Holiday Giveaway Winner!

Well, today's the day!  The winner has been picked!

 

The winner is Megan of The Craftinator!

There's so many things I love about the holidays, it's hard to choose just one! I really love giving someone the perfect gift and you can see it on their face when they open it. I love the decorations, the snow, the food and spending time with my family. The only thing I don't like is how sometimes the holiday can bring out the worst in people.

Please send me an e-mail at kirakirajenjen@gmail.com to claim your prizes!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered! 

2010 in Review

It's hard to believe that the year is almost over.  It seems like it only just began!

The highlight of my year was definitely my trip to Tokyo.  I went almost a year ago at the end of January for 2 weeks with one of my roommates.  I had an amazing time and I want to go back as soon as possible. 

Myself at Tokyo Disneyland Resort.  I went to both parks on different days. 

Myself with the statue of Hachiko at Shibuya Station. 

In February I went to a Tune in Tokyo event where I met Sisen and Moon Kana

Sisen told me that my wig was fabulous (it's actually my roommate's wig haha!)

Then I proceeded to be very boring and didn't really do much for a while.

In July I cosplayed at Anime Expo.  I wore a new Euphemia costume that I made.

In August I turned 23 and went to Disneyland with Ashley

In front of Sleeping Beauty Castle

In October I went to Sweet Streets II and tried out 6% DokiDoki Style

I wore this to Fan Day

In November I attended PMX and began wearing Innocent World

I went to Disneyland a lot, I became a big fan of TRON Legacy.  I saw Tangled and loved it.  My style changed: I went from Sweet Lolita to Classic, and now I'm scaling back on it since I don't wear it as much as other fashions.  Sanrio celebrated its 50th Anniversary and I was fortunate enough to be there to celebrate it too.  I got in a terrible car accident, but was lucky enough to only have some stitches in my head and some bruising and minor cuts.  I got to go to Japan, something I had hoped to do for several years. 

This year was mixed.  There were hard times and wonderful times.  It was made better by my wonderful friends and family, whom I am incredibly grateful for. 

I hope everyone has a fabulous New Years! 

Tomorrow I will be announcing the winner of my giveaway, so make sure to enter by then!

Disneyland and TRON makeup

I went to Disneyland twice in the past week.

I went on 12/23

Kim and I saw Rapunzel and Flynn.  Also a good shot of my outfit.
Jacket, T-shirt- Disney
Skirt, Sweater- Tralala
Socks- Angelic Pretty
Boots- Secret Shop
Leggings- Forever 21
Necklace- Sanrio

I did double buns for the first time in a while.  I used to do them pretty often when my hair was longer, but they are harder to do with shorter hair.  I was afraid they would come out, but they stayed pretty well. 

Myself with Eckhert, owner of the elecTRONica club.  Unfortunately the flash didn't go off.  He told me I got the award for dancing because I literally danced for all of elecTRONica (4 hours).  I just really love to dance!

I went again on Sunday for a friend's birthday.  I wore a TRON themed outfit.

I didn't get any good pics of my outfit :(  I was wearing my jacket here because it was cold all day.  I finally figured out a way to hang the disk off my belt easily and so it was easy to remove and modded my disk to be in "normal" mode instead of "battle" mode.  I like it much better this way!

I also entered a TRON makeup contest.
The contest was to replicate the makeup from either Quorra or one of the Sirens.  I chose to do the Siren makeup. 

Siren Gem

My version.
I tried to replicate the hair as well.  They have huge buns so I used extensions around the base to make it bigger.  The base was made by mixing BB Cream with different MAC pigments to lighten it and add some shimmer.  I also mixed some pigments in with m setting powder.  The eyes were done using heavy eyeliner; I used pa for this one since the brush tip is bigger and I needed to fill in a larger area.  The top lashes are pa and the bottom lashed are MAC and Diamond Lash (I used some that I usually wear on top and flipped them upside down).  I also drew the brows in since they pretty much got covered by the base and I wanted the proper shape.  For lips I used MAC Viva Glam Gaga with a thin layer of the base over it. 

I was pretty happy with the makeup, although my photos didn't turn out too well.  I don't use photoshop, so the only adjustment was to the lighting.  I also wish there had been some way to replicate the lighting, but it would not have worked with my camera and skills. 

I also found another picture of my Holiday Hot Mess outfit that I really like

Picture is from LookBookLA.com


Remember there's still a giveaway going on!  The winner will be picked on Friday!

Christmas Giveaway

Merry Christmas!!!

In honor of the holiday I am hosting a give away!

It's simple:

1: Be a follower of this blog

2: Comment with your favorite thing about the holiday season (it doesn't necessarily have to be Christmas, whatever holiday you celebrate)

On Friday, December 31st I will use a random generator to pick a winner.

The winner will receive  a glitter tulle headbow and a custom necklace- the winner gets to pick the colors and style!

The bow and examples of necklaces can be found at my etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/kirakirajenjen

Thank you so much for looking and good luck!

Some New Outfits

Earlier this month I went to a Christmas party with Ashley.  I tried to dress in a Holiday-ish theme, which basically means I wore tartan lol

Dress: Love Culture
Shoes: H&M
Necklace: Vivienne Westwood
Other stuff: Offbrand

Last night I went to Holiday Hot Mess, presented by Diamond Gyaru Circle and Tune In Tokyo.  I dressed in a ballerina outfit, with the idea that I would be someone from the Nutcracker.  Unfortunately no one else really dressed in costume, so I felt a bit silly.  Next time I will just wear GAL.

Dress: Watercolor
Shoes: Sansha
Tights: Capezio
Tiara: Offbrand

It's been raining non stop here, so I haven't been going out much because driving in the rain is kind of scary, and I'm not going to Disneyland or anything like that in the rain. 

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas! 

Cosplay

One hobby that I used to be very involved in is cosplay.  I used to make multiple costumes for each convention I attended and entered masquerades.  However, I haven't been very involved in the hobby for the last few years. 

The most recent costume I made was an original design of Princess Euphemia from Code Geass

I am actually quote proud of this costume... I spent several hours hand beading it and it is very well made.  I only wore it once though, since I didn't like how the skirt fell and I need to re-do the wig.

This was actually my second Euphemia costume, my first being this one:

However, that costume was really badly made.  I literally made it in 2 days before AX 2009 because I felt like cosplaying again after over a year of being away from the hobby.  I enjoyed wearing it, but I never liked it as much since it wasn't well made.

Probably the most complicated costume that I've ever made was Super Sailor Saturn.  I made this when I had been sewing for about a year, and I was really happy with it.  There are some things I would do differently now, but I still consider it one of my best costumes.

I actually used to cosplay Winry from Fullmetal Alchemist and Orihime from Bleach a lot.  I did about 4 costumes for each one.  Unfortunately I don't have many good pictures of those costumes.

I miss cosplaying a lot, but I often get distracted from making costumes that I want to.  I have a list of costumes that I want to do:

Rapunzel will probably be my next costume since I actually had planned to make it for Halloween, but I couldn't find the proper fabric and wig.  Now I have most of it planned out and just need to search out the fabric and get started on it.

I have wanted to do PGSM Sailor Moon since I watched the show 5 years ago.  The biggest issue I've run across is finding white neoprene.   I also would like to do it as a group with friends to have the whole inner senshi since it would be more fun.

Euphemia Angel Dress

I love this dress, however, I haven't made it because I haven't found a pattern that I felt would work well and because I never decided on how I would do the gold patterning on the dress.  Everything that I thought of seemed too tacky.  So I'll probably never make this dress.

I have wanted to do Giselle's curtain dress from Enchanted since before the film came out.  Unfortunately I have never been able to find a suitable fabric and I won't do it unless I can find one that is close enough for me.  I look for it every time I'm in a fabric shop and online ever so often, but I have yet to find one. 

There are others that I'd like to do (Susan's dress from the end of Prince Caspian, too many Disney costumes to name them all, a Princess Tutu costume) but these are the ones that I think about making the most.  I also want to make a TRON inspired costume based off of the Sirens, since there's no way I'm wearing a pleather bodysuit! 

Just some random thoughts on a hobby of mine.  This probably came to mind since I'm working on a costume for an upcoming event.

TRON Legacy!

Tonight Disney treated TRON fans to a big surprise!  They had a surprise free screening.  The way they did it was that an e-mail was sent out to members of a website (www.flynnlives.com) and by word of mouth, and it was first come, first served.  My roommate heard about it and we decided to go to Downtown Disney to see if we could get in.  Fortunately we made it just in time and were some of the last people to get in!

The movie is a sequel to the original TRON film, but can also stand alone (I have never seen the original movie). 

The movie is about Sam Flynn, who goes to find his father who has been missing for 20 years.  In the process, he gets transported to the Grid, a world within a computer.  That's all I'll say about the plot since I don't want to spoil anything.  

I thought the movie was awesome!  The visuals were really well done; the movie takes place mostly within a computer, so the world is completely different.  I'm sure a lot of it was filmed in greenscreen, but the actors worked well within it and fit in.  The costumes were also really cool; they used actual LED wire in the suits, so it actually turns out that they could only film max 12 minutes at a time before the suit ran out of power and they had to change the battery!  I had originally thought that they did the lighting through CG, but the suits actually lit up.

The acting was really good as well.  The standout in my opinion was Olivia Wilde, who played Quorra.  I won't say much about it since it's an important plot point, but she plays her role really well.  Michael Sheen was also very good in his portrayal or enigmatic club owner Castor.

 One of the most exciting things to fans was the fact that Daft Punk composed the soundtrack.  As a fan of soundtracks in general (I listen to movie scores all the time) I was interested to see what they would come up with.  And I was really impressed.  I had heard the soundtrack before seeing the film and liked it, and I have to say that the music really works well with the action of the film. 

All in all, I really enjoyed this film and I recommend that anyone who enjoys action and science fiction see it!  It comes to theatres on Friday in the US, and you can check for other countries.