Moved to Wordpress ♥

Hi cuties! Please feel free to follow me on my new wordpress blog ♥ I will keep this one up for archive purposes only ♥

marinakeicom.wordpress.com 

New Blog ♥

Back From Long Hiatus!

Hi cuties! Long time to read! I'm happy to be back here and I am so sorry for not updating! Lots have happened but I'm here! ♥ Since it's been about almost a year here is a quick update and normal posting will resume on Sundays NY time (′ʘ⌄ʘ‵) I also will be starting to blog on wordpress! There is nothing there as of now so when I post something there it will also be here too (n˘v˘•)¬ I just want to reach to more readers hence the addition ♡✧( ु•⌄• )  For now feel free to check out my latest video!





Sweet Wardrobe Video ♥

Updates and RuffleCon!!

Hi cuties! It's been far too long since I've updated here! I apologize. I am in my last semester of university so I got busy quick! Anyways I went to RuffleCon this past weekend, a Japanese fashion convention for the alternate styles such as lolita, fairy kei, kawaii decora etc. I left Thursday morning with my lolita community and we arrived at around 6pm same day and left Sunday night. I will be making this event into a 4 blog series starting tomorrow since there was so much and so it's a nicer short read for you cuties!  This was my first time attending and I have to say I am very impressed with how it went. I've only been to anime conventions so this was a new experience to me! I definitely would love to continue going every year!

Thanks for reading!

New dress!! Angelic Pretty x Disney: Kiss Me! Cat One Piece

Hi cuties! It's been so long since I have not been able to do posts due to school! Now that I am finished for the semester, summervavcation yay!, I can get back to my kawaii life fulltime! XD Anyway! If you didn't know already, I purchased a new dress! I was one day on my Facebook and I saw this new release of a AP x Disney collab. I IMMEDIATELY fell in love and HAD to buy it. I did more research on the print such as price, sizes, tights etc. I decided to just buy the OP. In order to obtain the dress I had to use a Japanese shopping service. A friend recommended that I use Tenshi Shop and I am so glad I did! I sent them an email in hopes they can take my order. This dress was selling fast so I was prepared for a bad response. The owner told me they can try to get the OP for me but does not guarantee it. So I took the chance, gave them a deposit (which was refundable if they didn't get the OP) and hoped for the best. As you can tell I got the dress!! It features Marie from the Aristocats.

The OP came in neatly folded in a box, it arrived pretty quickly! I would say in about a week and a half it came in.

I just love the details on the OP. Marie is so cute!

I love it!!

 I have to say that I am so happy with this OP. I might purchase the tights and some of the accessories that goes with this OP but I will wait for their prices to lower and when it's more available.

First try on!

New dress! Angelic Pretty: Milky-chan the Fawn One Piece

 Hi cuties! So I have been actively wearing lolita for less than a year now, but I have been into the fashion a bitbfor some years. Since wearing lolita, there has not been many prints that I have fallen for, BUT THERE ARE A FEW. I have obtained one of my dream dresses, which is also my first "brand" piece. The piece I purchased is Angelic Pretty's  Milky-chan the Fawn. I bought it in the black and pink colorway one piece.

the  brand

The dress came in nicely folded in the package. The dress is in really great condition, I have no complaints at all! :)

I plan on wearing this one piece at an anime convention I am attending in May. From now until then, I will be looking at how to make this coord really great and unique. I own several fawn necklaces and rings but the color wouldn't match. The dress actually has a built in petticoat which is really cool! The reason why I am in love with this print is because I am a fan of fawns. Since I was born basically, I have been introduced to Bambi. My first things were Bambi related and I still own them. So seeing this print was a must have for me. There are different colorways for this dress, I do also want to get the brown/pink version and the pink version. I fell in love with those colorways as well so hopefully one day I will have all three. For now there are other dresses I'd like to buy to continue building and upgrading my wardrobe. 

That's all for now cuties! Thank you for reading (*＾▽＾)／

print details

the whole dress!

trying out the dress

2016 lolita goals ♥

It's the new year! So you not what that means! New years resolutions and goals! :)

Currently most of my lolita wardrobe come from bodyline. I want to change that this year. 2015 was when I started wearing and actively be a lolita. 2016 is refining my wardrobe, improving my coordinates, and owning more valuable pieces which can be versatile and used in other j-fashions styles. Before lolita, I did more kawaii decora styles. So I also want to improve and make my kawaii decora coordinates more crazy and colorful!

So far I bought my first brand piece!(pictured below) It is Angelic Pretty's Milky-chan the Fawn OP. I love Bambi, I was basically born with a Bambi blanket wrapped around me so I think since then I love deer, baby deer especially. I haven't decided what would be my next AP piece.

Next goal! ♥ I want to go to more lolita related events! Unfortunately my local lolita community is not active. I have been hosting a couple events and it seems like I'll probably continue to do so. I wnat to make more loli friends!

Another goal ♥ Build my wardrobe to be able to be a semi lifestyle lolita! I say semi-lifestyle because I LOVE kawaii decora and fairy kei so those will never go away. I love pastel colors and on a regular basis wear such colors.

That's all for now! I might make a video about my 2016 goals but currently my camera is getting repaired so it'll be a little while till I do! Until next time! Thanks for reading ♥ ⃛(❛ั◡˜๑) If you enjoyed please, comment and become a member :) ♥

New year, new conventions!

source: bit.ly/1WaKXPS

Happy new year everyone! Hope your holiday cheers were the best :) Since it is the new year, it means new goals! This year I am planning on going to several anime and j-fashion conventions! So this will be a very busy year for my wardrobe (and wallet! LOL)

In order I plan on attending:

♥ ToraCon in Rochester,NY,
♥ Anime North in Ontario, CAN
♥ ReiyaCon in Rochester, NY
♥ Otakon in Baltimore, MD
♥ WakuWaku+NYC in NYC, NY
♥ RuffleCon in Stamford, CT

Most of these conventions will be my first time attending, I have been attending ToraCon since 2010. I am so excited for this year already. I will be attending with a fellow friend to the majority of these cons :) I hope to see you there!

Where to shop lolita video!

New video is up! This time I will talking about where to buy lolita.

                                                           New video :)

Where to shop lolita

Hi beauties! I have received a message on my FaceBook page asking where to shop lolita. I just want to thank the person who ask me for advice! So first things first! If you live in the United States, you will most likely be purchasing lolita items from online! Most lolita items come from East Asia. Unless you live there of course kudos to you! I will be unable to name EVERY store that sells lolita so I will mention a few big and small shops.


If you are  new to lolita Bodyline is a good store to start. Bodyline is a Japanese cosplay/costume and lolita store that sells really good stuff and for cheap!The price range for Bodyline is between $30-70 but if you catch them while on sale then you save even more money and get more items! Since this store is in Japan, the shipping does take a bit of time. I usually get my order from a month and week. So if you do want to get items from here I suggest you order early especially if you want a piece for an upcoming event. Their payment methods are CC and paypal, here is the link: bodyline.co.jp





Next place to shop lolita, are auctions! Japanese auctions such as yahoo have great stuff and you can get rare items for great or even expensive prices. Keep in mind these are auctioning sites so the items goes to the highest bidder. And that the types of sites are in the native language, in this case Japanese! But using you browser translator could be enough to get by. Below I am showing of what the site look like, all I did was type in 'angelic pretty' this is what is shows me! Link is here: auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/



Now for some lolita items on the more expensive side of the spectrum. You night have heard of brand lolita items. When one mean 'brand' they do not exactly mean the logo of the item, but more of the greatness of the brand itself. Usually 'brand' items are very sought after. Angelic Pretty (AP) and Baby The Stars shine Bright (BTSSB) are considered 'brand'. There are more but for now I will stick to these two since these are very well known. (AP) & (BTSSB) are indeed expensive. BUT THEY ARE GORGEOUS. I call them the Tesla and Gucci of lolita fashion because they pretty much are in my opinion. with these dresses you will be spending money unless you can find them second hand or even on auctions like I mentioned above. These are both Japanese brands, and they do have US locations in NYC and Los Angeles Angelic Pretty Site. Baby The Stars Shine Bright Site. 

Another great place to shop is LaceMarket! On this site the expensive dresses (AP) & (BTSSB) you can get these dresses here for less. LaceMarket is a place where people sell their old or unwanted lolita items. Every brand is sold here. The expensive dresses you want, you can try to find them for less here! There are auctioned items and buy it now items so really you have look for whatever you want. Link to LaceMarket  Below is what is looks like when you go on their site! The items here have no central location be aware that you could be buying from a n international seller and shipping rates are expensive. The great thing about this i that you can buy from soooo many brands, so lots of choices here.

Next I want to mention a Korean brand called Lief. Their website is in Korean so using your translator if you do not know Korean will be helpful. From what I can tell you have to make an account to purchase their things. I am not very experienced with this store so I could be wrong as well. Here is their site: www.lief.co.krFinally I will speak of a well known Chinese site name TaoBao. The thing with TaoBao is that the site itself is not a store but more of a place where there are many stores. Similar to how ebay has many sellers and their stores.But if you do not know Chinese or use a translator you might have some trouble with it. Also you are not actually able to order directly from a store because they do not ship outside of China. You have to use a shopping service. A shopping service is basically a third party agent with going in to get your purchased items and ship them to you. Through this shopping service's website you give them the link to what you want to buy and then you purchase and indicate the correct item through them. You will be paying for the item(s), the service fee for using the shopping service and the shipping. This does take some time to be shipped to you so be wary of that as well. There are many shopping services but a few that I know of: SpreeNow , TaoBaoSpree ,   Yoybuy, . There are many others and they each have their own perks.

Thanks so much for reading! If you liked this please follow me for more. This was a VERY long post I know but this isn't even all the stores. I can not tell you all the stores for lolita but could only give you a few. I will be making a YouTube of this as well so feel free to check that out when it's out! Until next time!

New video up!

Hi beauties! Hope the holidays are going well for you! This week's video is about my Halloween meet up :) If you enjoyed it please like & subscribe for more! Comment & tell me about your Halloween meet ups and events!

                                                         Halloween Meet Video

Flashbacks & updates

Hi beauties! The holidays are near, and as we are prepping for our holiday cheer, I was just recalling memories, places and cons I've been to as I am writing my anime conventions goals in the new year. It is a bit early, I know but we have less than 2 months left of 2015! So I am just doing a throwback to an anime convention I went to over the summer. For this coord, I did a kawaii decora lolita hybrid. My theme was royalty and it was my first time doing something like this. I was so excited when I first did this coord and happy how it turned. I gained lots more experience since then and I look forward to doing something like this again and improving it. I'd like to do more hybrid styles in the new year definitely! smile emoticon Let me know if you've done anything different or creative in your cosplay or j-fashion journeys


I also have exciting news! I will be entering a contest through Kawai.i International (Contest Link)! I am working on my coordinate, but the contest theme is dolly fashion. I have a few ideas as to how I will approach this, and I want to try my best with my limited experience as of now. When I enter I will; let you know and I hope you will like my dolly fashion enough to vote for me! :D Until then, have great day beauties!

One last thing, I received a video request so i will post that ASAP along with my thought for our community Halloween meet-up, I apologize for being behind on videos. I am a full-time university student so there ill be sometimes all y projects and work become overwhelming where I cannot make the time to do videos. Since Thanksgiving break is coming, I will definitely film and upload during that time :D

Royal theme

 
moticon

Ramen shop meet up video

Hi beauties! I uploaded my video about my Ramen meet up on youtube! Next I have my Halloween meet up to do! Should be up by next week ! Please like, comment and subscribe if you enjoyed the video! The link is below! Until next time~!

Ramen Meet Up Video (ෆ ͒•∘̬• ͒)◞

First Halloween meet-up !

Hello beauties!! Hope you had a happy Halloween! The weather for this Halloween weekend was GREAT! So in my last post I mentioned I would be hosting my very first lolita meet up! I will talking about that this week along with my thoughts of the meet ups. So for this meet up we decided to go to a botanical gardens in a neighboring town, about 30-35 minutes away from where I live. It was such a beautiful place and a diamond in the rough!

We had a reservation at the cafe but we were early so we decided to explore the gardens. The red, yellow and green trees were beautiful, we were awe at how beautiful autumn could be. We walked by a greenhouse an decided to take some pictures while we wait.







There were 6 people attending including myself, so we were a small group. One of them was my best friend and sister so I was so happy that she came along! She is not a lolita, she does cosplay but she enjoyed this meet up so much that she wants to go to more lolita meet ups ໒( ♥ ◡ ♥ )७.
The other attended were 2 of my newly found lolita friends, one of the lolita's boyfriend and a girl who is interested in lolita but has yet to start.

For my Halloween coord, I wanted to wear one of my new Alice prints from Bodyline. So since it was Halloween, I wanted to give off a Alice feel. In the gardens I looked like a lost Alice LOL I was like a candy Alice, very sweet and colorful. I really love this jsk, it is such a beautiful print and has is very cute!

We finally found the Japanese Gardens and we were so excited of how beautiful it was. There was a Japanese gate called a Torii gate. It is the red gates that leads to the path of the shrine. When we entered there a pond with a bridge over it, as seen in the picture.

This was the bridge in the above picture I was mentioning, and it was a great spot for a variety kind of pictures! I cannot wait to actually visit a Japanese shrine, and hopefully soon!

There were so many Japanese style statues, such as you would find in  areal Japanese shrine. I sort felt like we did travel and they did a great job integrating that into these gardens. There was a Japanese shrine there but unfortunately it was closed so we were not able to go in.

This was our group of girls that attended the Halloween meet! I had so much fun and look forward to the next one ❣⃛(❛ั◡˜๑)

Final Thoughts of The Meet Up

So I planned this meet up since about 3 weeks ago, to give people some time to decide. At first there were about 7-13 people going. Only 6 people attended as seen in the picture above. 3 of them were lolitas, including myself. So what happened to those people? Some people unfortunately had some last minute cancelling which was totally fine but the stuff I had planned would have been great for a larger group. For our activities, I had lolita bingo, a raffle, and a best Halloween coord contest. I had prizes too! Even though few people did attend, it was very fun and we already planned what our next meet up would be haha! We ended up only playing lolita bingo and everyone got to win a prize! I will admit I was a bit disappointed and a bit upset that I did deliberately tell people by a specific date to let me know who is attending for a reservation of the cafe in the gardens. But the day before about 3-5 people indicate they are unable to attend. I understand life happens and things come up last minute, but I was told a number of X amount of people attending which I told the cafe but about 1/3 of attendees attended. I did mention that my local lolita community is not active and in my opinion pretty much dead. It is a harsh way to put it but it is the truth. I do want our lolita community to be more active so I'm not going to stop trying to set up meetups,because that's not how our community will become active. This was a very great learning experience for me as I decide to set up more meetups, I learned what works and what would have more people attend and how I can become a better host for future meet ups. I am so glad I did this meetup, I bonded with the few lolitas that were there and I feel more unified with a lolita community. I will making a YouTube video of this to really talk about it & to give tips for meet ups along with footage of the actual site ♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ) Let me know what you did on your halloween weekend! Did you attend any meet ups? Let me & thanks for reading!

My most recent lolita meet up

Hello beauties! It's me again! ♡＾▽＾♡ if you haven't read about my lolita meet this past weekend then please read that! I'm going to talk about what I wore for that meet-up! ( do you sense a photo shoot coming again?) -ω(´•ω•｀)♡ So I wore a Alice print dress! I decided to wear something not too bright so I went for a toned down colorway.  The print is actually a Alice and wonderland print. My headband is a n accessory that came with the dress. This dress also came with and apron!! with bells!!!! I think of a foodie lolita with this on LOL (which is a very accurate description of me)   It was a very beautiful day that day so I couldn't resist a mini photo shoot! I might actually ask a fried who is very into photography to do an actual photo shoot. Next I will be going to a Halloween meet up and I can't wait for the beautiful pictures I will take along with my lolita friends! So for now enjoy my pictures of my coord and see you next time ! ♡〜٩(^▿^)۶〜♡

close up of my face

 

Ramen lolita meet up!

Yummy ramen time (♡´౪`♡)

  Hey beauties! So this weekend I went to my first lolita meet up! As I mentioned in my previous post it's basically a group of people in frilly clothing gathering & hanging out! I had so much fun! The meet up was about and our away from my town so I had a bit of a driving distance but I was not alone! I recently meet a lolita at my university and we decided to go together. It was so great going to new territory with someone I somewhat know, and it was less intimidating.

So we went to a ramen shop in town, my friend and I were a bit late because it was the beginning of rush hour ( lol ) As soon as we got there we were welcomed very warmly! My friend and I got separated because of the seating arrangements but it was great! I meet some wonderful girls and a cool guy. The first person I met was a girl originally from Thailand! I love her coord and she was so nice to me! Everyone were so great, friendly and I enjoyed my time there so much!

The food was DELICIOUS! I have never had real ramen, I've only had ramen cup noodles and the store bought microwavable ramen so I was very HUNGRY and EXCITED to taste real Japanese style ramen. I had NO IDEA what to order so I ordered whatever I knew. I actually ordered their most popular ramen and tonkatsu. I learned about tonkatsu in my Japanese class once so I was so happy to recognize something LOL

Ramen shop!

My ramen

Tonkatsu!

So after eating for 15-20 minutes we were at the ramen shop total of almost 3 hours! We were just talking and laughing about so many things, and I learned a lot of stuff! Unfortunately by the time we decided to leave the shop, it was getting dark outside! But I brought my awesome camera and got to take pictures of the lolitas ♡´･ᴗ･`♡

Our group (♡ >ω< ♡) ( One person is missing :c )

My first Halloween lolita meet up......But I am the HOST???

For Halloween I am hosting my very FIRST lolita meet-up! Now what is a lolita meet up you may be asking???? A lolita meet up is what it sounds like! People who dress up or are interested in lolita fashion got to a gathering with other lolitas and we socialize! Meet ups are like big group friend dates! Actually this coming weekend I am going to an neighboring lolita meet up! It's about an hour and half away though (︶︹︺)

Photos CR to nekoblog.ch

Think about when a group of you and your close friends go out, you guys could decide to go to a movie, a park, a festival or whatever! Same thing for lolita meet ups but the most common places we tend to got to are tea houses, cafes, amusement parks, a restaurant historical parks or gardens and there is so much more you can do! 

Funny story is I actually have not been to a lolita meet up before. "Ha-ha weird right? And I'm planning one? Why even?" you might be thinking. The reason why I am planning a meet up is for a few reasons.
 
 1.) My local lolita community is dead/not very active. By this I do not mean, there are no lolita's in my area, just that our community is not as unified or active as it COULD be. Many larger cities such as NYC, LA, etc, have meets ups often because it is a larger amount of people interested in the fashion there and there are actually more things to do. I know girls that travel to NYC from western NY because that is the only place they can express being a lolita aside from anime conventions. There are conventions dedicated to Japanese fashion but either they are far away or there aren't many currently. I only know of 3 Japanese fashion oriented conventions.

  

Photo CR to egl.livejournal.com

2.) You don't have to be a professional lolita to create an event You do not have to be well versed, a lolita model, or anything extraordinary to create a  meet-up. I have started wearing the fashion in April of 2015, I am still a newbie but I would like my community to have more events so I decided to take an initiative and JUST DO IT !

3.) WE NEED A HALLOWEEN MEET!! What lolita does NOT want to dress up on Halloween of all days of the year?! It's a given we do LOL. For the record lolita is NOT a costume.