An Achievement, of sorts

Sorry for the extra derpy / awk post expression... Normally I take a nice (relatively) picture before I go out, but today I had to leave the batteries charging in the camera to do so. Anyway! Sunday lolita, which was nice. Made extra nice by the fact I got to wear one of my dream dresses out. It was also my first 'dream dress', but strangely the last one to be acquired. I had three in total:

x Baby's Little Red Riding Hood OP
x Mary Magdalene's St. Claire OP
x Innocent World's Violin JSK

With a lot of patience and a bit of luck, I now have all three. It was pretty fortunate they were not incredibly rare or expensive, I do feel for people whose dream dresses are say, Moitie's Iron Gate or AP's Puppet Circus. But to each to their own, I say.

What is your dream dress(es)?

A meeting of interests

**Turn down youtube's volume before listening!! Or else the audio quality will be worse than it already is!!

Fractale is an anime airing this season and it's probably my favorite so far. It's based on an award winning light novel series by the same name. The ending song is a traditional tune "Down by the Sally Gardens" by W.B. Yeats, sung in both English and Japanese.

I really love this simple tune and I realized I have to start practicing violin again after about 3 years of absence. I also was out in lolita (Baby's Red Riding Hood) today, like usual except I forgot to get a pic (D:) But I was wearing it whilst playing to add a point of interest to a very short video.

Notes: I did record it with a camera phone (I should buy a mic one day ;_;)
I also had the mute on, so that's not the true sound of my violin. When I played without the mute, the phone mic made it way too shrill. It's still a little shrill, so listening it at half volume would probably improve it or something. I should figure out how to do that to the video itself...

Do you play any instruments?

Have a good week guys ~!

On a date, on a whim

Saturday was the first weekend I wasn't completely whacked out about an exam (Though I still have plenty to study for today...) So I went out on a date / shopping errand / get outside and enjoy the 60 degree weather. Because really, this is the time where I could wear a velvet JSK, but no coat and still not freeze and/or burn.

JSK: Lief
Bolero: HMHM
Socks: IW

Please ignore the monkey slippers. I wore real shoes outside, obviously.



This was suppose to be a make up shot, but it came out showing more the lackthereof. I was wearing UD's halfbaked, sidecar, and virgn eye shadows, with UD's Zero eyeliner. I typically don't bother with mascara anymore because I have reaaaallly short eyelashes and if mascara does anything, it really just smudges all over my eyes. Curse my hidden monolids! Whatever :P


My faaaavorite place is called hotcakes, which is a bakery/lunch place with really excellent pumpkin muffins. I got to sit around, do my homework, drink some tea, and people watch. Afterwards I went to Barnes and Noble and bought a big book on memorizing Kanji T-T .... But it was a good date, over all.

R-Series and Dollypoddle (SS) Review

Ready for this? I know I am.

Sacred Night by Lief Review

My first lolita arrival of 2011, Lief's Sacred Night in black, showed up today! (Meanwhile, my 2 other R series JSKs are on their way... but that's not what this is about)

First off, I got the black JSK in S/M.
Construction:

• The velvet is very soft
• Lined about halfway down
• Straps are spaced correctly
• Includes waist tie and detachable bow with pin
• The print is a very tasteful gold, not crazy glittery, but shows up crisp
• The zipper is a little uncooperative going up.
• I'm 5'5" (165cm) tall and it falls halfway between my knees and my ankle I'd say.
• Official Measurements: bust: 86~96cm; I am only 84cm, but the shirring isn't bulky
  

Customer Service:

• Invoiced with no issues
• No notice of shipping, albeit that is standard procedure for Lief (I ordered the Aster Cafe before).
• English rep is very considerate, informative, and accommodating (I switched my colorway after they notified us the colors became solid)

Detail Shots:




Overall: Lief is my favorite indie brand and I'm pretty glad I passed up the Regimental series for Sacred night. It's really warm too, naturally as the whole thing is velvet.

The Cost of Nothing

I started devising an experiment last year, called "Could I make money off buying/selling lolita clothing". The premise was simple and fairly logical: buy low, sell high. On many auction sites like yahoo japan and mbok, brand is sold fairly cheap. On the comm sale, the same items can go for almost 2x the listed auction price. I decided even if I wouldn't go through with it, I could still design an experiment.

The Concept:
- Start small. Start mid priced items that both fit my style, were in good condition, were exceptionally cheap, and were brand. If I followed these conditions, in the event I couldn't find a seller, I didn't mind keeping the pieces myself.

The Process:
-Find auctions on mbok, which is a little cheaper than yahoo japan. Also, a shopping service.

-Invest x amount of money and after getting the items, see if they can be sold for more than I bought them.

The Projected Results
- While a nice concept in theory, due to the poor exchange rate, the need for a shopping service (which charges shipping+comission), one would be lucky to make a profit by this process.
- Living in Japan would make this more of a viable concept. In that case however, it would just be a small scale Closet Child because those stores must use the same idea to make a profit.

Have you ever sold anything online and made a profit?

Belated Holiday and Sacred Night

Opening your day: teaser pic of Lief's new work "Sacred Night" aka "Shut up and take my money" Glad I passed on regimental stripes so I can get this when it comes out, yes yes.

I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had a good time, and everyone who doesn't also had a good time. Good times all around! The high point of my holiday was the Doctor Who Christmas Special which was amazing, and I am a huge nerd. I was also in Atlantic City to see my relatives on actual Christmas, which was interesting because neither my sister and I could gamble and/or drink so we just kind of sat at the pool and chilled out. Which was pretty nice, all in all.

New years is just around the corner! Got any fun new years plans / traditions?

Omlette and toast

Weirdly I have less time to blog while I'm on break than not. Weird, huh? And since my taobao order got delayed 2 weeks (one week ago) (wtf, R-series), I will technically be following my "no more lolita until 2011" deal I made with myself back in Sept/Oct. where I spent a little too much. Moving onwards...

Pictured is breakfast last sunday- spinach (with onions, mushroom, and cheese) omlette and toast. Spinach and goatcheese is actually my favorite kind of omlette~ It's nice to be at my parent's place, because we have a gas range <3 Which is amazing and so much easier to cook with than on the electric range in my apartment (;_;)

Leftovers (not food, I promise)

A couple odds and ends fashion (I use this term loosely) related items. Here is my converted bow that originally went at the neck of my St. Claire OP. Using the pin backing, I slipped it on a plain black headband I have. No this is not omfgcreative, but I just wanted to mention I cannot bring myself to actually pin it on the dress itself. It leaves holes!! I dunno, I never liked how big the holes were left by using those kind of pins. I'm now considering getting a strong magnet backing, but I heard even those run the risk of having the object fall off. In the meantime, cute matching headbow! (I have no outfit shot of when I wore the whole deal to my Ballroom Club's holiday party, w/e)



And here are my new winter slippers! I finally switched from my summer slippers, after picking these up at Target. I think they are really really cute, and they are hella warm to boot.

How do you keep your feet warm in the winter? Slippers? Socks? Keep shoes on at all costs?

(W)International Lolita Day 2010

Celebrated my first winter ILD by dressing up~ Rundown:
Skirt: Baby
Blouse: Yolanda
Socks: Innocent World
Hairpiece: Handmade by someone else

Pretty basic, I love this skirt to death and really should wear it out more. For lack of company as well as an excess of finals coming up, I went by myself to my favorite bakery/cafe/lunch place, Hot Cakes, and got a quiche and early grey and studied for my Japanese final this Monday. It was quite nice. Also, this morning before I got dolled up I cleaned the whole apartment with my housemates. Our floor was getting really grody, so it was definitely much needed. In addition I abhor showing a messy room in pictures, so I knew I had to clean up ;D



Make up shot. Make up is really the bane of my existence. I have to practice contouring more (getting a good brush would be a nice start) and I'm cursed with hidden monolids... meaning that most of the time, eyemake up just kind of disappears when I have my eyes open, hence the closed eye shot. I'm not big on falsies and I didn't even put on mascara because I find with my uncurlable eyelashes (this list of grievances is getting really long) the mascara just ends up on my face and its generally unpleasant.

But I tried! And I'll get better, in time. In the meantime, does anyone have any links for people with really asian eyes (ie me?) It's been killing me, but I won't resort to eyelid tape/glue/surgery.

Lolitas, what did you do (if anything) for ILD?

Baby x AatP x Kuragehime

OMG
Dying a little bit right now. Baby and AatP is doing a collab with Kuragehime, currently on reserve: heeeere(how did I miss this??)

Coming up next

Teenage girl spotted running down to bus stop with toast in her mouth, news at 11.

For almost my entire life I managed to eat breakfast before I left the house. All the times I've seen some character run late, go out the door with bread clamped between their teeth, I thought, "Hey if they just got up earlier they would be able to eat at home. Plus you get crumbs all over yourself" and happily tucked in to breakfast.

Well, today with 3 minutes till the bus arrived and my breakfast sitting on a plate, I bit the bullet (or bread...) and rushed out, probably looking like a complete fool. But at least I got breakfast, right?

It gets better- bus pulls up, I've got a quarter bit of bread left, sit down feeling pleased, if not a little self conscious and I heard the dreaded words-

'We've got 6 minutes here'

...

MLIAAA (my life is average/anime/awesome)

Bonus Round



I posted these to my tumblr the other day for funsies, I was just messing around with my hair and stuff. I love that over head braid style, and now my real hair is -finally- long enough to pull it off. The dress is Mary Magdalene (I swear, if I could marry a brand I'd be down on one knee as we speak) and the tights are 'sweater tights' from target... it's getting chilly guys and none of my housemates apparently need heat.

Off Brand Wishlist

It's getting cold and so longer JSK styles are appealing to me more. Especially these gorgeous pieces from the taobao shop R-Series. As they cost about 700 RMB, which is about 110 USD, they aren't cheap. Largely what I've found in buying offbrand lolita, especially from taobao, is that you get what you pay for, but up to a certain threshold (the threshold being the total price versus it's quality) and then past that threshold would be paying essentially for a brand name. Take the SS AP shoes for example. Cheaper tea parties probably have worse quality than the more expensive replicas that are essentially the same AP shoes. But the real AP shoes are obviously way more expensive. I find the same rule applies to a lot of offbrand dresses and blouses.



So I'm far from put off by the price tag. After all, 110USD (before shipping, SS fees) is a little less than half the price for a brand (non print) JSK.


This new floral one went up recently I believe (since I've been stalking their store all month) and I'm really digging both colorways. But I might go for the yellow in the end because I already have too much red tones in my wardrobe, haha.

Not to mention once December rolls around the the holidays start, a lot of shopping services get really tied up and there are delays everywhere. If I need something custom made, I don't want to get my winter style items in early March (though I don't think it's that extreme... probably).

What should I doooooo

tl;dr dresses, man. Dresses.

Another day, another market

Went to the farmer's market, now it opens at 8 instead of 6 and runs till 2. I still got up at the same time to go anyway. I went with a pretty laid back classic coord, between the knit tights, bloomers, petti, skirt, and coat, I stayed very warm.

My hat! I love it so much.


My main haul was bread, a loaf of farmhouse milk bread and french bread (which I froze for later this week) and a new jar of jam. It's "strawberry chocolate mint" and... that's exactly what it tastes like. Amazing. They also had strawberry and thai basil jam.



I also finally caved and got a ring from that jewelry table I adore. Only 5$ and the color matched Mary Magdalene's "Raspberry" colorway so perfectly. I really love wearing rings.

So that's how I spent my last 19$, go me~

OTL now, back to studying....

Feels bad man

Pic unrelated, I just love Mary Magdalene dresses and everyone else should too.

Today I go into target and remember I have a 10$ gift card and then hunt futilely through my bag for it and realize it's not where it should be. Then I go home and look for it (after getting my plastic mat anyway) and it's nowhere to be found! What a tragedy right?

What's an item you've lost, but never noticed until you needed it?

I'm still hoping in vain that some day it'll come back to me. But I might have just lost it at the drug store when I dropped my card case once and EVERYTHING spilled out and aughhhh

Happy hump day.

Cute Animal Objects

In the spirit of winterizing my room, I picked up a humidifier because it gets really dry :( It's also shaped like a super cute frog. Also I think the high today was 46F... the lowest of the season, yay! There's hope for snow yet.

As just an add on for a lolita related topic, I almost or never wear a petticoat with my lolita skirts when I wear them for classes or school, out of practicality. A lot of the seats in the auditorium or classroom are pretty small and increasing my volume will just get in the way of me and other people. While its an acceptable excuse, I still feel kind of ehhh. I love getting wear out of my skirts, but the poof man. The poof.

Farmer's Market Outing

Today was my outing with my friend to the city farmer's market. Opens from 6am to noon, though starting next week it'll be 8am to 2pm. They have so much excellent fresh produce as you can see.

Click the jump for more pictures :D

Book Post: 下妻物語 or Kamikaze Girls by Novala Takemoto

So, after I signed up for a free year of Amazon Prime with my student email (I also sent a FutureMe email in one year to remind me to cancel it before I have to start paying) I've been getting a lot of (relatively) inexpensive things because hey. Free fast shipping. I've seen the movie and read the book, but that was both ages ago. I don't even remember where I read it the first time. Light novels are something I purchase more frequently than manga, if only in a misguided attempt to tell publishers "hey translate more light novels please". Alas, if only.

If you have read KG, then you know it's a fun story. I like the differences between the book and the movie, and in the end I think I prefer the book (I always do). How about you guys?

Light novel vs. Movie? Totally didn't mess that up, haha

And if you haven't read or seen the movie, it's a fun, quirky watch and a good, quick read. Sometimes when I'm just feeling blah or down I'll watch it on youtube and generally even just listening to it perks me up. I love Anna Tsuchiya ♥

Farmer's Market Flowers + Pet peeve challenge

I bought these to liven up my room a couple days ago, 3$ bunch of mixed flowers. Very pretty, about mid week I took them out of the water and hung them upside down. I'll get some more this weekend I think, and try to accumulate a dried flower collection. For some reason, I like dried flowers just as much as live ones. There is something touching about the curled up preservation of them.

In lolita related news, Lolita in Secret's Pet peeve challenge.

1. When a print or item comes up on a secondhand auction site and you've been wanting it forever (or for a day) ... but you get outbid, or just don't have the funds.

2. The omnipresent paranoia of ruining my clothes.

3. Messy photo backgrounds. I will be the first to admit that my room, 9 times out of 10, looks like a hurricane passed through. But if I'm going to take a picture of myself and put it up for people to see, I take the extra 10 minutes to clear out a space for the shot.

4. Pink. Nothing against the colour, but the fact that I look really, really bad in it. Curse my midtone asian skin.

5. Bows. Not regular sized decorative bows, or even OTT head eating ones (I think they are quite cute). But the bows on a JSK or OP that just ruin it. Like, it would look so much better if it weren't for those damn bows that definitely aren't detachable. Sigh.

And there are my personal pet peeves. Most of all of them are avoided by selective shopping and really they are just trivial things.

I do wish I looked better in pink, all things considered

Unintentional visual pun: Aster Cafe and Doctor Who

I wasn't feeling so hot today so... I decided to cheer myself up with wearing some pretty clothes. This is my favorite Lief print to date. It has a very classic feel, but very intricate at the same time. It plays up a unique theme too, instead of the usual fare of delicious food or cute animals (not that there is anything wrong with either)



I used the detachable bow from the skirt as a makeshift bowtie, in honor of Matt Smith, my favorite incarnation of The Doctor. Yep, super nerd.

Skirt: Indie: Lief
Blouse: Offbrand (Yolanda)
Bag: Innocent World
Everything else: Offbrand