keskiviikko 13. maaliskuuta 2024

Circle lens review: TheDollyEye Celeb Super Nudy Blue

Long time no see!
A lot has happened since my last blog post. I finished my studies, moved to the North and started to work in a new place. It's been over two months already and now, finally, I had time to sit down and write this blog post. There are multiple circle lens reviews, con summaries etc. waiting in the drafts and to be written so at least there will be a lot of content for this year! 

Since circle lens reviews are easy to write I decided to write one of those. The lens I'm reviewing in this one is TheDollyEye Celeb Super Nudy Blue. As far as I know these lenses aren't sold anywhere anymore but I still decided to review these since the pics were already taken etc.

Important note: I got these lenses from someone who totally lost interest in wearing and reviewing circle lenses. These lenses had a wrong prescription for me and I think that these were close to their expiration date/already expired so I can not grade the comfort. However, I will say a few words about the comfort in general - pretty much my first impression of these. Remember: wearing lenses that are past their expiration date/broken/have the wrong prescription for you is a dangerous thing to do and it can damage your eyes for good so seriously, don't do it. I wore these lenses for half an hour and then threw them away so I had these on only for this review. Thank you. 

This circle lens review is non-sponsored (seriously, I doubt I'd even get a sponsor since it takes me half an eternity to write these lol).

The vials of the lenses.



The lenses in their vials.

Base curve: 8,6 mm
Diameter: 14,5 mm
Water content: 38 %
Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

 

Inserting these was easy. And yes, "inserting" is bold for a reason - when I had gotten the first lens in my eye, it hurt like hell! Never before has a circle lens felt so stingy and painful; it was literally hard to keep my eyes open. When I inserted the second one... Well, it just doubled the pain. I have literally no idea why these ones behaved so badly; all the other lenses from the same box were also expired (or close to the expiration date) and they behaved almost normally. So yeah, seriously no idea what was going on with these ones but this experience sure went to "my personal top 5 worst circle lens experiences" list... However, like I said: I can't grade the comfort, just mention the first experience of the lenses reviewed. 

And this first experience was bad. Don´t need another one of these, thanks.

These also were a bit on the thick side.

 

One lens in. Yes, it was painful.

Well, these are circle lenses so obviously these are at least a bit enlarging; however these ones don't have that notable enlargement effect. These make my eyes look bigger than they naturally are but not in a "kawaii anime doll" way. Since these also blend very well with my natural eye color - mixture of gray, green and blue but gray being the dominating color - I'd rather speak about enhancement effect in general. I'd say these would be pretty good for everyday use; these add some magic and detail to your outfit and make-up but aren't too "in your face".

The design looks pretty simple at first but the more you look at it, the more details you can find! These somehow make me think of summer; the print kind of reminds me of the sun and the color reminds me of a summer sky or maybe I just miss the summer too much lol. The lenses also look pretty light-colored in their vials but surprisingly dark in my eyes.

Now to the lens photos.
Pics kindly taken by Shiro Samurai, thanks a lot! ^__^

The pictures were taken on a rather cloudy day in June 2021 (yeah I'm way too late with these reviews). These aren't filtered in any way, only their size has been changed since the original photos were quite big.
(Note: we took pictures of quite many lenses on the same day so the light conditions are going to be the same in the next few reviews too.)

 

Natural roomlight.


Facing window.


Yellow roomlight.


Bathroom light.


Flash photo.


Back against the sun.


Facing the clouded sun.

From the distance.

 

  •  The color is 7/10. The blue is just absolutely stunning - when the lenses are in their vials. In my eyes these turned a bit too dark to my liking.

  • The design is also 7/10. Quite natural, good for everyday use. However I don't see that much other potential in these, which makes them a bit boring. Pretty, but not outstanding.

  • The opacity in my opinion is 6/10. These do let my own eye color through but not disturbingly much - and less than some other lenses I've reviewed lately.

  • The naturalness is 5/10. One can see that these are not your real eyes; however it might take them a while to notice what exactly isn't natural about them.

  • The enlargement is 5/10. The effect is there but these don't make you look like a kawaii anime dolly - even though the name kind of suggests so.

 

This one done, 20 to go.
And I mean that a bit too literally. Shouldn't have procrastinated with these so much.
Not sure will my next post be a circle lens review or a con summary but trust me: it will definitely be one of the two.

Until next time.

-Firith

sunnuntai 31. joulukuuta 2023

Luka Megurine - Just Be Friends photoshoot

Hi folks and happy New Year!

Even though I haven't written that many con summaries this year I attended many events in 2023 (I will publish those summaries next year - and also at least try to make blog posts more often since I've kind of miss writing these regularly). One of the events was Nekocon in Kuopio for which I made a new cosplay: my own design version of the VOCALOID Luka Megurine, more specifically her Just Be Friends version. Even though the costume isn't the best out there I still wanted to get some pics of it - and here they are! 

Photographer & photo edit © Shiro Samurai.





This one is definitely my favorite one <3

Favorite even though I was literally just standing still and almost fell because of the high heels lol.

...and, well, of course there just happened to be a sign that was a bit too hilarious and I just had to have a picture taken with it.

(I think the sign was actually warning people not to park there or they´d get a fine.)


There are the photoshoot pics of this costume! Even though the dress itself isn't the professionally made it still looks surprisingly good in pics imo.

See you guys in 2024~!
Until next time.

-Firith

sunnuntai 19. marraskuuta 2023

Nekocon 2023

Well... *khm* I know I'm super late with this summary too but better late than never, I guess. So yeah, here comes my Nekocon 2023 summary!

Nekocon was held 15th-16th of July at Kuopion musiikkikeskus (Kuopio Music Centre). I was supposed to leave for Kuopio on 14th of July, which I indeed did - just more than two hours late since my (now former since I´ve moved to another city) neighbor's cat decided to cause a scene - or rather, disappear into thin air :)) 

You see, I had promised to be a, err, cat-sitter when my neighbor and roommate were on a holiday/fishing trip. The cat in question had decided to take a little adventure on his own - likely in a nearby forest - and didn't come home when I called for him. The clock was ticking, I was supposed to be on my way towards Kuopio at that point and there I was, panicking and fuming at the same time. In the end I called the cat's owner and explained the situation - and turned out that they were about to leave the cottage they had been staying at since the weather in the north had taken a turn for worse and fishing would have been basically impossible. He told me that he would look for the cat himself and I could leave - two hours behind my schedule.
That meowing disaster came back home next day so had I stayed there I would have had to skip the whole con.

The drive to Kuopio went well, except for experiencing some anxiety at the freeway near Tampere but luckily it was nothing too bad. I arrived at Kuopio after six o'clock in the evening and drove straight to Rauhalahti Spa where I and Shiro Samurai would be staying for the weekend. You see, I happened a spot a good price for the hotel room, informed him about it and since I happen to have a driving license and a car (also known as it didn't really matter if there was some distance between the hotel and con venue)... Well... Why wouldn't I take the offer and have a relaxing weekend?
Anyway, like I stated I was a few hours late. Shiro Samurai had arrived at Kuopio a couple of hours before me and I had contacted the hotel if he could have the other key to the room already. That was okay with the hotel staff and when I got to the room he was already chilling there - I just dumped my stuff in the corner and proceeded to do the same. 

Our hotel room ft. cosplay chaos.
 

(Pics © Shiro Samurai if not mentioned otherwise.)

I think that during the evening we didn't do much; visited the nearby store and spent an hour or so in the spa. After that it was time to go to sleep - we were supposed to wake up pretty early because we didn't want to miss the hotel breakfast.

The morning came way too quickly in my opinion; someone's child had been crying for half of the night and even though I understand that there are babies that can't sleep because of pains etc., I wasn't too amused waking up after, like, three hours of sleep or so. Well, that's life. *shrugs*
We went to the hotel breakfast, had an apple juice that was going through identity crisis (it was literally just water lol) and then... It was time to do our make-ups and put on our cosplays. My cosplay for the weekend was Luka Megurine's Just Be Friends version (own design) and Shiro Samurai cosplayed Kisuke Urahara from Bleach. This year's Nekocon's theme was nostalgy and I think these characters fit it pretty well.
After a fight with trolling false eyelashes and eyeliner that didn't want to obey me I was ready to put on my - way too wrinkled - cosplay. I wasn't too happy with the dress; I mean, it could've been a lot better IF I had found a better fabric for it. I mean, I made some great mistakes with the patterns too (I have to make them myself since I can't find patterns as big as I would need thanks to being plus-sized and having a pear-modeled body) but still to this day I think a lot could've been saved had I used better materials. However, I had to work with what I could get and what was within my budget - which wasn't too great either at that point.
However, despite the wrinkles and errors in pattern-making the dress was surprisingly okay to wear and I made the decision to keep it on at least for a photoshoot.

I texted Sallukka and asked where they and their boyfriend were. I got a reply pretty soon; they informed that they were already at the event venue and there was a looooooong queue to the ticket exchange booth. This proved to be very true when we got to Musiikkikeskus; the queue was at least 150 meters long!
We decided to get a few photos taken while we waited for the queue to get shorter; first Shiro Samurai photoshooted my costume and then we switched roles since he wanted to get some pics taken of his Urahara cosplay too. I will publish my photoshoot pics in a separate post, otherwise this one will become unbearably long.

The wrist band. Gotta love the colors!


The con venue entrance.


 

Entrance hall overview pics.

Pohjois-Savon Seta ry's table.

To be honest, I don't remember much what we did on Saturday after photoshoots and fetching the wrist bands. You see, it was very warm both outside and inside the building, and I get nauseous and light-headed very easily when it's too warm so my memories are, unfortunately, pretty blurry. I remember checking out the Artisans´ Alley though - I even bought a few prints from si3art! A few years ago I barely checked out Artisans´Alley/Artists´ Alley, nowadays it's the first thing I check when I go to a con. 


Artisans' Alley and Merchants' Hall were pretty crowded at times.

Artisans' Alley overview.

On Saturday there were no panels or lectures we would have wanted to attend to; doesn't mean that their quality would've been bad, there was just nothing within our interests. We ran into Sallukka at one point and discussed about having some dinner together but eventually didn't happen this time. Hope we can fix that at some point - and btw, Sallukka, your costume was awesome! <3 

Head Hunter Store´s table.

On the front you can see a corner of Bard & Jester´s table, the one with manga books is Fantasiapelit's booth.

Hey there, friend!


Me and Shiro Samurai left the con building after a few hours; we were more interested in taking a dip in the spa and hanging out in the hotel room than staying at a con and sweating like there's no tomorrow. First we wanted to have something to eat though - and oh boy, that... Kind of became a derp show.
At first we googled some places and found a sushi restaurant near the center of Kuopio. We decided to drive there - and at this point I must mention that I'm not too familiar with the town in question so we placed our trust in Google Maps to guide us to the right place. And it... Kind of did... I just didn't see a parking lot anywhere when we got there! We quickly decided to search for one - and ended up driving all around Kuopio without a clear destination. Eventually we typed "Kuopion musiikkikeskus" to our Maps and drove to the familiar parking lot of the con venue.
We walked back to the center - or, well, Kuopio plaza - and finally got to the sushi place. And saw the price list. Which was waaaay beyond our budget so we quickly abandoned the idea. There really were no other restaurants we would have wanted to dine in (well, there was Hesburger and its nuggets are delicious but that wasn't an option at the time) so we just fetched a few energy drinks from a nearby shop and made our way back to the car, hungry and defeated.

We did some more brainstorming but couldn't come up with any solutions... Until we remembered there was a Scan Burger restaurant in the same floor than the spa. So yeah, we totally went there - the customer service was top-tier and the food was delicious!
After eating our meals we took a dip in the spa and just hanged out for the rest of the evening before going to sleep. And I slept poorly again.

Sunday morning came and after breakfast it was time to pack our stuff and leave the hotel. We were also in a bit of a hurry; Shiro Samurai wanted to see "Tolkuton plays Muumimetallia" show and I wanted to see the interview of the other guest of honor, Seppo Pääkkönen (the other one was the Finnish youtuber Namikolinx). He is a famous voice actor here in Finland and his voice has been a big part of my childhood <3 He has voiced for example Buster in Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp´s Adventure, Rothbart in The Swan Princess 1 and Hades in Hercules - obviously in the Finnish versions of the movies. Of course it would have been interesting to see Tolkuton's show too but I hope I get the chance to check it in another con! 

One could also play some video games right next to the Artists' Alley!

 

 

Artists' Alley. Yes, it was also crowded.

Before attending these shows we + Sallukka and their boyfriend Dongrieg visited Artists' Alley where I ran into Nana and Momo, also known as bunicorn_design. I chatted with them for a while, checked out the other artists (and made a couple of purchases) and then it was literally time to run to check out the shows. Sallukka and Dongrieg accompanied me to Pääkkönen's interview since they had already seen Tolkuton in Tracon.

(Pics from now on taken by yours truly w/ mobile phone so yeah, there is a quality drop, sorry about that - I really should buy a new camera at some point since my old one kind of called it quits.)

Ain't Hades such a mood sometimes though? :'D
 

The interview was one rollercoaster of emotions and I had hard time holding back my tears; seeing a man whom I have idolized since I was a child felt so unreal! He spoke about his career, its highs and downs and why he eventually quit voice acting.
I didn't have time to queue up and wait for his autograph but even seeing him made me pretty emotional; thank you Seppo for making my childhood so awesome! 

After that we had a small break and then it was time for the next programs we wanted to attend to. This time the other three went to see Bardic Inspiration concert while I made my way to a panel about Asian horror stories.
The panel was very interesting and it was so nice to see that it was not all about the Japanese horror stories; of course there were couple of them too but there were stories for example from Thailand and Vietnam too. I think my favorite ones were the stories about Mae Nak and the Krasue (don't google if you don´t like horror). The program was 45 minutes long (I think?) but if it ever gets a part 2 I will surely go and check that out too - it feels like a few stories had to be dropped from this panel because of the time limit. However, it was still very entertaining and sure gave me the chills!


 

 


And after the panel it was time to leave - needless to say how bad it felt to start driving to the other direction than the others but oh well, couldn't really be helped...
I will surely attend Nekocon in the future too; I enjoyed the con and got some of the con hype back too (along with some flashbacks to the past Animecons which were also in July and it was always pretty hot both outside and inside lol, some things don't change). It was a comfy and nice con from which I have many happy memories now <3

My con loot looks like this! ^__^

Tighnari, lady Alcina Dimitrescu and Grell by si3art, Klee by iaia.

Earrings by bunicorn_design, skull key chain by Niramuchu Art & Design and the Undertaker pin and Genshin Impact charms by si3art.


Also bought some lovely skull stickers from aroaava and decorated my calendar with them <3

That´s all for now folks!
I have multiple con summaries and circle lens reviews to write ( + Luka's photoshoot pics to publish) so at least there will be a lot of content after I get my thesis done :'D I won't make a WIP post about Luka's dress since I don't really find it worth it; so many people have done the same costume way better and written WIPs about it so... Yeah, not really worth the effort ^^" However, the said dress will be mentioned in the near future again...

Until next time... Which is hopefully soon since I'm pretty damn late with most of my posts.

- Firith

keskiviikko 30. elokuuta 2023

Sastamalan cosplay-päivä

 ...I know my summaries are often a bit late but this must be a record or something since the event was held in the end of May - 27th of May to be precise. This will be quite photo heavy post since the event itself was pretty small and thus I don't have that much to say about it - doesn't mean I wouldn't have enjoyed my time there though.

But, anyway.
Like I stated, Sastamalan cosplay-päivä (Sastamala´s cosplay day), was held on 27th of May and since it doesn't take longer than approximately one hour to drive there I thought "why not" and decided to pay a visit to this small cosplay event held at Sastamala's library. My company (and photographer) for the con was Shiro Samurai who happened to be in Southern Finland at the time. 

 (All pics © Shiro Samurai.)

Event schedule poster.
 

The library entrance.
 

Sastamala is pretty familiar town to me since I have visited my friend there for a few times - still had to ask Google Maps for help though when it came to the issue of navigating but we found our way to the library pretty easily after I had taken one wrong turn lol. The event had already started by the time we got there but we were still there in time - in other words, the cosplay competition was just about to start when we walked in.

 

The immediate view after walking into the library.

There were surprisingly many contestants - a lot more than for example at Euran Mangapäivä (Eura's manga day) a few years ago, even though the conventions were quite similar otherwise (read: small library events in small towns)! The contestants were of varying ages but I think that most of them were basically kids. Since most kids are known to be shy it meant that they practically walked to the stage, stayed there for a few seconds to make a couple of different poses and then walked off the stage. I think a couple of them spoke a few words to the mic but most of them didn't have the courage - which is obviously totally okay, it's not that easy! The competition took approximately 15 minutes and after that the judges made their final decisions about the winners.
The four winners were announced soon after the competition and I think both me and Shiro Samurai were surprised by the quality of the prizes - I mean, huge plush animals, anyone? It may have resulted in me wanting a big plush unicorn which I'm still yet to buy...

Cosplay competition in full swing! The lady in red and black kitsune costume works at Sastamala's library and was the main organizer of the event.

Winners of the cosplay competition.


After the competition I think we went to take a proof pic of my witch inspired outfit and then went to check the small space that was for Artist's Alley and merchants. I think I dropped my jaw luckily I´ve got two eiku when I saw a big name selling their stuff there, namely Bard & Jester - I mean, this really was a small event so seeing them there was very surprising.
...well, until we learnt that they actually have a shop at Sastamala. That explains a lot - it still left a smile on my face though since this is exactly what "support your local" means, be it merchant or event tai kyläbaari. Way to go, Bard & Jester! <3

They have so much nice stuff in sale <3
 

After checking out the Artist's Alley I chatted with the main organizer of the event for a while. Turned out the event was more successful than it was last year and that made me smile; these small events really are needed as a starting step for beginners and as a breather of more seasoned congoers. I really hope that Sastamala's cosplay day will be held in the future too!


We also took a quick check on the activities held in the library - to be honest there were more than I had expected beforehand. One could, for example, decorate a balloon to their liking, take part in a lottery draw (Sastamala's cosplay day had its own merchandise - still regretting that I didn't buy a coffee mug even though I have way too many coffee mugs already) and read and, if one had a library card to PIKI-kirjastot (Pirkanmaan Kirjastot also known as Pirkanmaa's libraries), loan theme-fitting books!

Themed books!

Congoers decorating balloons.

After that we left the library, paid a visit to a nearby Lidl to get some energy drinks it's pretty essential that the driver stays awake and drove to my place to hang out until Shiro Samurai had to leave for the North.
And that's how our Sastamala's cosplay day went! It was nice to see that many congoers at the library; even though library cons have become more and more popular it can't be taken for granted that an event would be a success. This one, however, definitely was; the congoers had fun and the ones who took part to the cosplay competition sure gained a lot of experience and confidence! <3 The library cons (pretty much all of them, at least afaik) are free too and that's a big thumbs up from me. Many times going to a con requires quite a lot of money (ticket, traveling, sleeping accommodation/airbnb/hotel etc.) and not everyone can afford it, especially in this financial situation that doesn't seem to get any better... 

I sure wish to see Sastamala's cosplay day happening in the future too and will be happy to attend it again! <3 

My witch-inspired outfit of the day!
Necklace: Niramuchu Art & Design

   

Sooo... I also have other summaries (and circle lens reviews) that I should write and I sure hope to find some time to do so. I'm writing my thesis at the moment and just trying to get it done so I would graduate in planned schedule.
Next post will also be a con summary - I attended Nekocon in July - so stay tuned!

 (Oh! I also bought a few magnets from aroaava and even took a pic of my con loot but the pic disappeared when my phone broke. I will upload a pic here when I take a new one.)

- Firith