♥ Outfit Post - YCC 8! ♥

Since the last time we wrote on this blog, we've attended 1 convention, several lolita meets, took part in GLISH and moved across the country for university! We've moved from Hull (in the North of England) to Chichester (in the South of England!), which has definitely been a bit of a difference! It's not so intense a culture shock for Haz, who lived in Bristol, but it's certainly been for me! 

We've also attended an International Lolita Day tea party and done a whole musical, but they were in June so appear to instead be two events I chose to skip over!

In August we attended our last Northern convention before we moved down South (although we will be attending Yorkshire Cosplay Con 2016 next summer, which we're very excited about! It will be the first 2-day convention we've ever sold at, we're treating it as a test run before we look at any Big Big conventions!), Yorkshire Cosplay Con 8. 

The problem with being behind a table is definitely balancing looking cute and being practical! We had a friend helping out with our table this time, and she was also wearing lolita, so things did tend to get a little bit poofy around the back. Thankfully, Haz was wearing decora/fairy kei, so we didn't have 3 petticoats to contend with!

My favourite moment of YCC was definitely the 5 minute walk we decided to take around the convention centre, during which we were asked if we would like to take party in an interview for the BBC! We ended up being interviewed for the BBC Radio show "Women's Hour", they spliced together lots of audio clips of other cosplayers and fashionistas to make a whole feature about geeky culture and fashion. I did feel a bit embarrassed when she asked me how much everything I was wearing cost, though!

Nat

Mint isn't really a colour we have a lot of in our wardrobe, so I definitely had to improvise! I really like the way that pink and mint compliment each other, so I'm glad that my attempt didn't turn out too horribly! I also went for something new with my wig, in the hopes it would resemble bear ears! It looked very cute at the beginning of the morning, but it slipped as time went on. As it turns out, hectic tabling is not the best environment for carefully styled wigs! 

JSK - Teddy Chocolatier by Meta
blouse, wristcuffs & shoes - Bodyline
bag - Angelic Pretty
accessories - handmade/Twinkle Kitty Boutique, offbrand, many many bargain shops!
socks - ASDA kid's section
wig - Geisha Wigs

Haz

Haz really loves the whole aesthetic of fairy kei and decora, and I think she looks adorable in it! We don't have too much of a fairy kei wardrobe, so we make do with a lot of offbrand stuff and a lot of normie clothes that just so happen to be in pastels! We both get very excited about pastels being in fashion when they are. 

top & cardigan - offbrand/high street

wig - Pastel Doll
skirt - Bodyline
shoes & socks - Primark
accessories - Sanrio, handmade/Twinkle Kitty Boutique, offbrand, Primark, Celestial Castle, vintage

We both had a lot of fun selling at YCC, although we didn't really purchase very much because we were so swamped with people! A tiny negative all wrapped up in a neat parcel of positives. We met a lot of people who'd bought from us at other conventions, a lot of people who were wearing things they'd bought from us, and a lot of people who we recognized! I think one of the nicest things about being behind a table at a con is getting to know all the other convention regulars and making friends that way.

Thank you for reading! I hope now that we're at uni and much closer to exciting things and with a brand new community, we will be able to blog more! Just recently we did a big Swimmer Haul, we're waiting on things from Yahoo Japan, and Haz bought herself one of her dream dresses! We're also in the process of planning a Halloween meet, so watch this space! 

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

☆ Lolita Desu Review! ☆ ♥Angelic Pretty and Kawaii Surprise Bag!♥

You've probably heard of Lolita Desu before, right? If not, it's a little web shop located in Japan that sells second-hand J-fashion goods from major brands like Angelic Pretty, BTSSB and Chocomint (as well as many, many others!). Their prices can be a little bit high; certainly more expensive than you'd be paying on the Japanese auctions and maybe sometimes a little bit higher than local community Facebook sales pages, but they have a really good rewards points system and often have discounts and sales going on! We ordered specifically because of one of these sales; 20% off any Angelic Pretty purchases for 24 hours! 

This was our second Lolita Desu order; we ordered previously for a few bits and pieces of items and two of the lucky packs, and the Angelic Pretty item we ordered this time was something we deliberated over for a bit; was it really worth almost £20 for a bit of plastic to go on your head? With the sale, though, we couldn't resist! We also got some Angelic Pretty stickers for a friend and a medium size lucky pack in the kawaii style, as we were really surprised by how much we liked the first one! 

We placed our order on the 23rd of June, and it arrived on the 1st of July! Our package was tracked and we were able to keep an eye on it. Altogether, we spent just over 50 USD and our shipping cost 16.20 USD. 

These are the AP items we got! A Little Bear's Cafe postcard and a "Pretty Melody" headband in black. As musical theatre students, we absolutely couldn't resist it! It's so cute (and probably versatile enough for everyday wear, heh!). We already have a Cat's Tea Party postcard that we're planning to put in a cute frame to have decorating our university rooms! Both came really well packaged and didn't suffer any damages. However, we did order three Angelic Pretty stickers for our friend and only one arrived. At the time of writing we've sent a message to Lolita Desu, but we're still waiting for a reply!

And these are the items we got in our Kawaii Lucky Pack! I won't bother listing them all here, but I was especially pleased about the cute stationary items and the cute homeware (especially the oven glove!). Most of the items seem to be Daiso, so if you're located near one of those these packs probably don't work out as good value, but we're nowhere near one and we pretty much loved everything! I was also probably much too excited about the PreCure tissues. 

Extra shot of cute stationary! I think the Jewelpets item is origami paper, but I can't quite tell! Whatever it is, it's cute and I'm sure we'll find a use for it!

As you can see, our experience (barring that sticker problem!) with Lolita Desu was pretty pleasant and we'll definitely be buying more from her! Probably more kawaii lucky packs. I think we might have a problem. 

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

❤Catch Up Post! Yorkshire Cosplay Con, Instagram Round Up and More!~❤

We've both been dreadfully neglectful of this blog in the past few months! Forgive us for leaving it so long. It isn't so much that we've been busy (although we have both been busy!) but it's getting more and more difficult to sit down and just blast out a post. When I was first becoming interested in lolita, one of the things that drew me into the fashion was the (sadly now defunct) lolita lifestyle blog the Princess Portal. I want to regularly post things and post cute outfits and talk about our life, but with the advent of easy social media like instagram and youtube and facebook fan pages, lifestyle blogs have fallen by the sideline. It looks like we've already failed our resolution to blog more, but we shall not be too discouraged! Here's a quick catch-up post to get you up to speed on all of the events we did not manage to write a blog about.

The first thing we never got round to blogging about was our attending Yorkshire Cosplay Con 7! We attended with our little etsy store and set up what was one of the pinkest, fluffiest of stalls you can imagine! We did really well, we made some new friends, and despite a couple of things that could have been better about the convention itself, we really enjoyed ourselves!

Haz's fairy kei outfit for the day!

I took this photo from an album on facebook, here! We had some cute little ponies guarding our stall that you can't see (I wore a bunny themed coord around my Cinderella Bunny jsk! I thought seeing as it was for an event some subtle little animal ears could be justified!). 

Whilst caught up in the chaos of preparing for Yorkshire Cosplay Con, I managed to make time to make this little Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask brooch! Also, a cute bodyline jsk we got from the sales comm for an absolute steal of a price! It was packaged so cutely!

Cute and unusual flavoured gum that we got from YCC! The cotton candy one was absolutely delicious. We also went out and got crepes with some friends from our local comm! 

Sweet Marie stationary that Haz got me as a gift, plus some Disney treasures we picked up in a charity shop! The little Wendy figurine is so darling (see what I did there?), and it always makes a nice change to find things from Disney movies that aren't about princesses!

We also had a little weekend away in London to celebrate both our two year anniversary and my birthday (my actual birthday is the date of our end of year show, so nothing can really be done in celebration that day!). We booked a hotel, went to an arcade and played a lot of dance games, and to top it all off we spent the next day wandering around museums and then finally went to the Disney cafe! Haz made friends with another girl in the Disney cafe wearing J-Fashion too, heh. We got afternoon tea and we both felt very fancy having it in Harrods! 

In June we have our very last college show, The Addams Family Musical, and then we're all done until university rolls around in September! We also have a couple of local meets to look forward to as well as an International Lolita Day meet in June, and lots of chances to go out with our friends who are back from university! Hopefully this time we'll have time to sit down and blog about them.

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

☆ Majikkon Haul! ☆ Prints, Accessories, Mini Wig Review and More!~ *:･ﾟ✧

This past weekend we packed up our little etsy store and headed to Huddersfield for Majikkon! We previously traded at AnimangaPOP! in Bristol and we had so much fun decorating our little table and talking to other vendors and artists that we decided we wanted to do it again. Majikkon was at the University of Huddersfield, and there was a lot going on! As soon as we got there we were shown to our table and set about making it as pink and cute as humanly possible! 

The tablecloth is actually from Tesco and has little bow scalloping all around the bottom; how cute is that? As always, we probably spent just as much as we made (oops!) but everyone else's tables were just so cute and full of pretty things that we couldn't help ourselves! 

The very sweet Wonder Box had a stall in the other section of the vendor's corner, and they were selling little £1 surprise bags! Surprise bags, blind boxes, or anything where you get a mystery gift are definitely weaknesses for both of us, so of course we bought 4 of them! We clipped the little "I Love You" clips to our guest lanyards to make them just that little bit cuter! 

Next to Wonder Box was the adorable Two Days Slow! They had lots of cute handmade jewelry, bows and even bags, but eventually we settled on this little cat rosette. The back is a two-way clip, meaning we can use it as a brooch or a hairclip! And I mean, can you really ever have too many cat-related items? 

Two of the guests who performed on the mainstage (which we had a pretty good view of from our little corner of the vendor's area!) were Kelsey Ellison and the Maids of England maid idol unit! The Maids of England were also running a maid cafe but we were too busy to check it out :c. We got some cute stickers from Kelsey's stall and this Popin Cookin from the M.O.E. stall, which I bought and forgot to check the instructions of, which is terrible seeing as we don't have a microwave! It was the very last one so I had an impulse buy because we've wanted to make a Popin Cookin together for forever! 

These prints and badges are by the very talented Starsqueak! Magical girls are definitely one of our weaknesses, and cute art to put on our walls are always a plus! Above is a Cardcaptor Sakura, a Sailor Moon, and a Bee (and numerous Puppycats!). We also picked up matching Sailor Moon and Chibi Moon badges for some outfits we've been planning to wear together! We also got some little stickers from Starsqueak, but I forgot to include them in this picture! Oops! 

These prints and badges (definitely another weakness for us both!) are by Brogan Coral, whose illustrations are absolutely beautiful! I saw someone carrying around the mini version of the Sailor Moon print, and hunted around every table looking for one! Unfortunately by the time I got there they were sold out of the mini prints, so I picked up the big version (not that I'm complaining!). All of her art was so beautiful, it was difficult to choose between it, but eventually I picked up a mix of spooky, cute and celestial art! The little cat button says "Cute as Heck" and is a perfect description of both of us. 

We also picked up a teeny tiny surprise Sailor Moon figure from AnimUK, the stall next to us! She's so tiny and detailed, although I'm a little sad we didn't get Sailor Moon herself! I guess that means we're just going to have to collect them all! 

This is how we've been displaying business cards we get at conventions, but we're rapidly running out of room! 

Finally, we splurged out and got a wig from Pastel Doll, a stall opposite us whose wares were all absolutely adorable. The girls working on the stall were really lovely and friendly, and we spent a lot of time umming and ahhing over which of their lovely wigs to get! Although a very sweet lavender/mint split wig was a point of debate for a pretty long time, we decided to go for versatility and got a blonde/pink split wig! We wanted to get some little buns to go in it, but they were out of the matching colours, so we're going to have to keep an eye out on their online store! 

The fibres on the wig were very soft and easy to comb through with our fingers for volume, and the eventual gradient between the split was very subtle and pretty! One of my pet peeves with split wigs are super abrupt changes in colour, especially when the colours aren't too far apart to begin with! 

Apologies for the sudden dip in photo quality! The wig when on is super comfy, very lightweight (and adjusts all the way over my uncontrollable mane of hair, which is always a plus for me! I'm one of those people who sometimes orders wigs and they just won't go on! :c ) and most importantly, is super cute! I would definitely recommend getting a wig from Pastel Doll, I think this wig was about £23, which is a really good price for something so well-made and pretty and means you're supporting a UK kawaii business (which is definitely something you want to be doing!). In wake of all of the recent drama with Gothic Lolita Wigs, Pastel Doll is definitely a wonderful alternative! ♥

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

☆ Dolly Darling Review! ☆ ♥Carousel Bunny Brooch♥

 Both of us love buying handmade, and just don't do it enough! Today we're reviewing dolly darling, a store that describes itself as having "cute & quirkiness at its very core", which definitely sounds like something that would appeal to us! Dolly Darling is well-known for these adorable deer headbands, and also for the adorable pastel fashion blog of its owner Georgina! The shop sells super cute pastel inspired accessories and plus size handmade clothing, all of which is handcrafted! 

Our order was for one of these pretty carousel animal pieces - in our case, the carousel bunny in a brooch form! I love bunnies, and both bunnies and carousels are such a prevalent motif in lolita, we though that it would mesh really well with our styles and with our wardrobe! The brooch itself is an original illustration (I really love the colours! they feel so pretty and soft, like an illustration in a children's book!) printed on laser cut wood. For £8 with free shipping, it was definitely a steal! 

We placed our order and paid on the 8th February, which was a Sunday, and although we didn't get any confirmation as to when our order was shipped it was with us on the Tuesday, which for free shipping is pretty darn quick! We didn't need to communicate in any way and the website was incredibly easy to navigate, so ten out of ten in every way for ease and quickness of the order! The brooch was shipped inside a bubble mailer, which was stamped with a dolly darling logo! I love it when stores have cute little factors like this so you can recognize a package as belonging to them! 

 

Inside the mailer, the brooch was in a little ziploc bag! It was very secure and safe and the brooch got to us in perfect condition. Also included were these sweet holographic Easter-themed sticker flakes, which was a nice touch! I know a few people who dislike getting "extras" in packages, but we are definitely not one of them! It's nice to think about the seller putting extra love and care into their wares.

As you can see, the wood isn't super thick, which means that it won't drag down lighter materials of cardigans and dresses! I have a vintage puzzle piece brooch made out of a very thick wood that can only be clipped onto thicker cardigans and jumpers, so this is a really nice weight! The brooch pin seems really well attached, although there were a few glue strands and a bit of overspill. These are totally covered when you're wearing the piece though, so it doesn't affect our enjoyment at all! As people who work with glue in our own work, we know how hard it can be to get everything totally perfect. 

The brooch itself is absolutely adorable. The pastel colours you see in the stock picture are dead-on for the brooch in real life, so you definitely won't be disappointed! The print is crisp and detailed and most importantly really really cute - I can't wait to put together outfits using this brooch in them! There are so many adorable tiny details (how cute is the bunny's little nose and collar? I'm in love!) and it's so beautifully drawn and made! 

All in all, our experience ordering from dolly darling was absolutely wonderful - the piece is well-made, got here in record time, and is going to look so cute worn with both our lolita wardrobe and our casual wardrobe (I'm already thinking up co-ord ideas using our Cinderella Bunny print!). I would definitely recommend buying from dolly darling if you're looking for something cute, kitschy, twee or anything in between those! I know that I am eyeing up this sweet embroidered kitten brooch for my ever growing brooch collection! 

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥