Turkey Day

Hello Ladies and Gents,

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving, an American Holiday.  For those of you who read my blog and are not familiar with this Holiday, it's a day that families and Friends all come together and have a big meal, in Celebration of all the things we are Thankful for.

So, I wont be online tomorrow to make a post, so I wanted to go over the things I am thankful for.  First and most importantly I am thankful for my family.  Though we drive each other crazy, they are the only people I know I can count on for support (and money when I am in a jam...  But I pay them back!).  I am thankful for my very supportive boyfriend, even being across an ocean he is there for me.  My friends, for all the stupid stuff I do, for some reason you still want to hangout with me.  I am thankful for my church that I found with the help of a friend.  I can't make it a lot of the time to services but I don't feel judged when I can go.  Really thankful for all the people I met in the Lolita Community, and I am looking forward to becoming a bigger part of it.

So I am thankful for other stuff too, but I only have so much time.

Today's plans:  Help mom prep for tomorrow.  Stuffing, buying the booze for consumption and the Turkey! Yum!  Cleaning the house, and then sleep for three hours before getting up to start cooking with my mom!

Tomorrow's plan: Cooking in Early Morning, Talking to Mason which will probably be followed with my Mother talking to Mason (I am 85% sure my mother will ask him what he is doing for Thanksgiving... forgetting that in England they do not celebrate the holiday.  Love you Mom!  Admittedly, I probably will do something equally as funny if not more so!).  Have an early Dinner and try not to pass out from the food coma!  Work on iSaunter's garment, hopefully finish it over the Weekend, and then I also have to work on my dress for my class.

So yeah, probably wont post any Turkey Day pictures as I don't really have a Lolita outfit for the Holiday.  But I will try to post these neat videos for making jewelry and neat gift ideas!  I am probably going to go ahead and actually make some of these items and use them for gift ideas.

If you have any neat crafting idea's, videos you would like to share, have any questions you would like to ask me, or pictures of your favorite Lolita co-ordinate; I will post them on the blog and try to answer the questions as best as I can. Please keep the questions PG :)

Email me at Lolita_doll11@yahoo.com 


Ok, well It's time to finish the work day.  I hope everyone has a happy Holiday!

-PLV

Trains!

So this has to be a super quick post as I am not sure how much time I have on my break. This is basically going to be a photo dump. It's been a while since I posted pictures on here. On here you will see my Attempt at a Kadona. I altered pants and threw stuff together (OMG what is she thinking?!?!).

Anyway, My friend Jeff and I decided to go to the Meetup in PA. It was very small, but nice as I got to hang out with two very awesome Lolitas!  The pictures that you see, almost all of them were taken by Laidech... I suck at taking pictures!  But these are really neat and I will probably use the inside of the Train for the Pretty Little Victorian Holiday Wall Picture!  Please note that the pictures are in random order, because I am tired or trying to fix it.

Tea Time...

So for my project that I am redoing, I came up with a theme for my color inspiration book.  Tea.  I have created a Lady Grey Dress, and a Longjing Green Tea dress (Chinese Green Tea) dress design, and will make designs inspired by Chai, Camomile, Darjeeling, and Assam .  I will be making an Earl Grey to go with Lady Grey as well (He counts as his own tea!).  I really want to create the Longjing Tea Dress, the design is simple, but the print is crazy.  Most likely I will have to paint the design on because I do not have the money to have fabric costum made!

So as I said before, what I am making is a Color Book.  It's a book that has the colors I want to use and what inspired me to use them.  Tea has inspired me, and not just tea, but tea from other cultures.  In our project we could either do magazine clippings, or we could sketch designs.  I first did clippings, but decided that since I am doing my project over, I am going to sketch this time.  The only thing that makes me nervous is someone possibly stealing my designs, but I really want to impress my instructor since the project is coming in late and I need to make up for that!

For others who are interested in starting your own line or going into Fashion and design, I would recommend making these.  It's basically your ideas in a book that you would present to a distributor or someone who would possibly be interested in selling your line.  It's an easy way to make a collection as well, so long as you are staying with a certain theme.  Will I post pictures?  I don't know, I say that I will do a lot of things :P  So lets just see how this goes!

Well, my break is up and I still haven't worked on my project yet today... Kinda need to get a move on that.  Don't forget to submit for the contest! Take advantage of the extension!

Hugs and Kisses,

PLV

Favors, Upcycle, Renaissance Festival.

Hello My Pretties!

So for the time being we are still here.  If Blogger gets better we will stay but as of right now any pictures I take I will be putting on our FB page.

So I thought I would let you all know what I am up to... aside from working two jobs and hardly sleeping.  My friend Sunny Sprocket is going to go to Otakon and has asked me to help her with her costumes.  I have been a very bad friend and forgotten about them, and so not I will be trying to work on some of them tonight and then hopefully get a good bulk done tomorrow.  I will not be attending Otakon this year as I need to save money for Wales.  I am looking forward to that Blog post, it will be like a belated Chanukah/Christmas and any other religion present :)  So now you have a hint of when I will be going.

I still have not worked on those pants that are supposed to be shorts for my Kadona co-ord.  So I will be working on that and also try to use the remaining fabric for a tie.  Speaking of ties, I still have to make a lot more.  I might be able to make a hat to go with my outfit... I have a lot of hats...

Renaissance Festival!  I love going to the Renaissance Festival and I found this super cute fabric to use so that I can make a Renaissance themed Lolita Co-ord!  I am going to try to make three dresses, yes three!  One for myself and two more for my friends.  Then, epic Lolita photoshoot!  I will give you all a hint, Dragons ^-^  But first I must complete the items above!  So I should get started.

Goodnight Lovelys,

Lolita Doll 11

Cupcake Purse!

Ok, so I keep trying to load the picture of my new purse on FB but for some reason it is not taking it.  Grrr Facebook!  But that is ok because I can show it off here!

It was actually not that hard, but it does not look as polished as I would like for it to look.  Either way, I have a cute purse now to go with my skirt!  Hoping to make a headpiece to go with it soon now too.  But first, I am fighting off a cold or something.  Check in with everyone later!

-Lolita Doll 11

Lolita Craft Night! And Hat box!

So Sunday night, Mi - tan and I went over to another Loli's house where we had snacks, delightful conversation, and worked on our own crafting projects!  It was the first night of our craft night, and I had a really good time.  Our Hostess, Sally, let us into her lovely home and fed us.  She also had some of her own creations around her house.  I thought this was really neat and helped with the theme of the night (not to mention that the clothes are beautiful!).  The picture on the left is of our hostess, and yes, she made the dress she is wearing!  She's lucky that I was too busy carrying my sewing machine into her house because I think I would have tried to figure out a way to steal it from her person (kidding... mostly :P ).

Here are the lovely ladies who attended our meet!  There were others who arrived before Mi-tan and I but I didn't get a picture of them.  Left picture is of Mi-tan and Tola.  It would seem that I put the two designers in one picture as Tola and Mi-tan both sew and design clothes!  The right picture is of Angelica and Olivia.  Olivia has her own blog as well, you can read it here, Black Witch.  Angelica is a very sweet girl, she also has made her own clothing (one piece I am still trying to figure out how she made without pulling her hair out!)  All of these girls are great and I am looking forward to the next craft night!

  As mentioned earlier, Sally had some of her own creations around her house.  I took the liberty of taking some pictures!  Sadly the picture on the right came out blurry.  I can only hope that Sally has this dress out again next time so that I may take another clear picture of it.  The skirt (left) is actually a Bodyline skirt that Sally plans on altering, and I cannot wait to see what she does with it!  I have legwarmers I could wear with it, and I love the bow in the front!



I took some more pictures of the girls, to show off their outfits.  Olivia (left) is wearing a skirt from Bodyline (I think that is what she said), not sure where the shirt is from, or the neat little bow/flower thingy she has.  She has cyberlocks, because she is awesome and therefore needs no other reason!  Mi-tan (right) I believe she is wearing a purple gingham dress from HMHM.  Ladies, feel free to correct me if I am wrong on anything.

 Tola (left) is wearing a pink Innocent World dress/jsk.  I love Innocent World, if I had the money I would get myself an Innocent World dress, skirt, everything!  I also love how she paired it with pink sneakers to give it more of a casual look.  Overall, very cute.  Angelica (right), I didn't get to ask her where her pieces from her outfit came from, but I think that what she is wearing is a perfect example of casual Lolita, especially if it is something you want to wear out and feel comfortable but still be Lolita.  Sunday night was a great night to get dressed up!

   And we finally get to crafting!  And Sally's husband comes in to join in on the fun!  Not really, but he did join us in conversation.  Sally is holding a pattern for a apron I believe, Tola is working on jewelry if memory serves me correctly.  Angelica is sketching, I am sad to say that I am not sure exactly what she was working on.  Mi-tan is crocheting, and I was sewing, working on my skirt, which I still have yet to finish (its soooo close to being
done!).

The next day after our meet, I got the itch to work on another craft project, specifically for my hats.  For the longest time I wanted to take mini hat boxes and paint them, decorate and line then with cloth.  So I have been working on one.  The inside still needs to be lined and I am not finished with the outside.  Despite all that I wanted to share with you my current progress.  I hate the bottom flower, so I tried to cover it with the V.  It wasn't until after I finished the second flower that I remembered what and orange rose meant when given to someone.  Yes, flowers had meanings behind them!  To put it simply, it meant that you hated/disliked them.  Oh well, I think over all its ok, but I still have more that I want to do to it.

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I am tired and I have a long day of running around, cleaning, and trying not to go crazy.  Hopefully get to some more crafts soon!  Stay Pretty!

-Lolita Doll 11

Happy New Year!

Seasons greetings everyone!

I hope that everyone has had a wonderful Holiday and looking forward to the New Year!  Now that all the crazyness of shopping and wrapping presents is over, in 6 days it is going to be a whole new year, and I have decided what my New Year Resolution will be.  This year I plan on making more things instead of buying (unless it is materials).  I plan on saving more money, not only for myself but to help others as well.  I will learn something new, be it to do with sewing, learning a new language or maybe something about history that I didn’t know before.

Aside from that, I would like to share with everyone a few things that I have made over the past year.  It is not as much as I would have liked, but by doing this I hope that I can use this to help myself in my goal to make even more beautiful things in 2012 (it is going to be the last year on earth supposedly).

In most of these pictures you will notice the same fabric has been used.  It was a few years ago I saw this Music note fabric.  I kept waiting and waiting until I had money to buy it.  Well the day that I did, there was only 1 yard left and was told that they were not making anymore of it, so I bought all that I could, as well as buy some fabric I found online (of course I ended up paying too much for it).  It sat in my drawer for a while until I figured out what I wanted to do with it.  Then I met the designer for BruteForceStudios.com.  His name is Thomas Willeford.  I modeled for him a few times and he made me my own corset with the music note fabric that I had bought.  After that I made a skirt with the remaining piece and then a hat.

After that I made a few more hats (there are about 4 of them on my Etsy account right now).  Discovered that I still had some Music note fabric, and a friend of mine made a large donation to my lack of fabric, and so I made another skirt and a cravat to go with it.  It’s a shame that I don’t really have anymore left, I would love to make some more pieces.  For now I plan on making more items with the fabric that I have.

For the Holiday I found this adorable fabric that I knew I wanted to make for Christmas.  Red with white poke-a-dots and Christmas themed cupcakes.  I was worried that I didn’t have enough fabric for it to be long enough, so I made a white hem with some red stitching.  As it turns out I wouldn’t have needed it, but I think the little white ruffle really pulled it together.  It was my first time doing an elastic waist (normally I use zippers), and I made it a tiny bit loose.  I wanted to have something for my hair that matched my skirt so I made this really cute hairclip.  After my pieces were made I realized that I made a Sweet Lolita outfit (at least it looks Sweet to me).  I normally would never wear Sweet (nothing against it, I just normally don’t wear it).  When my family came over I was expecting all sorts of questions like “What are you wearing?” but I was surprised when everyone kept saying how cute I looked and then were shocked when I said I made what I was wearing.  It was a great feeling, my one aunt ended up inspecting my skirt and told me I did very well on it and should sell online.  I don’t think I will be selling clothing anytime soon, because even though I can, I don’t know if I could keep up with the orders, but it is a thought for the future.

So that is all that I have made so far that really screams Lolita.  As I said before, I want to make more things for 2012.  Keep an eye out on my Etsy, I just might post up a skirt or two.

Speaking of Lolita clothing for sale, a friend of mine has posted some of her clothes on the egl livejournal.  Take a look at it, there is a beautiful AATP (Alice and The Pirates) dress that I want but sadly I need to save money for my trip to Wales.  If you’re not a member of http://egl-comm-sales.livejournal.com/ I suggest that you fix that.  It’s a great place to find some great pieces (or to just look at them as I always do).  Have a happy New Year!

PS.  Still getting used to posting pictures.