Tea time!

A tea post is a must in a lolita blog. Here's mine!

I've always liked tea, even though I'm not as refined as many others. I don't have high understanding when it comes to water temperature, cups with right shapes, the quality of tea leafs and such. Still, I'm very interested in Western tea traditions. It's such a pity that you can't find a tea house in Finland where you could get afternoon tea (at least I haven't found one). I've also always wanted to host a tea party meet up - I just didn't own some necessities such as a tea pot... But now I do!

I was randomly searching for Christmas presents yesterday and came along this pale blue tea pot at Clas Ohlson. It was only 15€ so I had to buy it! I've been looking for a tea pot since... hmm, forever? And this one was just perfect. It is the exact colour of my Arabia KoKo tableware and even the style is quite similar.

...and it also goes well with my Green Gate cups! (The camera changes the colours, in natural light there seems to be no difference at all between the pot and the polka dot cup).

It is big enough to serve at least for four and can be washed in a washign machine.

Of course, I'd love some cute flowery tea set with gold decorations, but they are both super expensive and impractical. I also don't have the space to store multiple tableware sets and they are hard to come by. So this pot is just perfect!

My favourite tea is black tea, even though I drink some green ones too. I like Earl Gray a lot, it's what my father prefers so I've always been drinking it and it's quite nostalgic. Many flavoured teas are lovely too, at the moment I especially enjoy Spring Flower tea from Indiska (I know, not very Christmas-like ^^;). It's a black tea flavoured with almond crocant, fudge, egg liqueur and cream. Very sweet and the scent is heavenly <3 I also like chai tea and everything else with spices like cinnamon, cardamom or vanilla. I prefer my tea with sugar, no milk, lightly infused.

I'd love to try scones with clotted cream and jam, one of the most traditional treats to go with afternoon tea. Anyone tried them? I'd also make cupcakes, sandwitches, pastries and a cake to go with tea ^^ ...and now I'm getting hungry.

It seems it's time to go and eat something :D

TaoBao order

So! My TaoBao order finally arrived.

I used DollyPoddle's shopping service, she can be found on Facebook by "TaoBao and Anna House shopping service". She was very kind and helpful and it was easy to communicate with her. I would recommend her if you need a shopping service ^^

Here's my order:

A blouse from KidsYoYo. Originally I was going to order a simpler one but then my sweet side got me... This is a good basic blouse anyway, it's good to have other colours than white too.

A close up. Lots of bows... I might remove some of them ^^; The buttons are heart-shaped <3 There is also a snap-on button at the highes point of bust to prevent the blouse from opening between the buttons. A very thoughtful of them, as western lolitas often aren't as flat as the easterns ones.

The Sweet Little Chocolate -skirt from KidsYoYo. I think the mint base makes this a bit more versatile as it can be coordinated to both mint and pink, as well as brown. The quality is very good, there are no mistakes, even tiny ones, at all.

I love the details!

They had a brand name lace made for them! The quality is also very good.

I ordered the necklace in both colours. They were shipped in adorable boxes as shown in the photo. These are handmade my the company owner. I intended to take one apart and make earrings and such, but I'm not sure I have the heart to do so...

As you can see, they vary a little. These are totally adorable.

Details.

More details.

The headdress and a removable bow from the skirt. The heart is from the headdress, it is detachable. The bow is loose enough to move along the hairband so it's very variable.

A Milky Planet -replica from Dream of Lolita. They are often referred as a low quality seller, but this is a very nicely done. The sewing is good, colours at least to me seem to be just like the original and the lace is soft and pretty. There's also a slim built-in petticoat. For a casual coordinate I'd love to combine this with pink UGG boots and thick knee-high wool socks with pompoms ^^

The print. The dark pink isn't actually as bold as in the photo but the bad winter light makes it look like this.

Lace close up.

Removable bow from the skirt, Milky Planet headdress and three hair bows from Classical Puppets. They are a perfect colour match ^^

The big bow (in the picture above it's the one placed highest).

One of the small bows, on the back you can see the one from the skirt. The colour match is quite nice, isn't it? :)

Boots from Antaina. These were quite necessary, as I don't own any loliable boots except for a couple of brown, very old ones that doesn't actually match anything I own.

Black shoes from Antaina. Black ones are a must-have even though I don't have that much black loli pieces. I love the heart buckles.

Pink ones from Antaina too. Until now I only had white and mint ones, so it's now easier to coordinate some of my dresses.










I also bought a petticoat for casual use, it isn't very poofy. It also isn't very pretty so I didn't take a photo ^^;

Now I have two more complete coordinates as the blouse can go with both Sweet Chocolate and Milky Planet. Too bad these both have a very spring-like feeling in them ^^;

For Christmas I'd love to have a red velvet skirt, maybe with embroidery. My mother has a sewing machine that can do embroidery and I spotted the perfect velvet at the fabric store, but it was just a liiiiittle bit expensive so we'll see...

Giselle

Less Expensive Brands - KidsYoYo

Long time no see ^^;

As I've told, brand clothes aren't my piece of cake (or my wallet's, as it is...) so what to do when there's something I just can't make myself? To turn to the less expensive "brands",  of course. These less expensive ones include places like Bodyline, FanPlusFriend and shops in TaoBao, like Rose Melody, Infanta, Dear Celine and KidsYoYo. I have ordered clothes from Bodyline and FanPlusFriend and also talked about them previously. I'm now intending to focus on TaoBao brands, starting with KidsYoYo.

As I've neither personally communicated with them nor received my order yet, this won't be a review. I'll just highlight some of my favourite pieces from them.

KidsYoYo is one of the most high-profile Chinese lolita brands. Their quality is good and prices higher than most, for example their JSK prices ranging from 45€ to 70€. (Not very expensive, but when compared to brands like Dream of Lolita or Lolita Princess with their JSK's priced 30€...)

They are also a personal favourite of mine, with their sweet-classic style and lovely colours. Here are some of my must-have-these -items:

This set of skirt, jacket and headdress is my number one love at the moment. It's a part of their Classical Violin series, available in dusty mint and dusty pink. I adore both colours, but would probably end up with this dusty mint. The jacket could be worn with regular clothing too.

This is sold out at the moment, but one can hope they'll re-stock. Luckily they usually do ^^

A coat with a cape, a beret and a muffler, also Classical Violin series. This isn't available at the moment either, at least not in pink. Oh well, wouldn't have the money anyway... But I love it to pieces!

A blouse and a skirt from Sweet Little Chocolate series. These are also available in mint and pink. I ordered the skirt in mint, a headdress and a necklace a while ago ^^ As this series is more decorated than many other of theirs, I decided to go with the skirt instead of a JSK. This way I can downplay it to everyday use with regular shoes and top. The sweets motifs on the bottom are totally adorable. I ordered two necklaces, I'm going to make other accessories with one of them and keep the other one.

This one is gorgeous. Not actually lolita (the lower hem is removable, though, so with a petticoat it's totally loliable), but a very beautiful and detailed piece anyway. I could never wear this, because grey looks horrible on me and I'm not slim enough for this kind of loose, full-lenght dress (one needs to be absolutely tiny to look good in this). But nothing can stop me from loving it!!











Now I can just wait for my Little Chocolates to arrive <3 I'll be sure to share them with you.

I also made a new layout, there are me and my friend Christina in the banner picture. How do you like the new look?

Giselle

Outfits and nails

Hi!

I was planning on making a little chance on Rose Tea Sugar: to post pictures about non-lolita outfits too. Not too often, but sometimes I wear something I think might be interesting enought to share.

 Here's my Tuesday's school outfit. On Tuesdays and Fridays I go to Technical University for my Japanese lessons. It's extremely fun to wear something colourful and make all those boys-wearing-black-hoods go blind by all the colours ^^

One of my favourite aspect of Bodyline's skirts is the removable bow. I think it's supposed to be worn on the waist but I prefer to put it on my hair or even use it as a brooch.

This outfit I wore on Monday but I didn't have the time to take a photo so I took this one on Tuesday too. Luckily I wore my hair the same way both days.

I'm totally in love with this huge cutsew/t-shirt. I paid 2€ for it and it's size 42, hehe. I think it looks great when combined with skinny jeans like in this picture, or with a short skirt like this - I own a skirt like that too.

I also made my nails yesterday (ignore my ugly cuticles...) I got inspired by this post at Cupcake's Clothes, it was highlighted at F Yeah Lolita a while ago. I had some difficulties, like the lack of colours - the only non-seethrough colour is mint, blue and pink needed a white base to have any colour at all and I had to mix white and dark purple to get light one. But I'm quite happy with the result ^^

And lastly, I finally ordered some clothes and shoes from TaoBao. I've been planning to do so for a while now and finally did! I'll post a review when I get them.

Giselle

New wig and some fabrics

Hi again!

As I told before, I got my latest wig a few days ago. It's a lovely strawberry milkshake colour, with short base and two wavy detachable ponytails. I totally love it!

I'm going to have a birthday picnic on next Saturday (my birthday's today, yay!!) and I wanted to have a new outfit and wig for that. I've been sewing a super-bubblegum-barbie-pink skirt and I wished to have my mint coloured wig by then. But that's not going to happen, so I'll wear this wig instead. But! No way this kind of pink will go with that super-sweet pink of my skirt... So, a new coordination too. I've wanted to make an applique dress for a while now so this was a perfect reason to get some fabrics for one. I love AP's appliques the most, so I went to steal some ideas:

Carnival Wappen! I think I'll make mine to be an almost exact replica, with different colours though. I'm also debating whether to make it JSK or OP. I'd like JSK more but I don't have a fitting blouse as I have bright white striped fabric. My absolute applique favourite is the Carnival applique but as I love those pom pom ribbons the most and couldn't find similar one, I'll have to postpone that. But I found the cutest ribbon online shop, Sugar Pink Boutique, selling pom pom ribbons in different sizes and colours. I'll probably order some and make something similar to Carnival for Desucon which is held in mid-June. We'll see. But anyway, here are my materials for Carnival Wappen:

I'm in a hurry with this, though, as I have to both work and study this week. But hopefully I'll manage to make it! ...and then we can hope that it's not going to rain. It's been lovely for these past few days and forecasts have promised it's going to be warm and sunny for the whole week, and then it's going to rain on Saturday >_< But I'll have my thumbs up!

Giselle

Fan+Friend order!

So! My order's finally here! I was quite exited, as I have been waiting about six weeks.

The coat is lovely, my favourite part is the asymmetric hem. I love the laces too! In my winter coat the lace was bright white and the coat off-white so I ended up removing it all. But this time they match very well ...the same thing can't be said about the buttons, though. The buttons are very bright white and very plastic. I'll probably remove them and sew on something more matching. They are pretty and heart-shaped, they just don't match the coat. The fit is good and they made the back a little shorter than usually as I asked.

The bag is pretty, but the handles are asymmetrically sewed on. Also, there's an ugly scratch and some smudge on the bow. I'm not very happy with this one...

The hooped petticoat! In the first picture, no petti (*gasp!*), in the middle with my bigger, "traditional" petti and the last with both the hooped and traditional pettis. The hoop is adjustable and really offers a possibility for a huuuge poof. A great help!

All in all, I'm not very happy with F+F this time... The coat is nice, but I have to change the buttons. The bag has two mistakes in it and even though the petti is what I wished it to be, it really can't save the whole order. Too bad, F+F.

Then a couple of words about my new wigs. The other one finally arrived last week. The first one you've already seen in my Tampere Kuplii -post, the other one was this absolutely gorgeous Strawberries and Cream:

Unfortunately, it looked horrible with my skin. The pink was kind of peach-tinted and those kind of warm colours don't suit me at all. I save you from the pain and insert no pictures... Luckily, it looked lovely on one of my friends and she bought it, along with my music notes -skirt.

Both of the wigs were of exellent quality: thick, soft and not shiny at all. The fiber is heat-resisting and CosplayWigs USA mentions that low settings on curling and flattening irons can be used. I have both flattening and curling iron from BaByliss, I used setting 2 out of 3 with flattening iron and 2 out of 2 with curler and the wig was totally fine. Actually, the cooler settings were of no help. So great quality!

Their custom service is also best I've ever came across. They're very friendly and helpful, I really want to support them. And they have lots of gorgeous wigs, I totally recommend visiting their web pages or Facebook.

I wasn't supposed to buy anything lolita-related for a while as I'm poooooooor. But oh, funny thing. The group hystery (I totally blame my friends) got me and now I'm waiting for two skirts from Bodyline again. And The Morning After Group Hystery I went and ordered another wig. Oh dear...

That's about it this time!

Giselle

Spring meet up

Hi!

Yesterday I participated in a spring meet up! I had so much fun again and everybody was very pretty <3 First we took photoes - the weather was so lovely and sunny - and then went to a cafe.

As I was very busy, I had no time to make new outfit. I decided to try on my music notes skirt from Bodyline. I mentioned before that the bright white in the print is a trouble for me and it really was so. I had no coat, no bag and no shoes for a bright white and baby blue coordination. Next time I surely have more time to make a proper coordination!

Here's my outfit:

(My nose isn't that big!!)

Skirt is from Bodyline, everything else is Totally Random. I changed shoes before leaving because those gray ones have 13cm heels and we were supposed to walk a lot. Well, we did so it was a good decision :D

Something else too: I ordered lots of lace from Etsy. Some of them are for lolita clothing and some for doll clothes. This was my favourite:

I ordered the ivory one. This should be perfect for skirt hems :)

See you soon,
Giselle

Headdresses

Hi!

School is a killer once again (just one more week and it gets so much easier!) so I have no life of my own. Today I had some free time after finishing my exam at 6pm (yeah, when I said 'killer', I meant it :D) so I went to buy some fabric for that new skirt I talked about earlier. I couldn't find anything close to dusty rose or gray-blue, so I ended up with... red! But I really like red and white combined together in a sweet-classic style. Too bad I don't have red shoes, they would be perfect. I think I'll make a slim, rectangular headdress to match the skirt. I could never wear a lolita outfit without a headdress - a perfect reason to wear something overly cute on your head and you waste it? No way!

I love hair accessories, whether lolita or non-lolita. I own lots and lots of different headbands, bows, flower pins, decorative pins... I wear something on my hair almost every day. When talking about lolita headpieces, what I don't like are huge things like super-wide headdresses, head-eating bows and bonnets. Sure, these things look gorgeous on some people but I'm not one of those. I like to use small headdresses but fill them with details up to almost OTT look (if such a thing as OTT classic lolita can excist). This headdress from Antique Beast is like a dream come true:

(Okay, I could have all their headdresses and die happy.)












Basically, this headdress is simple: quite small, only one colour and no ruffles. The richness comes from all the different ribbons used for the bows and that gorgeous black lace... Do I need to continue? *insert some ladylike drooling*

My favourites are small top hats (or any kind of hats actually) and classic rectangular headdresses. For a casual lolita, I prefer basic hairbands: I have one with white roses and one made of white pearls, those are my absolute favourites. My biggest problem when planning an outfit is the headdress: I have so many ideas that it's difficult to decide on only one. That means my only option is to make them all and use them one after another!

Today I got a notice that my wigs have been shipped! If I have any luck, they should reach me before Tampere Kuplii so I can wear one of them. By the way, is anyone else going to come? Hopefully I'll meet other lolitas there too :)

Giselle

Shopping vol.2!

Hi!

Sooo, a couple of days ago, I was just looking at some lolita wigs at CosplayWigs USA and couldn't help noticing that two of my absolutely favourites were both available! I should have gone to bed hours ago, but I decided quickly order one of them. But which one would I like to have the most? And then the Midnight Madness got me and I ordered both of them >_< But they were pre-order -wigs, so I'll receive them... by summer? So I'll talk more about them when I actually have them.

My YesStyle order faced some difficulties... The shoes I ordered had run out (hehe, pun not intended) so they'll refund me. I wanted those shoes! And this is the second time (out of my two orders...) they didn't have the shoes of my wanting after I've placed my order. So I'm not very happy with them at the moment.

But my main subject today: my Bodyline order arrived!! That was super fast, less than a week after I paid them. Here are they:

Shoes, two skirts and a cardigan. For a "cheap" company, I think their shipping bags are really cute <3

The skirt with music notes. (Sorry about wrinkles, the sun was about to set so I didn't have the time to iron these if I wanted pictures.) This one is exactly my size. The waist is very high, just below my bust. The bow is meant for the dress but I think I'll make a headdress out of it.

The white colour used in this is bright white instead of cream and that's aproblem for me too because I mostly have cream white loli clothes. This is a very cute skirt (or is it a dress?), almost too much so. As I'm more of a classic lolita instead of sweet, I might end up selling this one. Too bad, because this one really fits me perfectly!

This one is perfect! The colours are just as I wished them to be and the print is one of the most beautiful ones out of all Bodyline has. The waist is a bit too tight, but that's easy to fix.

The print. Totally adorable!

These shoes are actually more a mint green colour than sax blue, so they don't mach with the music notes skirt. But they do match perfectly with my cookies'n'cream -skirt, also from Bodyline (seen in one of my daily outfit -pics earlier). Happyhappy!

The cardigan is made of soft strech cotton so it's perfect for spring and summer. And the trimmings are very nice.

All in all, I'm very happy with my order! And because we have no laboratory exercises at school tomorrow, I can wear one of the skirts :)

Until next time,
Giselle

Shopping!

Hello again!

It seems that the sunny weather really makes me go crazy: I ordered clothes worth almost 300$ today from F+F and Bodyline. And tomorrow I'll make my YesStyle order with my little sister - that's another 100$ making their escape. I'm going to eat spaghetti and canned tuna for the rest of the spring...

And then the happy part: what did I order? The coat and petti I told earlier, from F+F. Lovelove the coat, and it will be custom size! I also ordered the handbag I told earlier:

(I'll get a white one, but this was the best picture.)

From Bodyline I ordered two skirts, a pair of shoes and a cardigan. Finding pretty shoes in right size and with decent price is a pain. I know, Taobao would be great, but I'm kind of afraid of it, it's so difficult! I've checked eBay too, but they seem to have only white ones and prices starting from 60$. And I like this shoe model best, I already have these in cream white and now sax blue ones:

These are the skirts:

The one with music notes I'll have in sax blue, so it will match with the shoes <3 That was the only colour left but it doesn't matter because I would have chosen it anyway ^^

 The other one I ordered in pink. I love pink and brown together, it makes me think about cakes and other sweet treats.

This cardigan I ordered in cream white. It's a nice basic cardigan and can be worn with pretty much everything, both lolita and non-lolita.

Lots of new clothes! And to think that I used 270$ and got a coat, shoes, a handbag, two skirts, a cardigan and a petti. Thank you mr. Yan!

Until next time,
Giselle