ALIQUID Lacquer Angel in Hell collection and GIVEAWAY!

Hello gentle readers! I've just released a brand new ALIQUID Lacquer collection that's perfect for Halloween! Bear with me while I talk about it, because there's a giveaway at the bottom of the post. (Or I guess you can just scroll down there immediately.)


The Phantom of the Opera has been my favorite musical for around 20 years, and the 1911 novel is one of my favorites too (I even wrote about it on this very blog). So it was the natural choice for me to base a Halloween collection on!

Rather than just naming polishes after songs in the musical (somewhat sketchy from a copyright point of view), I decided to make shades that emphasize the gothic/romantic themes in the story, as well as the contrasts between beauty/ugliness and light/dark. Take a look and tell me if I succeeded. :-)

Corpse de Ballet is a terrible pun and was inspired by the ballet girls, of course. In the book they are constantly scaring each other by spreading stories about Opera Ghost sightings. I was particularly thinking of the scene from the musical where Joseph Buquet is hanged directly above the ballerinas in the middle of a performance.

Forever and a Day represents the spiritual hold the Phantom has over Christine. I took the name from this passage in the book, where Christine passes through the mirror:

"And nothing could describe the passion with which the voice sang:

'Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!'

...Christine walked towards her image in the glass and the image came towards her. The two Christines - the real one and the reflection - ended by touching; and Raoul put out his arms to clasp the two in one embrace. But, by a sort of dazzling miracle that sent him staggering, Raoul was suddenly flung back, while an icy blast swept across his face; he saw not two, but four, eight, twenty Christines spinning round him, laughing at him and fleeing so swiftly that he could not touch one of them. At last, everything stood still again; and he saw himself in the glass. But Christine had disappeared.

He rushed up to the glass. He struck at the walls. Nobody! And meanwhile the room still echoed with a distant passionate singing:

'Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!'"

This is Maze of Mirrors. Mirrors are of course a major motif in the story and are linked to the theme of inner vs. outer beauty. In the book, the Phantom builds an elaborate torture chamber using mirrors to make Raoul and the Persian believe they're in the middle of a desert. They didn't include this in the musical, but the movie version does have a nod to it:

I had to make a polish called Red Death because, seriously, check out the Phantom's amazing outfit! I drew this probably 100 times as a kid.

 
This one is The Skeleton's Ring. In the musical, we don't learn the Phantom's ultimate fate, but in the book we are told explicitly that he died of a broken heart. This passage is from the last page of the book (the narrator is a journalist investigating the Phantom story):


"Yes, I am certain, quite certain that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records. It was Erik's skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daae must have slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise.

The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daae fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the Opera-house."

Finally, here is Unending Night. Night and darkness in Phantom are moral as well as physical; the Phantom chooses to live in darkness because he's been rejected by the "normal" world of daylight.

If you're interested in picking any of these up, they're on sale for the next week at my shop! I also have a new pumpkin cheesecake lip balm scent and nail polish magnets!

OK, now on to the giveaway!!

I'm giving away the entire Angel in Hell collection to one lucky US resident! Here are the rules!

• Winner must be over 18 and be able to provide a US shipping address.
• The only mandatory entry is to provide your email address. All other entries are optional but increase your chance of winning!
• Winning entries will be verified, so no cheating!
• The giveaway will run until 11:59 PM EST on October 9, 2014.
• The winner will have 48 hours to respond to my email, otherwise a new winner will be chosen.

Good luck!!


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