Punk

Notoriously Morbid

~ Carlie Sorat ~ 2 Comments

I love indie brands, especially gothic and dark themed brands, so I was so thrilled to find this brand, Notoriously Morbid. This line is a fun and creepy and gothic cosmetic brand.

Besides their cosmetics that they carry, they also carry certain alternative clothing, homeware, and accessory brands such as, Killstar, Kreepsville666, Sourpuss, and a lot of other styles that I love. Although it was tempting to go on a huge shopping spree on their site, I definitely was focused on the their makeup.

I love mystery and grab bags, and I decided to get their, “Vanishing Cabinet,” sub grab bag so I can try a little bit of everything and I must say I was not disappointed. For twenty dollars you get a random assortment of five full size NM beauty goodies.

Here are the items that I received from them. From left to right, I got “I want to Believe,” mint highlighter, which I tried out, “They call me Spooky,” blush, another beautiful winner, “The Mother,” eyeshadow, “The Dangerous Type,” eyeshadow which I wore yesterday in the corner of my eyes which I absolutely loved. I just sprayed some MAC prime and prep on my brush to wet it and applied it easily with no fall out which is always good. The last eyeshadow I got was, “Keeper of the Crops.”

Here is a description if you’re interested in getting a mystery grab bag from NM. These are blind Grab Bags and include a mixture of full size items from Past Subs. 

Random mixes include but not limited to: Eyeshadows, Highlighters, Contours, Blushes, Mystic Mattes, Lip Balms, and Changelings.

Blind Grab Bags mean that these are randomly put together before hand. When ordering multiple bags, we can not guarantee that you will not receive duplicate products.   You can not designate what goes in them however you can note in the comments at checkout if you prefer a ONLY vegan bag. Once sold out, there will be no more and can not be replicated.


PLUS you’ll receive any Get With Purchase promotion that we may be running at the time of purchase!

I am very satisfied and happy with my mystery grab bag from Notoriously Morbid and I definitely recommend checking out their site at https://linktr.ee/notoriouslymorbid

Sneak Peek of Punk Gal Glam Cosmetics

~ Carlie Sorat ~ 3 Comments

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Very soon I will be doing a FULL FEATURE AND INTERVIEW with one of my close friends, Kate who started her own beauty and makeup company, PUNK GAL GLAM.

    I’m so excited to be an affiliate  for my good friend Kate’s cosmetic business, Punk Glam Girl. She is such a sweetie and very talented with the products she put out. I love using her products and plan on taking photos of me wearing some of her goodies to post here. The first items I bought from Punk Gal Glam, were, “See You Next Fall,” which has the cutest different color leaves. The other item I bought with that was, “Punk’s Not Dead,” which has musical notes that look like my foot tattoo. I love them both. Wait until you see me wearing them. 

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 Like I said above, I’ll be doing a full feature on Kate’s business including lots of gorgeous photos and more so stay tuned!

   If you want to check out her site now, it’s punkgalglam.com AND MAKE SURE TO DROP MY COUPON CODE: PUNKCAR15 to get a wonderful discount. Her stuff is amazing. If you have any questions, definitely leave them in the comment section below!

xoxo Carlie

 

$50 or less, Fashion and Style

~ Carlie Sorat ~ 2 Comments

  Ok so I know it’s been a few weeks since I posted my last 50 dollars or less fashion, with full outfits, etc., but there is a reason why. Last week I tried to do this article at TJ MAXX, since Crossroads was my last post, and it was a disaster. I usually go there for home goods instead of clothes and even though I went right when they opened on a week day first thing in the morning and it was already jam packed. I couldn’t even look through the clothes cause it was chaos. And in the home goods department, people were knocking down and breaking plates. It got so bad I started sweating with a panic attack and had to leave. 

A few days later, I stopped at Kohl’s which I love but last time I didn’t find anything I liked but I decided to give that same location another shot and I’m so glad I did cause I scored this time!!!!!

I love jumpsuits and pantsuits as a lot of you know and the moment I walked into the shop, I spotted a gorgeous navy blue pantsuit with vibrant flowers on it. It was originally 40 dollars but it was on sale for 25 dollars which was amazing. The next thing I saw were supported bralettes which were adorable. They were marked down to 9 dollars and then got an extra discount to bring it to 5 dollars. I bought this bright yellow mustard one to go with my pantsuit which you’ll see in the closeup. By the way, I plan on going back to get more bralettes in every color. You can wear them as crop tops also.

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The last thing I fell in love with was from my favorite brand there, Rock Rebel. It’s a soft black top  with criss cross sleeves, which I always love a peek a boo moment, with red roses on it. It’s so cute. The top was originally 25 dollars but was marked down to 15 dollars. I couldn’t believe my scores. My total purchase for three things was $45.00 including tax.  I love it!

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As far as big variety stores are concerned, definitely are Kohl’s and Target are my favorite. 

Hope you enjoyed this third edition of 50 dollar fashion or less. Stay tuned to the next one AND if YOU have suggestions of shops you want me to check out, please definitely leave you SUGGESTIONS in my COMMENTS section. 

XOXO CARLIE 

50 Dollar Fashion and Style

~ Carlie Sorat ~ 2 Comments

   I’ve decided to start going to shops, mostly local shops in my area to find outfits the are stylish and fashionable for fifty dollars and under. My husband actually came up with this idea which I thought was so cute and even though many others have done similar things, I plan on putting my vintage and rock spin onto it. 

   I haven’t decided yet it I’m going to do this every week or every two weeks but I think this will be fun. My goal is to find full or mostly full outfits for under fifty dollars to show as inspiration to everyone who feels that they have to spend loads of money to be able to showcase their fashion and unique style. Every thing I show off here is something that is my style and/or that I would wear.

   I was going to one of my favorite local vintage shops but they were closed for the day. Instead I started with Target. I know Target isn’t a unique store but I thought it would be cool to include Target in my list of fifty dollar fashion since Target is an extremely popular chain that everyone has access to in their area.

The first thing that my eyes immediately went to was a pair of these cheetah print jeans. Animal print and me? Duh! Haha They cost $28.00.

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   The next thing I spotted was a super cute black and red (my favorite color combo) Game of Thrones “Where are My Dragons” top for $14.00. I love that show and the “Mother of Dragons” is probably my favorite character. The next item I spotted was in the jewelry section which was near where I found both the pants and top. The next item I looked for was a cute pair of shoes to complete this look. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t see anything that I would wear or that would go with this outfit but they did have a lot of styles that you might like to try in your Target locations so please don’t be discouraged that I didn’t find anything in the store location I went to. A lot of them were on sale as well. Instead I went to the jewelry section which was near where I found the pants and top. There I found this punk rock red “Rocky Horror” style lips necklace. It only was $6.00 so I had to get it.

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After the items I found, my total plus tax was literally $50.00 so it was perfect.

I hope you all liked what I chose and also the start of something new that I’m going to be doing for Bombshell.

 

Chrissy (kittens) Blake Feature from Passion Pinups

~ Carlie Sorat ~ 1 Comment

   Here’s my girl who created and runs Passion Pinup Magazine. Chrissy and I have developed a wonderful friendship and make sure to look for both of us in the upcoming Spring Issue that comes out March 21st so stay tuned. I’ve written a few articles on Passion Pinups Magazine on here several times but I wanted to do a feature on the lady who created this fabulous magazine.

 Here’s her bio where she talks about her relationship with her guy Brett, how they started dating, her art background, (which by the way I think that’s magical because you all know I went to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco) how they started Passion Pinups, and a lot more.

…ok, here we go!

” I think much like what you see on the instagram posts and facebook page this whole thing was a collaboration between myself and Brett.
We’ve been together for 14 years and I met him when I, I guess you would say, looked a lot different than I do now.
When we started dating he was very into photography and was doing a lot of action sports stuff for BMX. He’d always want to take pictures of me as well but when I would look at the photos, I was not happy with what I was seeing.
So we never really pursued anything with it. I guess what I mean is I felt constantly sick and was not comfortable with the way my body looked. One day while getting ready to go to work, I took a spill on our deck and severely sprained my knee and I resolved after that happened to try to figure out exactly why I was having issues with the way I felt physically and to figure out why I was unable to control my weight even though I worked out daily and watched my calories. I had a friend who told me all of the problems they used to have and how they were able to fix them by going on an elimination diet. Taking out all the known food allergens and they had discovered they were gluten intolerant. I used to always have (and still have to an extent) lots of issues with my gut. I decided that I needed to try to figure out what was causing these issues and this seemed like a good place to start. So I cut out all these possible allergens and started to feel so much better. This also had the side effect of it helping me to lose weight and I started to feel a bit better about the way I looked. One evening I came into the bedroom and Brett said “gee you look…different”. (Guys are quick on the uptake sometimes, lol). At that point I had lost about 35 pounds and was feeling so much better physically. I used to always joke with him that “if I ever got to “x” weight, WATCH OUT, because I am going there. Well, I got pretty close to where I wanted to be and we started talking. Brett likes to do fairy and pinup type art in 3D and I told him, I would so rock crazy outfits like what those girls you render wear, what do you think? Since he was into photography as well, like I mentioned, we discussed doing photos and started to try some different stuff.
It was very nice to finally be able to feel comfortable and not physically ill anymore so we started experimenting. Even though Brett was good at photoing action sports, taking pinup photos was a whole different realm for him. LOL. After some trial and error and lots of photoshoots and outfit buying I said to him, put some of these out there and see what response we get.
So we did. I was a little trepidatious at first because I started doing this in my early 40’s and wasn’t sure how I’d be taken but I figured it’s now or never so I came up with the name Chrissy “Kittens” and posted some photos on Facebook pinup pages. At one point the magazine Delicious Dolls shared out one of my photos and to my surprise it got thousands of likes! I was overwhelmed! It was very cool that others could see what the end result of my hard work was. So we kept taking photos and I would post on pinup pages and the like but never really pursued it because, like for so many of us, it’s just a hobby that I enjoy doing. Brett would send out photos to some of the magazines but we only really got one or two hits back for photos. I was having fun but felt like Brett and I were doing a lot of pretty good stuff and it was hard to get recognition! 
I have a background in pen and ink art and told Brett we should just do our own pinup magazine, because, well, we’re artists and we realize how hard it is to get in these magazines!  LOL. He loved the idea but then said, I only have you and a friend of ours as models, that’s not a lot to do a magazine! Well, I said, we gotta start somewhere. Put us in it and do some issues and we’ll keep putting it out there. I got on twitter and instagram and started to follow and like different pinups and artists and just said, “love to have you in our magazine”. It took some time but eventually a very nice burlesque promoter from the UK, Lady May J, got back to me and asked how she could help. I said, do you have anyone who would like to be in my magazine. “Sure thing hun” and that basically started it rolling forward. From there it began to snowball and now it’s becoming much easier to get people into the magazine and I finally have people asking me to be in there as opposed to going all over trying to find contributors.
It’s been awesome having the magazine evolve and I love seeing all the different contributors! I’m hoping that other women seeing this magazine being run by a pinup and also having a wonderful partner who supports them in whatever they love (Brett does a lot of supporting…I am also an avid animal lover and have…chickens, turtles, tortoises, spiders, dogs, cats, fish, snakes…) (CHRISSY GIRL, YOU’D LOVE MY THREE SNAKE TATTOOS I HAVE, HEHE. MY MOM USED TO RAISE SNAKES WHEN SHE WAS YOUNG AND I LOVE THEM. HEHE) will inspire them to take charge and make happen any dreams or ideas they may have.
I know personally how hard it is sometimes to work up the courage to say, I’m gonna do this and see where it leads, so I hope that by getting new people involved in the magazine and getting them recognized we help others being to pursue their dreams whatever they may be!

Ugh, there’s so much little nuances here and there that I could go into but that is the gist of it, lol. Essentially this whole thing from me doing pinup to starting the magazine was a collaboration of love between two people who believe in each other and try to lift each other up every day to wherever their passions may bring them.”

I loved reading Chrissy and her journey and like I said earlier, I’m so glad her any I have become good friends. I’ll post her social media info at the bottom. Enjoy these lovely photos of her in her everyday life. She is so beautiful and such a kind lady.

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midge on my head and lily in my arm

meds for milly!

crazy boots!

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Chrissy is so amazing and I know I’ve said this before but I’m very glad I met her. We have so much in common and just always seem to click. Here are her social media site info and stay tuned for the Spring Issue of Passion Pinups on March 21st!

INSTAGRAM: @chrissykittens, @passionpinups, @brettmiddaugh

WEBSITE: PASSIONPINUPS.COM/

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/passionpinupsmagazine/

TWITTER: @passionpinupmag 

 

 

 

 

Little Black Bats

~ Carlie Sorat ~ Leave a comment

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Alright I have done many many many articles on jewelry and accessories, especially unique jewelry that is handmade and/or you can’t find anywhere else. I got a brand new store and special friend that creates amazing handmade unique jewelry. Her name is Jenna Michals and her company is Little Black Bats which is such a cute name. I instantly connected with her and her work. Little Black Bats mostly makes Halloween, spooky, and magical inspired pieces but they also make fun and funny pieces as well. I’ll include the store information at the end of course.

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   I bought two pieces from Little Black Bats. The first one is my dark circus cluster necklace which reminds me of a spooky Alice in Wonderland piece.

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   The second one I bought was a my “DEAD BUT DELICIOUS” green and black necklace which the moment I saw it in Jenna’s shop I had to have it. It’s a quote from a brilliantly funny and spooky film spoof called, “What we do in the shadow” from New Zealand. (By the way, if you haven’t seen that movie, you MUST see it. I connected with my sister Suzy Owen who is also from there, and we both saw it together the same night, just on different sides of the world.)

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Here is how Little Black Bats got started. Hope you enjoy this article and you must check out Jenna and the shop:

“Little Black Bats was born out of frustration of needing a creative outlet. In the very beginning, I was making laser-cut acrylic jewelry, but soon after realizing it wasn’t the right medium for me, I changed gears and started working with shrink plastic. It gave me the freedom I was looking for to create, and three years later, the wheels haven’t stopped turning. I seek inspiration from everything—mainly music, movies, gothic and horror subcultures, medical oddities, and more.”

Another thing I adore about Jenna as a person and why I think we became fast friends is that we have a lot of important things in common, besides both liking spooky fun, stuff include that we’re both artists, we both believe in supporting artists, we both have a strong work ethic, and more. Definitely check Little Black Bats on all their social media sites and especially the store. You won’t be disappointed.

Little Black Bats pages:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/littleblackbatsjewelry/

Instagram: IG name: @littleblackbats

Etsy Store: www.littleblackbats.etsy.com

Glamorous and Rock and Roll Book Recommendations

~ Carlie Sorat ~ Leave a comment

I love going to book shops. I don’t like kindle very much. Especially for certain books of mine, I like to dog ear chapters or pages that I know will help me a lot. Anyways, I went through my book collection and I wanted to share some recommendations if you who want to get into burlesque, want to read on how to create vintage, besides, pinup looks, for beginners or even if you’re not a beginner, all these books have great writing, great tips and ideas, detailed instructions on how to create the different hair and makeup looks, get some Rock and Roll tips and stories, and more.

I have already reviewed Dita Von Teese’s,” Your Beauty Mark” in a huge article review on her book as well as a huge review on the book “Audrey Style” by Pamela Clarke Keogh. Please make sure to read the reviews I did on those two books and leave your likes and comments on it and follow my site if you haven’t already. 

Thank you and here are some of my top favorite books that I recommend for you. Hope you enjoy them and even if you only check out one of the books and read it, you’ll love it and will help you on your vintage, pinup, and glamour journey.

1. “It’s All That Glitters, Portraits of Burlesque Performers in Their Homes.” You’ll love this book, it’s the most stunning and glam households book I own.

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2. “The Burlesque Handbook” by Headmistress Jo Weldon. If you want to get into the gorgeous performing sisterhood, this is the book for you. It is the perfect book for beginners and it Jo teaches all her signature tricks and has some great anecdotes. This was the first book I bought when I want to start the art of Burlesque. Even if you have been performing burlesque, you might want to still check out this book for extra stunts, tips, tricks, and more from the stunning HeadMistress Jo Weldon.

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3. “Vintage Beauty Parlor” This is a great book to help you achieve flawless hair and make up in iconic and vintage styles.

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4. “Style Me Vintage” (Step by Step Retro Look Book) This is one of the best books for beginners in vintage and pinup.

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5. For the Rock and Roll chicks who want some extra wicked tips if they want to be in the music scene, dress like they are, and a lot more, check out “Cherry Bomb.” It’s an awesome book.

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HOPE YOU CHECK OUT THESE BOOKS AND ENJOY THEM. TAKE THE STORIES AND TIPS THAT YOU LIKE AND THAT ARE USEFUL, DISREGARD THE INFORMATION THAT DOESN’T NECESSARILY PERTAIN TO YOU, AND ENJOY THESE FABULOUS READS!!!!

 XOXO CARLIE MICHELLE

Sweet Dreams From the Gutter

~ Carlie Sorat ~ Leave a comment

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I first hear musician Dirk Vermin’s original band, “The Vermin,” years ago and I instantly liked them. I’m a huge lover of punk, and when I say punk, I mean true punk, not pop boy bands pretending they’re punk. If I had to choose another band that reminds me of “The Vermin” I would say Social Distortion who I absolutely love.

After hearing and learning about Dirk Vermin and his band, I saw him on a show that shall not be named. Dirk is extremely talented and I’m so glad I got my Bettie Page tattooed by him last year. Him and his new band, “Dirk Vermin and the Hostile Talent,” are extremely talented and pure punk and rock and roll. The album, “Sweet Dreams From the Gutter,” is a bad ass record and the title song is probably my favorite one although they are all good. I definitely recommend checking them out.

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