My half of an art trade with ~erin-hime; this is of her vampire character Caroline North (and her husband Thomas just off-screen there – well, it’s his hand and foot, at least).

Although anniversary gifts varied from year to year, it has always been the standard to have gifts of silver on the twenty-fifth anniversary. Gold on the fiftieth. Diamond on the sixtieth.

But what do you get someone on their one hundred and fiftieth anniversary?

It’d better be more than just roses, is all Caroline’s saying here. But I am amused by her politely baffled expression. Perhaps that’s the expression she gets when she’s startled, and Thomas is the one who startles her the most often. She’s just sitting there, looking at old pictures, them bam! Thomas is sitting on that ugly green couch, roses in hand and with a look on his face that suggests there is something else there, too. She doesn’t know what it is, she just knew that Thomas scared the crap out of her doing that.

The picture is set anywhere between 1948 and 1950, depending on when they were married (for the picture, I assumed they were married the year she was turned, 1798, but I’m willing to give a couple years’ leeway). The dress is based of a Dior dinner dress, made of silk. In my mind, Caroline likes green, because it matches her eyes and compliments her hair, and silk. Is silk hard to come by in ‘48? No; more likely she just hoarded whatever she could throughout the years, earning the envy of her mortal, rationing neighbours during the war. They likely didn't like the conspicuous displays of wealth when they were on ration books.

But does she still insist on wearing it whenever she can? Oh yes. In my mind, Elizabeth tells her, over and over, ‘we’re hiding out in a smaller town and we’ve already brought suspicion upon ourselves during the war – the last thing we need is more gossip about us.’ Caroline ignores her and wears silk anyway. She just hides it a little better. You can’t tell Caroline to not wear silk, or at the very least, not wear silk stockings. That’s like telling Winnie the Pooh he can’t eat honey – it ain’t gonna happen.

(Joke’s on her, of course. Soon there will be a point where fashionable women aren’t wearing stockings. At all. But this is 1948. She doesn’t know that just yet.)

Vintage hairstyles? Fail. D: I’m not really good at hairstyles between the 30s through the 50s. I’ve got a collection of pictures from the era (actual people, not film stars) but whenever I see them, I still can’t make much sense of what’s going on. (To be fair, they’re small pictures). So I sort of guessed here; I’ve no idea if it’s remotely accurate, but it does look kind of nice. I slaved over her face. She’s repeatedly described as stunningly beautiful, or a “classical beauty”, so I based her face off a statue of Aphrodite, and tried to get it to look as beautiful as I could. I hope it worked. She doesn’t look nineteen, but she’s pretty.

Anyway, I hope this trade makes up for my rushed previous attempt. :\ I like how it turned out, at least, and I hope ~erin-hime does too.

Caroline North © ~erin-hime