February Favourites

Another month has passed again and it seems 2018 is going too fast! As usual, I spelt February wrong in the title of this post. It's just one of those words I can never spell. Anyway, I didn't get up too much this month but here's my Feb Favourites!

Gaming
This month I've been playing Style Boutique 3 quite a lot (what a surprise) and I've been focusing on collecting all the clothing and accessory items. It's going quite well and I've a sizeable dent in the collection. Thankfully there is no storage limit at the boutique so that makes it much easier to not have to delete items for room like you had to do in previous games. In my game currently, I've just hit the start of spring and there was some new items to collect for the new season. I found summer was quite difficult as there was a lot of season specific items like bikini tops and sandals. So those took out a large chunk of money. At one point I was down to $25,000 but luckily now I've climbed back past $150,000. Trying to save up a lot to buy all the most expensive items like Enid Chen and Purple Moon soon.

Best sales day ever!

Music
This month I discovered some amazing songs. I know I'm late to the party, but Momoland's Bboom Bboom is one of the best K-Pop songs I've heard for years! I'd been following the group a while ago and I was interested in becoming a fan and this new album finally hooked me in! I love Bboom Bboom as it reminds me of classic Crayon Pop songs and I'm a sucker for quirky concepts. I've ordered the Great album so that will be exciting when it arrives.

One of my favourite groups CocoSori finally had a comeback with Mi Amor. It's a nice latin feel track with a great instrumental. I enjoy the song, but I wish CocoSori had stuck with their quirky image. I guess they went with the generic sound to try to appeal to a wider audience but I've seen a lot of fans aren't happy with it and the album isn't selling well. I've ordered the album so it should be good when it rocks up as I'm waiting to see the photo book. For some reason, blogger won't link to the MV of Mi Amor so here is the dance version. The MV version is available on youtube so just search it up if you are interested.

Lastly the queen of trot delivered another hit recently! Hong Jin Young brought out a new song titled Goodbye and I loved it from the first listen. I've always been a huge fan of hers and her singing is just beautiful. Plus she streams on twitch which is always hiralious.

Art 
A while ago I brought this book called How to Draw Almost Everyday by Chika Mayata. The book illustrates and provides instructions on how to draw simple and cute drawings every day of the year. I've been working through it since the start of the year and it's been great so far. I will post a review of it sometime in the future.

Sewing
Started a new sewing project this month which is a jacket. I've never made a jacket before so it should be interesting. I'm using this beautiful Japanese style vintage fabric that a friend gave me with the Simplicity 8418 in style A. I'm making it without the motifs on the back part of the jacket.

   

Style Boutique 3: 30 Day Outfit Challenge!

For the month of March, I wanted to do some kind of daily blog post thing as a little challenge. So I created a 30 day challenge for Style Boutique 3! After brainstorming a bunch of different themes and outfit ideas, I came up with 30 outfits to create over the course of a month. Each day has a unique theme and a prompt on what kind of outfit to create for that day. I picked a range of themes and items to build outfits from and some will challenge me to create outfits in the game I wouldn't normally wear. For the challenge, I going to stick with the same make-up and hairstyle apart from a few days (mainly the costume ones). I picked a hairstyle closest to my hair in real life and went with a simple make-up look. Looking forward to taking part in this during the month of March.

So here is the Styling Star: 30 Day Outfit Challenge!

1. An outfit perfect for the beach.
2. The classic Little Black Dress.
3. Show your wild side with animal prints.
4. Shoot for the stars with a space inspired outfit.
5. Bringing back the glam/flirty style!
6. Everything is black and white.
7. An outfit inspired by your favourite movie.
8. Dress like you would in real life.
9. An outfit delicious enough to eat - theme an outfit around food.
10. Pick a decade and design a vintage looking outfit.
11. Go outside your comfort zone and pick an item you would never usually wear.
12. Time for a menswear look.
13. Fit for a Princess.
14. Polka dots everywhere!
15. Mismatched outfit.
16. Sporty may be gone but not today!
17. Jeans are the essential wardrobe item.
18. Dress like a character from a previous Style Boutique game.
19. Try to make overalls a trend.
20. Wear an outfit from your least favourite style.
21. Halloween comes early! An outfit inspired by the supernatural and spooky.
22. Cosplay time!
23. Build an outfit around your favourite bag.
24. Blazers are perfect for a school day.
25. An outfit inspired by your favourite musician/band.
26. Pretty Pastels.
27. Dress up as a Nintendo character.
28. Showcase your favourite Designer item.
29. Copy an outfit from your favourite Styling Star character.
30. Wear your favourite outfit of all time!

This challenge will start on the 1st of March on my blog. I will post other blog posts throughout the month, but I will be posting daily for this 30 Day Challenge. Feel free to copy the list to do your own challenge, I'd love to see what other players come up with.

Style Boutique 3: Styling Star - Game Review

Now that New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star has been out for a few months, I think it's time to write a review of what I think about the game. The game is the fourth one in the series from Nintendo and Syn Sophia. This review is about my feelings on the game and the aspects I liked and disliked about the game.

When you first begin the game and are greeted by your eccentric uncle Tim, you are given the option to customise your in-game character. There is a variety of features that you can customise and it was a great that the developers added in the option to have single or double eyelids. When designing my character, I tend to stick to the same looking character in each game. I found it difficult to pick the eyes as some of them look a bit scary/empty looking and the new game graphics make some of them too shiny. 

Now we'll talk about the story line of the game. The franchise took a new direction and focus on a idol/pop star story this time round. At first I was sceptical of this as I thought the entire game would be about the songs rather than fashion. I was proved wrong when the actual story line focuses on helping three girls achieve their dreams of becoming idols with your assistance as their stylist. The three idol girls (Rosie, Yolanda and Alina) come to your boutique asking for your assistance in picking outfits for their debuts and performances. Their company NIN10 Productions pays you in return for your work. There is another idol in the game, the famous Angelique, and you do get to interact with her as well plus many other main characters. All the characters are endearing and have unique personalities. My favourite character from the main story line would have to be Camilla as I found her personality and story line amusing. The story line does drag on for a long time however. It took myself about 42 hours of gameplay to just play the full main story line. There was points were nothing much happened in the game and you just have to keep working on getting Stylist Points whilst waiting for the next story event to occur. 

Camilla would have to be my favourite character in the game.

The developers decided to go with a in-game clock system in this game rather than the real-time one used in Fashion Forward. I'm not sure which one I prefer really. I like the real-time clock (based off the 3DS clock) as you would always know what time it was in the game and could play for hours on end. But with the in-game clock, time moves quicker and you can pass more days easily to obtain new items. The main part I don't like about the in-game clock is that the days sometimes go too quick and customers barely appear (more on that in the next paragraph).

The customer request system has changed in Styling Star. In the previous game Fashion Forward, you would normally get the same style customers visiting your boutique all the time and there was always a constant stream of customers. With Styling Star, customers will either ask for a particular item with usually no set theme or an outfit based off a theme. I prefer the outfit one as you get to be more creative with your choices and you make more money. I wish the developers would create a mix between the two so you can make a substantial amount of money from items. The number one thing I hate about customers at the boutique in Styling Star is the frequency. In one day, I reckon you'll have tops 10 customers. I find I just never have enough visiting my boutique and some times during the day, I'll have none! I have to often exit and reenter to trigger at least one customer. You can message people to visit but you can only send three requests per day. I miss the old system from Fashion Forward with the floor display on the bottom screen and it would always be full of customers no matter what time it was.

This red trousers in one try request is a bizarre one that happens often.

Once you finish the main story line, there isn't really much to do in the game. The developers decided to remove all the challenging aspects such as unlocking things and fashion shows. Oh how I miss fashion shows! It was always a fun challenge to try and find five star outfits and work out what make-up and hairstyle matched the theme. Watching the fashion show was fun as well and taking photos was always a favourite of mine. Now all that's gone and unfortunately nothing has replaced it. Modelling jobs were also removed so no chance of doing those. I think the developers really failed with content in Styling Star. They took out so many fun features and replaced them with nothing. Once you finish the main story, there's nothing to do besides getting the awards and collecting items. Which you don't really get anything valuable from, at least with fashion shows and modelling jobs you had fun designing concepts. You don't get invited to attend locations or events with NPC's anymore. It was always fun visiting places like the Meadows or Maple Crescent with characters. Nothing like that is in Styling Star. The only time you visit locations is in the main story line but it's all pre-programmed with what happens. After the main story line, there are a few little events with siblings of certain characters, but nothing as exciting as say the Five Sisters from Fashion Forward.

AOA Runway - Album Review (Limited Edition Type C CD+DVD Edition)

I've been meaning to post this review for ages now as I mentioned receiving this album last year, but never posted a review. So here it is finally! A review of one of my favourite albums, AOA's second Japanese album RUNWAY!

RUNWAY is the second Japanese album from Korean pop group AOA. It was released in 2016 and comes in eleven different editions; CD+Blu-Ray (Limited Edition A), CD+DVD (Limited Edition B), CD+DVD (Limited Edition C), Limited First Press Edition that reverts to the CD Regular Edition, and seven member editions with one edition per member. The picture member editions only come with the CD of 11 tracks. Limited Edition A & B come with a DVD of a live concert and Limited Edition C comes with the music videos and making of footage. I brought the Limited Edition C in the Taiwan Edition which is exactly the same as the Japanese Edition. This edition comes with the following:

• CD - 11 track album
• DVD - contains MV's and making of footage.
• OBI
• Lyrics Booklet
• Photo card
• Taiwanese Lyrics booklet

All editions of the RUNWAY album are gorgeous. I love the sport themed thing the group has going on in the album design. Personally I prefer the bowling themed covers to the soccer (I think it's that sport?) themed ones. But they're all still beautiful. The album comes with an OBI (the little piece of paper that fits on the side) which I always love! I always keep the OBI's with my Japanese albums and singles. The back cover of the album details the contents and information about the DVD region. The CD and DVD have a cute ball design on them.

Style Boutique 3 - Shopdo Update

Updated the catalogue for Shopdo today! I've had the previous catalogue outfits up for a fair while now, so I finally decided to change them to some new outfits. Excuse the terrible names as I wasn't very creative with them. The first outfit is a simple cute outfit with a pink, light blue and white colour theme. I went with a gothic theme again with the second outfit and ended up choosing a few navy coloured items for the outfit. That's why I gave it the terrible name Navy Time. The final and third outfit is a preppy themed one which I found it difficult to find blue toned items that matched the exact blue tone of the skirt. A lot of the blue items from Brooke Bridge don't match the skirt colour perfectly so I just went with what was best.

New Look Pattern 6373 Review

Time for another sewing pattern review as I recently finished making a item from a pattern I've never used before. The last sewing post I made was well received so I hope my readers enjoy this post as well. This review will be about the New Look pattern 6373.

Pattern Description
The pattern features four items that can be created; playsuit (view A), romper (view B) and two dresses (view C & D). The playsuit and the romper feature a flounce, but this part of the pattern can be easily omitted when sewing the item. All items have a facing part and tie together at the back with a button loop. The playsuit and romper have an elastic band waist and a drawstring. I have only used this pattern once and made the romper in view B. 

Sizing
The sizing of the pattern is 8 to 20 (seven sizes in one) and I made the size 10 pattern. Once I completed the item, I found the bodice part was a bit loose for my body shape. The pants and waist part is fine, I just think the size 10 bodice was too big for my frame.

Instructions
The pattern is marked as an easy level pattern and the steps are quite easy to follow. I enjoyed making the item as there were some new techniques I had never tried before. I skipped some steps like turning the edges as I always overlock my fabric and often don't need to do that step because of the overlocking. I was happy with how the button loop part turned out as I thought I wouldn't have gotten it in the right spot.

Colour Outfits Collection - Blue

Last month, I wrote a post about pink themed outfits I created in Style Boutique 3: Styling Star. Thought I'd continue with that theme and showcase outfits in the colour blue this time. Originally I was planning to do light blue and dark blue in separate posts, but some styles didn't have enough items to create an entire outfits from those two colours. So I just decided to go with just any blue toned items for the outfit. It was difficult to choose my favourite outfit, it would be between the lively, girly and baby-doll ones. For this photo shoot, I used the Florist for the backdrop as it had blue tones in the wallpaper and counter.

Lively outfit

Eastern outfit

Basic outfit

Girly outfit

After School Lady Luck/Dilly Dally - Single Review (CD Only Edition)

Finally got around to making another music related post. I have such a back log of singles and albums to review, so let's get started. This review will be about After School's Japanese single Lady Luck/Dilly Dally single. The single is the group's fourth Japanese single released in 2012 and I will be reviewing the CD Only version.

Front cover of Lady Luck/Dilly Dally single.

The Lady Luck/Dilly Dally single comes in three versions: CD only, CD+DVD Music Video Edition and CD+DVD Live Edition. I got the CD Only version from the First Press run so it came with a photo card (random from 9 types). The CD Only version includes the lyrics booklet, CD, photo card and the OBI (the paper part on the side). There was also a piece of paper detailing information about the single, promotions and Japanese fanclub.

Contents of Lady Luck/Dilly Dally single.

I just love the pastel design of the album! It just stunning and aesthetically pleasing. The CD Only version of the single comes with the eight girls in seperate sections on the cover. Personally the eight rectangle design of the group's Japanese singles are my favourite and I always try to collect these versions. I have the same design in the Bang, Diva and Heaven versions. The only issue I have with the design is that the text on the back cover doesn't match the front and sides. Not a big issue, but I thought it could've matched as it does everywhere else.

Front & back covers of the single.

Interior of CD case.

Style Boutique 3 - Shopdo Update

Updated my Shopdo catalogue a few days ago but never got around to posting an update about it. So here it finally is, the three new (kinda) outfits in my Shopdo catalogue. These will be available for a few more days before I switch them over to some new ones.

The first outfit is the same as the previous outfit I had up, just in a different colour. I just love the star dresses from Marble Lily! The second one is a cross between Raven Candle and Purple Moon. I called it Apple Pie as I had used the apple skirt from Purple Moon which is one of the new items in the game. The final outfit is a chic outfit from Enid Chen and ARIANNA. Kinda went with a purple theme for it and gave it the name Paparazzi.