♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Days 10-15! ♥

Hello all! Sorry for the brief absence in those posts, we're currently dealing with some sad family news, so here's a quick catch-up post on the days we've missed! I think most of these are quite short, so hopefully this won't be too long of a post!

Recently Haz and I have been talking about taking our first trip abroad together, and we're thinking it might be a package holiday to Disneyland Paris! Obviously, with a package holiday we won't be able to fit in any time for sight-seeing or shopping in Paris, but one day I'd very much like to visit the BTSSB store there! Living in the UK, it's not too difficult to get across the Channel to visit France, and it's definitely something we both want to do!

(credit)

Themed shops and beautiful shop decors are one of our favourite things to think about! We're guilty of going into shops we don't plan on buying anything from or couldn't afford anything from just to have a quick look at all of the decor and decorations; we often talk about retiring when we're older and running a cute quirky little boutique style shop. 

We did a very quick cursory google search and watched this quick episode of How It's Made (it's very informative and relaxing to watch the machines work!), but we also went to the V&A quite recently, where they have a lot of beautiful examples of vintage and antique lace. 

My favourite example at the V&A of lace was this beautiful veil. 

As you probably know, we're not at home right now; we're staying with Haz's family in Bristol. We've done a few touristy things and a lot of visiting around places, but I'm fairly sure we ate out this day! I'm sure we had very nice plates wherever it was, though. 

I think that the essay/poem a lot of lolitas have already read is this one, It's entitled "Rules of the Lolita" and it's worth a look, if you haven't already read it. The one I read for this challenge is 'Let's Talk About Hello Kitty'. 

I asked Haz to do hers first, and she struggled a bit! The words she came up with were:

Pastel, Cutesy, Sweets, Fairytale, Storybook

In comparison, I struggled . . . a lot! Here are mine:

Cats, Pink, Bears, Pastel, Accessorized

I think that a lot of my outfits definitely fall into looking like one another; I find something that works and stick with it. I like ankle socks, I like vintage brooches, I like small understated bows. I'm working on trying to vary my style a bit more! 

I have to admit that neither Haz nor I are big scent people/perfume people. We have a 'toasted marshmallow' cheapy roomspray from Poundland that we spray sometimes, and at university we both had little diffusers in our room (Haz's was Salted Caramel, mine was Cherry!). We didn't bring any perfumes or anything with us, but I thought I would share with you our absolute favourite spray to have in our bags/around us. 

It's this.

It costs £1 from Asda and it lasts ages and smells like candy floss, and honestly, what's there not to love about it.

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lifestyle Lolita Challenge - Day 7 ♥ ~ Favourite Little Details! ~

This one was actually pretty difficult, seeing as we're in Bristol right now away from most of our lolita wardrobe! We did bring a few pieces with us, so I'll share some details from those; Haz's favourite JSK (Toy Parade!) is still at home in Hull, and I absolutely cannot choose from all of our beauties! 

I love this adorable custom fork and spoon lace on AP's Tea Time a la Carte! 

Haz's favourite part of the dress are the little bunny shaped biscuits!

AP's Dolly Cat Special Set might be one of my favourite dresses we own; the cats have such beautiful faces! I tried to take a picture of the sweet little name plates the cats have beneath them and the cat wearing wristcuffs, but unfortunately they didn't come out too well! Still, this cat wearing a bonnet is very beautiful and elegant!

Innocent World's Night Bear is one of my favourite prints; look at the little mouse helping the bear read! It's so adorable, it kills me.

As you all know, we love cats. We also love Metamorphose and its bizarre and strange ideas for prints; this is from the Brass Band Cat skirt! I love how Meta always manage to put their name into the print without it being overly obvious that they've done it!

This has definitely been one of my favourite posts to write so far! I love staring at a new dress the first time I get it and finding all the tiny details that I never noticed when I was looking at it online. What are all of your favourite little details about your dresses?

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 4! ♥ ~ Cute Lolita Hairstyles~

I think that there are a lot of lolitas out there who fall into a rut where their hair is concerned; I know that both of us tend to! I personally am not very good with my hair - and am definitely guilty of going days without brushing it because I'm so lazy - even though I have so much of it! I know how to plait, and I know how to put my hair into a pony tail, and that's about as far as I'm prepared to go - and I'm always too afraid of messing up wigs to go too far with them!

I'm going to drop a few inspirational lolita pictures with cute hair/wigs and then drop a few YouTube channels with tutorials on them here!

I really like how the first girl doesn't have a fringe but her hair is still classy and pretty; Haz's hair is a little too fine to hold a fringe in properly and to be honest I am much too scatter-brained to keep a fringe in good order; it's something I've attempted a few times but have never been successful with! Her hair seems to be in tiny little buns beneath the two hairclips; it's cute and faintly anime-ish without being weeby! The second hairstyle is one I've always wanted to try but been afraid it would look a little silly; this absolutely inspires me to try it out!

Some of my favourite hairstyles are vintage inspired; I love rockabilly and 50s pin-up fashion and I love their hair; a YouTube channel we follow that posts a lot of those is Cherry Dollface. Here's a tutorial of hers for a vintage style bouffant with a bow that I think would be adorable with the right retro-inspired coordinate!

One of Haz's favourite YouTube channels to look at for make-up and life inspiration is Kawaii Pateen, a Japan-based YouTube channel that often has special videos by Japanese fashion celebrities! You might have seen some of their videos with Misako Aoki. Here's a video that they made called "2 Kawaii CHILDISH FAIRY Hairstyles!" I think the first hairstyle with the powder puffs is really cute (and would be cute even replaced with bows or something else of the kind!

I hope this post gave you a few cute ideas about hairstyling yourself! I plan on trying these out as soon as I can; we're away right now so it's a bit difficult to take photos, but I'm excited especially to try out the vintage style bouffant!

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 3! ♥ ~ A Friend's Wishlist ~

 

One of the things that we often get sidetracked by is the fact that we are a "lolita couple"; we wear lolita together, we go to meets together, we get asked to hang out together. We share a wardrobe! We buy things that we think will fit both of us and both of us borrow each other's . . . well, everything, to be honest. 

So it makes sense that we know exactly what each other wants, that we link each other to items we've been looking for when we're in separate places looking up, when we search things out specifically . . . we have pretty similar taste, but we don't have exactly the same taste. 

Probably most of you recognize this dress; it's AP's Toy Parade JSK in mint! Here's the thing; Haz loves elephants. She collects them, she loves them, she squeals over them daily. So it makes sense that she would have a desperate need to own an AP dress with toy elephants all over it! She's also been adding a lot more mint to her wardrobe, so having it in mint would be perfect for her . . . and also, it fitting well would be a bonus! So during my *cough cough* weekly* wunderwelt searchings, when i came across this dress for under £100, it was as if all of the lolita Gods had conspired to make Haz's day a good one. 

We umm-ed and ahh-ed about buying it for a while (as someone does when they're going to drop a lot of money at once!) but eventually bit the bullet - and it was so exciting when it got here! Plus, she looks adorable in it, and that's what's important, right?

In the same order, I also found Classic Melody, which is one of my dream dresses - violins and music notes? Yes please! It doesn't quite fit the theme because Haz didn't find it for me, but she did pay for it, and that is just as important in the grand scheme of keeping your wardrobe full of desired dresses!

As well as each other, we keep an eye out for things for our friends too (at least, when we remember!). A couple of things we're always on the look out for are music themed prints - especially chocolate and music themed prints together! - and a couple of other specific dresses that we've heard people mention!

Another thing we do is remember who sometimes comments on a post after it's already been sold, and if we see it being sold again try and let them know! It's so nice to help someone get their dream items and then see them enjoying it!

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ Lolita Lifestyle Challenge - Day 1! ♥ ~ Wardrobe Resolutions ~

Hi! Long time, no see, right? We started university (and had to quit due to various medical and health reasons!) in the time we were gone, and altogether haven't had the best 2015 we could have - but let's take a moment and hope that 2016 will be a better year for both of us! To get us back on track with blogging, we've decided to take on the 365 day Lifestyle Lolita Challenge from Lace a la Mode! We've both definitely been feeling a little discouraged from both blogging and lolita recently (even our instagram feed, which was probably our most active social media, hasn't been updated since August!) so we're hoping that taking on such a challenge might push us out of our slump!

So, before we get on to the challenge, let's just take a minute to review our lolita goals from last year's new year's resolution post! 

• Stop buying things just because they are cheap and might not be available again. I'm not really sure how well we managed this, although we definitely in general did buy more expensive items! We didn't buy as many bodyline pieces, which was the main reason we set up this resolution in the first place!
• Buy a lot more basics; blouses, tights, and boleros spring to mind before all others! We definitely bought a lot more blouses! We also bought a lot of ankle socks, though not so many tights. We're having a bit of trouble finding cute loli-able boleros in plus size, though, so if anyone has any recommendations we'd be glad to hear them!
• Get a big, good, bag that will work with most of our co-ords and will fit all of our stuff in! This one we did pretty well! We bought a lot of bags, most of which fit quite a good amount of stuff in!
• Look at how pieces coordinate with our outfits and wardrobes before we buy them. Okay, this one wasn't such a success; we spent the vast majority of 2015 talking about how badly we needed to buy a pair of brown shoes. Really badly.
• Attend more meetups and try and wear lolita at least once a month, as well as becoming more active in the online loli community. We did really well with this up until September, basically! The last few months we definitely did not have the motivation to wear lolita, but up until then we were getting there! We posted a lot of coords on tumblr and Haz posted her first Closet of Frills post! 

• More shoes! Always, always more shoes. We bought a lot of shoes! We both got gold shoes, eventually brown shoes, but we could both still really do with some pale pink shoes.
• Try and get at least one wish list item each, whether it be something as small as an accessory or as big as an OP! We both did this! I got one of my Ultimate Dream Dresses (AP's Classic Melody!) and so did Haz (AP's Toy Parade!). As well as that we picked up some other wishlist dresses; Sweet Cream House, Dolly Cat, and more than a few others!
• Try out an indie or a taobao brand. We didn't go out and buy any indie/taobao brand specially, but we did end up getting a really cute elephant dress from one of our friend's brands, Camellia's Closet! It's really cute and Haz collects elephants so it was perfect for her! 

Okay! So, this challenge originates from Lace a la Mode, a cute lolita and lifestyle blog! I think the idea is that there'll be a different challenge/prompt etc. posted every day to do with lolita/lolita lifestyle, and we're going to do our best to follow along with this blog. Without further ado, goals for our wardrobe for 2016: 

• Buy more blouses! Because really, can you ever have too many blouses? 
• Buy more dream items and less stuff just because it's cheap and easy to get to - a resolution we made last year, but still a resolution to go with!
• Make more things to go with our dresses and outfits; we both obviously make a lot of jewelry for the shop but we don't often just make something just because we want to. 
• Attend more meets and events and conventions! That way we have somewhere to wear all of the cute things we're making! I'm not really sure what's going on with our local community, but there are a few comms close to us that it would be easy to go to meets at! 

Well, I think that's it! I hope you all had a wonderful new year and I hope that 2016 is going to be your best year yet! We have tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in June and we're trading at our first two-day convention in the summer too, so we already have something to look forward to! 

I hope we'll be posting a lot more next year!

 ✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥

♥ 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♥

❤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♥

♥ January Lolita Meet - Afternoon Tea Party! ♥

You may remember one of our goals for 2015 was both to attend more meetups and try and wear lolita more often! Well, our local community's lolita meet was this Saturday and both of us managed to be free and be feeling up to it! Our community has only really grown in size in the past six months or so, so having an active lolita calendar is a relative novelty! We all planned on meeting up and having afternoon tea at the cutest little tea shop and our lovely host planned a quiz with some prizes for the winning team! 

Haz outfit rundown!

JSK - Lyrical Dot by Angelic Pretty
Bolero & Tights - ASDA (forever the classiest place for lolitas to shop!)
Shoes, Blouse, Wristcuffs - Bodyline
Bag - Claire's Accessories
Bow - Home Bargains (it cost 20p and is cute and really, what more can you ask for?)
Wig - Geisha Wigs

(Slightly less classy location!)

Skirt - Metamorphose
Blouse & Shoes - Bodyline
Cardigan - Charity shop
Beret - Accessorize
Glasses & Ankle Socks - eBay
Accessories - Handmade, charity shops, and a very very classy golden crown ring that we took off the top of a Gregg's cupcake!

(an image shamelessly stolen from facebook!) 

The tea rooms we went to were adorable! All of the furniture was very shabby chic and vintage and our actual tea was all served in various charmingly mismatched teapots and teacups! Haz and I both has peppermint tea; we're not really very big tea people but because of how generous the "tea for two" offer is we were both able to get about three cups each! We also had a delicious slice of cake each, and they had gluten free cake available for some of the comm members with specific dietary needs! 

We then had a lolita quiz devised by our host! The general knowledge questions I think both Haz and I struggled on, but the other questions (name a print with rabbits on! etc.) were both a lot easier, so there was definitely something for everyone! We even had some special rounds such as acting out a brand new VenusAngelic video (both of which are now preserved on video forever!). Around this time, the tearoom needed to shut down (although the lovely workers did extend their hours another half hour for us, which was super nice of them!) and we moved over to finish our quiz at Wetherspoons!

(Wetherspoons bathroom pictures!)

We finished the quiz with a game involving designing lolita coords based on specific themes (including ballet and olives!) and a team game of lolita Cards Against Humanity! Both of the teams ended up tying, but Haz and I brought a little something to contribute to the prizes as well as the prizes that our quizmaster brought, so all of us were able to walk away with little gifts! Haz and I got two cute scented candles (cinnamon stick and lavender!) that smelled divine! 

Everyone looked adorable and it was so nice to catch up with each other after the busy festive period! Next month's meet is going to be a Valentine's event, but I'm not sure if either of us will be able to make it, but hopefully we won't have to wait too long before we can get together and get frilly again! I leave you with the video that one of the other comm members made of the day!

✿Love,✿

♥Haz & Nat♥