for the 20th anniversary of freddie's death, i painted my nails like this. when most people think of 'freddie mercury nails', they probably think of nails with pictures of freddie on them (like katy perry's russell brand nails) or nails that say 'freddie mercury'. these are more based on the nail polishes that freddie actually used himself. (sorry for the bad photo- i was running late, which is why some of the pink nails are a bit smudged as well).
during queen's glam rock phase in the 70's, freddie was big on straight hair, black eyeliner and black nail polish as part of his stage outfits (my favourite of that era being his white batwing outfit). he could only paint his left-hand nails though, which is why my left-hand nails were painted black.
freddie also wore bright pink nail polish to match his earrings, lipstick and jumper (?) in the 'i want to break free' video.
both images of freddie were found on google images and are not my own.
hello! so as you know, yesterday i went to see we will rock you, at the grand theatre in leeds. it was the 20th anniversary of freddie mercury's death and i wanted to celebrate in style. i went with my friend lauren, who wasn't a big queen fan, but i think i've converted her.
i had sixth form in the morning so i wore my queen top and painted my nails freddie style (a diy post on that coming up soon - not very difficult to do but needs a bit of explaining) for the occasion. my friends were lovely and we talked about queen for most of the school day. then i went home, listened to queen, lit a few candles (i wanted to light twenty, one for every year, but i think that might have become a serious fire hazard...), cried quite a lot and got ready to go to the show.
we had mcdonalds for tea and went up to the grand theatre. there was a huge crowd outside but we managed to get in easily, as the crowd was mostly a queue for the merchandise. our seats were surprisingly good; i thought they were going to be bad because i had wanted to go on that date so badly that i just booked any seats available. i was sat next to a lovely old couple who were obviously huge queen fans and were dancing and singing throughout the whole show.
sorry for the crazy looking photo, we were both trying not to laugh when i took it as the people sat in front of us were looking over their shoulder's at us with confused looks on their faces. :)
i don't want to ruin it for you, so i won't say much about the actual play. all i'll say is, it was amazing, completely worth the £70 and i would definitely, definitely jump at the chance to go again. i had heard that the story wasn't very good but i really loved it. i thought the story was quite clever, and they managed to slot in all the best known queen songs. it was so funny as well, we were doubled over in our seats laughing. i had warned lauren that i was probably going to cry at some point, and sure enough i did, during the performances of 'no one but you (only the good die young)' and 'these are the days of our lies'. i didn't expect lauren to cry though, but during 'we are the champions' and 'bohemian rhapsody' we were both stood, waving and singing, with tears running down our cheeks. also, the lovely old man sat next to me grabbed my hand during 'we are the champions' and we waved together, it was quite cute, like a bond between two distant generations.
the best bit for me was seeing rufus taylor during the curtain call. he's the son of roger taylor, drummer of queen, and is currently playing drums for the we will rock you uk tour. i'm a big fan of his and i was really excited to get to see him play. i was a bit nervous at first because i couldn't figure out where the band was. we got to see them during the second half but i couldn't see rufus anywhere, and i was a bit upset because i thought that i'd chosen the wrong day to see him and that he was probably with his dad or something. rufus was there though, hiding behind his drums, and he came on at the end to take a bow, whilst tapping his legs with his drumsticks to beat off nerves (so cute! i love him!).
after the show, the cast came on stage to get us to cheer for freddie, and to inform us that members of the cast will be holding collection buckets as we left and would love donations to support the mercury phoenix trust. i cleared out my purse and gave around £4 to the actor who was playing 'cliff richard', i think. i told him i loved his hair and he said he was going to take it off in a bit and i could have it if i loved it so much. i might hold him to that!
on the way out of the theatre, i realised it was nearly 11 o'clock and had to rush home as i had to catch a train at half nine the next morning to go to harrogate with my sixth form (maybe a post on that later?). i was hoping to hang around for a bit outside to meet rufus taylor but unfortunately i couldn't. :(
i also didn't have enough money with me on the night to buy a we will rock you t-shirt, but i'm going to town tomorrow to try and grab one while the merchandise stall is open during the saturday matinee performance. tomorrow will be the last day that we will rock you is in my hometown and i'll be sad to see it go.
i filmed a little bit of my day and this is all the footage i shot. it isn't much, i know. oh, and excuse my accent about halfway in, for some reason i put on a strange posh voice to say hi to my friends from tumblr (i had been meaning to get rufus to say hi to them but of course, i didn't get to meet him).
overall, it was a great (but sad) day, an amazing show and a perfect way to celebrate freddie's life. thank you for everything, darling, you really did rock us. rest in peace. xxx
colours i used: rimmel 'pro matte finish' matte top coat, models own 'red alert', models own 'black magic', models own 'juicy jules'
the only 'halloween' part of this was my thumb nails, which had the dripping blood design. i was really proud of how it came out as it was my first try, but looking at this extreme close-up i realise they were far from perfect, ha! i used this tutorial to do them but if you want a quick summary then here you go:
choose your nail polish (brand, colour, etc. - red is obviously the best for the blood design but i've experimented with other colours and they all look equally as good) and drip a few blobs onto a piece of greaseproof baking paper.
take a nail or a pin (or anything with a sharp point) and dip it into the blobs of nail polish on the greaseproof paper, then draw on your dripping blood design. (i found it easier to paint the tip of my nail red first, and then add the dripping parts). then you're done!
as a base for this design, i used rimmel's matte base/top coat, which meant i couldn't use a clear top coat as it would ruin the matte base (not that i have a clear top coat anyway, mine ran out a few months ago). however, it would probably be best to use a clear top coat for this design to stop it chipping away faster. if you try this design then please leave me a comment or send me a picture, i'd love to see them. :) x
this is what takes up the majority of my life now. with textiles and psychology, i feel like i'm doing my bit and i'm getting by fine and i'll get the grades i want. with art, it feels like i could spend every second of every day working and i still might get to the end of a project for my teacher to say it's only at a grade C (which is what's been happening and is not what i want). then i've reached the deadline for that project and have to start a new one, and whilst juggling that i also have to bump up the other project to a grade A, and keep up with my other courses. right now i'm keeping everything up to speed, let's hope it stays that way. :)
p.s. i've been a good blogger and planned a few posts, although they may be late or a long time in the future, so keep your eyes peeled. x
p.p.s if you'd seen this blog in the earlier days, one of the first posts i had up was my opinions on the x factor. i wrote that just after this years auditions had finished, but i deleted it because i didn't feel like it fit in with the rest of my posts and it was generally just me rambling on for a very long time about nothing really. since then, i've started to go a bit mad and i'm suddenly really opinionated on the x factor. i don't know if this blog is a place for my rants so as a little test, this is a little preview, if you will, that i posted on my tumblr a while ago. i'm not sure. maybe i'll post them anyway. we'll see. x
hello :) i've not posted here for a while and, i don't know, it just seems like i never do anything or have anything worthy of a post. i've been drowning in schoolwork recently so whenever i do something that won't count towards my courses or get me ucas points, i feel like i'm being unproductive, so i've been avoiding spending too long on the computer. i haven't really had time to think about posting anything, never mind actually doing it. i thought i might post some of my schoolwork but i don't know. my art coursework comes across very badly in photos (not that it's very good anyway) and it takes too long to scan things. my textiles coursework is coming along really nicely but i don't think you guys would be interested in design specifications or brief analysis'. i'm not sure you'd be too interested in my psychology work either. so i don't know.
today i did two hours of psychology, played around on the animation studios on the apple macs in the art rooms (me and lauren make bloody good films), ate lots of halloween sweets and had mcdonalds for lunch. me and lauren also built a little paper ship, ate pizza and went to a meeting about doing the duke of edinburgh bronze award. what an exciting life i lead! ha.
so yeah. i'm not sure what to post. i think i'll post some of my own artwork, like, stuff that i've done that wasn't coursework for school. it won't be much though, just the stuff that's already been scanned onto my laptop, which is just 3 (i think) drawings of members of queen (fangirl alert). for now you can have this grainy awkwardly-lit photo that my camera churned out. x
p.s. if anyone's interested, 'we will rock you' has now officially arrived in my hometown and their first show is about to start in a few minutes. they'll be here for 26 days, i think, and i have tickets for the 24th. if you're going then i'd love to know! and if you've been then i'd love to know what you thought of it. :)
