Unmutual

My hobbies include playing the piano, drawing, writing and dreaming. At the moment, I live in bohemia with all that entails (vegetarian, pacifist, anti-everything, pro-everything...)

2/11/2014 Update Dear all - over the last couple of months I have had a colossal crash in my mental health. I'm late on sending things, and late on rating things, and generally haven't done anything that can't be accomplished while hiding under a duvet and pretending to be a terrified, unwilling cat. This is not cool. I am catching up as best I can. Sorry for any delays.

If sending a card to me

• I can't be offended. Art away, with gleeful abandon, and assume that everything goes. Any rating, any concept, any treatment :D
• Any questions, or running late? Ask me!
• I welcome any theme, however do not use buttons as embellishments when making cards for me. Regardless of the card's beauty, it will be traded forward.
• I love reading about how people think about art. If you can, please send a note with your card explaining what inspired you to choose what you did!

Likes:

• The past! Particularly Victoriana, but I also love retro and vintage in all shapes and sizes.
• Trees
• Cinema
• Words. I love wordy swaps, writing zines, and non-fiction essays, long letters, and making up stories.
• Things which are sinister without being too scary i.e. Alice in Wonderland
• Propaganda and kitch trash: I just love BAD. This includes: trash movies, bad comics, bad album covers, incompetant/unusual music, boring postcards.
• Abandoned and overgrown buildings
• top hats, cravats, sword canes, and all things gentlemanly
• steampunk
• kraken, squid, octopodes. And snails!
• Art which comes with a story! I love art cards best when they have heart behind them, beyond just looking marvellous. So send me a note with your inspirations and influences too :)
• graphic novels, particularly Watchmen
• um. Taxidermy. Just chalk it up to Victoriana + awfulness = stuffed animals.
• Oscar Wilde
• The Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion
• antiques, second hand items. I love the idea that items have been loved before.
• atmospheres and places. People think I like trees because I'm a hippy; I am a hippy, but I love cities - all cities - and small villages, wildernesses, sewers, paradises, beaches, rubbish tips. Anywhere with colours and light.
• Feminism/queer/LGBT/ and anything else politically engaged and protesty
• zines

Pagan Things

I am interested in hedgewitchery, city magic, Haitian vodou (and other African diaspora faiths), the Green Man, strongly-nature-based paganism, the Western Magical Tradition, spirits, dreams, hedgecrossing, the dead, and suchforth, saints, genus loci, Catholicism, trees, tarot spreads, British traditional witchcraft. I follow the 8 sabbats; I like pagan crafts, practical folk magic, visualisations and basic skills. I have no sense of smell, so no incence, and do not often work with herbs.

Food

• I am veggie!
• smoothies! I love my blender, so if you have recipes I'd love to try them!
• dark chocolate; sours, sherbert things
• bread is my favourite thing in the world. Not sure you can post that. But recipes would be grand.

Dislikes No make up or bath products please; I do not have pierced ears. I do not have a sense of smell, so no perfume/incense either!

I'm on here for the ATCs. I love collecting things, but hate the mercinary nature of most "real" collectables - proper trading cards, for example, or rare books. I get angry that people make money off the things I love. So I love the personal touch of ATCs - both making and recieving them - and the way they are peversely both totally valueless and uniquely priceless. This really appeals to me.

Other Wants

• Zines! Particularly of a political/activist/educational bent. My zines to swap are here

• Saint Cards

• Matchbox shrines! Always wanted one, never seen one

• tarot packs / cards / influenced stuff

• foreign sweets (mmmm, always so strange, always so tasty!)

• smoothie recipes

• glow in the dark stars

• Jack of Hearts (the playing card.)

• old photos, or any photo without context. I love making up stories about the mystery.

• This particular comic book: "World's Finest #289", featuring Superman and Batman. Very hard to find in England, very cheap and easy to find in the US.

• Stuff featuring the Penny Farthing bicycle. I'd particularly love penny farthing rubber stamps!

• Disney pins. Particularly the Haunted Mansion.

• In fact, Disney Haunted Mansion full stop :D

• An amirgurumi squid or octopus

Always happy to recieve any of the following:

• Ephemera (from any era but ours):postcards, maps, letters, photos, cards, invites, labels e.t.c.)

• bad taste ephemera - all of the above, except you wouldn't show it to your vicar or politically correct friends.

• copies of The Picture of Dorian Gray (international - I have all the common English ones. Can trade if, miraculously, anyone wanted to...)

• old film strips/reels for my projector

• I collect religious memerobilia from all faiths so please, send me religious themed stuff, or pop a leaflet in the envelope or something.

My favourite directors are Terry Gilliam and M. Night Shyamalan, and I'm particularly fond of crime and buddy movies.

Among my favourites are:

• Westerns (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Once Upon a Time in the West)

• Crime (The Godfather, Millers Crossing, L.A. Confidential, Reservoir Dogs, Hot Fuzz)

• War (Guns of Navarone, Black Hawk Down, Zulu, Spy Game)

• Sci fi (Blade Runner, Galaxy Quest, Unbreakable, The Warriors, Constantine)

• Good natured horror (Lost Boys, Signs, Planet Terror, From Dusk til Dawn)

• Strange stuff - technical film studies term for ya there - (Twelve Monkeys, Donnie Darko, Brazil, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead)

And... Apocalypse Now, Fellowship of the Ring, Legend of 1900, School of Rock, Virgin Suicides, Fight Club, Run Lola Run, Ed Wood, Velvet Goldmine, The Third Man, Chinatown ...and many many more...

I'm a big enough Nerd of Cinema to be willing to watch anything good, regardless of subject - despite this, I generally don't have much time for serious realism and hard-hitting drama, and I can't watch disaster movies.

I don't read as much as I should. My favourite author is Oscar Wilde, whom I adore with a firey passion. My favourite book is The Picture of Dorian Gray. One of my geekier hobbies is collecting different editions of the book - I currently own 50, from all over the globe and in different languages, from thrift store buys to deluxe leather-bound copies, and two comic book adaptations.

Other favourites are Tolkien's Unfinished Tales (and all the rest, Unfinished Tales and Lays of Belariand are my faves though), 1984, Rebecca, Invisible Cities, the Count of Monte Cristo and Brideshead Revisited. By the time I finish it, Orlando will also be on this list.

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who. Though a child of the new series, I've got a soft spot for every era of the show, particularly the 80s. My favourite episodes are Utopia and Enlightenment; favourite villains are the Master and the Valeyard, and I don't understand how anyone could have a favourite Doctor.

Other shows I enjoy include:

• The Prisoner
• Blake's 7
• Danger Mouse
• Band of Brothers
• Brideshead Revisited
• Hornblower
• Firefly
• the A-Team

Can I dance to it?

I like most things I listen to, but particular faves are:

Genesis, the Guillemots, the Scissor Sisters, Al Stewart, Patrick Wolf, the Beach Boys, Electric Light Orchestra, Star One/The Guilt Machine, The Caretaker and whatever my friends tell me to like :)

Obviously, I like film scores a lot - particularly James Newton Howard - and though I've got a soft spot for serious prog rock, my favourite genre is probably 50s-60s "oldies". Also, I adore piano music - particularly Chopin.

I also collect bad/kitch/unconventional music.

Casper David Friedrich - painter Romantic, gothic, big on twisted trees and misty sunsets.

Feliks Topolski - painter Travelled the world, like an impressionist Forrest Gump, making sketches of the big historical events he saw. I found him by accident when wandering London.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - sculptor Intensely beautiful neo-classical carving, I mean seriously - you would not believe such things can be done with marble. Needs to be seen in real life, to appreciate small details like the way one hand presses another.

Eugenio Recuenco - photographer Takes these wonderfully faded, dusky high-fashion photos - very creepy and edgy. You'll know him from the Nina Ricci advert with the apples. I want to know how he gets that quality of light.

Colette Calascione - inspires my ATCs all the time. She and her faux-Renaissance surrealism can be found online.

Henry Darger - outsider. His paintings make me hear phantom music. That's how good he is...

I've recently become interested in Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints, particularly surreal imagery of demons, ghosts, myths and legends, and the Earth Spider.

awesome tag partners

• Thank you audreyrivera735 for Pagan Pages and an awesome witchy charm.