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!

Making of Tiger print hooded vest

Hey guys, how's it going?

So recently I've been working on this little DIY project ever since I randomly came across this tiger printed fabric. I've always wanted to own something that was animal printed so I thought I'd make something that's versatile and able to wear in almost all weathers and almost with any outfit~ a hooded long vest.

Why a hooded long vest? Why not just a normal vest or a long vest or a normal hooded vest? Well the reason is that I've always been succumbed around long top garments such as long sweaters, long sweaters, long coats etc especially through Japanese and Korean fashion seen online, in movies, dramas etc. 

When I mean long garments, I don't mean oversized- it fits nicely around the body but just longer in length to cover over or half way of the bottom/bum. 

So being inspired by Japanese and Korean fashion, I decided to make a long garment and especially with the animal print since it is quite commonly incorporated into their fashion.

Why a vest? A vest is very versatile and can be incorporated so easily into your style from wearing the piece alone or layering over other pieces. Especially with a busy pattern like animal print, it adds a strong bold character to such versatile piece.

Why a hoodie? A long vest would look very classy, in order to make it look more casual and edgy- it would look better as a normal sized vest. Therefore I added a hoodie to give it that casual edgy feel and toning down the classiness. 

Hopefully that explains why I chose to make a long hooded vest out of the tiger print fabric. The fabric I bought costed $7.00AUS per metre with a width of 2.1metre. It has a feel similar to a blanket, so its nice and fluffy and somewhat furry but not overly furry. It has a stretch, very lightweight, loose and also printed double sided.

Got home with the fabric and started researching on making a hoodies since I've never made a hoodie before, got an idea and then started cutting out my patterns and fabric.

Here is a video of me just cutting out and sewing the fabric. You really can't see much but yeah.

After sewing the base, I thought the hoodie was missing something, especially when I wasn't planning to have a lining. So decided to bring out the black vinyl or pleather that my mom bought me from vietnam and utilise it as a hoodie lining.

After that day of sewing, I ended up with:

FINALLY A PICTURE INSTEAD OF BORING WRITING

OH! HAVE TO TELL YOU MY UPSETTING STORY. For the hoodie, I originally wanted to make a furry trimmed hoodie so decided to go find some fur trims. NONE of which I liked OR afford even.
I first went to Spotlight which had some fur trims but IT WAS $15AUS A METRE which I needed 70cm so therefore it was a no, plus it was in a light beige meerkat-like color which wouldn't match my fabric. 
Drove to Lincraft which literally had no fur trims, but had feather trims which was a no for me. BUT they had a super nice faux fur fabric which was super nice, thick and perfect brown color; however it was a roll of fabric which costed $37AUS per metre in which I'd probably would only need 20cm of that roll which they don't sell -_-;
Running out of hope, I decide to drive to Cabramatta which is local to me and sells cheap fabric. No luck, they guy didn't have any thick puffy faux furr.
At this point I was already really upset and started actually yelling in my car with all my windows up LOLOL! But yeah, end of my depressing story. :D

Anyway I left the project on hold abit just to gather some ideas on how I could improve on it. Didnt' work on and finish it until the day before the photoshoot since I decided to have another casual photoshoot to show off my new creation but yeah eventually got it done :)

Added some black vinyl as an inner placket to hem the raw edges of the front placket which creates a slight collar on the vest. Also added a flap pocket which TOOK FOREVER to work on because I was struggling on how to make the flap pocket with the pocket. Eventually I got it done with great help to my dad who is a tailor which he did a great job and taught me alot.

The black vinyl definitely adds class and edginess to the outfit which is great :D

Did some test styling to prepare for the photoshoot the next day.

Oh right forgot to mention about what I end up doing with the trims of the hoodie. I ended up using the left over fabric that I used for the vest and rolled it up to make it slightly puffy and sew it in. In the end, I thought it really went well and even better than the fur trims I originally had in mind. :D

Also experimented and made this arm piece thing that looks like some bondage thing but yeah, was inspired after seeing something similar on television about a fashion show and they were wrapping the model's legs with this but in gold if I remember correctly. It was super easy to make as it just uses eyelets, cords and strings. What I used here is a string that contains eyelets already so I just threaded elastic cords around my arm through the eyelets. I thought It looked really cool and adds a little something to the whole outfit.

Last style testing and pretty much decided for the photoshoot. :D

I will make another post on the photoshoot since this entry is just getting too long.
Until then, stay well & take care!