Tag: E. L. James

17

Christian Grey’s playthings, part four: handcuffs

What we used: Luxury Suede Leather Handcuffs in red
From: Bondara
Price: £25.99
Material(s): Cuffs – suede and leather. Fastenings – nickel-plated steel

Read Fifty Shades of Grey and curious about bondage? If so, we hope you enjoy the fourth and final post in our Christian Grey’s playthings series, in which Thomas restrains Lizzie with some very comfortable leather handcuffs and she does a bit of … hanging about.

Important: If you haven’t already, please read the Behind the Chintz Curtain Disclaimer. (It’s not as dry and boring as you might think, so please do take the time to have a look.)

First impressions …

Lizzie
I have a bit of a thing for the colour red, so it was probably a given that I’d like the look of these cuffs. They arrive in generic brown packaging and, I have to say, my first thought when I extract them from their plastic sleeve is that they appear to be very well made; heavier and a lot more substantial than I imagined they would be. I can’t resist giving them a quick sniff – I adore the smell of leather – and am not disappointed by their aroma!

Each red suede cuff is lined with smooth black leather and has a metal buckle, a leather strap with punched holes, and a metal D-ring (to which the accompanying chain can be clipped to secure the cuffs together) on its outer surface. A close inspection reveals that the finishing is excellent: the stitching on the cuff edges is neat and the rivets that attach the D-rings and buckle sections are firmly set. The leather is wonderfully supple and bends easily when I manipulate the cuffs with my hands – a very good sign since having something stiff or hard around the wrists isn’t a great idea if you’re going to get physical. (You don’t want restraints chaffing, cutting into your skin or affecting circulation.) Continue reading →

10

Christian Grey’s playthings, part three: pleasure beads

What we used: LELO Luna Pleasure Bead System
From: Lovehoney
Price: £29.99
Material(s): FDA-approved body-safe silicone

The third in our series of posts on Christian Grey’s playthings, in which we review pleasure beads (a.k.a. ‘jiggle balls’, Ben Wa balls, Geisha balls) and discover that they make a bit of noise!

First impressions …

Lizzie
Nice. The packaging is very grown up and classy – not a topless porn-star in sight! There’s an outer case in white with the LELO branding on it, and inside that a heavy black cardboard box with ‘LELO’ embossed on the lid. Opening up the latter reveals four pleasure beads – two in ‘petal pink’ and two ‘powder blue’ – sitting in a moulded black plastic casing. The pink beads are encased in a flexible white sleeve (girdle) shaped like the number 8.

All the beads are made of transparent, coloured silicone and inside each one there is a small grey weight, roughly the size of a marble. (Shaking a bead causes the weight to rattle against the outer plastic sleeve but the noise it makes doesn’t seem particularly loud – more like a dull thudding.) Continue reading →

06

Christian Grey’s playthings, part two: the crop

What we used: Bondage Boutique slim riding crop whip in red
From: Lovehoney
Price: £14.99
Material(s): Leather, plastic

The second in our series of posts on Christian Grey’s playthings, in which we discover that crops with slightly imperfect handles are extremely flexible and feel very, very nice when applied to one’s bottom.

Important: If you haven’t already, please read the Behind the Chintz Curtain Disclaimer.

First impressions …

Lizzie
The crop arrives in a long, plain, brown box the day after I order it. Quick, prompt, discrete. I wait until Thomas arrives home from work before breaking into the packaging as we want to examine the crop for the first time together.

Some frenzied ripping of tape from the box later and we find the crop encased in a clear plastic sleeve and tagged with a Bondage Boutique swing tag on the wrist strap.

The crop itself is 27.5 inches (69.85 centimetres) long, with a red leather tab at the business end. The shaft appears to be made of a flexible plastic cane (which Thomas takes great delight in flexing and bending into a U-shape to see just how malleable it really is – gulp). A leather wrist strap is fixed immediately below the painted wooden handle and, to be honest, the latter is the only visually disappointing feature; on the crop we receive, it is slightly scratched and chipped. That said, for £14.99 I’m more than happy to live with the imperfection, especially since I’m not sure if I’m going to like how it feels when applied! (Hey, there’s a recession going on.) Continue reading →

05

Fifty Shades of Grey – E.L. James

Title: Fifty Shades of Grey
Author: E.L. James
ISBN: 978-0099579939
Publisher: Arrow (26 April 2012)

I’ve procrastinated over whether to do a review for Fifty Shades of Grey because, frankly, there’s not a lot that I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. The coverage of – and the furore around – this book has been absolutely massive and you can’t seem to walk five paces without bumping into someone who’s reading it or having a conversation about it. It’s broken sales records set by J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard, Harry Potter, and is the first book ever to reach the one million sales mark on Amazon Kindle. If you’ve been living in a parallel universe and haven’t a clue what I’m going on about, here’s a brief run-down …

Fifty Shades of Grey is an erotic romance written by British author E.L. James (a pseudonym for London T.V. executive Erika Leonard). It started life as fanfiction based on the characters and stories from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, which James later reworked to create Fifty Shades of Grey and the two subsequent books in the series, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. To boil it right down to basics:

- Edward Cullen (wealthy blood-sucking vampire) becomes Christian Grey (wealthy flogger-wielding sadist);

- Bella Swan (virginal high school student) becomes Anastasia Steele (virginal college graduate);

- Forks (small Pacific North West town) becomes Seattle (large Pacific North West city). Continue reading →

04

Christian Grey’s playthings, part one: the blindfold

What we used: ‘Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be’ blindfold
From: Coco de Mer U.K.
Price: £25.50
Material(s): Silk

The first in our series of posts on Christian Grey’s playthings, in which we discover that silk blindfolds feel lovely but are very, very hard to keep in place …

First impressions …

Lizzie
This blindfold is beautiful. It’s gorgeously soft, feels wonderfully silky to the touch, and the words ‘Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be’ are stitched in a pretty scripted font in the middle of the outward-facing panel. The Coco de Mer logo is embroidered at the right-hand end. All-in-all, very seductive and a million miles from sleazy and cheap. I’m impressed – and a bit surprised! – that Thomas has chosen this for me; it’s far sexier than a hanky or one of my pashminas, but being an average bloke, they’re exactly what I’d expect him to be wrapping around my head in place of this!

Thomas
The blindfold came in quality packaging from Coco de Mer along with several other items, none of which looked cheap or tacky, which is to be avoided at all costs if you are shopping for toys. The blindfold is of decent silk and is well made with black embroidery on one side. It has a nice look and feel and you won’t be embarrassed to whip it out (so to speak) on your partner. Continue reading →

03

Curious about Christian Grey’s playthings?

Okay. You’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey and you’re curious. What exactly happens when people play with all those things in the bedroom in real life? You know, those, er, ‘toys’?

Before Fifty came on the scene, the items that Christian Grey uses during his sexual encounters with Anastasia Steele were probably a bit outside the standard sexual behaviour box for a good many people. But if this book has done one thing by going mainstream, regardless of what you think of its origins, the writing, and the way it portrays the BDSM lifestyle, it has opened the door for candid conversations between partners and – hopefully – allowed them to communicate more openly about things they’d like to try in (or out of) the bedroom.

That said, it’s one thing to read about these sorts of things in a book and quite another to go out, buy up the hardware aisle at Homebase, and experiment with your significant other. So, to quench your curiosity, we’re going to roadtest (well, our reviewers Lizzie and Thomas are) four of the items from E.L. James’s record-breaking novel – the blindfold, the crop, ‘the beads’ and the handcuffs – to help you decide whether you’d like to try them out yourself.

We’ll be posting the reviews in instalments, so make sure you visit Chintz later this week for the first in the series.

Fifty Shades of Grey is available from: Amazon.co.uk (Kindle ; paperback), Amazon.com (Kindle ; paperback), Barnes & Noble (Nook ; paperback), Kobo (eBook).