OOTD #5 ~ little red shota

Hello everyone! Hope you're all doing well!

click to enlarge

I'm BACK for an outfit of the day post! :D It's been a realllyyy long while (a year+ now) since I've done an OOTD post :O! 

I recently just got a new camera so it'll be more easier to capture my OOTD with its wide lens.

Anyway lets get into it :)

I call this outfit the "little red shota" inspired by outfits ショタ (shota, young boys) wear especially in japanese animation. This outfit is young and fresh with subtle hints of class and elegance. Definitely a more modern take on what elderly men wear when playing golf. 
Also thought this fun and bright outfit would also go well with my bowl haircut haha!

For the top - 
I paired a red v-neck knit sweater with a light yellow, grey & white checkered short sleeve dress shirt with the collar buttoned all the way to the top. To tie the warm tops together without making it look formal - I added my copper retractable neck chain that is pulled to the collar with the chains tucked inside the sweater. This gives the outfit a more modern and casual look rather than using a tie which looks formal.

The dress shirt was purchased from a store on Oxford street called "Christopher Daniel".
The red sweater is by a japanese brand called "BROWNY" and was purchased from taobao which can be viewed HERE . 

For the bottoms - 

I wore camel/beige shorts with the legs rolled up to be just above the knee, dark red over-knee socks that was worn at knee height, and red pleather boots inspired by marten boots. 

Kept the bottoms warm tone as well but went for a more darker approach on the red since I wanted the sweater to be the main attention. Also since the kneesocks itself would capture people's attention since this style is rarely seen around, so had to keep the red subtle. 

The socks can be worn both pulled up to the knee or bunched up on top of the boots to achieve the construction-worker boots. But since it was quite chilly yesterday - decided to keep the socks up.

Pants was purchased in Vietnam at a store called "SEA". (store was in Nguyen Trai in Q3, HCM city)

The belt suspenders was purchased in Japan in Harajuku at one of the stores on Takeshita Street.

Red over-knee socks purchased on Ebay which can be viewed HERE (warning SUPER slow shipping =A=;)

Cherry red boots purchased on Ebay. (Sorry don't have the link since it was a while ago >_<)

I also wore glasses with this outfit to give it a nerdy, smart fling to it.

That's it for this entry *^*)/

Until then!~

Stay well & Take care!

Using cosplay for everyday outfits - FREE!

Hello everyone! 
Hope you're all doing well :)

Yesterday I was cleaning my room and it got me thinking that I incorporate alot of my cosplays into my everyday clothing. SO! that being said - thought I'd make some blog entries on using some cosplay pieces of clothing and transitioning it into your everyday outfits.

It's quite common amongst us cosplayers here in Australia (well Sydney) that we cosplayers wear some of our cosplay pieces in our everyday outfit, so hopefully this can inspire you somehow to do so too ^_^)/

Now I understand alot of people may think you're weird or give you strange looks because you stand out or whatever BUT! I personally love looking different but at the same time not overdoing it (sometimes ;D). If people recognise a certain piece such as SNK jacket or Iwatobi jacket - then just rock the outfit even more ^_^)/ 

So that being said I understand that many of the following outfit may not be according to your taste but this is just to inspire and give you ideas of how you can use your cosplay pieces into your outfits :D 

So lets get started with the FREE! outfits ^_^)/

Outfit #1:
- FREE! ED shirt
- Iwatobi Jacket

I actually ALWAYS wear the FREE! ending shirt because they're light, comfy and also have a raglan shirt style which is commonly seen worn on the shirt. Also they have a cute animal design - why not!? *^*)/

Here I wore my Nagisa shirt paired with matching pink glasses, handmade blue & red bracelet (gift from a friend in Vietnam) and royal blue skinny chinos with blue shoes. 
These pants really reminded me of the pants the characters wear when they wear their uniform with the yellow Iwatobi shirt. I rolled up the legs just abit to give it more of a fresh feel, similar to what Makoto wore. Super comfy everyday outfit perfect for going to school, college, or outtings. Can also be worn with other character shirts :)

Outfit #2 - Haru inspired
- FREE! ED shirt
- Iwatobi jacket

A Haru inspired style keeping the outfit blue keeping in mind to wear different shades of blue so you don't look washed out. I switched up my pants to these blue shorts to match the dolphin of the Haru shirt, paired with blue glasses and blue shoes. Changed up the bracelet to be an anklet so give that summer feel. Another refreshing outfit perfect for summer.

Outfit #3 - Nagisa inspired
- FREE! ED shirt
- Iwatobi jacket

A Nagisa inspired style where it reflects on Nagisa's fun and bubbly nature with bright colors and keeping the red/pink shades to match. Paired the top with pink shorts, red boots, pink glasses, a fun glasses necklace and the red&blue bracelet as earlier. Perfect fun outfit to wear in summer,  may stand out abit but if its too much - layer the jacket and all is well. The jacket compliments well since the shirt has blue on it. 

Outfit #4
-Free ED shirt
-Long swimmer trunks (MAKOTO)

Now this outfit is for those who are abit more on the extreme side. I LOVE my meggings/leggings paired with shorts and if you have the proper swimmer leggings made of spandex or fabric - then this is perfect. If you have the shiny pvc one like I do - it may stand out quite abit and also feel abit uncomfortable (because you sweat LOL). The swimmer trunks make great pairs of leggings with a very subtle pattern without making it look like sport compressors.

I paired my Makoto's green swimmer leggings with my beige shorts, Haru shirt, black boots, neutral earth-tone arm candy, yellow glasses and brass chain necklace. Unfortunately my Makoto trunks was the shiny pleather one so it didn't hug my skin nicely and was super shiny an what was funny that everytime I walk or move - it hear the sound like plastic bags rustling haha! As mentioned earlier- this would be perfect if you have the fabric type like spandex or lycra etc.
But overall I really do enjoy this outfit, Super comfortable and can be worn easily for cooler season like autumn, winter and spring.

 Anyway that is all I currently have for the FREE! inspired outfits utilising the cosplay pieces. The combination and ideas are endless so hope this inspires you to use your cosplays :)

Stay updated for the next blogpost *^*)/
Until then stay well & take care!

Casual Tiger-vest Photoshoot Photos & Pandographi's blog

Hey everyone, it's been a while~ Hope you're all doing well!

Sorry for the lack of posts; been busy catching up, helping parents with their work and all especially when I just graduated recently which I'll blog soon and trying to record some vids to upload and yeah! Also trying to customise the blog abit so it's more convenient to navigate through and not be so busy but yeah, please bare with me >_<;. Hopefully the header and all the tabs are alright.

So Pandori-san has made a blog which he will start sharing his work and contact etc. Pandori-san is a good friend of mine who have really grown so much as a cosplayer and photographer and while mainly focusing on photography, his work has improved so much. And also as you may of known that I do alot of shoot with Pandori-san as my photographer.
He is a great photographer who understands both cosplayer's and photographer's point of view which is super great because it enables him to capture what cosplayers or the model would like.

Please do check his blog out at http://pandographi.wordpress.com/ and also his facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/Pandographi

I've mentioned in the previous blogpost(view here) about my long hooded tiger print vest and I had a casual photoshoot with it and now the photos are currently being posted onto Pandori-san's blog. 
Here are some of the photos from the shoot:

For more photos please check out his blogpost at http://pandographi.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/%E3%80%90o4-1o-2o13%E3%80%91-tiger-fashion/ 

The post is still currently being updated, please do check it out once every while for new updates on it.

Both Pandori-san and I are really enjoying this photoset because of how natural the picture is with very minor editting. Super thanks to Pandori-san for it :D

Anyway just a quick short update before I go to sleep. 

Will definitely blog more often real soon!

Until then, stay well & take care!

Casual Photoshoot - Tiger print hooded vest (PICTURE HEAVY)

Yo! Hope you're all doing well!

Yesterday I had a photoshoot with Pandori-san for the tiger printed hooded vest that I made just because I show off what I made :D

We shot at the armory of Olympic Park which was a great find for location because we actually have never been here before and was really surprised with the variety of scenery that was around so it was really great.

I had chores and errands to do in the morning so getting myself ready once I got home was quite rushed so I didn't end up doing my eye makeup until I was at the location but in the end I thought the outfit turned out well. Luckily I already planned out my outfit the night before so all I had to do really was my base makeup and contouring. Also did my hair at the location.

This is how I looked liked after the shoot but you kinda get the jizz of how I looked for the shoot.

For the eye makeup, I tried to replicate the patterns of the tiger onto my eyes, using the colors similar to the vest. The makeup I thought was alright however would've been heaps better if I had a white cream shadow/liner since the white powdered shadow didn't stand out so much. Also some of the black liquid liner used to draw the tiger stripes smudged so towards 2/3 of the shoot, the makeup was slightly messy.
(Sorry for the colors of the photos)

Sorry about the red eyes, eyes getting exhausted from contact lenses

My outfit for the shoot consisted of a basic black short sleeve dress shirt layered with the hooded vest over it. Wore my usual adjustable brass colored chain to tie the collar of my dress shirt together and to add a little detail to the plain dress shirt. 

I added a big gold chain necklace around the hoodie area of the vest to tie together the whole top for the complete look. The gold chain necklace really does add such character and boldness to the outfit and also makes the vest look like a cape.

Added on a clip earring and a magnetic earring on my left ear to match the detail I had on my top. To be honest I had to ask friends on instagram, twitter and facebook for opinions on the long clip-on earring because it looks abit too much yet it gives this superior feel to it. Eventually I decided to go with it. Though they were only on for the first half of the shoot because I forgot to put them back on after we took a break.

For accesories on arms and hands, I wore a black vinyl cuff bracelet that I made from spare vinyl fabric and a rhinestone brad on my left wrist .

Wore a simple copper ring with a large black oval detail which matched really well with the entire outfit. Never wore this ring because It use to be to tight, but turns out I can just fit it now. Literally JUST because sometimes it gets stuck even haha!

On my right arm, I wore the strange bondage-looking arm thing that I made mentioned in the previous blogpost.

This is the eyelet string/ribbon I mentioned in the previous blogpost.

For the bottoms, I wore skinny black jeans which wrapped around my legs really well paired and tucked in with my Ebay combat boots mentioned alot in my OOTD posts. Simple and classy. :D

BACK ONTO THE PHOTOSHOOT TOPIC. . .

Got to Pandori-san's place at approximately 1.30pm to pick him and then zoomzoom we go to the destination!

So funny upon driving to our destination because we both have never been here but I've drove passed it but upon entering the entrace, we see this prison-looking place which made us go " O_O ". Had no idea where we were but kept driving and eventually reached a super nice looking area which is a large park which we were so amazed of the area and this discovery. Truly awesome! Did my makeup and my hair in the car and fixed anything that needed to be fixed and off we went to shoot! 

We explored the area abit and took some photos where we could but yeah I think we just got carried away with how awesome the place was. 

Here's a picture of me and pandori-san owo)/

After exploring the place and shooting for approximately an hour and a half, we went back to Pandori-san's house to pick up Wanye-san who bought us some sausages and bread to cook over the BBQ at the photoshoot destination since the park had BBQ hot plates to cook on =)

Picked up Wanye-san and got to the destination again and decided that we would eat first then shoot because by the time we finish eating, it would be the perfect time to shoot since it'll be golden hour.

Cooked up some sausages and toasted some bread. This is the life, one of the best photoshoots I've been to. Good weather, good location, good food, great people and even had good music playing because of the other people having BBQ next to us playing some nice jazzy music. Was so great.

Me with my half sausage looking suspicious but hey- SEAGULL!

Ate till we were all nicely full, cleaned up and got back to business with shooting. The lighting by the time we started shooting was just simply amazing because of golden hour. The trick with golden hour photography is to work fast and capture because the sun sets really fast.

Once the sun was down, we decided to go play in the children's playground which is really big. We had great fun and even had some shots with the water feature. I unexpectedly got wet twice by the water feature because I didn't expect the water to come at me. But it was all great fun :D

Here's a picture of Wanye-san, me, and pandori-san owo)/

And that pretty much concludes the casual photoshoot :D
I really do look forward shooting at this location more with amazing people.

Before I end the blogpost, here is one of the amazing RAW photos taken at the shoot by Pandori-san. So awesome and from a RAW photo too, no edit. I do really look forward to the photo that'll be released :D

Please check out and like Pandori-san's facebook page at http://facebook.com/pandographi
Also, Wanye-san now has a facebook page as well, please check out his page at http://www.facebook.com/Kagami1ye

Until then, stay well & take care!

First Fashion Photoshoot - Japanese Inspired

Hey everyone, hope you're all doing well!

Today I had my very first casual fashion photoshoot with just my good friend Grace-san and we shot with the theme "japanese inspired fashion". 

We've been longing to do these casual types of photoshoots to practice our photography, taking photos of each other with our cameras and to be able to dress up and yeah, finally happened and was super fun and the photos turned out quite good.

It was so funny because it took us forever to decide what to wear because we're so indecisive, just a couple of hours before meeting up- we were still deciding on our outfits and wondering if it matched and if we will survive the weather. 

Here's a full picture of what I wore to the shoot :
(Super thanks to Grace for the photos <3!)
I thought I looked like a legit Japanese guy who came to Australia on holiday LOL!

From head to toe, rocked on :
→ Black plastic fedora hat from DAISO
→ Platinum blonde wig
→ GEO Angel grey contact lenses
→ Black dog printed bandana from DAISO as a scarf

→ Adjustable DIY chain necklace with fastener

→ White textured v-neck shirt from JayJays
→ Bag with ears from a store on Takeshita Street at Harajuku, Japan.

→ Stacked DIY bracelets

→ Grey high school shorts
→ Black meggings (men's leggings)
→ Black boots from EBAY

Also layered on a nice stylished red vest, but was too hot so you can't see in the pictures above- but you'll see it in the Cafe shots :)

Grace dressed up super cute today, very preppy and somewhat very kyary styled as well :D This was Grace's outfit :

→ Black beret with an eyeball print (not quite sure but it looked like an eyeball LOL)
→ Hair in twin braids that was curled and facing outwards

→ Pink contact lenses
→ White blouse with word details on the back panel

→ Black pleather DIY bowtie that I made with square studs Grace blinged 

→ Black pleated skirt
→ Printed little side bag/clutch with bow detail

→ Printed socks
→ Stitch detail creepers

So this shoot was super fun as so many things happened throughout the shoot-

The first one was the street infront of Sydney Westfields where people scattered around and ripped off TIM TAM packs and it was just a disaster for Tim Tams AHAHA! Here is the mess after all the packages were taken:

We headed to the "Strand Arcade" and just felt super out of place because EVERYTHING WAS SO GRAND, and upstairs was designers stores. But the building was super nice and decorated nicely for valentines. 

Here's a stalker pic of Grace-san, where you can see the buildings and the decorations around and you can see her outfit :D

Headed off to Seven-Eleven to buy some KrispyKreme donuts to nom on when we head to the cafe to shoot, thanks so much Grace for the donut! ;A; BUT THIS PART WAS HILARIOUS.
Because we were dressed differently, the guy at the counter serving us scans the donuts etc and while waiting for Grace to pay, he then stares and then asks "from Japan?"
LOL! I just nodded and we walked out after paying and just laughed out heads off, clearly we pass. BEST moment. There are more moments to come, you'll see ;)

Walked to the stationary cafe called "My Sweet Memories" at TownHall, and got ourselves a Iced Green tea Latte/Shake (sorry can't remember since It was my first time) but yeah, was really nice and refreshing for this weather. TRIED to find seats but the good spots were occupied were people so we headed to this little outdoor area they had (I'm guessing for smokers) and made ourselves a home. Legit we just camped there LOL.

Such great difficulties walking around since the ground was covered in large black pebbles and there was chairs that wobbled insanely and sunked in the pebbles unexpectedly but was good fun. Oh and we kept hearing this guy saying "YEAHHHH YEAHHH" ... sounded quite suspicious LOL!

Started taking photos of each other, me having seedy moments with the donut and yeah. Here are some photos of me taken by Grace (thanks!)

Editting also done by Grace, inspired by "Ulzzang" style since some of their pics have cute edittings and yeah!

Here are some photos of Grace that I took with my camera (using Nikon d7000 with 35mm f1.8 lens). 

BUT YEAH GRACE IS SO CUTE QQ <3

Left the cafe after camping here enough and started heading to World Square. 
Unexpectedly found these set of rainbow lights on the ceiling in one of the tunnels at World Square and was really nice so thought we'd stick around and shoot there. Only to realise the rainbow lights made the photos extremely difficult to edit because it changed the color of the photo >_<;

Took alot of the solo shots and the outfit we wore and yeahh. 
Here are a few photos of me taken by Grace <3

And here a few photos of Grace taken by me :D
Can see the lights on the top, can't really see the rainbow :O

AND ONE PHOTO I TOOK OF GRACE, there was this lady in the background for some reason my camera decided to focus on her and she just looked hilarious cos she looked posed LOL!

But yeah, on another funny note - while taking photos, this very nice lady comes up to us and was like "would you like me to take the photo of you two?" LOL! She thought we were tourists, but we decided to just accept the offer and this is the photo she took:

THEN she was like "put your arms around her~" LOL! So I did and this is the result :

Five-ten minutes later, this guy comes to us and asks if we wanted to take a picture together. LOL! We declined the offer though haha! I didn't think we looked like such lost touriists HAHA! So good and funny though. 

Finished up the shoot and headed to the train station to go home.

Was a good day, thanks so much Grace for the shoot! I look forward to us shooting again! :D (next week!) ahaha!

That's it for this long entry that's picture heavy. Hope you guys enjoy it

Thanks so much, until then- stay well, take care and good night!