Sunday, October 21, 2012

Late Summer/Early Fall

I can't believe how quickly time goes by. It is already October!


Over the summer I organized and attended a few Lolita events. 

It started with The Aquarium meetup in Long Beach. I wore my Treasure Hunt JSK. 

EGL holds monthly theme contetests, and Augusts' theme was nautical. I submitted this picture and won! 

Here's a shot of the group: 
The turnout was great! I got there super late because I was taking a test in the morning, but I was lucky to snag everyone afterword. 

The week after that was the Museum of Death meetup which I organized. I wore my Cinderella Jewelry JSK. 

Here's a photo of our group. I was completely stunned and a little intimidated that so many people showed up. 

Then we had a small gathering in Little Tokyo for Little Nisei week. It must have been 100 degrees out, I thought I was going to die. I wore my purple Melty Mermaid Princess skirt along with OTK oots and the Rhapsody wig. I was sweating like a pig! 

Then there was the "Hello" meetup in El Monte. I wore my sax Wonder Story JSK. I completely forgot to pack a blouse that weekend when I left for my boyfriends, so I went blouseless. 
This is how I looked a majority of the time: 

After the meetup a couple of the girls went to IKEA with me. I was moving out of my parents house that weekend, and IKEA turned out to be a great photo op.


Then my friend Penny had her birthday party in Little Tokyo. It was pretty damn hot that day, so I went blouse less once again. 




That was the last meetup I attended. I can't dress up too often because I work Saturdays now, but luckily there are some Friday meetups in November. 


As for new stuff, I just purchased my first lolita piece in a while! I bought St. Mephisto in black. This time the OP version. It's my first OP, its definitely different. 

Also, I got my first valentine and secret this week!

Someone made this secret about my user image. 

And then someone made this valentine! So awesome. 

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Sunday, July 22, 2012

July Events

July has been pretty fun. It started out with a meetup at the Norton Simon Museum and the Chado Tea House. I wore St. Mephisto. I still need to get this altered so it fits me better! 


Ironicly there was a Japanese Cherry Blossom exhibit going on in the museam. The people were pretty nice, and one of the museum workers (who was an older caucasian man) told us about how he lived in Harajuku for 8 years and would go out on Sundays and see all the lolitas! It's always nice when people recognize the fashion and not just jump to the conclusion that it's a costume. 


Here's a nice shot of the museum group. Susanna (2nd from left) left before tea. She is a seamstress and makes all of her JSK's. 


Here's a group shot from Chado: 

I fucked up this shot on purpose. 


Now on to future junk!!


Saturday August 4th is a maritime meetup at the Long Beach Aquarium. Guess what I had to sell to buy an outfit? 

 Chess Chocolate. I sold Chocolate Chess. AND my Royal Chocolate socks. But just look at what I'm getting in return: 

This is called Treasure Hunt in the Mystic Island by Alice and the Pirates. It is one of the most brilliant prints I've ever seen, and it's so perfect for pirate lolita. I went back and forth with myself about Chocolate Chess, but in the end I realized that I have no desire to wear it again. I only wanted to keep it around because of how rare it is. 

Anyway here's a closeup of the print itself: 

I'm actually pretty annoyed at myself. This print came out back in April. I had no idea it existed until 2 weeks ago. I somehow missed the April Kera scans on EGL therefore had no idea this was coming. I'm not a huge fan of the JSK, I'd rather have the skirt. Treasure Hunt was a reserve print, so I'm lucky to have the JSK. I'm still on the lookout for the skirt version. I prefer AATP's skirts because they can be incorporated very easily into every day wear. 


Anyway I'll also be selling my Angelic Pretty Chocolate bar bag and donut necklace. I also considered selling Wonder Story, in an attempt to move away from sweet entirely. I couldn't quite bear to sell it just yet! 

I am hosting a meetup in Hollywood the following Saturday. It'll be a gothic themed meet starting at the Museum of Death. 




Friday, June 22, 2012

AM2 outfit

I went to AM2 last Friday, and wore my mint Bodyline JSK. Even though I'm growing out of sweet I'm still very partial to this JSK.

I didn't manage to get very many pictures, but I ended up getting one with my friend Judy.




I only ended up staying at the convention for about an hour. I bought a couple of things, my favorite of which are these black dangle stars from Dearie.
These clips are just like the 6% ones. I bought them to go with my Melty Mermaid Princess pirate coord. They may also go with Cinderella Jewelry. 




Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Chado Meetup

This Saturday I went to a meetup in Pasadena at the Chado Tea Room. I wore my Amelia's Locket skirt.


Sophia and I:


Here's a couple of group shots:


All in all it was a pretty nice Saturday afternoon meet. As for Chado's tea service, it was decently priced. I ended up paying $23 for a pot of tea, 4 tea sandwiches, a scone, and a slice of cake. I do prefer the Scarlet Tea Room to Chado, as I liked their sandwiches a lot more.


There's a lot going on in June and July. On Friday I may go to an anime convention in Anaheim. Plans are in the works for a Norton Simon/Scarlet tea room meet.








Sunday, May 27, 2012

First Buys of the Summer!

I worked a crap load more than normal this pay period, so I was able to put a bit of money away in my savings, as well as buy a couple new things for my wardrobe!


Item 1:
Baby the Stars shine bright Cinderella Jewelry JSK in black


I got the deal of the century on this. A girl from London bought this in an attempt to alter it for a larger size. She decided to give up on it, and decided to sell it for dirt cheap.

This is definitely going to be a bit of a project. My tailor will have to fix the alterations and piece it back to normal, but it'll be well worth it.

I'm thinking of doing an entirely black coordinate with this. Meaning black blouse, black socks, black shoes. I'm going to have the most fun with the hair and accessories. I'm going to pin up my honey colored alice wig into an updo, and wear elegant Cinderella inspired jewelry.


Item #2
AATP Melty Mermaid Princess skirt in black:

I found this by chance. A girl posted it to a want to buy post on egl, and the girl who wanted to buy it changed her mind! I rarely look at WTB posts, but since the title was "mermaids" I decided to check and see if I'd get lucky. Which I did.

For this coord, the purple in the print is unlike the basic lavender in lolita. Therefore I'm going to keep the coord predominately black. I may go to Teeja Jamilla on etsy for more narwhal pirate tights. She does black tights with a purple print that would look lovely with this skirt. I have black OTK pirate looking boots that would also go nicely with this skirt. This is going to be more of a piratey coord than mermaid, so I may turn the waist ties into a pirate head scarf! Also, the underlying colors in my pirate boots are silver, so I'll be using silver jewelry as opposed to gold like I do with the navy colorway.


Item #3:
HP Lovecraft necklace


I bought this for my Cthulhu coord. I haven't even started on that yet, but I'm already buying crap for it. it reads:
That is not dead
Which can eternal lie
And with strange eons
Even death may die


I think I'm done buying lolita for the rest of the summer.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

May Adventures

May has proven itself to be a good month!

I'm currently in the process of training for a new job. It's at the same place I work now, but is a lot more responsibility (and more pay!) I'm still in training though, so I will not count on that raise until I successfully pass.

On to the fun stuff.
A couple of weeks ago I went to lunch with a couple of folks from the LA Lolita community. We went to Royal T! The place is closing in August, so it was nice to get out there before it shuts its doors.

I wore a casual St. Mephisto's coord. I threw this together at the last minute, and I'm not pleased at how it turned out. I used pink and black to coordinate it with, but I feel like I could have used more lavender somewhere in the coord.

I wear it with a cardigan because I do not like how the front part of the jSK looks (ribboning, bows).
It just seems a bit boring with the cardigan. I definitely need to get this JSK tailored a little bit. I'm hoping my tailor will be able to remove the ribbons and bows, and maybe lengthen the straps a bit to make it longer.
Here's a group shot:


This last Saturday, there was a meetup at the Old Zoo at Griffith park. It was HUGE! There were girls there from all areas of Southern California. I had so much fun. I wore my Melty Mermaid Princess coord. I initially wanted to wear Amelia's Locket, but I lost the mint blouse i was going to wear with it.

Picture dump time!

This picture was taken by a professional photographer named Nelson. I believe he's married to a local lolita and he comes to most of the big meets. His work is AMAZING, though a little depressing. I wish I looked like I do in this picture normally!

Here's a group of us hiking through the park!


Sara's wearing St. Mephisto, she looked so pretty in it!



Aurora, Flora and I:


And this girl was wearing sax Wonder Story! She had so much poof. She said she got her petticoat for around $15 in the fashion district in LA, I'm gonna have to go check it out. 

The meetup was a swapmeet and pot luck. I brought a bunch of my stuff to sell, but only ended up selling my black bodyline soft cream skirt. Just to give you an idea of how big this meet was, here's a shot I took before it started to get really packed:



I am so glad I went, because I got to see all my old friends and meet a bunch more.

I am hoping I'll be able to go to Anime Expo in late June, it all depends on my new work schedule. However I will for sure be going to a small tea in Pasadena in June.







Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Cthulhu Project

Before I go into any plans, I feel that I should lay the groundwork first. If you can't already tell, I get a bit obsessive over things I'm interested in. This is something I have interested in for a while, so I feel a background in the subject is appropriate. 

About ten years ago, I watched a movie called Dagon. 












Dagon is a horror movie about half fish people. It is loosely based on HP Lovecraft's story, and it definitely stuck with me. In 2005  I found a band called Dagon with an evil looking mermaid on the cover of their CD. I fell in love with the mermaid artwork, and the guy at the record store was awesome enough to let me keep the cover without actually buying the CD. A few months later I got the mermaid tattooed on my upper back. Unfortunately I can not find a picture of the art for the life of me.

I decided I wanted to read Dagon. I went to the library to get it, and while I was there I saw this, also by HP Lovecraft: 
























I was absolutely amazed by the artwork on the cover, so I checked the book out along with Dagon. I read Dagon, but never ended up reading anything from this book. It is full of short stories, and I had no idea where to read about the giant monstrosity on the cover. 
Over the years I never forgot the art. I really wanted to get this tattooed as well, but could not think of a less graceful thing than a giant squid like apparatus on my back. Over the years I did things to get try to get it out of my system so that I wouldn't get it tattooed; I traced over it a couple times, I even tried painting it. Nothing really worked. 

So recently I started researching it a little bit more. I found out the artist of the portrait is Raymond Bayless. I also found out that the monster is called Cthulhu. Researching it more I found out that it is apparently the god of Lovecraft's characters. I also found out that the book has the story on Cthulhu, which is appropriately titled "The Call of Cthulhu". Metallica's song from Master of Puppets called "The Thing that Should Not Be" is based off of Cthulhu as well. I've heard that song dozens of times before, and I had no clue! 


So what do I do? I decide to turn this art work into a lolita skirt. 

By using Spoonflower, I will be able to print this portrait onto fabric.  Cthulhu and his cavern will be on the front of the skirt, and the rocks will be along the bottom of the fabric the rest of the way around. 

My first step in doing this was buying the actual book. My dad said I needed a high resolution photo instead of pulling it off of the internet (something to do about pixels). That version of The Dunwich Horror has since been discontinued, so I had to order an old library book from Ohio. I'm glad I did, because I was then able to read the Call of Cthulhu. According to the story, Cthulhu was sent down from the stars and has been around for eons. He's been in suspended in time, dead but dreaming, waiting for the right time to awake.  By reading the book, I found other things that I'll be incorporating into the skirt: 

Lovecraft developed a language for the Cthulhu cult (the cult are the people who help Cthulhu awake when the 'stars are aligned properly') This is their chant: 

Ph'nghui mglw'nath Cthulhu R'ley wgah'nagl fhtagn

It means, in his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. 

I want to put the chant on the bottom of the skirt, underneath the rocks. I want it to be in some nautical looking script. 


I also found the latitude and longitude coordinates for R'lyeh, which I want to incorporate into the skirt as well. I am still kind of stuck about how to do so. 

I know of a couple girls in the lolita community who can sew, so I'll be seeing if one of them can help me turn the fabric into a skirt. 

As for the coord,  thats an entirely different story. The color scheme is going to be pale green and gray. I see this having the potential to be both a pirate and mermaid coord. 

Either way, I'm pretty excited. I can actually say that I'm content with my lolita wardrobe in a way that I haven't been before. I don't feel the need to buy new stuff anymore, and all I have left to do is sell off most of my old sweet stuff. I'll only have 3 JSK's and 2 skirts, but I feel that's enough. My wardrobe is still versatile enough to wear sweet when I want. 

Oh, and the Royal T meet next week, I don't know what to wear yet!