Japanese Dolls and Geishas

Here's another one of my collections, this time featuring my items with traditionally garbed Japanese women. I have a statue, a doll, and a note pad in this collection (see below).

The statue features a lady wearing a kimono doing a traditional Japanese art: Ikebana or flower arranging. I like how delicate this statue is and how it mostly uses soft colors that all blend nicely together.

The next item is the doll. I believe that this doll is a highly simplified version of the Hinamatsuri, Japanese girl's day, Ohime-sama doll as it is in a similar style to other Hinamatsuri dolls and has a tiny fan, like the full sized versions of Ohime-sama have. I love how simple and small this doll is while still being very elegant and detailed.

The last item in this collection is the note pad. It's a very pretty note pad with a geisha featured on the front. The paper inside has a nice delicate pattern using different shades of purple. The outside has lot of metallic gold accents, making it very difficult to get a good image of the cover.

All images are by me unless otherwise noted. Check me out on Twitter.

Lolita on a Budjet: Gothic Lolita

 Gothic Lolita is the first Lolita style I tried and today is one of my favorites.The one thing I dislike about Gothic Lolita is that it lacks bright colors, so I enjoy wearing other styles of Lolita as well. For this Gothic Lolita outfit I chose to do an outfit that's mainly black with white accents to keep the outfit from looking too dark. For those that prefer an all black Gothic or Kuro Lolita, I'll do an outfit later on for that style. This outfit costs $120 plus shipping and handling. Let's go!

The most important part of any Lolita ensemble is, of course, the dress or, in this case the jumper. For this outfit I chose a ruffled jumper that comes with a matching katayusha, or head bow. I love that this jumper's cute yet inexpensive and that it comes with a head bow as well making for even more savings. For a blouse to wear under the jumper, I felt that the ladder race blouse in white would be the best since it allows one to wear the sleeves long or short making it a very versatile blouse. Since it's a white blouse it can also be used with many ensembles or by itself with a pair of jeans if you want a casual but cute look for every day wear. I thought that over the knee socks would look best with this look, but a cute pair of lacy white tights could be substituted for a more mature look or to keep your legs warm in winter. I love how cute all of Bodyline's shoes are and these are no exception! The triple bow shoes in black are very cute and I love the little heart shaped clasps on them. To top it all off, I thought that adding a few cute rings would be nice. My favorite ones are the black crystal rose and bow rings. Now add a petticoat and a pair of bloomers and you're good to go! I hope you enjoy this look and look forward to more in the future! Bodyline! is always adding new items, so there's sure to be more looks in this and other styles in the future.

All of the items in this outfit plus more in this style can be found on the Bodyline website. No pictures due to the fact that I haven't received permission to use Bodyline!'s images. Check me out on Twitter.

Gothic & Lolita Kodona Blouse

A while back I got a blouse pattern from Miss Carlyfornia out of a Gothic & Lolita Bible she owns. The blouse was part of a Kodona Lolita (Boy style) ensemble that included a frill, ribbon, and belts for the sleeves of the blouse as well as a pair of shorts. Seeing as how I barely fit extra large Japanese size blouses, I doubted I'd fit the shorts pattern so I only copied the blouse pattern. A little while back I took the time to actually make the blouse that was in the instructions since I'd only used the bodice of the blouse to make a puff sleeved sailor collar blouse. This time I altered the pattern to make it slightly longer as well as making the modifications called for in the pattern to give the blouse tails and enough space in the front to make it a button up blouse. Fortunately the alterations all turned out well and I was able to assemble the pattern fairly easily. My main struggles were with the sleeves, as they were in three different sections and I'd sized the middle section a little off, and the collar, which was a style I'd never done before. The buttons were also a little difficult making sure that they were positioned properly, but the part that brought me the most grief was the button holes. This is mainly because I'd never done button holes on a sewing machine before, but also due to the fact that the pieces for button holes decided to stop working for no evident reason partway through several of the button holes. Overall, the blouse turned out really nicely and it fits very well.

I'm wearing my new blouse with a ribbon at the collar and my loliable skirt in the image above. The blouse also works really nicely with my Gothic Lolita Pinafore by Miss Carlyfornia.

All images are by me unless otherwise noted. Check me out on Twitter.