informative one. No acceptance of technical constraints: it is the night that best reveals the light, and not the sun-drenched town.

The mystery deepens when we see that these elements grabbed from reality are naturally structured to found a story of which we do not know the scenario, of which we can only follow the inexplicably harmonious thread as it seems to feed on digressions or chance.

Free photographers, like free travellers, get to know themselves in what they experience of elsewhere and of others. Happy is he who, like Ulysses or Bieke Depoorter, has been on a beautiful voyage..

October 14, 2015

The Horror Issue: Meg Langdale

The Horror Issue of Things&Ink features a music playlist by apprentice tattooer 28-year-old Meg Langdale. We visited Meg at The Burton Tattoo Collective in Leiceter for an evening filled with creepy yet cute kewpies. As our editorial assistant Rosie was being tattooed, we chatted to Meg about her developing style, how she started out and her tattoo collection…

What first attracted you to the tattoo world?
I’ve always known I wanted to do something creative but I just wasn’t too sure what. I did a fashion and design degree at university, and at the time all the design and illustration jobs I looked at just seemed like glorified office jobs, which wasn’t for me. Tattooing has given me the freedom I wanted creatively and in an environment I feel comfortable. I think my illustration work was the stepping stone into the tattoo world. Meeting my boyfriend, who is a tattoo artist, of course had a huge influence. I feel like it’s what I was meant to do, it maybe just took me a little longer than others to realise.

How did you get your apprenticeship?
I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity by my boyfriend, which I will be forever grateful for. I started my apprenticeship in September last year and I’ve only been tattooing around four months. So far I have really enjoyed tattooing lots of floral pieces, but a lot of my illustrations are quite dark and creepy, I want to bring this into my tattooing. None of it would have been possible if it hadn’t been for the support from my whole family. I feel very lucky how things have worked out.

How would you describe your style?
My style is still evolving but its super illustrative, and it includes flaws and imperfections. I really want my tattoos to look like illustrations. When I draw, I like that my designs aren’t perfect, don’t get me wrong I spend hours drawing and redrawing designs. But I sometimes like the little wobbles in lines and lack of symmetry. I also weirdly like tiny little flaws in my own tattoos. I’m lucky enough to have some beautiful pieces down by amazing artists but I quite like that in most tattoos you can find tiny little imperfections. It’s not a question of liking or having bad tattoos, mine are perfect to me and I love them. But I think flaws make them real. I’m not perfect and neither are my tattoos.

What inspires you?
I’m really critical of myself and my work, so that in itself inspires me to want to keep improving and keep pushing myself. I really hope to be respected as an artist by other artists too, and not just for drawing pretty stuff. I want to be able to put in solid lines, and produce really nice quality tattoos.
I also collect old reference books; I adore medical illustrations in old anatomy books, and simple line drawings in books of wild flowers. I like combining quite delicate floral stuff with elements of darker stuff. I’d much rather draw from real life or old books than have to rely on the internet.

How did it feel doing your first tattoo?
Terrifying. I tattooed pig skin a lot to build my confidence initially. Then myself which was just dreadful. It’s so hard to overcome inflicting pain on yourself to focus on putting in decent lines. My first tattoo on someone other than myself was on Dane’s brother in law, it was so nerve wracking. He’s always been really supportive of my work and was quick to offer up some skin for me to practice on. At the same time I just remember thinking this is it, this is what I’m going to be doing forever now. I get nervous before I tattoo, but I’m always fine once I start and I just get into my little zone. My confidence has definitely been one of my biggest hurdles.

Can you tell us about the tattoos on your body?
My own tattoos are a combination of styles, mostly black and grey. Weirdly enough I don’t have any that are that similar to my own style, but I’m saving my right arm for lots of illustrative floral bits and bones, I’m just undecided on who I want to do it yet. I’ve been lucky enough to get tattooed by some amazing artists in the last couple of years, and of course Dane, he’s done a lot of my favourite pieces. I do have a few colour tattoos too, currently no plans for any more, although I had considered having some really muted colours on my legs in-between lots of black of course.

Photographs by William Kirk