Nail Art/Cinderella Solutions~Daily Nail Polish

Lolita fashion is all about the details. Detailed prints, embroidered lace, fabric quality, accessories, and of course, nails. While it is not necessary to have an extravagant design, it is nice to at least have a matching color. Nail polish, however, lasts for about a week to 10 days. Instead of coordinating your nails to your outfit, you would have to coordinate your outfit to match your nails!

Oh, but you can simply remove the color with nail polish remover, right? Of course it is possible, but that is pretty damaging to your precious nails! Not to mention time-consuming and costly (especially with glitter polishes, which must be soaked first!)

I personally love to do my nails, and my recent obsession is a Glitter French. A shimmer base coat with glitter piled on the tips where the white of a regular French manicure would go. After the first time I did this though, it took a few days and a quarter of a bottle of mild remover to get all of it off, despite soaking and rubbing. My cuticles became very dry from the treatment! So, I found a better way that is cheap, and allows one to change nail color and design daily - no remover required!



Here is the culprit - Anna Sui nail polish 302. Beautiful pale pink with a shimmer
Also (not pictured) Shiseido silver glitter polish. Anna Sui actually had an almost exact same glitter, but didn't come in a mini bottle like Shiseido so I went with that ;)


Polish on (two coats). No photo of the completed French, but even this requires soaking already!


The hero of the hour! Yes, that is plain white school glue. How can this school glue help, you ask?
It is your base coat. Just put some glue in an empty nail polish bottle and apply a layer of it before your regular polish! Allow the layer to dry (it does not have to be very thick) and then polish and decorate your nails as usual

When it comes time to take off your polish....


Just pick at the edges, and then peel it off!


The silver glitter portion was a bit stiffer and harder to find an edge on, but still comes off quickly and easily


Perfectly clean

Now you too, can change up your polish without damaging your nails! And save some money on remover, to boot ;)

Happy Halloween!

Guess what?

Meetup Report~Rose House Meetup 2010-10-30 (Image Heavy!)

Today was my very first meetup in Taiwan! Unfortunately the coffee house I wanted to go to had no space Despite email assurance that I could hold a space for 12 if I went 10 minutes early to let them know, they said they had no space until 3. One of the older lolitas had gone to check because she was there a bit earlier. We just waited at the MRT station for everybody and I felt awful

Luckily, Doro was able to call around and get us a space at an English tea house called Rose House so the day was saved!!



Rose House








The girl wearing CBB is 望. She was the first girl I met at MRT station. She is pretty quiet, this was only her second meetup. She is very nice though!

The girl in the Alice Trick or Treat skirt is pretty nice too! I talked to her a bit at Rose House about makeup and stuff ;P


Me and Xiao Xia, whom I met second at the MRT station. She is really nice!


The girl sitting next to me came with Xiao Xia


These four are the older lolitas. They are all wearing AP!
The girl in mint Room Print came later and she is very nice.
 I don't remember anybody's names, sorry!
Doro is the one in mint Jewelry Jelly! I talked to her more on the way back home and she's really sweet and nice :)


Another shot


Table shot! PieRot is sitting next to Doro (with the huge, brown hair)
And you totally can't see the girl who was wearing BABY or her guy. She had a BABY bonnet and black JSK with white lace and blouse. Didn't get to talk to her too much, but we did talk about colored contacts (she was wearing them too!) Seems pretty nice. She's in her first year of college. Her guy was reading most of the time, but did speak up to yell at some people taking "sneaky" photos of us after we were done eating and just hanging out

Speaking of sneaky photos, today was the first time I have noticed a sneaky photo of me getting taken!! I was waiting for the MRT and a girl standing next to me definitely took out her cell phone to snap a shot of me and I looked directly at her (and she looked back), and just tried to cover my face by brushing back my hair. Which was actually all put up ^^;


All in all, a pretty good first meet. Everybody seems pretty nice though there are definitely some girls who know each other already (the older lolitas have been wearing for many years - the one in the Room Print has apparently been a lolita for 10 years!) so it was a little bit hard to get into conversation, but as it got later in the day (we stayed from about 3 to past 6) I talked more to the older lolitas since we were all sitting together XD And the younger ones had to leave earlier.

Daily Wear Snaps

I don't plan on putting too many outfit snaps on my blog because I would prefer more actual content (though I don't fancy myself a very good writer) but here are two of my looks from Thursday to all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut and school, and yesterday from work!

All the English cram schools hosted Halloween events, and Joy English was no exception! Each class of kids was given a card and had to go around to each classroom, complete the game or activity, receive a stamp, and then move on to the next room. After filling up their whole card they got a big bag of candy (yum!)

To be honest, most of the kids and teachers don't know why Halloween is celebrated... but they just want to have fun!



Theme Lolita!
Winnie the Pooh skirt a headbow made by me
Blouse is vintage
Everything else is offbrand

All You Can Eat Pizza Hut was a complete diet-ruiner! Even though there was only one type of pizza I could eat (the rest had meat on them), I still ate a lot! The current theme is "Japanese" so there was Okono Miyaki, red bean pizza, red bean soup, Japanese vegetable soup, a Japanese red bean and green jelly dessert, etc. The red bean pizza was truly interesting... the photos I took make it look disgusting, so I will spare you the horror. It was literally a cheese pizza with red bean on top. It was drizzled with some type of green sauce that I could not taste the flavor of. Everything else was mediocre, but if you are ever in the mood to pig out on "American" food in Taiwan, Pizza Hut buffet has got you covered!


My "Halloween Costume"
JSK and Inner Dress made by me
Blouse is one I bought just a couple days ago and will be getting modified when I have time
Everything else is offbrand


No cardigan


Eyemake and lens shot

This was my first time wearing colored lens! I think they are too light-colored... look very unnatural! I will do a full write-up on the lens after I have worn them a bit more

Tiana's Kitched~Stuffed Bell Peppers

Because Lolitas can't be sustained entirely on sweets and snacks, here is another toaster oven recipe for a savory main dish. The slight sweetness of the bell peppers is delicious when toasted! Feel free to add more veggies or meat to your filling. I found my celery to be moldy so I couldn't add anything other than onion to the filling rice This makes 2 servings of one pepper each.

Ingredients:
2 Bell Peppers, any color
1 cup of cooked rice (or enough to fill your peppers)
1/4 onion, diced
Cheese for sprinkling on top
Salt and Pepper to taste


Directions:

1) Cut your bell peppers in half, discarding the stems and seeds. I find that they bake more evenly in these shallow tray like shapes. Some people just cut off the tops to make one deep bowl, but for a toaster oven, the shallow shape will be better. Not to mention you can mix the colors for more interesting plates!



2) Saute your onions in a hot pan and mix with the rice. Fill each bell pepper half with 1/4 of the rice mixture and top with a bit of cheese



3) Toast in the toaster oven! I did mine at 750W for about 13 minutes.



4) NOM while hot (but not burning). I tried eating it with a fork, but found it much easier to simply pick up the whole pepper half and bite!


Ooooh melty cheese

Tiana's Kitchen~Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Looking for a snack fix, but don't want it do be unhealthy? Try some delicious, healthy french fries! The sweetness of the potato is balanced with the salt and pepper. For more variety, try herb blends (basil?) or cinnamon!

These would be lovely at a picnic or potluck meetup

Ingredients:
Sweet potatoes
EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
Salt and Pepper to taste
OR Cinnamon Powder


Directions:
1. Wash your sweet potatoes very thoroughly. I leave the skin on because it is nutritious, so it is best to super scrub it!!



If you somehow end up with dirt on the inside of your potato, cut that portion off because it is weird


2. Slice the potatoes into wedges or whatever shape you want and put it in a baggie for shaking



3. Take 1TBS of EVOO and put it in the bag too



4. Shake it up to fully cover!


Really, I don't know if it covered everything. It is the thought that counts I think!

5. Lay the fries on the toaster oven plate and put your seasonings on top. The sweet flavor is very interesting and yummy with salt and pepper!



6. Put them into the toaster oven and bake until they are hot and toasty and cooked through. I put mine at 750W for 15 minutes. I have no idea what W is :/ Sorry



7. NOM the fries while hot!

Mini Tutorial~Deco Pokewalker

I am a bit of a Pokemon freak. That's right, I admit it! I LOVE Pokemon! And of course, I think the original 150 is the best (151, if you were in on the secret of Mew!) Unfortunately, I was not allowed to play the games, and my parents never bought any game systems until Xbox came out. But that's what friends are for, right? Weekends spent borrowing GameBoys (Pokemon Yellow was my favorite!) and taking turns at Pokemon Stadium for N64 (don't forget Super Smash! Though I was actually always Kirby rather than Jigglypuff or Pikachu).

For my birthday this past May, two of my best friends got me a Nintendo DSi and Pokemon Heart Gold ! Then my dad got me a DSlite, and being truly material, I chose the DSlite because I prefer the shade of milk pink over the hot pink

As you all know (or should know!), Heart Gold and Soul Silver come with the Pokewalker! Basically, it is a pedometer that you can transfer one of your Pokemon into. I like to imagine that they are walking by my side when I am using it! Which is... every day... and of course, with so much use, my Pokewalker is getting a little bit beat up! It has two scuffs and a crack that goes about 3/4 of the way around the perimeter My solution? Deco it! Hopefully the strass stones will help protect it from more damage, plus it is so cute now!

I originally wanted to just add stones the same color as the base (red, black, and white) but failed to find red strass stones I found pink, and thought of making my Pokewalker into a Loveball instead, but the screen takes up too much room and the heart of the Loveball would be covered up! Instead, I chose to just make it cute and simple. Enough rambling, on to the pictures!

FYI this was my first time doing a full deco like this! It is not perfect, but I like it


First, I chose my materials!


White ribbon, white rose, pink rose, and pink, black, and white strass stones. The pink ones are ever so slightly smaller than the other two (they are 3mm I believe), which actually ended up working better!


Epoxy glue! This was my very first time using epoxy glue... you have to mix equal portions of the two bottles


PROTECT YOUR WORK AREA! This is extremely important!


Squeeze out equal size blobs of glue. The top on is the pink bottle, and is more viscous. The bottom is the blue bottle and is more liquid


The kit came with a stirring piece for mixing it up

First, place the large pieces on. It is easier to build the stones around the large pieces than to try and leave space for them at the end. They will also adhere better stuck directly onto your objet than if they were attached on top of the stones because there is more surface area attached.

I found that my nails were too long to hold these properly... need tweezers! Place them where you want. The glue takes 4 hours to dry, so you have lots of time to work

Next, build up your design. I had mine planned out for months, so I just went ahead and started gluing! I tried putting glue on the back of the strass stone, then attaching it, but actually found it easier to put a line of glue on the Pokewalker, then sticking stones on top of that. I did the black lines first, then the white portion, and lastly the pink portion. I worked in rows rather than from one side to the other in an attempt to keep it symmetrical. As you can see, I messed up on the white portion, but did better on the pink!

The smaller stones make it easier to maneuver around objects (like the ribbons and buttons) without gaping too much
While working around the buttons, stop periodically to press them and make sure you are not putting the stones too close!!

Lastly, I added the roses on top of the buttons to make them easier to press

I think I ended up getting some glue into the button area because the left button is a bit gummy. The other two click fine. I hope I didn't mess up my Pokewalker...
Also note that whatever you put on the buttons, the base shouldn't be bigger than the button otherwise it will hit the strass stones and be unable to be pushed down.

Deco is a very fun and pretty way to personalize an object. Get creative with your designs, but remember to think them through and make sure you won't regret it! Once dried, epoxy glue is hard to remove. Also please note that deco-ing directly onto any object voids the warranty. I suggest waiting until your warranty has expired, or buying a sleeve or case for your phone/laptop/game console. This way, you can also decorate multiple sleeves or cases and change your look to match your mood!

The place I bought my deco supplies at has many cute cakes and sweet cabochans that I would like to use for something... not sure what, but I like them a lot!

Now go out there and bring some pretty bling bling into your life!


EDIT:
Now that the glue has dried, I am happy to say that all three buttons function properly! I kept pressing them periodically (very carefully) throughout the drying time to make sure no glue seeped in and glued them stuck. Hooray!