Paper faces on parade

So moving on, to celebrate this momentous deadline me and my friends (Karen, Hannah, Sandy and the respective men partners) will be attending a masquerade ball on Saturday night. I state who will be coming tentatively, because while I know for definite we will have Karen, Hannah, Sandy and Damien with us, there's been a little bit of the usual broo-haa-haa whether or not Wayne (Sandy's husband) will come and yesterday Karen told me on a quiet aside that she's heard something about James (Hannah's beau) not being able to come either.

You may also notice the significant lack of Avanti - and yes, her absence will be sorely missed. I can't recall the exact reason, but I think initially she was supposed to still be in Holland at this point with V, but had to come back to England early. She's had more trouble with her project than any of us, and she also told us that a ticket plus a dress and a mask would be too much for her (in typical Avanti style, apologising profusely). Avanti is possibly the most honest and selfless person I know and while it's a crying shame she won't be with us, we arranged for pizza on the friday night to catch up with her then, instead (:

Anyway, I digress. Masquerade balls have been a point of quiet wonder for me for a long time - when I think masquerade I think Phantom of the opera (or god, that creepy scene from Labyrinth) and quite unlike me I'm stupidly, girlishly excited about the whole affair. Perhaps this has something to do with my mask arriving just this morning - I even got the whole 'special delivery for Natalie Beresford'. Anyway, the picture above is my mask. Pretty, aint it? I had already saved myself a tonne of money by wearing a dress I have *gasp* worn before (highschool dinner dance, yes it still fits. Better than it did when I was sixteen, actually) so I figured I could go spend a bit of money on a nice mask, rather than buying a three quid one 'and making do'. The trouble was, my dress is a fetching (if awkward) shade of purple and there was always that risk of 'if I buy a mask with purple on it, the purple will be a different shade and it won't match'.

So initially, I began looking at entirely black masks. I have to say after my searching, all-black masks are universally boring unless they're decorated with feathers. The problem with masquerade masks is that feathers tend to be huge, and with me being... petite, huge feathers stuck to my face would look really dumb. So a featherless mask that wasn't all black, OR had any purple on it was my goal. This narrowed my options down considerably.

In the end I stumbled across http://www.accito.com/, who claim to make masks that are 'hand crafted in Venice, Italy'. Whether or not this is true I couldn't tell you, but I liked what I saw and from my searching, the pricing was very reasonable (nice masquerade masks can be up to anywhere short of £200 or more). When I found a mask in black, gold and that old ceramic kind of white, with manuscript between the eyes no less! I knew that mask was mine. It was also in the sale so I snapped it up for just over £20. Bargain.