Happy Chinese New Year!!

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year of the Dragon!!!

It's another exciting few days of celebration of the most important date for most Asian people. If you don't really know how big it is, think of it as Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one, that's how big it is! It's the one time for families to come together and often, I see distant relatives only during this one time of the year. Also, instead of receiving presents, unwed adults and children receive red packets stuffed with money instead. So naturally, plenty of kids look forward to it!

I've just finished my second day of visiting relatives and so far, I've only met the relatives on my mom's side, my dad's side would be on Saturday. It can be quite exhausting with all the adults gossiping and chatting and food being shoved everywhere and kids running amok in the crowds of people, but I like to sit still amidst all the noise and just take in the whole celebratory atmosphere.

Traditionally, its customary for everyone to buy new clothes and clean the whole house as a way to usher in the new year as well as inviting luck and propserity. However, my family is rather liberal and since we're the ones who usually visit other people's houses, we didn't bother to tidy up the house much. I did get a new dress:

Ah yes that's me, I did some surgery the past week or so..... LOL!!!!! Just jesting! It had slipped my mind to take a picture of my dress before changing out so here's the dress on the lovely model instead. The dress is from Spiral Girl.

Of course the colour red is mostly de rigeur for clothes, but I don't wear red outfits that often and most of my previous New year clothes winded up hanging in the closet till I got rid of it. So I decided to get something I know I'll definitely use again. If you're wondering, red is the colour of choice as it's considered a properous colour, so naturally it'll invite plenty of luck and good fortune.

It was also my first attempt at trying out the Newspaper printed nail:

I think it's decent for a first try but I would definitely use the section of newspaper with a smaller font and Steph suggested using a grey nail polish the next time.

Ona side note, I apologise for the lack of posts recently, I kindda had writer's block for abit and when I was finally thinking bout writing a post, I came down with a bout of flu. I'll probably try and finish up my review posts, but no promises as I'll be quite busy with school and finishing up the detailing for my costumes for the next cosplay event. Any guesses what character I'll be doing next? I'll give you a hint, one of the characters is definitely from Vocaloid, the other comes from last season's anime and had one of the most complicated storylines for an anime. Lol, lets see if anyone will take upthe challenge! Till next time! Xin Nian Kuai Le and Gong Xi Fatt Chai (Happy New Year and Wishing you Prosperity and Wealth)!!!!

No Longer Sheryl Nome

After nearly 3 months and having a good deal of my roots grown out, I finally made a trip to the hairdresser to fix my hair before Chinese New Year celebrations roll by. If you're wondering about the title of this post, this is Sheryl Nome:

She's one of the main characters in the anime, Macross Frontier, and as you can clearly see, her hair is a mixture of blonde and pink. So from the moment I started getting pink streaks done to my hair, alot of my friends, especially those in the cosplay circle, have constantly teased me about having my hair like her. It is flattering and fun, but all the teasing can get a tad annoying at times plus I was starting to get bored of my current hair. So I decided to get a change in hair colour.

This is the last picture of me with my old blonde hair. The pink streaks had faded out quite abit and were only visible as low lights.

Typically, I waited till the last moment to decide what my new hair colour would be. I was randomly scrolling through various pictures in my iphone when I chanced upon this old picture of Sakurina:

I immediately fell in love with the deep reddish/pinkish shade of hair with the black streaks. So I requested a similar do from my hairdresser.

This is the resulting hair colour. (Pardon my face, I have the barest of makeup on and it was a long day at school, then at the salon)

Unfortunately, the hair colour is brighter then what Sakurina had, and, despite having added some darker low lights to my hair, my hairdresser didn't extend them all the way down so I have more like a reddish/purplish tone hair right this instant.

I quite like the colour as it's something totally different from what I've had for awhile now, and I also finally got my blunt fringe back. I've really missed it despite being bored with it awhile back, hence the growing out stage.

The colour is alot bolder in a more subtle way (am I even making sense here?) and it's helping me adjust to having darker hair. Somehow, the thought of having darker hair kindda scared me after having light -coloured hair for such a long time, but it's a nice transition so far. I only hope that the colour doesn't fade out too fast, somehow, my bleached hair can no longer retain colour for long.

Anyone else making changes to their image for Chinese New year celebrations?

Personal Outfits (Busy End)

I was rather free when December rolled by, however, towards the last 2 weeks of December, lots of things started happening back-to-back so I've winded up delaying my post once again. Too many things to list down specifically so I'll let my outfits for the various day do most of the talking.

Singapore had quite alot of cold days with plenty of rain towards the end of the year, so I figured why not bring out my winter-influenced wear. Wore this for some Chritsmas shopping I think.

Outfit:

Turtleneck cape: second-hand from Mom

Inner tank top: can't remember

Denim skirt: Victoria Beckham for Rock & Republic

Thigh high socks: Cosmode

Leopard bag: Jimmy Choo

Shoes: Gal Star

Wore this for a movie date with the bf, we watched Sherlock Holmes. Gotta love the bro-mance between Sherlock and Watson hahah

Outfit:

Dress: Can't remember

Red Stockings: This Fashion

Shoes: Taobao

Leopard Bag: Jimmy Choo

Wore this when I went out with Esther before heading to a friend's house for a Christmas-themed dinner. We were fed pasta and cheese fondue by the guys who took over the kitchen, whilst the girls waited for them to be done. Esther says I look like a kuma (bear) with my hairdo combined with my fur stole.

Outfit:

Black shirt: Giordano

Jeans: River Island

Fur Stole: Uniqlo

Shoes: Gal Star

The rest of our purikura. I'm terribly sad that the outlet at Cineleisure has closed, so now there's only one shop left that has awesome purikura machines.

Went for an outing with some of my cosplay friends. We had planned to go ice-skating but it was too crowded so we decided to go bowling instead. I finally brought my polaroid camera along so other then Esther and I, the other girl is called Neir and the guy is Daisy (you may recognise him as my partner for my Just Be Friends cosplay and as my first Claude Faustus)

My last shoot so far and the first shoot for the year. Care to guess what series we're from? Should be pretty obvious! Kenneth was photographer and another cosplayer, Minichaos, came down to assist in the shoot. Mini does fabulous drool-worthy cross-dressing, I should probably show some examples of her fabulous work next time.

My classes are starting next Tuesday, but my mind is drifting off and planning for the next cosplay event in February. Unfortunately, I totally forgot just how long China celebrates Chinese New Year, so I've got a costume that may not make it in time for the event. Luckily, my partner is facing the same situation so at least I'm not exactly abandoning her during the event. I also had to change my plans as the other costume I had planned to get, the seller decided to increase the price by such a crazy amount as it was considered rushed order, so I scrapped that plan and pushed another plan forward instead. It's a good thing that this 2 particular costumes are solo plans of mine, so it's easier to switch them around.

Plenty of things to look forward to for the year I guess, and I'll probably be doing a review on this new series of lenses I've been using for cosplay recently, they're alot more comfortable then my previous cosplay favourite, the Dollyeye lenses. I'm also having a backlog of review posts for makeup and stuffs, shall get to them as fast as I can, promise!

End-Of-Year 2011 (Continued)

Happy New Year to all! It's hard to believe that 2011 is over and its already 2012. The year seriously flew by in the blink of an eye and I'm left scratching my head wondering what exactly did I do the past year. But I shan't bore you people with it, neither will I make any sort of new year's resolutions since I'll probably forget about them before the week is over, no thanks to my shoddy memory.

Well, as promised, I'm uploading the higher resolution pictures that Kenneth took of me during the End-Of-Year (EOY) 2011 event, the last cosplay event in my country. It was a seriously messy and poorly-organised event and I was tempted to skip out of attending it, especially when majority of the cosplayers had headed off to Malaysia to attend Comifest. But since the event was located at a school, I figured I'd might as well make use of it!

However, I winded up looking quite fierce in some of the pictures so, only these 2 shall be seen. The rest shall be tucked away in a corner and shall never see the light of day ever again.

Esther (as Shou) and I. Loving her adorable froggy head!

My super cute Shouko!

I was asked to pose for a local website/Iphone app that is pretty much the same logic as the popular Bijin or Gal Tokei. However, this photo makes me look short and wide, so not very pleased with it but at least I just had to endure a minute of my ugly mug being shown on the app and website LOL!

We met some friends at the event and winded up eating at an Indonesian restaurant later in the evening. Naturally, Chibito threatened me with physical violence and forced me to smuggle him into the restaurant so that I could feed him.

Chibito after his meal (just kidding! And no, the red parts aren't blood, just some leftover chilli paste and those are fish bones)

He's especially distrusting of Kenneth's driving skills, so of course, he kept a careful eye on him!

I'll be having plenty of photoshoot pictures up soon, as to date, I've done about 3 shoots, 2 of which were done within this past week alone. I'm still waiting for Kenneth to finish editing them and send them my way for a final inspection before their release haha!

Anyway, in case you heavn't heard, Japan suffered another earthquake of magnitude of about 6.8-7.2 (depending on the area). As far as I know, no tsunami warnings have been sent but I'm sure its not an experience people would want so early in the new year. So take a moment to send a little prayer for Japan and lets hope for the best.