Angelic Pretty: Snow Glass Dome

So its winter and that means winter themed prints! This winter season Angelic Pretty released Snow Glass Dome, my first thought is 'I wish this was a boarder print'! Could they not maybe scale up their prints a bit? I feel like a lot of prints have been looking cute on the close up but when its small you can't see any of the cute details.

The only colorway I like is the light blue one, the others are just make the print even more meeeeeeh. The grey version looks like it's just some small darker bows on it. I get that they have been going for grey colorways lately but can we have some contrast? The lavender isn't horrible, but I feel like something about the shade is kinda off. This could be just the photos, it might look okay irl.

The OP looks cute with the white collar, since it looks like snow. But otherwise I don't like coordinating with white usually. The layering of the jsk is a bit cute, but could use more frills. This just feels like a discount Sugar Dream Dome.

Thanks for reading! I feel like I sound more grumpy than usual but I'm sure its fine. I should try to have some more fun with writing these. Leave a comment so I know you read my posts and didn't just look at the pretty picture, either is fine, just curious.

//Love Mintyfrills

Brand Feature: Diamond Honey

Lately I've been browsing taobao a lot and wanted to share some of the taobao brands that I love! Starting with a brand called Diamond Honey. This brand has adorable original prints along with some really good blouses and cute tights. Their style is generally pretty sweet but there is still a lot of variation! Both supersweet pastels and more toned down almost otome type dresses. 

The Price is significantly lower than any Japanese lolita brand while still keeping a pretty good quality! Most of their dresses are in the $25-50 range. While they are available for purchase from some overseas online re-sellers, I would recommend buying directly from their own shop since the markup doubles the price. 

Their blouses come in many colors and are the style in the top left corner are very stretchy and comfy too! Definitely a great place to get some more color variation on blouses for a great price! 

They have a bunch of really cute tights, though I wish some of them would have a bit more saturated colors and have other base colors. I think the berry and bat ones are the best since you can see the print on those very clearly!

If you don't like the very sweet look they still have lots more so check them out and look for yourself! It's a lot more than I could show you in one blog post. All in all Diamond Honey is a great budget option for anyone looking for sweet lolita clothes. 

I will feature more brands that I like from taobao, there are just so many that its hard to decide which one to show you next! Feel free to comment with what kind of clothes you would like to find on taobao. Check back soon again!

Angelic Pretty: Candy Carol

The holidays are coming up soon and Angelic Pretty has released this festive dress called Candy Carol. It has an all over print with teddybears, wrapped gifts, treats and decorations!The print is cute but doesn't feel like anything special and the cuts are pretty basic too. I think you can probably do the most interesting outfits with the white jsk, by matching it with one of the colors from the print. Since I dislike making outfits with white it feels boring that the red and navy colorways seems to already have decided you should wear it with white.

All in all I don't really dislike this dress, its perfectly fine and has a cute print. Maybe it would be cuter with some candy cane striped ribbon details or some more box and frills of any kind? One thing I know is that this dress wont be on my wishlist.

//Love Mintyfrills

Improved Outfits [2]: Color Coordination - 2 colors

 So in this post I want to talk a bit about how to put together outfits with two colors. Using the base color of the dress and a color picked from the colors in the print. To balance this type of color coordinate its often good to have shoes in the base color so that you then can wear socks in the accent color to get contrast from the shoes. If the socks or tights are the same color as the dress you end up lumping together the same color and it looks unbalanced. The socks being another color gives a space between the shoes and dress. The blouse will be in the accent color to again be contrasting the dress. most of the accessories too since we already have so much of the base color from the dress itself. wristcuffs in the base color can help break off again after the sleeves and you will probably want either a headbow, some additional bow in your hair, or have your hair be in the base color. Just so You get something of that color in the top section.

The Fantastic Horoscope outfit will look very different from the one with Horror Candy Shop. But since both dresses have the same accent colors in the print you can put together the outfit in the exact same way! Coordinating with the accent colors from a print will really make the colors in the print pop a lot more and really nicely compliment your main piece. Its a pretty easy way to figure out what colors would go nicely with a dress, even though you can usually pick any color you like. The important thing to think about is balancing the colors, so that you have all the colors in each section from top to bottom.

I will be doing more posts like this so be sure to check back for that and more!

//Love Mintyfrills

Angelic Pretty: Drink Me ReRelease

Angelic Pretty are ReReleasing their Drink Me series, a cute dress with an Alice in Wonderland theme. This is such a cute and simple dress, it comes in really soft shades of blue and pink.

 I always love scallop details and its cute how they mix scallops and melted details. It also has some cute beads that look like water drops. Since the dress is quite simple and only one color they use different textures to keep it interesting. With the pearly silk fabric along with the sheer striped trim and sheer melting parts. I love the 'drink me' tag on the jsk, I wish they would have it on the OP too instead of just having 'drink me' on the bodice. The jsk had full shirring and adjustable straps which should make a pretty comfortable fit even though I know not everyone likes the empire waist.

All in all this is a cute dress.~

//Love Mintyfrills

Improved Outfits [1]: Color Coordination - 1 Base color

There are many ways of putting together a lolita outfit and I want to talk about some different ways of  coordinating colors. Lets start simple with some looks at how to match with the base color of the main piece. 

I think many start with wearing a neutral white blouse to go with pastel colors. Though I think going with all pink with a pink dress makes for a much cuter outfit. You could also make it more interesting by matching with a different shade of the same color, but lets talk more about that in a future post! While doing this type of outfit I would favor ankle socks over otk socks since your legs break off the color scheme. If you don't like bare legs I would suggest thin white stockings with the pink outfit and black fishnets with the black one.

Even though this dress is in the grey colorway you can choice to treat black as the base color since it has the black ribbons and a lot of black in the print. Even though I would love a coord using this dark grey as the base and black as the accent, its hard to find items in this kind of grey from Angelic Pretty. Even though light grey has become more prevalent in many collections. 

In the next guide I will go into how to do outfits with more colors! 

//Love Mintyfrills

Angelic Pretty: Horror Candy Shop

This weekend Angelic Pretty released Horror Candy Shop, an adorable Halloween themed print. I really like it! I think the colors available gives a lot of different options for coordinated, it looks so different in each color! Sadly the orange one is a Tokyo exclusive.

I like the style of the OP. the collar looks like a bat, which is just perfect! I think the empire waist is more liked than the loose no waist style. If you're worried about sizing at least the jsk has full shirring. There is also a new illustration by Imai Kira that they are selling as a postcard, its adorable as always!

 The jsk is pretty simple but it works well I think, the black Ribbon on the bodice looks nice. The upside with this is that its very versatile for making a lot of different style outfits. The print has adorable plush animals and Halloween lollipops. For all the colorways the print has details in pink and blue. For a really stand out outfit you should try to coord it with the same shade of pink or blue (or both!). It will really make the print pop.

 For all the colorways the print has details in pink and blue. For a really stand out outfit you should try to coord it with the same shade of pink or blue (or both!). It will really make the print pop. For example the Imai Kira illustration further up is drawn with hair in the same shade of blue.

There was also this totally amazing orange version of Horror Candy Shop released for the Vouge Fashion's Night Out in Tokyo this weekend. It looks so good and this color and it makes me sad that the only other dress in this kind of orange color is 'Halloween Treats'. Last years Halloween print that also go a special edition orange colorway released for that years Vouge Fashion's Night Out. Please release more prints in this color Angelic Pretty!

Also check out my post about Ghost Night Bride, another spooky print recently released from Angelic Pretty.

//Love Mintyfrills

Angelic Pretty: Ghost Night Bride

In anticipation for Halloween coming up Angelic Pretty have released Ghost Night Bride. Its got a slightly Gothic aesthetic, but the cut, details and print motifs it still keeps Angelic Pretty's regular sweet style. Though I think with the right styling and coordinate those who want to could probably make this look quite Gothic.
I decided to make my own layouts to show off the new release instead of just reposting the pictures everyone has already seen, I hope you like them! Please drop a comment to let me know if you do.~

I've seen people compare this to Vampire Requiem from Alice and the Pirates, but I don't agree on them being very similar. I think the thing that most makes people relate them is that the color palette of this print (the red details on these kinds of colorways) is more prevalent in Alice and the Pirates collections. It has some elements in common like gates, castles and roses. But if you look closer at the Angelic Pretty print the theme is more 'wedding of people super into Halloween'. It has lots of cute things like cakes, stars and a romantic set table. Vampire Requiem also has clouds over the boarder followed by nothing, its plain one color above that. This is not my kind of color palette, but it looks good and the colors are nicely balanced.

The OP has a the fake blouse style that AP tend to do a lot. Personally I'm not a fan of this type of premade coordinate. Don't get me wrong; this dress is definitely pretty and looks elegant. But I think it limits your options to be creative with making your own outfits and makes it harder to not have every outfit look the same. With difference with having a regular OP and the fake blouse style like this is that they are already picking black as the main accent color in addition to the colorway of the dress. So you would have to do a three color coord (with two colors decided for you). I wish this dress was a bit more special and different from the jsk. They have the same waistline and the biggest difference other than the fake blouse is there being organza bows instead of lacing and no shirring.

So for the reasons stated above I would prefer the jsk, since it gives you a lot more options for outfits. The cut is similar to OP and really basic high waist Angelic Pretty cut with cupcake skirt. I Think this dress would be super pretty to coord with grey, luckily Angelic Pretty have been doing more items in grey colorways! The print features three shades of grey so there are plenty of options. The latest release of the milky cross blouse has a really pretty silver grey version that I think would look really pretty with any colorway of this dress. I made a little palette below to help you pick out the colors of the print that would be great to make outfits with. 

I hope you like this post and all the graphics I made for it. It took a lot of time but I had fun and I'm happy with how it all turned out! I miss blogging but its been hard to do due to health issues that I've been dealing with. 

Thanks for reading and please check back soon.

//Love Mintyfrills