Angelic Pretty Lace

I attempted to blog about Angelic Pretty's lace in my last post, but decided that it is far too interesting a subject to only mention briefly. While lace may seem like something minuscule to outsiders, it is in fact what makes our lolita brand dresses special. It is the reason why I wear sweet lolita, and why I can justify spending the money on my dresses. 

Lace is also one of the reasons I decided to not wear replicas. While some of the replica brands do an OK job at replicating Angelic Pretty's lace, its just not the same. Additionally, replicas can be relatively expensive too, and I'd rather just save my money for the real thing. 

In this post, I am going to show five of Angelic Pretty's prints and their lace. Two of these prints are so loved and popular that they are somewhat difficult to find and incredibly more expensive than the others. This post is meant for outsiders to perhaps understand an aspect of this fashion that makes it so unique. 

 I found some of these photos from other fashion blogs, so if one of these is one your photos, I thank you for taking these pictures! Also, some of these pictures might be big, but it's so you can see the beautiful detail in the lace. 

Milky Berry

 As I mentioned in my earlier post, I don't particularly like this lace. I realize it's because it isn't the typical colorful mesh material. Since I posted my Milky Berry JSK in the last post, I'm going to put the lace in here only. You need to look closely to see the detail: 

Milky Berry's print is covered in strawberries. Note how the lace matches that theme. 

Sugary Carnival 

Sugary Carnival is one of Angelic Pretty's most popular prints. Used, Sugary Carnival costs one to two hundred dollars more than the original release price. It is detailed with carousel horses attached to marshmallow "poles". Pictured is a Sugary Carnival skirt: 

And now for Sugary Carnival's lace: 

Notice the carousel horses in the lace! How adorable is that? 

Milky Planet:

Milky Planet is also a relatively popular Angelic Pretty print. There is ice cream everywhere on this print, even little ice cream rocket ships.  I couldn't find a picture of a dress or skirt that had a good view of the print itself, so here is a swatch of it:

Now for Milky Planet's lace: 

Can you see the ice cream cones in the lace? Kind of makes you hungry doesn't it? 

Jewelry Jelly 

I like Jewelry Jelly because unlike the last two prints, it isn't as crazy in demand. It usually sells quickly when it's in the EGL sales, but it isn't as expensive as Milky Planet and Sugary Carnival. Since I have a Jewelry Jelly JSK in an earlier post, I'm going to use the swatch as an example of the print. Its somewhat hard to see, but there are jello molds on platters. 

                                  Look closely and see how the lace matches the print: 

Candy Treat

I thought I'd post Candy Treat's lace, as I blogged so much about this print. If you haven't noticed from earlier posts, Candy Treat is adorned with lolly pops and other candies.  Heres the print swatch: 

Now for the lace, which I can't get enough of: 

More lace to make your mouth water!

So now you see one of the reasons why I am obsessed with this fashion. Theres no way in hell you can find this kinda stuff at the mall! 

Milky Berry Coord

Today I purchased my second Angelic Pretty set. It isn't Jewelry Jelly like I had initially wanted, but it was my second choice. I've been saving up and living frugally to be able to afford more Angelic Pretty, and I'm happy that I found this dress in the colourway that I wanted! For anyone who doesn't know how Lolita sales work, we either have to buy directly from the stores, or buy used on EGL sales. EGL is a livejournal community devoted to gothic and lolita fashion. They have a sales portion where girls can put up their used clothes and accessories and sell them to others. This is a great tool for us, as brands usually only release a certain amount of items in a particular series. Anyway, I think Milky Berry was released a few years ago, so there is no way I'd be able to buy it direct from their site. I happened upon it this morning  in the EGL sales! I thought I'd share with you my plans for my Milky Berry Coord.

First, and most importantly, this is the set that I bought:

I lucked out and got the JSK and hairbow in one set. No socks though :-(

The one thing I do not like about Milky Berry is the lace. It has strawberries in the lace, but it's white and doesn't stand out as much as prints like Milky Planet and Sugary Carnival. I will post another entry about Angelic Pretty lace today. 

I will be able to wear this with the mocha latte wig that I already bought from GLW. Or perhaps my plan old boring brunette wig that is similar to the one in the photo of the bow. 

Now on to the things that I still have to buy! I'm hoping to get away with spending only about $100 more. 

To make my life a little easier, I am planning on buying Angelic Pretty's Berry Berry socks instead of their Milky Berry ones. The socks in the Milky Berry series might be a little difficult to find, as Angelic Pretty doesn't produce them anymore. However, Berry Berry socks are currently available on their website. I am going to buy them in white because it's one of the coordinating colors in the outfit. 

Next, I need to buy a bag. Angelic Pretty released a strawberry bag that would go perfectly with this coord. However, as I mentioned earlier, I don't want to spend more than another $100 on Milky Berry. Bodyline, Angelic Pretty's poor second cousin, released this bag.  I'm hoping and praying I'll be able to find it in EGL. 

                                                            

Next, I will need a red blouse to go under the JSK. I can probably find that for cheap either at a thrift store or Ross. 

Finally, I need rmint shoes to complete this look. I'd like to try another type of shoe other than RHS, so I'd settle for tea party shoes or anything else lolita-esque: 

                                                      

These shoes are Antaina, which is the same ebay seller I bought my blue rocking horse shoes from. Their shoes average about $55 shipped, and I trust them because of the good experience I had with them last time. 

As for accessories, I've been planning them out for a while now. Perhaps I convinced myself to buy Milky Berry before Jewelry Jelly because of all the creative freedom I'll have. I am going to make giant strawberries for hair clips. And at dinner on Friday, I saw strawberry tarts and got inspired. I'm going to make a huge strawberry tart necklace. I also happened to pick up this Angelic Pretty gingham ring for a really good price on EGL: 

I hate gingham, but this will go so well with my coord!

As I mentioned earlier, after I shine my boots for work tomorrow, I'll post an entry about Angelic Pretty lace. It's much more exciting than you may think :0) 

Comic Con 2011

This Saturday I went to Comic Con in San Diego. It was quite an experience. I wore my candy treat coord, which turned out nicely. My sax RHS from ebay were much more comfortable than my pink ones from Bodyline.  I walked around in them for 12 hours and didn't get very tired. Comic Con was insanely huge, with so much crap to look at in the exhibition hall. We went to a PeeWee Herman panel, and a Dr Who meetup as well.
                                          
Here's Erica cosplaying as River Song from Dr Who. I really wish I had some pictures from their meetup. There was probably about 25 Dr Who cosplayers.

And now on to my CANDY TREAT COORD!

I brought three different dresses for comic con, but ended up wearing Candy Treat the entire time. On Thursday when we went to the actual con, I wore my wig without the pigtails.

That day I got invited to a photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly, and I got to take professional photographs with a bunch of other cosplayers. I only let them think I was wearing a costume. 

On Saturday, I went to a Lolita meetup at Seaport Village. which is right across the street from the convention center. That day I did end up wearing my pigtails, and I got mobbed by people taking pictures while walking through the outside of the convention. The pigtails really brought the look together, and although I fear they make my face look too round, I think I'd wear them again.

This is a photo from facebook.com/deliscousbuzz. I actually won a contest because of this photo, but the prize was to some weird party in San. Diego that I had no interest in.

 There must have been about 20 girls at the meetup. I have never seen so many girls dressed in lolita at once. The ones that I talked to were so nice, and everyone looked amazing. 

Heres a nice candid shot of us walking to the carousel 

Before we left for seaport village, this strange lady with a german accent made me and my friend Amy pose for weird photos. It turns out she was the wife of some famous german filmaker named Werner Herzog. I've never heard of him. Anyway, apparently he's quite famous. Here he is standing around some of the girls: 

His wife was really weird and wanted to take pictures of us holding hands and hugging as if we were little girls. Just because we dress like dolls doesn't mean we want to act like children! 

                                                  Anyway, heres a good shot of most of the group:

This is most of the group. I'm over on the far right. 

All in all, I had so much fun at Comic Con. It was a priceless experience and I hope to go again next year. 

Projects

This week I'm tearing my room apart. I donated a good majority of my clothes to the goodwill, and I'm going to destroy my old dresser to make room for another one. The one I currently have is wide, and I'd prefer one that's longer and not as wide. The one I'm going to take from the garage won't really match the rest of my room, but I don't really care. I'm going to make a lolita wardrobe out of a current bookshelf I have, so that will be fun.  I moved my bed around so I'll have the room to do it.

My Angelic Pretty purse came in the mail today! I'm so happy. It's in excellent condition too. Kawaii Goods is so awesome. Once my sax RHS come in the mail my candy treat coord will be complete!! They are currently clearing customs in San Francisco, so they should be here by tomorrow. I'm going to a tea party on Sunday in Glendora, so that will be my first time wearing everything. I'm really excited to wear Angelic Pretty for the first time. Then that Thursday will be comic con! Horay. Really stoked.


I'm also going to a sailor lolita meetup in August. I have this dress from bodyline:
I detest the color and the fabric of this dress. When I bought it, I assumed its color was navy blue. Instead, this dress is royal blue, and the fabric is similar to a sports jersey. I was initially planning on trying to sell it on EGL, but I think I'll just cut off the sleeves so it doesn't look as frumpy. I also need some white OTK socks. I have plain black mary jane shoes which will probably go nicely with this. I'm also planning on making my own royal blue hair bow, and using an old nautical looking bag from high school. I have an anchor polymer clay mold which will be good for my accessories.
Also, this wig re-stocked on the GLW website literally a day after I bought the mocha latte wig:


I think this would be perfect for a sailor coord, but my mocha latte wig will also suffice. If my anthropology book on amazon sells, I'll have enough to buy this.


Also, I'm going to try and sell my first lolita coord on EGL. It's the milky chan replica that I hate so much. I'm going to attempt to group everything together; the dress, the wig, the cuffs, the bow, the bloomers, and even the jewelry I made. I'm hoping to get $100 for everything. It will go straight into my jewelry jelly fund!
:
These are the accessories. I stupidly glued a cookie to the middle of the bow, and a barrette clip to it as well.

Until next time.

Cute Etsy Finds, amongst other things

I just thought I'd share these cute things I found on etsy:



I found this fuzzy star clip from a shop called Starlight Deco Dream. It was $10 with shipping. Pretty good deal! Most fuzzy clips can cost upwards to $20 with shipping. It has some cute deco pieces on it as well. It'll look nice with my blue wig.

 
These gummy bear rings are from an etsy shop called Bit of Sugar. These rings are on sale for $10 plus shipping. I adore them, but I don't really look good in rings because I pick my nails :/ I'm going to try to learn how to make gummy bear molds and cast resign instead, that way I can make my own. Though they won't be as good as these.


Anyway, I got paid yesterday, and I put some money away towards my AP fund. The rest goes towards my car payment, insurance, and basic living expenses. I did buy a new wig and socks though :-)


This is the blended choco latte wig, and its been sold out for months on their site. I initially wanted the black wig from them for a sailor lolita coord, but I can wear this with both sailor and sweet.

And I picked up some mint secret shop socks from the EGL sales this morning:
I bought these for my soft cream JSK, and my future mint coords. I got them at a pretty good price at $13.

Jury Duty part 2

I got called back for a second day of jury duty! I'm livid. On top of that, it won't start until all of the jurors are here. There are about 2 or 3 late people, and the rest of us have to wait for them to show up! Ugh! I can't stand people who are late. Haven't they ever heard of planning ahead? Yesterday the judge said this shouldn't go past 12pm, and if it does I'm screwed! I have no lunch money, and lunch is an entire hour and a half.

Anyway, I found this when I was surfing the web yesterday, bored out of my mind. 
CAKE POPS!!! nom nom nom

The best part about these cake pops are that they are fake. Can you believe that? Their so beautiful! I've tried to make cake pops out of polymer clay before, but they've come out looking like crap. After looking at these though, I know what to do! I will make my own soon.
Heres a close up!
 
I love the detail on these.
When I made my cake pops, I just wrapped a sheet of polymer clay around a ball of clay. They looked pretty crappy, because I have a hard time blending the sheets together.

I may make some of these tomorrow. I will post pictures of them when I do!

Jury Duty Blues

Today, I'm stuck in jury duty, missing out on work. I'm pretty mad about that. To top it off, the county's wifi won't let me accesses facebook or livejournal. That means no EGL sales browsing today. I thought I'd share my plans for my Candy treat coord, and also post my next dream dress. 

As posted in an earlier blog, this is the candy treat set that I recently bought:

There are a lot of colors going on here, but I'll be using the color blue to coordinate this dress. Blue will be my secondary color. 

This is the wig I plan on wearing with this dress:

The wig is a blue and pink split, and as you can see it is predominantly blue. I think the pink bow will coordinate nicely with the blue of the wig.

This is the bag I'll be using:

I'm buying this from the girl that runs kawaii goods. She's giving it to me for $75 shipped, which is a great deal. The Candy Treat bag on Angelic Pretty's website sold out before I could buy it, so this is a lovely alternative. It's not very functional with my mint pieces, (I discovered I love the mint colorway and want almost everything in it)  but I'm still happy I got such a deal from kawaii goods. 

These are the shoes I'll be wearing: 

I bought them in sax. These cost a whopping $90 to buy and ship out here, as I need them by comic con. I was initially planning on buying sax tea party shoes, but I fell in love with the way rocking horse shoes look after wearing them at AX. Their such a pain in the ass to walk in though!!! :-)

I bought  a light blue Ann Taylor blouse at the thrift store, and I'm going to alter it with lace and buttons.

As for accessories, I've already made some lollypop pieces for my hair.  I also want to incorporate smarties candy into my outfit. I'm going to make smarties bracelets, as well as probably glue them onto something stupid like wristcuffs. I made wristcuffs for my soft cream coord, but didn't end up wearing them. I'm kind of sick of making wristcuffs. I also want to incorporate jelly beans, and conversation hearts into the coord as well. I bought Candy Treat because I was amazed with the amount of things I'd be able to make for it. So far, I've been relatively lazy with completing it all. Maybe, once I see the dress in person, I'll become more motivated. 

And of course, no OTT sweet look is complete without circle lenses. I bought some violet circle lenses from thedollyeye.com. Right now their having a $!5 deal. That $15 includes shipping too, which is pretty nice

Anyway, this dress is next in line for me:

Jewelry Jelly! I don't know what it is about this print, but I love it. I don't even like jello. Theres no way I'd be able to make jelly themed accessories, but I love this colorway! The pink and blue would coordinate in the dress well with the accessories I already have for Candy Treat. 

If I put away $120 from each pay check, I'll have enough for another Angelic Pretty dress in about a month and a half. I'll have enough left over for hopefully a bag or shoes or something. Its really fun living off of $40 a week, haha.

AX

I went to Anime Expo at the convention center this weekend, and had a total blast. The meetup got canceled because the room it was going to be in got evacuated, but I did see a lot of Lolitas! A lot of them were really nice! I was thrilled to meet and talk to other girls with so much in common with me. 

Here are some photos of me at AX: 

This is me at the kawaii goods booth. I bought a mint colored bow, and a teddy bear ice cream parfait necklace.

Four hours in to the convention, my feet were starting to kill me! I never knew how difficult walking in rocking horse shoes is! This photo makes me realize how important OTK socks are to lolita. I really need to get some! 

                                                   Here I am taking a well needed breather.  

This is Erica, my photo buddy.

 It took me 40 min. to put in my circle lenses. I nearly gave up! I'm so glad I didn't though, its amazing how they pulled the outfit together. 

I truly love this wig too. Gothic and Lolita wigs has been a godsend for me. Before I found them, I was buying my wigs from Hollywood blvd. These wigs are so amazing, because they pull together the OTT look like nothing. In this photo you can see the melty mickey mouse ice cream hair pieces that I made. 

All in all, I had a blast. I'm already planning a coord for next year. It's going to be a cosplay/lolita fusion.

Until next time. 

First con tommorow

Tomorrow I am going to anime expo, which will be my first expo/con I've gone to. Candy Treat hasn't come in the mail yet, so I'll be wearing my bodyline soft cream JSK in mint.

For my bodyline coord, I altered a blouse from H&M to go under it, and I think it came out nicely. It certainly saved me a ton of money. If I had gone the cheap route and ordered one from bodyline, it would have cost at least $50 to ship it out here. Instead I spent about $8 on the shirt and the lace and did it myself. I'll also be wearing my wig from gothic and lolita wigs, and circle lenses from thedollyeye.com I have no idea how to put in lenses, so it'll be quite the adventure. I'm also really excited to wear my rocking horse shoes outside, as I've only been able to prance around the house in them. I also made a crap load of hair accessories out of polymer clay.



The girl I bought Candy Treat from waited to ship the dress, as she lives in Canada and did not want it to get stuck in the mail because of the postal strike. Pretty good idea, but it'll make it just days late. I guess thats a good thing, because it let me finish up the soft cream coord, which I would have all but abandoned if I had my Angelic Pretty .


 I'm going to a lolita meetup at the expo and I'm trying not to be nervous about it! I just have to keep telling myself I'll look just as good as the other girls, as I think I have the anatomy of the outfit down.  I've only met a few other lolitas, and they were really cool, and I'm hoping the others are too. I hate to admit it but I would feel more comfortable if I was wearing brand, but I think soft cream is one of bodylines better pieces, and I have the coord down properly (I hope!)  Im excited! Photos to come. I'm also super excited about all the kawaii shopping I'm going to do.