Fabric update and Bunnies & Bowls Pre-order soon! (finally...)

I'm excited to announce that all of the fabric designs from Spring/Summer are available on Spoonflower now! Click for shop. I know this took a really long time to get out, after the initial photo shoot spoonflower said that they we're changing their printing inks, so I had to reorder swatches of everything just to make sure they still printed correctly.  Well they also made swatches $1 instead of $5 so I took the opportunity to get Amelia's Locket and Medusa's Legion printed as well.  Now you can buy Amelia's Locket fabric! Medusa's Legion did not print as planned and honestly there were a few things wrong with the print so now after revisiting the print here it is in Oleander:

Firstly I changed the designs for this print as well, previously all the designs had a bustle and also they all had to be made with a long skirt length because of how large the print was.  In the new designs only the OP has a front bustle, made to look more like an overdress, and everything is done with the sailor/pirate look in mind.  There's a high waist JSK and a regular JSK, the regular JSK can be made in either long length or normal, and a high waisted SK which can also be long length or normal.

On another note perhaps this print could use some explanation :) I wanted to do a deep sea Medusa replacing her hair with creatures of the sea rather than just snakes.  In her hair are sea crates, LOADS of eels and a nautilus.  She's pouring poison into the sea because well, she can, but note that she's also using a special AE teacup with the Octopus design from Amelia's Locket while sticking her pinky out like the classy lady she is.  Originally the print was only going to include poisonous sea creatures, note the ring octopus and box jellies, but then I decided that the print really need a squid and an angler and I also stuck the whole life cycle of jellyfish in there because they're just so alien and beautiful I couldn't help myself.   This is also going to come in green (Lupine) and royal blue (Nightshade) with the colorway names all coming from poisonous plants.  If you look at my spoonflower link under Designs not for Sale you can see the other colors :)

The other exciting announcement I have is that the Bunnies & Bowls Pre-order can finally start soon! Here are some pictures from the first photoshoot.  Like I said earlier the fabric prints differently than how it printed here, however the new printing is so much prettier!! I'm also going to replace some of the lace I used for this photoshoot, I'm not happy with the quality so that was the other reason this pre-order was postponed.. I needed to find lace! Here is the Pricing for Bunnies & Bowls:

OP - $220
JSK - $200
SK - with apron $165, without apron part $150

From Left to Right Apron Style SK, OP, JSK

Hopefully I'll be able to start the Pre-order Friday, if not it'll be Saturday :D I'll close it after a week and then depending on how many orders there are everything should ship out by the end of September!!

Photography by Yenra

Time for Another Giveaway!

Enter to win a free custom skirt by voting for your favorite print! One winner will choose a design, fabric, and colorway and will receive a free Atelier Enchanteur skirt and custom matching headbow!  Some designs and print combinations are shown below:

Please help me choose what print will be in pre-order first by voting in this giveaway, the print that gets the most votes will go up for pre-order first! The prints to choose from are below:

Bunnies & Bowls in 4 colorways

or

Whimsical Chirimen in 3 colorways

or

Hanafuda in 3 colorways

 The giveaway lasts until June 16th! In order to enter you must vote for your favorite print. You can get additional entries by liking my facebook page, following my tumblr, and many other ways, see below! Please share with you friends~

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winner will be contacted by email after June 16th.  If they do not respond within one week a new winner will be drawn.  Please only one vote per person!

Want a discount on a future purchase? Write a review!

Thanks so much to everyone who has been supporting me and following this brand!  As a thank you to any of my lovely customers I am starting a special discount specifically for anyone who has purchased something from me, either online or in person!

Now when you write a review on previous purchases you can receive a discount on a future purchase! You can write the review on my facebook page, storenvy, EGL feedback page, or post it publicly on your blog/tumblr/livejournal and email me a link to the review.  I will keep track of your review and discount, no code necessary!

You may only receive one discount per purchase reviewed, and the discount is only awarded for reviews of items that we're bought (feel free to review free gifts from orders or giveaway prizes but they do not count as eligible items to receive a discount!)

Discount cannot be applied to previous purchases, no maximum or minimum purchase required.  Clothing is defined by any skirt, jumperskirt, dress, one piece, blouse, coat, or jacket on my storenvy or EGL sales posts.  Accessories are anything else.

Spring Madness!

Well I've started the Spring giveaway, so go see my facebook page for details! Otherwise I've been hard at work getting together the spring looks for the upcoming photoshoot, as well as taxes, and other business things that are not so fun! (but they're finally done just in time, whew!)

Set of Actual Hanafuda Cards

Compared to the new print, Hanafuda!
Three Coloraways Ayame, Botan, and Sakura

For the Spring season I was greatly inspired by Japan and also by memories from my childhood.  One day when I was in high school I noticed a stack of brightly colored beautiful cards with all kinds of animals and plants in lovely bold colors that are from a game called hanafuda.  My grandmother who was always a very strict person (but also very sweet!) who you would never think would ever do anything naughty or even against the law taught me how to play hanafuda a popular gambling game (which was illegal in Hawaii where she learned to play lol...) and through this game I learned a little more about her.  Apparently her first job was washing dishes for a gambling ring in Hawaii.  The men would play hanafuda while drinking and eating food and my innocent justice loving grandmother was supported by their illegal business.. LOL.  Ohwell, I think it was all in good fun, I also learned later on that she used to smoke, who knew!  Now I have nothing against smoking or people who smoke but if you knew my grandmother you'd be really surprised that she used to smoke >.>

Whimsical Chirimen
Three Colorways Momoiro, Murasaki, and Kuro

Whimsical Chirimen is a print based off of traditional chirimen fabric; the kind of fabric used to make kimonos.  Of course real chirimen fabric is not printed on cotton but I was really only going for the look and not authenticity here.  When I was five years old I was a rather dexterous child for my age and I was always painting and getting into things I shouldn't do, but if you gave me something to occupy my hands with I could sit still for hours! Which is when my aunty taught me how to do origami.  The paper crane was the first origami pattern I ever learned and I've never forgotten it since! I used to amaze my classmates by making little cranes that flapped their wings and leaping frogs and talking fox faces.  In my family every time someone gets married we fold them 1000 cranes in silver foil paper... which is by far the most annoying paper to fold.  So I told my family when I get married please only fold me one large crane in whatever paper you want >.<  The rest of the print features many popular Japanese motifs and a temari (something my family uses to decorate our Christmas tree, although that's not what it's really for lol).

Bunnies & Bowls Print
Four Colorways Sesame, Sorbet, Cupcake, and Tarte

Bunnies & Bowls Coordinating Border print 

The bunnies and bowls print was the final print I finished with a separate coordinating border print as well.  I've always loved bunnies, they're my favorite animal, next to sheepies (so mymelody and her sheepy friend mysweetpiano are my most favorite sanrio characters ever!) I have a dwarf bun that I adopted from a friend because she couldn't take care of her anymore, here she is:

She's blurry because she won't sit still! :X

Compared to the bunny in the bowl here, which was inspired by my own bun.  However my bunny even being a dwarf would not fit in a regular bowl like this lol. The print also includes an apple bunny, a snow bunny, and a tasty mochi bunny! On top of stripes with cluny heart lace and a panel from one of the coordinating colorways of Whimsical Chirimen.

All of the prints feature the Sakura, the pinnacle of Spring flowers (in my opinion), as well as Botan (peonies)!

I hope you are looking forward to the new spring looks, what look is your favorite? You can see the new designs on my facebook page!

Huge website makeover!

I finally have a web store! So if you'd like to go shopping you can now use the Shop Now button to the right.  Also if you have not already, please like my page on Facebook. My Facebook page is going to be my main source for giveaways and since i'm 5 likes away from 100 likes the first giveaway is very soon!

 Currently I'm finishing up the Medusa's Legion looks, so when they're ready the first few will be up for sale and then the rest will be made to order.  I have Sea Foam fabric in stock again, and I'll have some Deep Sea fabric in stock soon from Amelia's Locket.  I have a bunch of jewelry that i'm finishing up as well that will be added to the web store shortly.

I've also begun working on my spring prints.  After going back and forth between a few ideas I finally settled on my inspiration for spring -  Japan! This spring will be all about bold colors, pattern mixing, and experimenting with different styles.

Medusa's Legion Photoshoot and Website update

Hello Everyone! Just wanted to let you know about a couple changes on the site.  Firstly the Amelia's Locket JSK was reduced $30 and is now $200.  Also check out the new one piece in the dresses section, the t-shirts in the tops section, and the necklaces in the accessories section! Currently I only have enough Sea Foam fabric to make something in size small, hoping to do another fabric order before Katsucon.

I've unfortunately had to raise my shipping price on clothing to $8.00 (shirts and jewelry are $5.30 to ship) since the postal service recently raised their prices, however every purchase comes with a free gift and I combine shipping so if you buy a dress and shirt you only have to pay $8.00 for shipping.

I'm also working on getting even more pictures on the website, and if you have not seen yet, the facebook page now has an album called customs which includes any custom merchandise I've made.  Over the next few days I'll be adding more photos of bows and cutsew options for the shirts.

Now onto the photoshoot!

For Medusa's Legion I wanted to shoot in an abandoned building, and my photographer Yenra showed us the way to a really amazing setting! At first we entered the old abandoned Henryton Sanitarium, an old graphitied building  with broken glass and sunken in floors.  However upon entering we started hearing crashing noises and doors slamming, which we figure we're the wind or the distant shooting range, but as they started getting closer to us and we started to hear voices we ran off to a safer area of the Sanitarium... Most likely what we heard was a bored teenager but I wasn't about to take any chances!

I modeled the Amelia's Locket JSK in marina, and my models we're in the new Amelia's Locket one piece in Deep Sea, and Medusa's Legion skirt and JSK in Empress.  The blouses we wore we're made by my bestie Dragoness Cosplay, and we also wore jewelry made by A Keen Eye Jewelry (btw she has a TON of different kinds of jewelry, she really makes something for everyone and her facebook pictures are a tiny part of what she actually has in stock) these will all be on sale at my booth at Katsucon!

Check out the new updated pages around the site for more pictures!

Photography by Yenra

T-shirts and Necklaces!

The T-shirts are almost ready, I'm very excited! I also attended a photo shoot on Sunday with Lolita Doll and got some product shots of the jewelry and a shirt, and also a surprise custom hat I did for a dear friend and one of the models from the Amelia's Locket shoot.  I liked making the hat so much I was thinking of making a few more.  Hopefully I'll get the stock pictures soon, until then the custom hat will be a mystery! But I'll give you a hint, it features a rather popular feline! (can you guess who?)

I'll also, of course, post pics from the photo shoot when I get them. I didn't wear any of my own dresses so it wasn't really something related to the brand but it was a lot of fun even though it was 22 degrees outside, and I'm talking Fahrenheit.... One nice thing was I got to try out my new circle lenses from http://www.kiwiberry1-collection.com/.  I got the Geo Princess Mimi Bambi lenses in sesame gray and they are HUGE.  And they're pretty comfortable too! I'll do a review later on all of my circle lenses, I have 4 pairs now and they're slowly growing into a real collection.

Happy New Year! And end of survey giveaway!

I'm happy to announce that roseandlilygarden was the winner of the free t-shirt! 

Thank you so much to everyone who took the survey, I've looked over the results and the top three color choices were: *drumroll*

Nautical

Plum

Mint Julep

Raspberry came very close to being in 3rd, so I'm going to print that one too!

The top suggested colors were sax blue and pink, mint and pink, and some color on a white shirt (I completely forgot to make options on white >.>) I'm going to look into doing metallics, gold and silver. Some of the other choices that were popular were Ruby, Violet, Blueberry and Guava.  I think my problem is that I like all these color choices so you will probably see these in the future!

To give an estimate, I'd say t-shirts won't be available for about 14 business days.  But I can promise that I'll be charging $19.99 usd for them.  At the moment I don't know when I'll be offering the DIY cutsew kits, I want to be able to sell them at Katsucon so maybe sometime in February they'll be online.

I'm going to make something similar to what sweet rococo has, in terms of customization,  for custom cutsews.  You'll be able to choose a neckline, optional collars, princess seams, added bows, buttons, and beads, puffy sleeves, ruffly sleeves, pockets, neck ties, and different kinds of lace and ribbon.  I'll also be making one of a kind cutsews and posting them here and on facebook to buy.  

As far as other merchandise the most popular request was blouses.  I'm going to try to match the prices of In The Starlight and Anna House, but that all depends on how fast I can sew pintucks! I will also offer bloomers,  bows (not just ones to match my prints but solids as well), hats, bonnets, purses, jewelry (I have some supplies coming in already!), stationary and pins.  The pins might be a while.

I've scheduled myself to finish the next print by January 7th! And I've scheduled a photoshoot on January 29th, so watch for new merchandise at the end of January! Thank you again for all you support and ideas!