Fairytale Dress

 

 Teaser from a photoshoot I did in the dress.

For Christmas my lovely friend Maura sent me some fabulous japanese fabric with a super cute boarder print. But she only sent me 1 yard, and the boarder was different on either side. But I did some creative cutting, and I think it worked out well. I designed the dress to be comfortable and warm, I used jersey cotton for the top, not something typical of lolita outside of cutsews and hoodies, but hey I'm a rebel.

Before I finished with the sleeves. I still plan on adding some lace to the bottom, but I haven't found any I liked yet.

In the top picture I'm wearing vintage gloves and beret. The green butterfly necklace is Tarina Tarantino. The bottom picture are my new rubber boots from mel. They've been super useful this winter, and cute, let's not forget cute.

Tea Cups

 

I bought myself a gorgeous tea cup over the holidays, I was super excited about it, it's seafoam with pink roses and gold accents, the inside is pearly lusterware. I love it!

In mid January a photographer contacted me about doing some stock photos of women drinking, and I of course thought about my new tea cup. Now I don't have a huge amount of time right now, I've just become the Director of The Kids Cooking Corner, which was where these photos were taken. Bob was really great and shot me in a two hour window I had open during the day.

Photographer: Robert Brown Stock

Model/MUA: Me

Infrared Photoshoot

 

 My favorite shot

Actually shooting in infrared (as opposed to changing it to infrared via Photoshop) can be pretty unpredictable. How dark or light something can look depends less on color, and more on what the object is made of. It tends to smooth out skin tone, but can make you look old because it accentuates wrinkles. It edits out freckles and moles but can bring out the appearance of veins. Most photographers who use infrared choose to shoot landscapes, in that respect Michael is a bit of a rebel.

There are of course some things you can do to get the photo you want. The older the cloth is, the more likely it will shoot better  and more true to color because vintage clothing used more natural fibers where more modern stuff tends to have a blend.

Plastic tends to photograph white or clear, as you can tell from my large white faux lashes. So if you plan on wearing lashes maybe buy one that are made from real hair. Although this is kinda a neat side effect.

Lipstick will not be dark, no matter what. I'm wearing Geek Chics Kaos and it doesn't look as if I'm wearing anything. Though for whatever reason khol eyeliner always shows up black, so use that on your mouth instead.

This, believe it or not, is a black dress, it photographed light blue under infrared except for the black elastic straps, kinda fascinating don't you think? This was my last outfit, the shoes were 4 inch heels and kept sinking into the dirt as I walked around, and dress was absolutely killing me. In fact as soon as I got home I chucked it, most of the pictures wearing it I found really unflattering anyway, plus it has a tendency to get a bit twisted while moving and it's super hard to straighten out again. I really only brought it along cause the photographer asked me to, and I don't have a lot of black in my wardrobe.

I got three panoramics, one for each outfit, but like I said I didn't care for the black dress much. This was my favorite panoramic, I'm particularly fond of poses 2 and 5.

I'm in love with pose 4, I want to have a whole album of me jumping in this dress.

All these photos were taken in Portland Riverview Cemetery, which is huge and old and includes a lot of famous residents from Portland history and some large, amazing tombstones. There are also a lot of bikers who come for the quiet roads. This shot was taken just before a whole bunch of them road past shouting things like, "Looking good," and "Very pretty." It was kinda funny really.

There were a few short jokes about this shot because even standing on a bench I still wasn't tall enough to have the leaves directly behind me. The background photographed pretty though didn't it?

I did not get a color shot of my makeup that day. But I took some photos when I was practicing earlier in the month, I changed the shape a bit for the actual shoot, but these are the colors I used in the shoot with the exception of the blue eyeliner which I took out at the last minute, and I used black eyeliner on my waterline.

• Black Rose Minerals It's Electric
• Black Rose Minerals Venom
• Aromaleigh Almost Midnight
• Meow Hoar Frost
• Meow Sleet
• Meow Astral Projection
• Aromaleigh Plush Romantic
• Aromaleigh Fume

Wow that's a lot of eyeshadow.

Shoot with Revolution Intermedia: Part 2

I brought a few more outfits with me down the beach and for the second part of the shoot we went with this one. I changed in the wooded area up from the beach. The blush stands out much more in these photos too, it's kinda crazy.

My favorite.

So what do you think? Do you like the first outfit or the second outfit better?

Shoot with Revolution Intermedia: Part 1

This was a shoot I did back in the last week of September. The photographer, Kenny asked me to wear something "flowy", but to have my makeup be sort of dark and edgy. I wore my black fingerless gloves and black boots to help reign in the angelic feeling of the dress.

I'm afraid I don't remember what makeup I wore. I'm pretty sure I'm wearing Aromaleighs Cherry Bomb blush, and waaaay too much of it if I'm going off these pictures. I over did it because I thought the wig and the sun would wash me out more then it did.

It was really freakin hot this day, and I was wearing a wig, and I didn't realize Kenny was gonna have me walk half a mile in heels up the beach. I ended up looking like a sweaty mess in a lot of the photos I got back. Thank goodness some of them turned out. I like my precise lip line in this picture, I'm also pretty sure I'm wearing Clinique Lipstick in Cranberry Creme.

Most of my favorites are of me not looking at the camera, it was so bright, that with the reflector shining at me I was squinting like hell. I felt really terrible over it actually, but there was also nothing I could do about it, if you've got to squint you've got to squint

Arika is a Doll...

For my part of the photoshoot I put on my Black Forest print dress, and made myself a new head piece. I did my makeup and hair, and brought a Pomegranate as a prop, I called him Mr. POM he's the original forbidden fruit.

I glued cellophane to a headband and cut it down to a more manageable size.

The end result kinda looked like a bonnet, I wanted to add more stuff to it, but I ran out of time, still looked cute though, not as cool as Brennas.

I kept makeup simple. I used Aromaleigh Champagne Toast on the lids, and Drama Liner in Copper. I also used Aromaleigh Rocks! glitter in hothothot on my lips over a red gloss. But you can't really tell. Lame... Also Aromaleigh Corset blush.

I painted my nails using Sally Hansens Hard as Nails in Cardinal, with a Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Strobe Light over that. OMG it's so pretty you don't even know!

We did the shoot over at the Red Cross entry way, Brenna helped me tape the stars up, she also helped me cut them out. Afterwards we put the stars up next to the Heroes posters. Now have some Arika spam!

Brenna is a Deer...

Brenna and I collaborated on a photoshoot for a contest we were trying to enter. I did her makeup made her a really cute hair piece and created a "background", she used one of my wigs and looks AMAZING in it! She was very patient with me as I kept adding more and more stuff to her face. And then when we were done I was like, "okay, let's glue stuff to you arm now!"

So I totally put way too many colors on Brenna, and I can't remember them all but I will tell you all of what I do remember. I used Aromaleighs Almost Midnight to made the dark line around her eyes and Hit or Miss on the lid and under the lower lash line. After that the eyeshadow get's fuzzy, I'm pretty sure I used Athena, and Imperial as well.

On her face I used Aromaleigh Wildflower blush, Ben Nye's Lux Powder in Ice, with Lime Crime's Empress dusted over a piece of lace to create that pattern. On her lips is Lime Crimes Airborne Unicorn lined with Aromaleigh Wildflower blush, and Aromaleigh eyeshadow in Fume patted on the middle of the lips.

I drew out the background for her freehand and cut it out with a dull exact-o knife. It was very hard.

But damn it looks good. Now have some awesome Brenna spam!

Doll Photoshoot

At the end of last March I had Gloria and Shannon make the drive with me to Mollola Oregon to do a shoot with AleanaMae Inc. , it would be my first time taking model-type photos in my Lolita dresses.

I brought a bunch of stuff with me including the pastel balloons, and candy, stuffed animals, three dresses (though I only shot in two of them), my makeup. I brought a lot....

Aleana had a set up in the corner of one side of her room, and was geared more toward the "creepy" dolls she had been shooting thus far then my sweet lolita, super pastel doll. But the pictures still look cute so I can't complain.

I wore both my petticoats with my dresses, it looked good with my rainbow dress but not so much with this one, too poofy, who knew such a thing could be? I brought this dress along despite the fact that it's unfinished and has been for quite awhile now. I don't know, I just keep falling into other projects.

Sharing secrets!

Okay night, night now!