Antique Beast review + try on

Dear all,

Yes, still here, still trying to make thing a thing again. 

The Portuguese Lolita community has always been tiny but lately there seems to have a tiny boost in energy. I won't like, I am not really a big part of that boost unfortunately because I just cannot cope with...much of anything really but it is nice to see new people join and the overall enthusiasm.

Part of that brought something we used to have and stopped for a while: group orders. Now I try not to go too wild because our customs is... abusive to be honest but when I can join, I do.

The last group order I joined was an Antique Beast order. 

For those who do not know the brand, it is quite old... 2000s dare I say? And the particularity is that they do not always accept orders, they open the opportunity to order until the slots are full and then they just do not accept orders until the next round. That makes it a bit inconvenient but also sort of makes you feel special when you do make an order.

I cannot fit into their clothes but I love the hair accessories so I jumped at the opportunity to add something else to my collection. 

I ordered two pieces:

白猫ヘッドドレス (bat headdress in white)

Treizeヘッドドレス

As this was a made to order and group order, I kind of "forget" I order things and when they arrive it is just a wonderful surprise again!

There were two fabric options for the bat headpiece, the regular fabric and fancier option but I already owned it in black and I like how it sits so I wanted to order the white in the exact same material. I guess i was scared it would be floppier or something.

Here's the black. I was surprised because the tag is red on the black but purple on the white. 

The items come in plastic bags and there are no paper tags on the items, just a small glued on home printed "sticker" which makes it feel as indie as it comes. I think most people just imagine all japanese lolita brands to be these huge businesses but this really shows the reality of things. As I have been to Japan I know that's not the case. If you are reading this: if you have the means, do support your favorite brands as much as you can. I wish I could do that more often these days.

I particularly love the fact that the ribbon has this flower print detail. It is lovely. 

I am also very happy I ordered something else. This piece is equally beautiful if not more, I am in love with it. I just hope I can do it justice. The ties are wide chiffon which adds some drama to it (who does not love some drama in their coords) and the ribbons have the same floral detail as the bat headdress even though they are a wider ribbon. There are little cute details everywhere. I really recommend that you get something from them if you love elegant gothic styles. 

I really could not wait to try something on so I decided to dress in lolita again this weekend to celebrate this order. I went with my Moitie white op which is literally the only white main piece i have. I do love shiro coords but because I am plus sized it makes me super self conscious and I rarely wear it or invest in new white pieces. This means that headdress matches very little in my wardrobe but oh well.

OUTFIT INFO

Cutsew: Maxicimam

Dress: Moi-Meme-Moitié

[fun fact: someone uploaded my photos to lolibrary so those photos are of this actual dress XD ]

Headdress: Antique Beast

Socks & Necklace: Metamorphose temps de fille

Tights, Shoes, Cross ring, bracelets, wristcuffs: Offbrand

Bag, rings: Vivienne Westwood

Coffin ring: Suppurate System

After this I sat in my small couch and just browsed an old Gothic & Lolita Bible (boy do I miss them!). I don't have them all but I wish I did. I may hunt them down some day... 

I love how inspirational they are. Did you know my favorite sections are always the "street snap" photos. I wish I was lucky enough to have been in one of these pages. It would have been such an honor. I am forever sad I missed the chance. 

Looking at these photos does also make me regret many things I sold over the years, I wish i had all my old Metamorphose blouses and my fully shirred dresses. I wonder where they are now. Some I still know. I hope one day they return to my closet. Who knows. It would make me happy to at least wear them again, just one more time. 

Do you have any sales regrets too? Do you think about it?

Hope you liked another rambling post, see you next time :)

International lolita day, winter.

9th of January

This day our community, the Portuguese Lolita community had organized a small gathering in my town to celebrate the winter loliday with a huge delay. Better late than never, right?

Anyway the weather was a disgrace, it was raining a lot and barely anyone was in the streets. 

It was scheduled at a lovely chocolate/cake store in which we had too many yummy sweets. It was great.

I had a lot of fun just looking at lolita magazines, eating and chatting with everyone and I love how everyone looked so different too. 

My friend Su came all the way from Lisbon to attend and stayed at my place which was a plus. <3 

Su, I adore you Su.

After getting dressed I went over to the meeting spot where soon all the participants arrived. Sadly it then started raining (a lot!) and we had to go all the way to the shop under heavy rain (my feet were super wet) but once we got there we got pretty confortable.

The counter full of tasty chocolates <3

We chatted and looked through lolita magazines and just spent a lovely afternoon. I really do wish we had these more ofen but the truth is, we just don't..

Group photo. Everyone looked super different, which is really cool. 

I am going to leave you with some photos of the goodies. The food was super yummy and just perfect for a dark and wet afternoon like that one. <3
I had my favorite drink (cappuccino) and a slice of chocolate / passion fruit cake, it was amazing!

Also Su brought me an adorable present, this cute cupcake shaped box which is now being used as decoration downstairs <3 My daughter also got treats, a princess crown and scepter which she loved.

You spoil me too much Su!

That was pretty much our day. 

The next day Su had to go back home but we booked lunch at our favorite restaurant, Ichiban.

Su loved it which is what's important. The view there is usually amazing because its right next to the sea but the weather was even worse on that sunday so just getting out of the car and into the restaurant was a freaking nightmare. 

Anyway I hope you liked hearing about my special weekend. I really want to have another one in my town just like that but nothing is scheduled for the rest of the year hehe.

I love you, thank you for following even if i'm too busy to post often. <3 I really really do appreciate it. <3

Japan 2015 Haul Post

Hello!

As you might have noticed I will not be posting other entries about my trip this year. I don't feel like it to be honest but I am still going to post my trip haul. I bought a bit too much again this year and will now be saving to pay off my extravagant buys for a couple of months haha but its always worth it, shopping in Japan is a lot of fun!

The photos are a bit small but if you click on them you should be able to see things a bit better.

These are all the lolita related purchases. In total I bought 5 dresses, 1 used and the other 4 new. 

I cannot post individual photos of everything so if there's anything you'd like to see please comment below! 

This is all the makeup/beauty related products I got during this trip. I even got these cute plastic containers to put in my room because they were too lovely to pass on,

And these are mostly stationary items, a couple I got from liemzie too (thank you) and of course the rilakkuma x hankyu plushie is not stationary, his job is to look cute and gather dust. :X

I buy a bit of this stuff there because I LOVE penpaling. I don't write a lot of letters unfortunately but I like being prepared. I don't collect these although i wish i could (who has space for that), I really use them. 

Lastly these are my doll related buys this time. I did not visit any doll stores unfortunately so I just got a magazine and a couple rement items because they are adorable. My BJDs got nothing this time.

And other than that we also bought a ton of food. Now I am poor, again. haha

I hope you liked reading about my shoppaholic side :|

I love this sort of post I must admit, looking at what other people buy is a sort of sadistic hobby.

Love always,

Jo

Hello everyone!

Strangely I do have new pieces to post and they are all from taobao which is unusual. One of them, the dress was actually bought a while ago. The other is a long underskirt I got from another lolita.

Dear Celine underskirt in ivory, very well made, I really love it. I have to admit that the quality is pretty good. It is the best piece i have ever gotten through taobao. <3

The other piece is SouffleSong / Neverland and Gloria Oil Painting jsk. I loved the print when it came out and ordered it. Unfortunately the print is blurry and the details are just so-so quality. I can't really say I love it as I'd like. Both the quality and finish as well as the materials are below the quality I am used to which is more disturbing than i thought. Plus taobao prices aren't that affordable anymore, i could have gotten a nice second hand dress for the price i paid which was about 100 euro with ship, fees and customs. 

 I decided to dress up for loliday, I had been outdoors before and worn a moitie necklace with my regular outfit but I really wanted to wear lolita for something, even if just to chill out at home.
For some reason summer really makes me wanna wear sweet a lot, its probably the colors. I went for a strawberry sweet lolita look. I really love green in lolita and I also love fruit prints in lolita too. You probably did not expect thar.

At some point my hudband got me cheesecake which made me very happy. At least my day was "sweet". 

As a way to celebrate loliday i also decided to either make something lolita or finish a lolita sewing project so that's what i did. I got a nice dramatic sleeved bolero in my trip to london for enchanted and i always wanted to make it rounder in the edges and add some ribbon ties. I also later decided the sleeves were too poofy and this is the end result, much easier to wear!

I was a bit sad that all my plans for loliday kinda got ruinned by timing, distance and last minute cancelling but honestly since it was so ridiculously hot (and it was worse today, what's up with the weather?!?) but I had fun this weekend with my familly, could have been much worse than it was and I still managed to wear lolita as I wanted. 

I do think about what it'd be like to live in a country with a big, active community though, all those photos of ild meetings made me a tad bit jealous still. I am positive and am sure things will be better soon. Now I must focus on getting everything finished at work. I have so much stuff to do, Its a bit overwhelming.

How about you? Did you do anything that day/dress up?

Love,

Jo

9th March

After an odd night that Saturday, (We changed, went out for kebabs and witnessed a robbery and waited 15min for the police to arrive while noticing that apparently nobody cared and reported it - despite a lot of people walking by - sad huh?) we had a more relaxed Sunday.


First my family was gone, so no mom and my brother also went to rest due to having gotten a cold and second Sunday's are always a bit... slow.


We hanged out at home a while and then in the afternoon finally left to walk around town a bit and for Mari to run around because that's her favorite thing right now.


I recently got another dress, its not really a new dress, but a dress I already own in another color way. One of the local lolitas has it in yet another color so I thought it would be fab if we did a trio. Sadly we never heard back from said Lolita so it ended up being me and fla twinning again. I changed the outfits in order for them to kinda be a twin and off we went. My favorite outfit is fla's. I just adore the burgundy ribbon on that dress, I think its pretty unexpected. Obviously I matched it with burgundy pieces and I think it works out quite nicely.

I am not really sure about this cut on me actually, for casual outings sure, for actual proper Lolita like this... I'm not sure it suits me. It makes me bulkier than normal. I do adore the print on the dress and the fabric though so I'm sad to let these go. They were not super cheap either.

Eventually fla had to get ready to leave which was sad.... we will miss having her around, I felt so... appreciated... actually no, I felt like someone considers me to be a good friend and wants to hang out with me which is something I have not had for a while nor did I know that I was not getting.
That made me get very gloomy these next days, I think you only miss things when you acknowledge them. I got so used to being with my family and only meeting certain people on some occasions that spending a whole weekend with someone dedicating their full attention to me kind of spoiled me.
I now plan to kidnap fla and her boyfriend and "force" them to move to the most amazing Portuguese city of them all, Porto.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading and looking at the photos.
I had so much fun twinning, I want to do it again soon!
Love,
Jo

7, 8 of March

            I was going to post a bit more, stuff other than just this weekend but I ended up procrastinating and I'll only post about the weekend in the end. I hope you will like reading, it was a very happy time for me so hopefully you will.

7th March - Friday
Two events took place on friday, my inlaws sent a package full of food again and that arrived which is always a colorful fun event for me and my husband. Mari had fun taking everything out of the box and putting everything inside again and so on...

Later that evening, around 10pm my dear friend fla arrived from Lisbon. She wanted to come over to visit me and my familly and would stay with us for the weekend!

8th March - Saturday

We woke up at decent time i suppose but took our time around the house. We decided we should go have lunch somewhere and everyone got ready.

Me, my husband, Mari, my older brother and fla all got in the car and my husband drove us to the nearby city of Vila Nova de Gaia to go to his favorite restaurant. 

My friend fla brought gifts, yes i know.... what a nice girl! 

She got things for Mari and also made some things for both Mari and myself. <3

She got Mari a set, a H&M red dress with pink dots and she made a matching bear headdress. How cute is that? 

I keep telling her that I adore the floral headbands she makes so she made me one. She made it in red, white and gold. It is huge I wonder if i can pull it off. 

She also made me a bear black headpiece. She did it out of a sort of spike things, as a dare. I shall wear it just for the lolz. :P I wonder if i can pull it off?

I also saw her wearing these tights and i loved them. I told her so and she got me a pair. I had no idea they were from Primark. They look amazing in pictures, everyone should get a pair.  

In the afternoon we had scheduled a Lolita meeting. One of the local girls, Isabel, had scheduled it before fla even knew she'd come over. It sounded like fun but we had other plans so we knew we could only stay for a bit. Still we got dressed and went. We had decided to wear the same dress since we both own Metamorphose temps de fille room print in the white colorway. Of course for fla that means her confort zone: sweet lolita and for me quite the opposite. It's fun thought and i think i pulled it off.

 We ordered one cake and shared. It was ok, i think the presentation is better than taste there but the kitchness of the decor of that place won me over.

We had to leave a bit earlier (aroung 5.30) because we had a classical music thing at 6pm. We got in the car and off we went. Unfortunately that weekend there was a ton of traffic and, in the end, we could  not get there on time. So that means no show and leaving the meeting earlier for nothing! We decided not to let it go to waste and stopped in a nice spot for some shots.

So I guess since we got nice shots I cannot complain but i'm still sad because i wanted to take fla to the show. Oh well....
We both wore the same print (fla wore the op version and I wore the jsk), the same shirt, the same lace socks in different colorways, flat shoes, ankle socks and the exact same bag in different colorways, same accesories etc. I think it was a decent twin experience and it was a lot of fun!

Soon, the next day report. I wonder what we both wore.... :P

I hope you liked the post, i miss her terribly!
Love,
Jo