Part II- AWA, Halloween, and a November Meetup!

Hello Lovelies! I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving for those that celebrated it! I’m finally getting around to writing Part II! I still have to catch you up on how AWA, Halloween, and how our November Meetup went! 

Anime Weekend Atlanta (AWA) is a three day convention that takes place in Atlanta, Georgia every year towards the middle or end of September. I’ve been going to AWA for about 5 or 6 years now! This year was really special to me because it marked my first year as a Lolita! I still can’t believe that one year ago at that time, I was nervously putting on my first Lolita outfit to go and meet the Atl Lolitas! Here is what I wore last AWA!  

I’m proud of the progress that I have made but I know that I definitely still have a long way to go! I’m just enjoying the journey right now!

This year was also special because this was the first time that I was able to go to AWA all three days!  Greg, Greg’s girlfriend Jillian, Faust, Kim Joon, and I got a hotel across the street from the main convention area.  On Friday, we wandered around the convention looking for friends and panels to go to. I didn’t take any pictures for some reason but I found this one! Pedobear wanted a hug.

On Saturday, we hung out with the Atl Lolitas, attended a few panels, and went to the rave that night. I had so much fun that night! Here are a few pictures!

On Sunday we packed up to go home. We spent a little bit of time in the dealer’s room and visited Frill Boutique! Frill featured some of Megan Maude’s (http://www.meganmaude.com) and The Snow Field’s (http://snowfield.etsy.com/) awesome handmade clothing. If you’re looking for quality products, these are the people to check out! I took a few pictures with friends in front of the store before we had to head back to our dorm.

Jennifer and Halston looked so cute!

Moving on to Halloween!

I actually had plans this year! Whipcreambunn threw a party and invited us to it! We had a lot of fun getting ready!


 

Chris helping Greg tie a tie

It started out as a small get together but as it got later, more people started showing up! We were the first people to arrive so we helped set up and put together this awesome air swimmer thing. It is remote controlled and had a habit of sinking and attacking me every once in a while. We had a small photo shoot and played blackjack with Kim Joon as our dealer. We had to leave early but it was still tons of fun! Here are some pictures! I’m terrible at posing!

Our host and hostess

Last but not least, I have to tell you guys about our November Corn Maze meetup! The Atl Lolitas met up in downtown Marietta at Marietta Square for lunch and pictures! We ate at the amazing Marietta Pizza Company and took a few pictures afterward. 

 

If you notice, I’m not wearing a coat. I COMPLETELY forgot to grab my coat before leaving our dorm. It was going to get VERY cold that night and I was unprepared.

When we finally got done taking pictures, we headed up to the corn maze in north Georgia. It was about two hours away so we had a very fun car ride with whipcreambunn and her boyfriend, Eric. Eric taught her how to drive with a stick shift in a parking lot halfway there. That was an experience!  When we finally got to the Corn Maze, it was completely dark and freezing. I decided to dig through Eric’s trunk to see if I could find SOMETHING to use as a coat. Lo and behold, I found a nice and thick coat! I wasn’t cold for the rest of the night! I’m also really glad that some people were smart enough to bring flash lights! We went on a quick hayride and then headed into the maze!  

Though part of the fun of being in a corn maze is getting lost, several of the guys decided to use the map to get us through the maze and to find all the checkpoints. Some stupid guy that wasn’t in our group kept popping out of the corn to scare us and almost got a really heavy flashlight to his face.  

A few hours later we all finished at decided to head home. It was about 9PM and we had a two hour drive back to Atlanta and class the next day!

Well this concludes Part II of what I’ve been up to! I have a project in mind for this blog that I want to work on over my winter break! Let’s just say that it involves furries. Yes, furries. The ones that everyone seems to dislike. Stay tuned for more information!

Conventions Part I

Hello Lovelies!

I’m back! I am SO sorry that I haven’t updated in a while! My workload has been insane in these last few months and I’m just now catching a break. A lot of stuff happened in the month of September and October so I’ve decided to fill you all in! I’ll probably have to do this in several parts but I’ll try to get as much done today as possible!

Let’s start with the beginning of September!

I went to Dragon*Con for the first time ever!! This was one of the most exciting things that I have been to all year! For those that don’t know, D*C is a four day sci-fi and fantasy convention that is held over Labor Day weekend in downtown Atlanta. This is by far the biggest convention that is held in the southeast. I was definitely not prepared for it even though I knew this information. The convention was held about three blocks away from my dorm so we visited the area during the entire weekend. We decided to get a one day badge for Saturday which cost us $50! We will definitely be buying our badges earlier next year to avoid the high cost. I didn’t want to focus on anything specific for this convention because I was mostly interested in taking in all of the amazing aspects. 

My friend Gina stayed with us in our dorm from Friday to Sunday. We never get to see each other so this was very nice! She ran off to do convention stuff while we walked around the area on Friday. At the end of the day, we hung out with several people that frequent the 4chan board /CGL/.  4chan is an image board website where posting is almost all done anonymously. /CGL/ is the website’s Cosplay and Gothic Lolita area. People can be helpful sometimes but most of the time they’re just catty. I was interested to see how the members would be in real life, without the mask of anonymity.  We all ended up taking a nice long walk to Gladys’s and Ron’s Chicken and Waffles for some delicious food. I had a great time and enjoyed everyone’s company!  

On Saturday, we decided to go to the parade that was held on Peachtree Street. Unfortunately, we left our dorm too late to get a spot. Being 4’11”didn’t help anything either. Kim Joon was nice enough to take a few pictures for me since he is tall.

After the parade, we ate lunch and got ready to stand in line to get our badges. We originally thought that the line was going to be about 30 minutes long because of how fast it was moving. We could see most of the line from our living room window but couldn’t see how far back it stretched. Let’s just say that we definitely underestimated the time. I think we stood in line for about three hours or more.  We had a lot of fun goofing off in line and taking pictures. It was very hot that weekend (in the high 90’s!) so we were excited to see an ice cream truck parked next to the long line.

When we finally made it through the line, it was almost 4:30. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the hotels and went to a photoshoot with the Atlanta Lolitas. After taking lots of fun pictures, we stopped for lunch.

Right as we were finishing up, it started to rain! We only made it to two panels later that night and then decided to go to the rave. When we got back to our dorm to change for the rave, we were exhausted and didn’t have the motivation to go back outside. We ended up not going to the rave.  There’s always next year!

Sunday and Monday were very lazy days that consisted of homework and periodically going outside to take in the sights and to meet with people for lunch. We were completely exhausted from all the running around that we did in the previous days! I’m so glad that I was able to go and experience Dragon*Con!

The next weekend was Japan Fest! I was so excited to go this year because Japan Fest usually falls on the same weekend as Anime Weekend Atlanta. Japan Fest is a very small two day convention. This is the first time that I have been in about 5 years! We only went on Saturday but had a great time sampling food. It was nice meeting up with the ATL Lolitas again that weekend. We decided to play a game to get to know everyone a bit better that involved stealing large amounts of toilet paper. For every square that you ripped off, you had to say a fact about yourself.

Two of the boyfriends decided to play this game (including Kim Joon) and of course pulled off about 40 squares. I made Kim Joon cut it down to about 10 to spare everyone. It turned out to be a very fun game and we got to meet several new members of the group! I should mention that the Atlanta Lolitas currently has about 170 members now!

Well that’s all for Part I! Hopefully Part II will be later this week and not in another two months! I have a few projects that I want to complete over Thanksgiving and Winter break with Greg so I'll give you guys some updates about those as well!
Thanks for reading!
<3

VAMPIRE REQUIEM REPLICA REVIEW!!

Hello everyone!

It's been a while! I have been SO busy with school and personal stuff that I haven't had a minute to make a post! I'm so sorry about that. I will try my best to catch up. Right now I want to do a quick review on an item that came in the mail this morning before class!

Dream of Lolita's VAMPIRE REQUIEM REPLICA!!! 

I can't tell you all how excited I am that this is finally in my possession! Let's move on to the review!

I'll be reviewing several things: Loli-Loli Paradise's shopping service in general, the group ordering process, the JSK, and the headpiece that came with it. I apologize in advance for all the wrinkles!

**Feel free to skip this part**

Loli-Loli Paradise and the Group Order Process

I joined the group order for the JSK on July 24th through a shopping service that's run through facebook called Loli-Loli Paradise. She has run many group orders for DOL dresses and was absolutely amazing through out the entire process. I would definitely recommend her service. The samples of the dresses were not released at the time of ordering. I was a little bit worried about this but I was more interested in getting the replica and just couldn't wait til the samples were released! This was my first time ordering through Taobao so I wasn't sure what to expect. She answered all my questions very quickly and kept the group updated as DOL made the samples and provided more information.

The first payment was due on July 27th. I originally ordered the short version in red in a custom size. After seeing the sample pictures of the dress, I decided to change to the long version of the JSK. Loli-Loli Paradise was very sweet and allowed me to change, even though my dress order was already put in with DOL. I paid the second payment on August 20th and was told that the dresses would take another 20 days to arrive. On September 14th, I was told that the dresses would be shipped out in another 10 days. I was starting to worry because I needed the dress before Anime Weekend Atlanta (September 30th). Four days later, I was told that my dress had arrived at her house and would be shipped out on that following Tuesday. I decided to upgrade my shipping to EMS so that it would definitely make it in time. I received my dress on September 27th with a sweet little gift! A pair of red tights!

The Dress!

The dress was packaged very neatly in a shipping envelope. I couldn't wait to open it so I ripped right through the package! The dress itself came in a clear plastic bag with the headdress and tights sitting on top. 

When I first pulled out the dress, I immediately noticed the fabric and the weight of the JSK. The fabric is VERY thick. You definitely can't see through it one bit! Kim Joon also recognized how course the fabric is. I'm hoping that over time it will become softer. Another thing that I noticed how big it was. Now, I'm not a tiny girl by any means but I was still surprised. I had to get custom measurements so I was hoping that everything would turn out okay. I found out that the dress had a small shirring and corset panel which definitely helped the fit when I tried it on.

The Print.

I've seen the actual Vampire Requiem up close several times and I can say that DOL's copy of the print isn't as good. It's not bad but of course, the original is always better.

The print itself isn't blury! That was just my camera :)

Here are a few close ups on other parts of the dress :)

 

This can easily fit a variety of sizes! I'm guessing that the standard size would also be able to do the same. I have to pull the ribbon very tight for it to fit comfortably.

 When I flipped the dress inside out, I immediately saw a few pieces of thread that weren't cut properly.

 

I also noticed a very long thread by the shirring panel.

The dress is lined with a shiny, bright red fabric.

 

 I found a zipper that I didn't notice when I originally tried it on!  Of course, like all DOL zippers...it's terrible! I had trouble unzipping it when I flipped it back to the right side.

I also ordered a headdress to go along with it! Rococo Soul was supposed to make them but was unable to. A lovely reader figured out that this came from the taobao shop FoxCherry333! You can find it here:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=12447523951

 The only problem that I had with this was all the strands of hot glue all over the roses.

And here are some pictures of it worn! Please excuse my derp face and the wrinkly dress! Kim Joon was trying to make me laugh! I put this on really quickly and didn't even bother with my hair -.-

Well, there you have it! I'll be wearing this dress to Anime Weekend Atlanta! Speaking of conventions, I promise to write a post about all the conventions that happened this month! I've been so busy with school and work that I haven't had time to sit down and make a post! 

Thank you all for reading! If you have any questions,comments, or suggestions, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email!