Every­one does one last bit of shop­ping before a big spend­ing freeze, right?  Well, since we are sav­ing up for some­thing big in August, we have to put a spend­ing freeze on every­thing except for bills. Every­thing has to go into savings.

That’s gonna be hard for me because I typ­i­cally never have to save more then 2–3 pay peri­ods for any­thing. Oh, well. Time to be an adult. 

As a result, I got a few things on my last avail­able week­end down in LA. Mostly col­lectibles, but I got some make up/bath stuff too since I won’t have the money to make another trip down there for another 6 months at least.

Actu­ally, the 3D case, I bought a cou­ple of weeks back. The front sticker/protector was what I pur­chased today. It’s actu­ally sit­ting on top of one of those ZaGG (or what­ever) pro­tec­tors, so I actu­ally have two skins on my iphone.  Mostly, this is because I’m para­noid about my screen get­ting cracked or scratched. Thank­fully, it hasn’t affected the sen­si­tiv­ity of my screen, so I can carry on like a weirdo.

Mobile phone/card case because Richard says I lose my phone too often. “You lose it in your hand.” He even thinks that I’d lose it in the case while it’s sit­ting around my neck.

Phone stand! I wanted to buy a cra­dle, but when I saw this thing, I jumped for it.

You can see how grossly large my san-x col­lec­tion is get­ting in the back­ground. 

Found a Swim­mer bambi headband/earmuff at Q-Pop! Amaz­ing find, con­sid­er­ing that these have been sold out for like 5 months.

My largest pur­chase of the day. Lit­er­ally and finan­cially.   A giant kori­lakkuma pul­low. It takes up nearly the whole width of my bed. I’m not really sure if I want to take it out of the pack­ag­ing because I’d hate for it to get schmutzy. Maybe I’ll just pull a granny move and keep the plas­tic on the pil­low. 

Brand: Replica of Alice and the Pirates

Print Name: Mid­sum­mer Night Dream Ver­sion II

Col­or­ways: Navy, Ivory, Black

Retail Price: Esti­mated $250-$350USD (Non-inclusive)

Rar­ity: (Of the orig­i­nal) Mod­er­ately Rare

Repli­ca­tor: Oo Jia

Price of Replica: $104.50 USD (inclu­sive of ship­ping, and extras)

Over­all Score: 4/5

 

On Tues­day, I received the Oo Jia replica I ordered in Feb­ru­ary. I have never ordered from Oo Jia so this is a first time, unbi­ased review for her and her replications.

I IM’d her via Face­book on the 12th of Feb­ru­ary and received it just about a month later. I have heard of occa­sional delay, so the expe­ri­ence with ship­ping and make time will vary with her.

The pack­age was sur­pris­ingly undam­aged except for what looks like a hole that some­one tried to poke open. The over­all pack­age looked like it hadn’t spent more than a day in tran­sit.

Pack­aged dress shown here. Already, you can see the details of the dress. They look fairly decent.

The first things to come out of the wrap­ping! A head­bow, corset-lacing bodice bows and a pair of Secret Shop socks.

The dress laid out is quite impres­sive. It has vol­ume of its own with­out a pet­ti­coat, and while miss­ing a few minor details, the print qual­ity is sur­pris­ingly vivid and accu­rate with min­i­mal edge blur­ring.

The back of the dress is shirred with the lace serv­ing as the loop­ing for the corset ties. As far as the siz­ing accu­racy goes for this dress, I’d say it was ok. It was a lit­tle on the tight side, but it’s not ter­ri­ble and unwear­able. The zip­per does get stuck (actu­ally, most invisa-zips seem to do this. Or atleast they do for me. orz)

Details in the straps of the JSK.

Hav­ing seen this print in real life, it looks almost real. The actual give away, isn’t so much the print qual­ity itself, rather, the orig­i­nal has a type of waf­fle weave in the fab­ric and because of this, you can see the tex­ture of it from a glance. The replica is printed on a poplin(?) cot­ton and is very smooth to look at. 

The beau­ti­ful sil­ver rose but­tons used to attach the waist ties.

The brand name of the orig­i­nal printed on to the replica. Which doesn’t bother me because it shows who really owns the print.

The stitch qual­ity. Not ter­ri­ble. So far, I’ve only found two loose threads that were prob­a­bly from the bob­bin thread.

On the ruf­fle of the dress, I did find a few weird lit­tle white spots in the print that shouldn’t be there. Keep in mind how­ever, I was scru­ti­niz­ing this dress with pretty much a mag­ni­fy­ing glass.

The only thing I hate about the head bow (actu­ally this goes for the bodice bows too) is that the mid­dle is not secured entirely. Thus, the bot­tom wings of the bow are free to slide around giv­ing them a sloppy look. Espe­cially so for the bodice bows because they are satin and that stuff slides like ice on glass.

Decent look­ing but slip­pery. The pins in them aren’t secured either.

Over all, I really do like this replica. I made a mis­take in the type of JSK I wanted as I wanted JSK ver. I and not Ver II (shown). This was entirely my fault. The extra bow on the bodice does not suit me, so adding a waist belt, helps with defin­ing my shape in the (for me) some-what unflat­ter­ing cut. I give this an 4/5

Alter­ations I am considering:

- A pocket.

- Removal of the bot­tom bodice bow/lacing.

Found myself a kitschy lit­tle tea-for-one set at Barnes & Noble. It fea­tures the char­ac­ters of Beat­rix Potter’s famous, Peter Rab­bit. It’s so freakin’ adorable and classy. 

Cute lit­tle detail on the lid.

Tee­hee, Ben­jamin Bunny!