Tutorial! Afternoon Project: Bunny Sneakers



I've been seeing cute bunny ear shoes all around and thought they were a really great piece to have. I'm trying to find more comfy and casual shoes which are cute enough to fit loosely into a himekaji style. These might not scream princess, but they're definitely extremely cute and unique, and for a whimsical summer wardrobe I think it ties in.

Summer Norcal Cosplay Gathering: Marine Hanayo



I'm trying to post a bit more frequently, but it's hard when weeks pass by so quickly! Yesterday was the Summer Norcal Cosplay Gathering, which I was lucky to be in the area for! These gatherings happen four times a year, and they've always seemed really exciting and fun, but I've never had a chance to go for some reason. This was my first time attending, and it sounds like they're getting bigger and bigger! Maybe it will be its own convention before we know it. For the time being, it does great as a gathering. I love the Norcal cosplay community for things like these. People want more chances to dress up and hang out with friends from all around the area, so they go out and just do it. It's really inspirational!
When I was trying to decide what to wear to this gathering, I was looking through schoolido.lu to see if there were any cute and simple summer outfits I could throw together to feed my Hanayo cosplay addiction. At the time the Marine outfits were in the process of being released, but Hanayo's wasn't out yet. I loved all of the available outfits, though, and I thought having a water gun at a beach meetup would be really fun! I waffled on which card to do, thinking that if I waited for Hanayo's Marine card I might not have time to finish. I had already done a fair amount of online window shopping for other outfits when Hanayo's card was released, but it was so cute, I knew I had to do it! Overall, I'm really happy with how this costume turned out. It wasn't too time consuming or expensive, but the design is really cute, and I feel like I can see the quality of my work improving with each costume I make, which is really exciting.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many progress pictures of this costume, but I'll give a brief rundown of how I made this come together!
I got most of the fabric from Jo-Ann. I wanted to make most of it out of cotton, but decided on a stretch knit for the white trim and sleeves. I did this partially hoping that the frill would turn out looking a bit softer this way, wrinkling less easily and having a bit more weight to hang down, but I also figured I might not have to hem the trim this way, which might have made it too stiff to hang right. Looking back, the unhemmed stretch knit, while not at a risk for fraying, does look a bit messy, so this might not have been the right move. But I think overall it had the effect I was going for.


The skirt fabric was an eBay find. It's not spot on, but after the hell that my constellation uniforms gave me, I leaped at readily available close-enough plaid. It was really cheap, which was also a plus, but surprisingly high quality! I found out when it got here that it's actually woven, rather than just printed on top, and it was super nice to work with because of that.


The top took a bit of fiddling, but still only took about two sittings, a couple of hours for the collar and then maybe 5 more for the shirt. I have a kind of strange method for making princess seam tops, but I've done this several times now and I think it works pretty well. I like to use shirring in the back when possible partially because it pulls the whole thing tight, giving it a nice fitted look without having to take any exact measurements, and partially because I just really like how shirring looks. A friend of mine suggested I add shirring when I accidentally made a dress too small, and I've been in love with the look ever since!
So, to make my shirred princess seam tops, I'll create a tube of fabric shirred in the back according to my widest measurement (typically my bust). The exact measurements are up to you, but I tend to make 5 panels roughly 1/6 my bust measurement, and one panel which is about 1/3 my bust measurement, but shirred down to 1/6 as well. This takes a bit of playing around, depending on where exactly you want your seams to lie, and your best bet if you're unsure is to make them a little bit bigger than needed, and then take in the seams until you're happy with where they lie.



Then you turn it inside out and put it on, and pin along the princess seams (the ones going over the bust) until it feels like it fits you pretty well. Then you just sew along where you pinned, trim the excess, and shape the neckline however you like.
Once I had a base top like this, I simply attached the sailor collar to it, creating a sort of halter top.



Then there were boots. I didn't feel like making boot covers again so soon after my last boot covers adventure, so I opted for a slightly easier route. I managed to find some plain brown gogo boots at the thrift store for $20, so I jumped on them. They wear these weird peek-toe boots, but it was pretty easy to cut through the boots using an x-acto knife. I miraculously found matching vinyl at Jo-Ann and cut out a big t-shape to cover the toe and serve as a fake lip. I carefully sewed along bias tape (well, painstakingly ironed ribbon, since I couldn't find any nice looking gold bias tape myself) along the T to create the illusion that the T is actually peeking out from under the boot, and glued the whole thing on using craft glue. This was certainly not the optimal glue to use, but unfortunately I'm not too knowledgeable on that. At this point the gathering was the next day so my boots weren't everything they could have been. If you're not lazy like I am, this is when you would make the straps out of matching vinyl and sew them into the boots. In my case, I was worried that the glue might still be drying, and didn't want to risk touching them any sooner than I absolutely had to, so I left them off. If you have some extra time, another nice touch would have been to use some felt to cover the exposed insoles, which might have some white peeking through from where you cut out the toe where it meets the sole.

The rest of the details were mostly dumb luck finding the perfect charms or fabric at Jo-Ann, and just having things lying around the house. The only other notable technique I used was to make the bow on the hat stay upright, I put clear packing tape on the inside as makeshift interfacing. Maybe not the most long-term solution, but definitely cheap and easy for a last-minute fix!

This will have to do for the final product while I wait for my photoshoot pictures to come back.


The gathering itself was really fun. My real-life childhood friend was cosplaying Rin with me, and although we didn't have exactly matching outfits this time, it's always really fun to cosplay with her, and it's even more fun cosplaying characters that embody our friendship so well. Later in the day we bumped into a photographer I like and got a nice photoshoot in by the beach. I can't wait to get the photos back!

I've been admittedly slacking on my fashion endeavors recently in preparation for this gathering. I still have some smaller cosplay plans in the works, but mostly I'd like to try and push through the second half or so of my wardrobe so I have something workable while I have plenty of summer weather ahead of me. I've got a couple of afternoon projects ready to go, plenty of thrift store trips, and probably some sort of taobao group order if I can find some more friends to get in on it with me, so look forward to that!

Until next time,

Fabric District + Little Tokyo Mini Haul

Yesterday I ventured into Little Tokyo for my friend's birthday! It's always kind of tiring trying to get to and from downtown, but it's always worth it. We browsed a lot of shops and restaurants and then visited the Barcade, a bar filled with retro arcade games. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of arcade games, but it was still a really unique place, and we found some pretty fun games as well.

I ended up mostly buying things from Daiso and Kinokuniya, which I was a little disappointed by because those places aren't really special to Little Tokyo, but I'm still really happy with what I found.


The main thing I knew I wanted to get at Kinokuniya is a copy of Larme, since everyone has been talking about that magazine lately. For $10, it feels really sturdy and nice to touch. I was hoping to get a few copies of previous volumes, but unfortunately Kinokuniya only had the current issue in stock. Still, though, I can see what all the hype is about! Inside there are lots of makeup tutorials and style guides that I'm excited about, and it seems like there are some cute stories about some of the models (I think?) that are making me really want to improve my Japanese so I can read them. Once I've had a chance to look through it all I'll definitely be writing a review, and I may scan some of the pages that stuck out to me, so keep an eye out for that in the future. I also waffled on some of the sewing magazines, but didn't end up getting any this time, since I couldn't make up my mind on them.
Most of the other stuff was from Daiso. I found a lot of hair accessories which I think are really cute and will hopefully compliment my growing new wardrobe. 

Finally, while this is a little old by now, I also went to the fabric district a couple of weekends back and found some really nice fabric that I'm excited to use!


Most of these are from Michael Levine's remnants room, a magical place where fabric is sold for only a couple bucks a pound. I love that place so much, I can't even put it into words. I wish I had found some pastel floral fabrics, but I really didn't find any that suited me, so the search for cute florals will continue. However, I did found some good stuff. The pink gingham sheer is so floaty and airy, I think it's perfect for summer! And I don't know yet what I plan on using that sparkly blue spandex for, but it was so glittery that I couldn't resist. Maybe it will fit into an idol cosplay I do in the future, or I might try and take it in a soft grunge direction with some kind of cut out crop top... that one won't be able to fit into this Summer's wardrobe for sure, but sometimes you see something and just have to go for it regardless!
I have quite a bit of extra fabric for a lot of these, so I might make some extras of everything and try my luck at selling them.

Until next time, 

Happy Birthday Honoka! (And OOTD)


This is just a quick update. Today is Honoka's birthday, and being a huge Love Live fan I've gotta dress up for every μ's birthday that comes and goes. So, today I tried my best to put together the most Honoka outfit I could, and made sure to make my hair up in a side half up-do like she wears. I was inspired by the SR card from the last Honoka event, although I didn't stick to it very strictly. I also made sure to wear my new strawberry t-shirt (I'm still waiting on a few more items from my order to arrive before writing a proper review!) since strawberries are Honoka's favorite. I've had fun today feeling like an energetic shoujo protagonist! Sorry for the poor quality cellphone pic... I should be getting a better camera soon!

I'm not really wearing anything too fancy, but I'll do a rundown of my outfit anyway.
Tops: Thrifted (outer) and eBay (inner)
Shorts: DIY
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: eBay
Ribbon: Jo-Ann Fabrics
(Do you believe me now that I'm not wearing anything too fancy?)
Although it's not really the look I'm going for this season, it's nice to break out sometimes and wear something in a different style.

In other Love Live news, I'm making progress on my Marine Hanayo outfit. <3




So that's exciting! I think I'll easily be able to finish this costume in time for the norcal gathering. When I finish I'll write up an entry about my process here.

Thanks for reading! I'll have something a bit more fashionable next time.