Recent Adventures

I've actually been doing a lot recently, but haven't been taking enough pictures to warrant a full blog post. So, here's a few pictures taken from various places recently.

First, here's two style updates from a couple of weeks ago. I felt like dressing up as much as I could toward the last days of high school (I'm finally graduated! Yay!) so I wore these two outfits for school:

Dress: DoL (AP replica)

Cardigan: Forever 21 (altered)

Belt: Kohl's (ripped from a skirt)

Necklace: Bought at a convention

Bow: Forever 21

Tights: We Love Colors

I feel like this is sort of a very toned-down version of what you might see in Alice Deco a La Mode (RIP). I wanted to try something with accessories traditionally not used in Lolita, hence the belt. I think the belt makes the dress look a lot more flattering, as it really cinches in the waist. I'll have to find more belts with a similar style that are more lolita-appropriate.

Unfortunately, the only pictures I had for this outfit (which was mermaid-inspired) were horrid, but the main focus was the hair accessory and the hair in the first place. I tried doing this thing where you bunch up your hair before you go to sleep, then let it dry over night. My hair was still a little wet in the morning; I'll have to let it dry more next time :(

Same look, but with a better view of the hair.

Later, I took a field trip to China Town. It was a lot of fun! We ate Dim Sum and ate delicious cupcakes from a cupcake truck.

My friend Robert and I were making funny faces lol

The cupcake truck!

I also went to Newburyport and Salem with my friends Matti and Rachel recently:

I will never understand why blogger INSISTS of flipping my editing photos, no matter how many times I fix them.

Anyhow, here are Matti and Rachel, with our friend Joe hidden in the background.

My outfit~

Dress: Milky-chan replica

Cardigan, shoes, tights: Forever 21

Hat: bought at a convention (korilakuma)

Aaaand what I wore to Salem. We went to this cute little community theater to see Snow White and the Hunstman (which, tbh, was meh), but they were also showing the Avengers and had all kinds of art around to reflect that. I really want to see that movie again!

Dress: Milky-chan replica

Skirt: Kohl's

Bag (not pictured): Angelic Pretty

Bow, tights: Forever 21

Shoes: Unknown

Muffler: BABY

I know I kind of look like crap in this picture, but I'd been up all night the previous night due to graduation celebrations and hadn't slept at all. I actually wore glasses instead of contacts so if I fell asleep my contacts wouldn't be so uncomfortable >.> My muffler also made a good neck-pillow when that did happen.

That's it for now; I realized a while ago I never posted pictures from my Disney vacation, so as soon as I edit those pictures (just re-sizing them so they don't take FOREVER to load; what a pain~) I'll get those up! Have a great summer everyone!

Anime Boston Part 2

First of all, I just realized the other night "holy crap... there's one more week of school left, then finals, then graduation then I'm done with high school FOREVER!" Yeeeah, the whole graduation thing has kind of taken a while to actually hit me :P

I'm extremely excited though; I'm officially enrolled in a nice school just half an hour outside of NYC! The school actually has field studies at the United Nations and an excellent language program, so I'm extremely excited to study there (also when I was at accepted students day there I saw girl with a NaNoWriMo sweatshirt and pink hair... and then the room we looked at in the dorm I'll be staying at had a book shelf full of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books... the whole time I was just like "MY PEOPLE")

Also, the musical I was in (Legally Blonde) is being revived in late June to raise funds for my school's new stadium. I'm really excited to play my roles as bitchy salesgirl/pretentious Harvard student/very Bostonian news reporter again! Soooo that, work and school enrollment things, as well as the multitude of last-minute projects my teachers have been dumping on me have been keeping me very busy lately- hence the late post >.> (though not too busy to play some City of Heroes... I'm a level 23 dominator and I'm on the Victory server and my name is Alicornia if anyone ever wants to play with me :P )

So anywho, here's what went down Saturday:

My con-pals du jour :) From right to left, Brianna is cosplaying as Teto, Rachel and Nephy are wearing Lolita, and Janel (who had cosplayed as Sailor Moon and destroyed her feet the day before) was not cosplaying, but wearing a cute bow and nerd shirt :)

Piiiiit

Nephy and Rachel with their pimp, Oogie Boogie

For some reason every time I rotate a picture right side up as soon as I put it in here it just goes right back. Hopefully looking at this doesn't give you neck pains, but this Catwomen literally looked like Halle Berry @_@

Charloootte! I especially love the little bow at her neck in this cosplay :) Unfortunately, she was the only Charlotte I saw at AB!

I'm not sure where these two are from, but omg those costumes are gorgeous

Foot shot while standing in line for the Lolita panel

Aaand this is the spaz-tastic pose I did all day... I'll have to work on posing for next year >.> I guess you could say for this that I was primarily wearing Lolita, but I tried to mix in some obvious nods to Pinkie Pie (like the necklace, the hair balloons that I actually bought in the artist's alley the day before) so I could sort of fulfill my fantasy of cosplaying from My Little Pony while still wearing Lolita.

Funny thing though, this picture is actually taken from somebody else's AB album... I had my camera with me but I was so busy from the time I left my house until I got home that I didn't think to take a picture of my own outfit >.>

All in all, AB was tons of fun this year! I'm so glad I went this year, and will definitely try to make it next year since the spring semester should be over by then (AB is awfully late next year- I'll have to bring plenty of water or else I'll probably end up dehydrated as it was hot enough in the con center this year and the crowds are only expanding every year >.> ). I'll probably also try to get a hotel room next year, since we couldn't do a lot of events (like the dance) this year due to having to catch the train :( Nonetheless, it was still probably the best year yet!

Thanks for reading!

Happy National Princess Week~

Okay, so National Princess Week was technically last week, but I dressed up anyhow! And I took picture woooaaah!
For those of you not in the know, National Princess Week was declared by Disney in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Princess Diaries! I'm not sure if they actually... did anything to celebrate it, but I wanted to dress up anyhow ^^;

To start it off, a completely unrelated image:

I just really like the way these tights look with this skirt ^^; Also there's Albus, my unicorn, and Bonbon, my fat rabbit-blob that I bought at Anime Boston.

As usual, blogger doesn't want to let me flip this but that's okay because this outfit was less than spectacular anyhow >.> I meant to alter the dress I had on ($10 at TJ Maxx!) to be strapless, because I swear to god once I get around to that it will look SO much like a Jesus Diamante dress it's crazy. But anyhow, I ended not having time to do that, and then I realized I'd have to cover my shoulders with a cardigan anyhow because you have to have straps in school >.>

Rundown:

Dress: TJ Maxx

Cardigan/tights: Forever 21

Tiara: Chocomint

Shoes/accesories: Thrifted

Muffler: BABY

I like this shot, except you can see my dryer in the background >.> Close enough

Unfortunately, due to work and school, I didn't get to do anything special for Princess Week :( Just dress up this once and feel pretty, which was pretty nice in itself I guess. Still, I'm free this Sunday so my friend Rachel and I are planning on having our own princess day! More on that later :)

Also, while I'm doing this here's some shots from Salem I took a while back but never put up:

This design on my pink lemonade reminded me of Charlotte in her worm form :) I love Charlotte to death; I can't wait to cosplay as her!

Rachel in a super cool pose, and super pretty as usual. Also, the guy who came with us as well, who's name unfortunately escapes me >.> He was really nice!

I was so excited to eat this damn raspberry thing that I took this one blurry shot before wolfing it down in one but expecting a burst of delicious amazingness in my mouth. It was not.

Also, here's my twinsie, Bethany, who has yet to be pictured on this blog because every time I take a picture of her it turns out awful (exhibit A is right here). I swear she doesn't always creepily leer at things in real life, I just thought it was about high time she get a picture slot on this blog. So everybody say hi Bethany~ :P

BTW, this picture was actually taken at our 18th birthday dinner at Olive Garden (because everybody in my family is just so classy that all big events end with a dinner at Olive Garden). I still can't believe I'm a legal adult; and I certainly don't feel like it. I bought a scratch ticket the other day, and went to Fox Woods casino to play some Bingo for my birthday, but that's the only privaleges I've experienced so far. Still... it is weird to think about. Right now, I'm old enough to join the army, or start a family on my own, or even drink in other countries! I still don't feel like I'm mature enough for any of that, but here we are now >.>

So, that's it for now. I'll try to get around to posting Anime Boston pictures from Saturday soon, possibly in a picture-dump form because I got quite a few good pictures that day. Until then, thank you for reading and good bye~

Extremely buh-lated Anime Boston post (and a long horror story) Part One

A couple weeks ago, I attended Anime Boston 2012! I've been going ever since I was 12 (except for 2010, which was the year I first seriously got into Lolita and saved my money for wardrobe-building), but so far this was the best year yet! Due to the fact that I actually had money this year from my job (I took SO many extra shifts to save up for this thing! Somehow, my grades didn't suffer), I was able to go both Friday and Saturday, something I've never been able to do before. I could have gone Sunday as well, except it was Easter and I didn't want to abandon my family since we always have a little get-together to eat ice cream on Easter day :)

Friday I went as the vocaloid SeeU, which was a blast! Apparently, I was the only SeeU there so lots of people came up asking for pictures and such. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an amazing picture of my costume due to the fact that I was being rushed around all day from the time I got up to the time I went home (which was fine, of course), but some of my friends managed to get decent shots of me.

Before I share a picture, let me share the short horror story that went along with this costume:

I originally ordered this costume from a reputable commissioner known among the cosplaying community. I trusted her because her reputation seemed good enough, and she'd always go around and give out free cosplay advice. Based on the quality of her advice, she seemed to definitely know what she was talking about. I'd been wanting to cosplay SeeU for a while, but knew I wouldn't have the time to make the costume myself since school, work, and other creative pursuits like choir and musicals owned my soul, so I figured I'd drop the $210 and order from her. It was a bit pricey, but I thought I'd be getting a quality costume from her, and it would be easier to work a couple extra shifts to get the money than to acquire all the money and materials to make the thing myself. To get and idea of what I expected, here's a picture:

Days before the con, the monstrosity she called my costume arrived. Now, those of you who know SeeU know that one of the defining traits of her costume is that it's orange. Lots of people hated this, and I wasn't too fond of it on first but it grew on me. What color is the thing she gives me? Freaking yellow. Not even tangerine-orange, or yellow-orange, just straight-up yellow. 

The SOLID black panel on the top half of the shirt is made of lace for some reason, which might be a cute touch except I never request ANYTHING like that and the shirt is cut low enough that you can see my bra. The whole top sags really weirdly because it turns out that she, the professional full-time costumer, forgot to dart the bust (though there's a whole lot more going on). 

The CD pin is missing, and the buttons and bangles (which she agreed to make with wonderflex) were poorly made from sculpey clay, of all things. Instead of having the circles and power symbol on the buttons, which were falling off due to the fact that she only added a very small amount of hot glue, she just kind of painted whatever the hell she wanted there, which sort of looked liked the symbols from a Playstation controller.

 The cat ears were also poorly hot glued onto a cheap headband, and just had little orange circles hastily painted on them, and one had fallen off (she'd e-mailed me before warning that due to the fact that sometimes USPS would mishandle packages even if they were marked "fragile," which mine was not, one of the ears might have fallen off and that I could fix that with some hot glue. Seems kind of odd that she ONLY warned me about the ears, which had conveniently fallen apart, and not the buttons or anything else that looked ready to fall apart as well). 

Instead of the bangles being orange on the outside and black on the inside, she'd just kind of roughly formed two little circles that looked like they were made by a freaking pre-schooler in orange and black, both of which were WAY too big for my wrist even though I'd sent her my wrist size and emphasized that my hands are smaller than average. The second pair of bangles were missing, as well as the pause button on the back of the shirt (she claimed to have "sketchy reference," but I'd sent her an e-mail with several, VERY clear close-ups of SeeU's outfit, including a clear shot of the back with the pause button).

Despite needing to be ironed and not having serged seams on the inside, the skirt, which was what she'd sent a progress picture of a week or so before sending my costume, was pretty nice- except it was made for a 34 inch waist. My waist is 27 inches. When I told her about this, she said she usually makes her items a half inch or so bigger just to be safe and may have overshot a bit. That's nice, I do that too, except my skirts that end up being too big are usually 28.5" at worst, and I'm not the professional costumer getting paid $200+ freaking dollars to make a costume within a couple weeks.

Needless to say, I was NOT happy with my product. The ONLY excuse the commissioner had was that she'd been in the hospital a month before, and I'd been late with my second payment so I'd kind of rushed her with the second order- but she still had a whole two or three weeks to do it. Even then, if she knew she wouldn't be able to, she shouldn't told me and either offered me a refund or offer to just send the costume late. With the kind of money she was charging, the costume should have been made from decent, non-see through fabrics and materials, it should have fit like a glove, and it should be so accurate that the very seams match the character's costume. Instead, I received a see-through, wrinkle-prone piece of crap top and skirt, with sculpey accessories that look like they were scuplted by a three-year-old with key pieces of the costume missing. There was no way I was wearing this shit to Anime Boston.

What I ended up having to so was re-make the ENTIRE top, the bangles, the cat ears (which were WICKED tiny and awkward, especially with the wig), the CD pin and re-size the skirt she gave me (which wrinkled like a mofo even after being ironed several times). I did this with $15 in two short afternoons, and I am NOT a skilled craftsman. My costume ended up not being exactly the right color, and I ended up just using sculpey clay as well for the buttons and bangles, but it was INFINITELY more well-made and accurate than whatever the hell it was she gave me, and it fit fine.

Here is a picture of me (with my socks fallen down a bit) and Batman:

Not the best picture, I know. I still love the character and her costume though, and plan to entirely re-make the costume myself this time. Here are some key things I plan to change:

-Get extensions that match my wig- SeeU has a LOT of hair and even with my 40" wig I didn't quite do it justice. I had some blonde extensions but unfortunately they were too dark to wear with the wig >.>

-Get sock tape, so my socks don't fall down constantly as seen here and in every picture taken of me throughout the day.

-Get a skirt that doesn't wrinkle like a butt.

-Re-make the entire top so the colour is accurate, as well as replacing the clay buttons and bangles with something nicer and smoother-looking.

-Hopefully, if I can figure this out, get some of that fabric with those designs on it that lights up when music is played with it. Figure out how to get the orange sound-line design on the stuff, rig it to a microphone so it lights up to my voice when I speak (SeeU actually has a headset so this works), and attach it to the black part of the shirt. Possibly do the same for the gray panel on the shoes, which also need to be re-done since I didn't attach the panels securely enough and they fell off >.>

-Again just a possibility, but I'd like to also re-make the cat ears to look smoother, and maybe even actually install speakers inside them like I saw somebody do once (freaking coolest thing ever) so they actually function like they're supposed to and they're not just random cat ears (this was actually one of the things I liked about SeeU's design)

-Get a new band for the socks so they actually match.

I have a lot to do for this costume, but at least this time I'm not just putting my faith into somebody else to make it for me. I won't be doing that again for a while >.> Honestly, despite the rush when I made it, I did have fun making the costume! I hope to get back into making costumes in the summer when I have more free time. Obviously I'd like to finish my SeeU cosplay first so it doesn't suck, but afterwards, I'd really like to make a gijinka of Charlotte from Madoka magica:

I really love Charlotte's design, and haven't really found a cosplay yet that I think fully captures the character. My second outfit for Anime Boston was actually a gijinka of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony, but I'll save that for another post :) Basically, the outfit was born from the fact that I couldn't decided between cosplaying My Little Pony or wearing Lolita, so I ended up wearing Lolita VERY strongly influenced by Pinkie Pie- the only thing I didn't do that would push it straight into cosplay territory was the ears/tail.

For now though, I'll leave you guys with some of my favourite cosplayers I saw Friday. There were so many great cosplayers, it's difficult to pick just a few to show you guys!:

Grooooose

there were so many good Groose cosplays this year, and they were ALL women which is kind of awesome, in a weird way

Rue, SO amazing!

Idk where she's from but this costume is so adorable

Link and Zelda! Zelda was especially adorable.

Finally, here's a shot of what I got on Friday:

Lots of alpacas and pastels. I REGRET NOTHING

Style update- Retro Dolly★

I actually wore this a while ago, for the Kawaii.i contest (I really wish I'd picked an outfit later because I could have done better but I was mistakenly under the impression that this was a voting contest so I rushed >.> ). I also kind of recycled this same outfit for a fashion show in Salem recently (hey, it's the only retro-esque coord I have suitable to warmer to cool weather and since this fashion show focused on the retro I thought it'd be appropriate :P), so it's still relevant. Even if I didn't get any pictures of the event because my camera died >.>

Dress: Handmade

Bow/Cardigan: Forever 21

Shoes/Belt/glasses: Offbrand

Necklace: Imyourpresent on Etsy

For some reason, Blogger REALLY doesn't like my pictures being right-side up, so here's another sideways shot. I swear to God I'll fix that soon. Someday.
Anyhow, for some reason the cardigan makes me look infinitely bigger in pictures than in real life. I swear it's not that bulky in real life... I just tend to look awful in photographs lately...
For this outfit, I was obviously going for a more retro look. I've also been a big fan of black/white/pink lately, so I wanted to do that. Since it was so warm when I wore this (80 in New England in MARCH?!), I decided to go without tights and use an updo. It was very comfortable given the weather :) I hope it gets nice again soon...
That's pretty much it for now. I've STILL been busy with scholarships and physics (which, despite the fact that it's a low-level class and I put five times more effort into it than I do my honors and AP classes which I do get A's in, I can't seem to get anything higher than a low C in). Next week should be better, though; I'm almost done with scholarships, teachers will probably let up on homework since the quarter ends this week so they won't have to scurry to finish anything, and best of all, Anime Boston is that Friday and Saturday! I'm cosplaying as SeeU and Pinkie Pie in Lolita! My SeeU costume shipped today, and I am going to buy the buttons to alter my cardigan for my PP outfit tomorrow. I'm so excited!
So, hopefully I'll be able to be a bit more active soon. That's it for now! Ciao!

Style update: Sweets Princess

I recently wanted to put my hair in a hime-ish do (well, as hime as I can get with no extensions). Of course I failed pretty hard but I still liked my outfit that day:

 Rundown:

Blouse, shoes: Bodyline

Tights: Forever 21

Pin: Catnapcaps on Etsy

Tiara: Chocomint

Skirt: BtSSB replica

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a makeup/detail shot of this outfit >.> I didn't get home until late and the lighting wasn't cooperating, so I couldn't for the life of me get ANY good pictures.

Sooooo a lot has been going on in my life recently, just nothing I can show in pictures (because I can't bring a camera to school durr hurr). Namely, the musical I was in (Legally Blonde) ended recently. It was a fun and fantastic show, and I was so glad to be a part of it! Those long days of attending four-hour rehearsals while everybody else went home and just hung out may have been tedious, but they were so worth it in the end and made for a great show. My only regret was that I didn't do any more shows at my school; it has the best drama department!

Another major component of my life as of recent: Colleges. Now that I've FINALLY finished long applications and like eight different essays for regular and honors colleges alike, now I get to start scholarships! Lucky me! In addition to that, all my teachers seem to have decided that RIGHT NOW is the perfect time to assign big projects and papers and make them all due next week. On top of THAT, teachers who have been out for months (or, in one case, all year) all seem to be coming back at once, which, I'm not going to lie, makes things pretty chaotic. It's a bit difficult to be taught by one teacher all year, then the next day get a completely different teacher teaching similar material with a COMPLETELY different style, but I guess I shouldn't complain.

Soooo that's been my life recently. It's been a pretty bad season for me overall, despite a few pluses like the musical- I never even got the opportunity to make my snow unicorn since I was trapped inside on all the days it snowed for once! :(

At least spring is coming, along with my 18th birthday, Anime Boston, graduation and a trip to China Town, so those are all things to look forward to!

Thank you for reading!

Style update- 3/1/2012: Urban Kawaii

Yes, I used the word "kawaii" in the title; I thought it was appropriate. Shoot me.

For some reason Blogger refuses to let my pic be right side up, so I apologize, but this is the best I can do :(
Rundown:
Socks: Sockdreams
Skirt/Sweatshirt: Old Navy
Shoes: Pastry
Brooch: Catnapcaps on Etsy
Muffler: BABY
Necklace: Weeabootique on Etsy
Bow: Dream of Lolita (Sugary Carnival replica)
T-shirt (not pictured): Unicorn t-shirt from Pink Macaroon


And here's a detail shot:

It finally snowed today, so I wanted to wear something snow bunny-ish. Finally! Considering I live in New England, it's about three months late >.>
I also wanted to wear something comfortable considering I was supposed to have rehearsal today (I ended up not having it due to the snow though), thus, this outfit :)


Also, I'd like to introduce this blog's new mascot to you: Albus (plus my face)!

Albus is my purple mini Pillow pet that I got for Valentines Day. He's not very good at being a pillow so he just kind of chills out on my bed during the day as decoration and stays on the floor at night because I'm a wild beast when I sleep and I always kick him off the bed.
He likes sleeping and food, which is why he's so fat. He acts as my elbow rest when I use my laptop at the desk in my room, since the armrests on my chair suck.


That's it, for now. Just fyi, I haven't been posting lately because I've been busy as butts (rehearsal, school, work, etc) but thankfully the musical is almost over (opening night is a week from now! Yikes!), so I'll have free time after that. It is a bit sad though, since this will be the last musical of my high school career (well, it's also only the second, but STILL...). I've had so much fun doing this musical, though unfortunately I don't believe I'm talented enough to place in a college production, not to mention I would probably not have enough time! I'm glad I did the musical this year though :) It's been very fun, even as a member of the ensemble!


That's it for now! Have a good day, my little (big?) unicorns~!