As many of you know I was fortunate enough to work with Rick Nunn for a couple of days in 2011. After shooting “White in the Woods” we got onto something creative and attempted “Little Red.” Rick burgled his parent’s house for the basket, rented the cape from a local fancy dress shop, and I put together the rest with a little help from my theatrical wardrobe.

Rick shot the first three digitally – and the rest on expired film which is what caused the unusual colour tones and grain on the later images.

The first image above is my favorite – which is yours?

So those were the digital… but Rick also shot this on FILM with his Canon 1V-hs with the Canon EF 135mm F/2.0 L on expired Fuji X-tra ISO400 (which is where these amazing tones come from).

Photographer: Rick Nunn

Model: Samantha Laura Kaye

Hair and Makeup: Samantha Laura Kaye

Shot on location in the Lincoln Woods in 2011

Putting on false eyelashes in the woods - as you do.

Rick Nunn (of the internet) shot these photos for me in Lincoln Forest. I got bitten a countless number of times by midges or mozzies or whatever lives out there, but the images were worth it.

My favorite from the shoot, my agency have used this image in my modeling portfolio. Love the mood. Good work Rick.

My Agency also really like this headshot Rick took of me. Its a strange angle, but its nice and fresh.

• You can see this photo (and some of the others) much much bigger on Rick’s Flickr.
• You can also check out Rick’s website here and you can like his facebook page here.
• I have a facebook page too… these images were up there months ago. Like it here.

Photographer: Rick Nunn

Model, hair, makeup and wardrobe: Samantha Laura Kaye

Dress by Bershka.

Shot on location in the Lincoln Woods in 2011.

Beautiful as underwater and artistically driven images are, and as much as lingerie shows off the female form, my agency felt clients would feel more comfortable with the sexy and creative being diluted a little with some “digestible” and “normal” lifestyle images.

“Girl in jeans in street, girl hailing cab, lady being domestic with cookies or something” were the words my booker left me with to guide the direction of the test shoots I was likely to encounter whilst abroad.

These shots Rick took of me in the street, with unbrushed hair, minimal makeup and the very simple wardrobe of jeans and a vest turned out exceptionally well and my agency love them. *insert happy face*

Delicious coffee featured above is from Coffee Aroma.

Rad huh?

If you’re still hungry for more images you should go take a look at Rick’s Flickr. otherwise stop in here again over the next few days as I post the rest of the images that we shot together.

Photographer: Rick Nunn

Model, Hair, Makeup and Wardrobe: Samantha Laura Kaye

I feel like I inhaled November, like it played a trick on me, tapping me on the shoulder only to run away when I turned around.

November took me from England to Cape Town, reunited me with old friends, showed me a taller version of my baby sister, marked the date two of my favourite people got married and challenged me in a myriad of ways – showing me vulnerabilities I had almost convinced myself I no longer posessed.

I meant to blog… I had so much to say… but when one is still in the midst of unpacking, living out of bags and wandering from open window to open window a la stray cat it can be difficult to find the time to venture out in search of the internet.

You heard me correctly. Aside from the 3G on my now lost iPhone4S I have been living mostly without wifi for the last month. This has definitely aged me in stress and provoked comfort eating.

Soon I shall re-unite with the land of wifi at home. I have pictures and stories. I’ll bring you up to date before we head into the throws of New Year and I disappear somewhere into the mountains or forests of unblogability to welcome the new year.

November sunset - taken with an iPhone4S

Until then… go be nice to someone. It’s easy to drag people down, but the world would all be an easier place if we went out of our way to be the sunshine in someone else’s day. Corny… but surely you have no right to be angry with the world unless you are the change you want to see, the person you want to meet.

Yours in hopeful optimism. Sleepy Cat.

Friday morning, post cheese and wine feasting, I watched the sunrise from the que outside the Apple store in Brighton. I was dreading the whole process, but – eager to buy my new iPhone4S after grieving my 2nd iPhone4 for the last 2 weeks – I went forward with a smile on my face and ended up giggling my way through the que with my new friend before entering the store around 9am and buying my beloved apple of joy.

You sexy thing

A huge thank you to Josh from the Apple Store in Brighton, and to my new friend @asguardclone – and everyone else in earshot in the que – between the hundred odd of them we managed to figure out whether I wanted a black or a white iPhone4 – which in retrospect is ridiculous – but if you bothered to read my “about me” you’d know I’m neurotic by now.

White iPhone4S in hand (my last 2 iPhone4′s have been black) I packed my bags, checked out of the hotel and drank up some of the Brighton scenery.

Brighton you sexy sunny thing!

I then had a traditional Italian breakfast with Kenty, hung out at a spa he’s involved with for a while, and then got chauffered back to Woking to prepare for what was meant to be a working weekend.

Upon entering the house, I was delighted to find a present waiting for me, the recipe book: “Adventures with Chocolate” by paul.a.young – and scoured the pages, whilst frantically texting my house-mates my chocolate demands (never send a book about chocolate to a choc-o-holic unless you send chocolate simultaneously.)

Signed to me - apparently now the "chocolate cat"

Saturday morning I was supposed to be photographed in London but a last minute cancellation left the day wide open.

- Cue phonecall from Djane Amathyst – who had just played what was apparently an amazing gig in Croatia and was now sitting in Heathrow looking for somewhere to drink her duty-free Amarula whilst avoiding her bed.

I told her she should come to our house in Woking and sit with me in the sunshine, and then later we could head into London together for the electro swing party I’d been looking forward to for the last two weeks.

Hello, I am an international DJ and I am a fabulous human being - my friends call me "Tasha"

Emma and I fetched Tash from the station and headed home for merriment in the garden.

1 shot of Aeropressed espresso + 1 shot of Amarula Cream + ice = delicious

We sat in the garden and drank a lot of these. At some point the sun went down and we started to shiver. Somehow “onesies” came up and after laughing at the idea of wearing a baby-grow designed for adults Tash and I declared (much to the amusement of Emma’s disdainful face) that we secretly yearned to own our own ridiculous onesies, but were discouraged by the “rather spend your money on shoes or clothes you’d be willing to go out in public wearing” argument.

It then emerged that Primark – the UK’s cheapest (to the best of my knowledge) retail chain store stocked onesies and that we could, for the price of an elitest cocktail, own our very own onesies and tick that ridiculous dream off of our list.

I checked my watch – it read 16:40 – which I took to indicate that we had 20 minutes to run to the store and acquire aforementioned ridiculous garments.

I wish I had a video of our journey to Primark.

Sadly, I do not.

You’re just going to have to imagine two girls trying to run between giggles, flailing through traffic, stopping abruptly to smile respectfully at an old lady, dropping things, giggling some more, making flirty eyes with a fruit seller, turning heads as they ran/stumbled up escalators and then indulging in exagerated exhalation and giggles as they realised that the low budget clothing mecca closed at 18:00 instead of the imagined 17:00.

With an extra hour to play with we opted to try on ALL of the onesies that we felt might be suitable for our cause – instead of buying the black cat onesies that had initially caught my eye.

In case you did not know, this is a onesie. It is like a baby-grow/jumpsuit, you climb into it, and zip it closed. It is very warm and snuggly.

Thankfully the Primark staff are generally a little disinterested  - cause/effect of minimum wage – and paid no notice to our dressing room photoshoot.

First we tried the skeleton onesies.

Then we tried the monkey onesies which were very nearly the winners! They had proper tails - but were in guys sizes and simply too large We tripped on the feet.

There were tiger ones which were pretty cool - but again rather large (mens) and without tails.

Elvis was rad - but had no enclosed feet - and again - a little too large (the cool ones were all boy's onesies)

So in the end we left with our first choice, the black cat outfit, and returned home where Emma painted noses and whiskers on us:

I thought this was HILARIOUS.

Somewhere in this chaos we grilled some burgers… drank some more shots, and eventually settled down with some roasted marshmallows and an old DVD: “the girl next door”

We didn’t make it out to our electro swing party – which is a HUGE shame because we could have worn pretty dresses and danced to music like this:

- Caravan Palace are performing around France this month – if my fairy godmother is listening – I would LOVE to go to the show in Bordeaux on the 26th October – so feel free to send a pumpkin/carriage and a pair of glass slippers (though I don’t mind dancing barefoot.)

Sunday morning we awoke to a very messy house. Andrew made breakfast whilst we showered and Tash (the youngest of us) feigned a hangover – I had a stress attack about not owning enough warm clothes and eventually Emma ushered us all out of the house towards Woking station where we were to head into London for the chocolate fair.

*rush rush rush* - sure I can put my false lashes on in the express train.

The “Chocolate Unwrapped” London Chocolate Festival was happening in London Bridge, which was fabulous for me as I finally had someone to snap the “London Bridge” underground snap for my collection.

I was hoping to have an outing with someone at each major stop before I left at the beginning of November, but it seems unlikely. Too many times I meet up with my accomplices outside of the station (no one to take the photo) or we use cabs or cars.

However this time I did manage to capture the station, and with this photograph making its way to my Instagram feed, we journeyed on to Chocolate Unwrapped.

Andrew - stoked to get his chocolate on

Upon arrival we were encouraged to write our names, in melted chocolate on the giant canvas

Kids, if someone gives you a rose and you do this; check the thorns have been removed ok?

Once inside, we were exposed to more chocolate, chocolate tasting and chocoalte based products than we knew what to do with.

That's chocolate penne pasta in Emma's hand

Chocolate wine.

Structure

Love

According to the experts, this is currently the best chocolate in the world. It was good - but in my opinion Duffy's 70% Peru is the best "small bite melt on your tongue" chocolate in the world. I bought some. I'm addicted

It was tough to leave – chocolate is a pretty addictive substance and there were SO many varieties – I really could have loaded about 70 images if I thought you or I had the patience for them.

I have been to a proper chocolate tasting before, so knew a little bit more about chocolate than the average consumer, but for those who were less exposed to the chocolate knowledge I take for granted there were talks and seminars and opportunities to taste bean varieties: for example two 66% chocoalte buttons- tempered the same way and made by the same chocolatier – but one made with Madagascan beans and one made with beans from Peru. Through opportunities like this, people were given the opportunity to learn a little more about chocolate and the tastes and methods that set different chocolate apart.

There is, however, a chocoalte saturation point and at some stage we all started to feel a little ill.

"Yay we're going to eat lots of chocolate"

"Boo... we failed to exercise self restraint and feel like crap"

So we left and looked for a place for everyone to watch the cricket whilst I pretended to know what is going on. I don’t watch sports. I do play certain sports. I like stories and poetry more than I like competitions. Television doesn’t really appeal to me, and I don’t have enough life at my disposal to pretend to be into something I’m not into. You might remember this from my lack of patriotism when South Africa hosted the soccer world cup in 2010.

Anyway; we found a pub which was willing to donate on of their soccer filled televisions to the cricket… I took the chair with the worst view and a few hours later once some of the chocolate had settled everyone made their respective way home and I made my way to visit my friend Andy.

Andy lives with Trish and Trish’s entire family was visiting for Sunday lunch, which I arrived at the tail end of, just in time for tea *insert happy face.*

I met lots of lovely new people…

Poppy and Rosy

Ate home-made gingerbread

And watched Fight Club on Blu Ray.

Fabulous weekend. To those of you who texted me – my sim-swap has not been processed. Drop me a line below to make me feel bad about letting you down/standing you up/leaving you at the alter.

xxx

Samcat

I don't know who wrote the bio... I don't like boybands (who does?) - except the Beatles - best pop group ever!

Thank you to Rio for bringing me a copy of the magazine, all the way from South Africa so that I could scan in the above photograph as well as the whole page:

Yep – I beat Ke$ha, Selena Gomez, Britney (99 – she barely made it this year), Kim Kardashian, Eva Longaria and a coupe of people I’ve never heard of. I had never entered a beauty pageant before or any sort of competition like this – but thanks to a series of online votes from the interwebs at large I was honoured with an official sexy stamp which I find puzzling, amazing, delightful and with a history of childhood bullying and low self esteem, a tad bizarre.

Thanks to you – my lovely readers who voted  - without your help and my crafty omission of all evidence that I’ve been wearing Ugg boots for a large part of the year – I would never have been given this incredible title of the 89th sexiest woman in the world 2011.

A huge huge huge thank you to Kass Photography who took the photograph FHM used as well as many other amazing shots of me. She is so talented, suo supportive and so patient. If you need a photographer for anything I urge you to contact her and see if she is available.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for all of the time you must have taken to vote, and for your continuous support  and assistance in achieving my dreams.

~Update~

This October of 2011 the FHM Top 100 Models of 2012 were announced. FHM have placed me on that list and have now opened the votes to the general public for Top 10 positions. If you are based in South Africa you can SMS “Model 68″ to 33441 or if you are somewhere else in the world you can vote for me online by clicking the button on the right hand side of this page until your fingers twitch.

Thank you again – I simply cannot thank you enough –  xox Sam

Curls were created using the Veaudry "My Curl" lipstick is Chanel Rouge Coco "Madamoiselle" #5

This lingerie shoot was heaps of fun, and definitely something I would love to do again. If you enjoyed these images, and would like to help me grace the pages of FHM/ win a playstation 3/accompany the winner to a FHM photoshoot vote here. Simply type “Samantha Laura Kaye” into the box along with any other girl you would like to support and smile in the knowledge that you’ve helped me get one step closer to bringing you more good images like these and yourself closer to that playstation/model wrangling.

Photographer: Kass Photography

Model: Samantha Laura Kaye

Stylist: Samantha Laura Kaye

Hair and Makeup Artist: Samantha Laura Kaye

Shot on location at the Cape Royale in 2010

In less than 4 hours, including styling, hair and makeup time we came up with these:

Photographer: Kass Photography

Model: Goli

Hair and Makeup Artist: Samantha Laura Kaye

Stylist: Kaylene West

Shot in Cape Town in 2010

Despite the difficulty of the task, I feel that Rob and I nailed it and produced one of the better examples of gothic glam.

I used Kryolan water-based white face paint on my skin, applying it first in thick sweeping motions with MAC’s #187 brush, and then smoothing it over smaller areas with the #249 brush and buffing it into delicate skin such as around the eyes with the #227 brush. The amazing shiny lip was produced by using Hourglass “Extreme Sheen” in “Siren.” Hourglass is an amazing brand that I discovered whilst in Los Angeles last December – seek out the hourglass mascara for great definition and length.

We then added some vampire teeth

Finally we went wild, playing with pigments, glitter and fake blood effects.

Just to put it all in perspective this is what I looked like before I covered myself in white paint and false eye-lashes.

Would you like to buy some washing powder?

It is amazing what a great photographer and make-up artist can come up with.

Photographer: Robert Miller

Model: Samantha Laura Kaye

Hair and Makeup Artist: Samantha Laura Kaye

Shot at Snap Studios in 2010

On Saturday morning I climbed in front of the camera to model some swimwear and pretty dresses for Beatnik Bazaar.

Having “Saturday” as our call time, I let the morning tea and bed vibes last a little longer than usual, rolled my hair into pin curls, threw on a vintage inspired dress and then set off to Boulders Beach (doing my make-up in the car.)

I arrived, was presented with coffee (just the way I like it) and immediately transformed into a flirtatious stereotype.

Good Morning Sugar

How could I help myself? The 50′s is an era that epitomizes girly prettiness for prettiness’s sake. An era where curves and individuality (so long as you were white and good looking) was celebrated in the fashion scene…. the time before heroine chic and twiggy, when cooking was nearly as sexy as suspenders and where models look like they’re having fun doing normal things (like lying in the sun with red lipstick on.)

I got into character, not by starving myself for a week, not by chain smoking cigarettes (though that may have been more authentic 50′s chic) and not by bitching about the process – Instead I ate a pizza from ColCachios and drank half a bottle of champagne the night before the swimwear shoot, and then spent the whole day giggling, being fed pears and strawberries and  pomegranate green tea  before finishing off with cocktails and crayfish at Polana *Oops*

The result is a series of some seriously cute vintage looking photographs of me having fun at the beach in some seriously cute vintage style dresses:

As well as original vintage swimwear:

Beatnik Bazaar sourced all of these costumes and is currently busy recreating them in a variety of fabrics in time for summer. Drop her a line and place your order ladies, these are fabulous for both feeling glamorous (add a large sunhat for enhanced effect) and for surfing and swimming laps and doing all those other things where you don’t want your bikini to come off!

Beatnik Bazaar is the coolest local vintage store and the only blog that does all of thei own fashion photography and has their own fashion range. Beatnik Bazaar has been been nominated at the SA Blog Awards and they need your vote before Friday to win!

Here are some behind the scenes clips of my American model persona: