Spring Sales

hello pizza cuties! i just wanted to let you quickly know about a couple different sales going on right now i thought you might be interested in.

romwe, a brand known for its black milk-esque printed leggings, is having a flash sale for buy one get one half off on all their leggings. they have a lot of cool printed leggings very similar to black milk in design, but at a fraction of the cost. i've never bought from romwe before but i lust after so many of their items, and a lot of fashion bloggers whose opinions i trust have bought from them before and loved them, so i think they're a good bet. they have galaxy leggings, too.

you have to use the code second50% to get the deal.

they are also having a bit of clearance, so when you get your leggings you might want to check that out as well!

the second sale i wanted to notify you of is meltydream's spring sale.

meltydream is an independent kawaii brand loved by lolitas, creepy cute, fairy-kei, uchuu-kei, and probably even more subcultures i don't know about. she makes the wonderful pastel galaxy skirt, now also available as a miniskirt, as well as cute bows, t-shirts, and other skirts and cute items.

i have the pastel galaxy skirt and i can assure you that the quality is tremendous. it is by far one of the most professional quality independent clothing brand pieces i own, down to the stitching, the printing is really nice quality and looks gorgeous. it takes a while to get, because she makes it to your measurements, so order ahead if you're planning on wearing it to a meetup!

so if you've been eyeing any of her products, now is a great time to buy that meltydream item!

Dreamy Spring Trends

hey everyone! i wanted to talk about trends i've been noticing in japanese and alternative fashion recently. 

i've been seeing a lot of the following and love all of it to death:

• platform shoes (especially in pale colors, white, neutrals)
• romantic pastel outfits
• romantic, angelic aesthetics
• feminine things contrasted with edgy items
• oversize buttons

source: neko-milk

source: scenesrushingby

source: dolldelight

brand: tokyo bopper
source: tokyo fashion

rocking horse shoes seem to be making a comeback, too.
source: tokyo fashion

 

source: tokyo fashion

source: tokyo fashion

source: tokyo fashion

source

brand: maxstar

i'm in love with those maxstar white boat shoes. i'm definitely getting them for my birthday. they''re perfect and so versatile!

these platforms aren't pastel or pale, but they are still very cute and very on-trend:

source: milky-honey

even without pale platforms, she's still got some soft pink and neutrals going on, as well as an oversized button, which i've also been noticing as a huge trend in alt-fashion this spring. you can see it in above photos as well.

source: tokyo fashion

source: tokyo fashion

here are some more outfits and photos i feel emphasize these trends!

source: tsunderrorist

asos

etsy

source: lolitahime

source: tokyo fashion

you can get an angel ring like that from starlight deco dream, which also has a lot of romantic/angel items.

source: pastelbmob

source: taobaosux

source: pastelbmob

source: theinternetisforperverts

that's all for now!

Sanrio.com review: Little Twin Stars watch + backpack, Hello Kitty coin bank

hello everyone! i made an order with sanrio.com recently, and the items arrived today so i thought i would give you a little review. i made a short review of sanrio once before, but i think it's good to share repeated experiences with a company and show what's good about these specific products.

what i ordered was a little twin stars watch for my mom, a backpack for me, and with our total we could also add a hello kitty coin bank for free! sanrio often does free giveaways like this where they'll include freebies with an order over a certain amount. unlike other stores though, the amount usually isn't crazy high like over $100. for example, right now if you spend $75 or more you get a free hello kitty perfume and free shipping, and with a purchase of any amount you get a free shopping bag. cool, huh?

the only problem with this is that i think you can only apply one code at a time, so you might have to choose. i chose the coin bank freebie over free shipping.

so, onto the unboxing!

it came in a big regular brown box as usual, but as soon as i opened it i found a cute surprise!

it's cute hello kitty tissue paper!!

it was itemized on the receipt as a free bonus and i don't know why, but i love it. it was just folded nicely on top and wasn't wrapping anything so i'm saving it! it's really cute.

underneath the paper was the free coin bank! i wasn't expecting it to be so big and ceramic, but since it's usually like $30 i think, it was definitely worth the value.

 

 it's really cute! the paint job is really nice quality and it's not too fragile to use. as you can see it's pretty big in relation to my DVDs behind it. it fit nicely on this TV cabinet though so i'm displaying it there! it's so cute and i'll definitely be using it for saving up my loose change.

underneath the bank, nicely protected with bubble wrap and cardboard was the watch!

i love this watch! it really suits my mom and i'm so glad we got it for her. it came in a nice plastic case printed with a pink little twin stars logo:

 

and has a cute tag attached to it:

the band is printed very nicely with adorable little twin stars related bows and stars, and the face has kiki and lala with a free-floating star charm.

 

i don't know if the star charm is supposed to be free inside the watch face like that, but i don't see where it would normally attach so i think it's intended to be like that. the design of the entire watch is super cute! the quality is also really good and doesn't look cheap at all.

my only qualm is that there's a japanese warning or alert of some kind on the box that i don't know enough japanese to read. we haven't checked out the booklet yet though so there may be a translation in there.

underneath the watch was my backpack, covered with some brown paper:

it was protected in a clear plastic bag that had a hole for the tag to stick out. i love when products have such cute tags! i always save them.

now, i'd been eyeing this backpack since i saw it on tumblr ages ago but i only recently saw that it was for sale on the US site. it's become a popular item in fairy-kei and other kawaii culture fashions and i can see why! the design is absolutely perfect, and i think this is now the cutest bag i own.

the size of the design on the front is perfect, and all the colors are wonderful. the print quality is really nice as well. 

since it's supposed to be a backpack for a really little kid, i wondered if the sturdiness and size would be ok. well, the material is fantastic. it's very sturdy and seems like it could easily carry a lot of weight without warping or getting damaged. it was actually adjusted too big for me and i had to tighten the straps. 

all the colors of the backpack are totally perfect but i love how the straps have such a wonderful complementing lavender on them. the little stars are so cute and the straps are padded so it's comfortable to carry. you could also carry it by the top loop if you dont want to wear it as a backpack.

the front pocket with kiki and lala on it is flat and lined partially with yellow waterproof plastic. i think it would be good for keeping your wallet and gum or other flat stuff in, since it doesn't seem to expand a lot.

the bigger pocket has lining on both sides, as well as a pocket that closes with velcro. the whole big pocket expands and seems to be able to hold a good amount! because it's a mini backpack though, i'd only really recommend using it as a purse. i don't think it'd be very good for toting a lot of school stuff and hefty textbooks, but it seems great for holding a big purse worth's of items. i think it'll be great for me to use this summer because i can put my sketchbook and planner in it.

i put my little twin stars keychain on it and it didn't scratch any of the pink off of the zipper either! 

 

♡ review breakdown ♡ 

sanrio.com services: 5/5 ♡

the shipping took longer than estimated but that worked out great for me because i was on spring break! i love the coin bank and think it is an awesome freebie, and love the extra tissue paper too. the prices of everything were fair and i was happy with everything about the transaction.

 watch: 5/5♡

  the quality and price were both good. it's a super cute watch!

backpack: 5/5♡

i couldn't be happier about the quality and design of the bag. it's so adorable and totally wonderful!

overall i was super happy with the whole order and will still be ordering from sanrio.com in the future as long as they stock little twin stars and other cute stuff i can't find anywhere else!

that's all for today! i have more for you all coming up soon about my spring break trip to st. louis, meeting they might be giants, and some cute things i got at the comic shop there. i also added a little bloglovin button to the sidebar so you can follow me on bloglovin now! please keep checking back for more posts and thank you for reading❣

Purikura - How to Cuteify Your Photos (Without an App!)

hey everyone~ you may have noticed i'm super into decorating my photos with cute pixel art, as you can see from my other posts and even my sidebar photo. 

well, i'd always been into the idea of purikura because of my love of stickers and decorating any empty space with cute things, but i was never satisfied with the apps available to do this online. i tried all the free online ones available, and i don't  have a smartphone, so i figured out my own technique for decorating my photos and making them a lot cuter to look at!

so, here is my method! anyone can do this at all, and it doesn't require much more artistic skill than knowing where to stick a sticker.

1. Get a Photo Editor

if you have photoshop, gimp, SAI, paint.net, or another image editor that works with layers you can do this. my laptop where i write my blog posts can't handle photoshop, so i use paint.net. both paint.net and gimp are free, small files!

2. Pick a photo

you can use purikura to add visual interest to a sparse photo, cover up things like your mailing label on a package or clutter in the background, fill empty space, or just make things cuter!

so, let's pick a boring photo we can make cute with some empty background space. 

3. Pick your deco

i pick my decorations from different pixel art blogs on tumblr. a few of my favorites are

• engrampixel -tons of cute pixels, all kinds of characters and letters, plus backgrounds, emoji sets, and blog buttons
• princess-pixel - cute themed posts full of specific pixel art
• mewpixie - great decorations and pretty pixel art scenes too!
• fuckyeahsubversivekawaii - not specifically deco but good if you want to put a good and cute looking feminist ideal on your photo
• transparent-flowers - not pixel art, but tons of beautiful high quality flowers, organized by color and number of petals, and already transparent for you

my favorite is engrampixel because of the search function and the fact that they have SO much, a lot of rare little twin stars stuff, and a good search function (but it only matches exact tags, so you might rather load up the whole blog and ctrl+f if you can't find what you want with the search bar).

4. Copy and paste the decoration you want

simply copy the deco you want to put on the photo and paste it on top in a new layer, like so:

 

if you hold shift while you resize, it keeps the proportion of your image the same so you don't end up stretching it out and making it look bad.

if you're using paint.net, make sure you have "pixelated" selected for quality if you want your pixel art to look like pixel art and not all smoothed out and blurry. if you're not using pixel art, you'll want it to be smooth.

 continue pasting and adding! if you lay transparent images over one another on the same layer in paint.net though and you overlap their spaces, it will cause the "background" of one image to obscure another. just make a new layer and paste the art in that layer if this happens.

5. finish and save your image!

 

i hope you breaking bad fans appreciate that i included a lily of the valley pixel omg

and there you have it! a super cute-ified photo that looks like it just came out of a japanese purikura machine. it's really easy and fun to do!

i hope this tutorial helped you guys out! you don't have to buy an app or use a sub-par website to decorate your pictures, you just need a little cut and paste know how and some cute art to use.