My bad. I thought I would have more motivation to update this site. I suck hard. I honestly haven't been touching my sewing machine for the past few months since my October commissions were done. I thought I could knock out one thing at a time and then move along to get this rolling. At this point, about 5.5 months upon returning from Japan, I'm just making excuses and procrastinating. For a while I was busy job hunting. Got a job which was supposed to be just a temporary thing. Now I'm looking for a new job but it's been harder than I thought. I put a lot of time and energy into looking, resume, cover letters, etc. I have to change my game plan because obviously I'm doing something wrong. It only makes me feel slightly better knowing that I'm not the only one in this situation. I know lots of JETs come back to shitty economy and takes them months, even a year, to land a decent job. 

.... I get really frustrated at times. But I just have to keep on plowing cuz that's all I got left to do. I got a new dog I'm responsible for -- A stray/abandon pup that I found outside my dad's place, followed me to my car and laid his head on my lap. I took him home, my bro fell in love with him and we eventually got him taken care of at the shelter and adopted him. He's hella cute but ate a lot of the money I'm supposed to be saving for myself, my business, and my rent money to my bro. lol. Then I have to start at ground zero in trying to get my parents financial assistant for health care. There goes plan A.... life takes you to interesting places. My short term goals have changed, but long term I'm determined to get where I wanna get, but it's gonna be a hard field to plow. It'll be worth it. 

Good news though -- there's definitely lots of opportunities out there. I just need to keep trying. 

This is just a short update. I have backed up a lot of topics that were suppose to be posted here. In due time. Just wanted to let you know I'm still alive. Again.

 

I got a client friend who's commissioning a David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust costume for Halloween this year. Here are some pictures I used for references. I later realized that there were two versions of this. I noticed because while trying to study the painting, the styles on two pictures were different and the boots/bootcovers were also different in these two versions. Duh... lol. The first pic is one version and the last three is the other. Notice the paintings and boots/covers (on some pictures, they were drape-y and in others, they looked like they were reinforced with something thicker and not shiny...). In the final costume designed, I kinda just incorporated the two. What the hell, right?

Finally sewing the boot/cover all around, and attaching it to the canvas shoes, bought from ChinaTown in SF I believe -- but you can get them anywhere. They are slipons.

YAAAAY! Halloween is here! But like every year, I end up making costumes for others and barely have enough time to make my own. Ha. I thought this would be a really good time to show what I've done in the last four years in Toyama's Halloween Party at Banana's in Uozu City. Epic, drunken fun with what... 6 hours all you can drink and dance. That was and still is one of the BEST parties of the year. Ever. (Although I am no longer there). Just for the "all you can drink for 6 hours" alone. Though I'm not a big drinker, I do enjoy seeing fellow monsters, zombies, and Mr. Peanuts tumble over each other and vomiting into the Japanese gaijin ditch. Hah. Wait... I did that one year too so I shouldn't be laughing. The stories, make-out sessions, drama, and scandals that ensued... good times. :)

I actually don't have a picture of my first Halloween in Toyama in 2006. I think some people no longer remembered me being the dreaded/hated/loved/lifesaver 2006 TOYAMA TEAM TEACHING HANDBOOK! YES. I WAS A BOOK. With pages. It's the edition that is light pink with white lettering. So if you guys have it in your work desk, that's me! Wish I had pics of it but wasn't popular or sexy enough to warrant people taking pictures of me. LOL. I had markers so people can actually flip through me to write stuff in there. I kept that costume for three years until I finally moved out to my new apartment.

Anyway, this was 2007's remake of my SUN outfit from my college fashion show collection. The orange is the SUN outfit (2005), obviously. I used the same pattern for the skirt but remade the top into something more corset-ish. Turned out really fun to wear ... but it was hard to tell people what I was suppose to be. Can't I just be cool looking, damnit? My friend told me I should be a "French Courtesan" --- trying to categorize me. lol. I only wore it once unfortunately. It's now in Japan's dumpsters somewhere. Took me about a whole day to make it and I reused old curtain fabrics. At the party, I had to carry my train around. Booo!

In 2008, I went as a random anime girl with silver hair. I upped it with cat makeup. :P I wish I would have gone as Harley Quinn cuz my boyfriend at the time was the Joker. That would have been super hot. I was already in the color scheme. I had to alter the costume cuz it was too boring. I took in the seams on the shirt to fit better on me and I gave the skirt some lifts so you can actually see the cute red underskirt on it. Plus made it shorter so looked like it fitted me better. I didn't make this costume btw... bought it and then altered it cuz  I never go "as is"... haha. 

I just wanted to pop in and say that I want to be a mermaid!!! 

Hahaha.... I'm still job searching and have finished a couple of resumes and cover letters. Having a few friends and family help me look over it so I don't look stupid on paper. But anyway... I found a job posting on craigslist for children's entertainment as a fairy/mermaid/pirate/etc. It's kinda silly but for some odd reason, I'm super intrigued and actually am seriously considering applying... it just looks hella fun, and definitely something different. Hehe. 

Okay --- I don't know why I felt inclined to share that. Probably because I feel super guilty for not updating for so long. But on a serious and happy note, Ebi finally was able to donate the rest of the money from the fashion show (about 100,000yen) to Toyama Aiikuen and they have sent him a big thank you letter in return. We did good, guys! ^_^ .... nearly three months later. Haha... Still!

I am still enjoying my life in the states. I haven't really felt any reverse culture shock or missed Japan too much right now. Honestly I don't know if I'll ever feel a deep sadness for leaving that place behind. I tend to look forward to the present and the future. Japan will always be there. :) So. Yes. life in the bay area is kinda slow job-wise. There are actually quite a few options for me, it's just a bit hard to motivate myself on sewing projects when I don't have an 'actual' sewing lab to work from. But I'm determined to make do with what I got. I did it in Japan and I can certainly do it here. Social wise I'm doing pretty well... my initial fear of not having an already prepped social network when I moved here, pfftshaw. I never needed to fear. 

Halloween is coming around the corner too -- prime time for me to pick up tons of freelance work. Woot. I'll see how my "sewing lab" *coughcarpetedbedroom* comes along... Okay. I'm going to clean up my room and dream about fairies now. 

So I sorta dropped off the face of the Earth the past month or so... but I'm back now! There were so many times that I have actually started blogging, and then midway through, got busy with life, drama, moving, and family. Finally sat my butt down to look through Craigslist to find a few sewing machines and possible temporary/part time job to keep me out of the house and meeting new people. 

So, the first thing I wanted to update is that we FINALLY donated money to the Japanese Red Cross Society in July. Here is a receipt of the bank transfer to the JRCS. The whole 310,053yen

It took me and Everson a long long time full of meetings, numbers, paperworks, and more meeting with the TIC committee to get everything we need for the subsidy -- and yes, in the end, we got the full 100,000yen subsidy, which is in the process of being donated to Toyama Aiikuen. And hopefully Everson got a picture of the receipt or something from Aiikuen... woot! Unfortunately I wasn't here in Toyama long enough to go with him, and the one time we COULD have went, we hadn't gotten the subsidy yet. Woops. Ah well, I think everyone involved in the production did what we can. It was a good experience and again, thank you guys!! I wish that all of this -- I could have contacted the newspapers in Toyama to let them know that we have donated the money. I'm sure a lot of ppl who came would have liked to know. ^_^

So, currently I am sitting in my bro's dinning room table in Fremont, California, typing this all out. I'm here temporary, but I honestly don't know how long temporary is. I've spent about two weeks or so already hanging out with the family and so I'm kinda ready to look into doing things... whether it is joining a gym, some sort of club or circle, and looking for a temporary job -- again, I'm kinda just going with the flow, see where this next chapter of my life will take me. Today -- I got 5 of my 7 boxes. I am surprised how fast they arrived. So I got about half of my sewing supplies already, and my box of shoes! SHOOOEEES god I'm going to miss buying cute shoes in Japan. Buahaha...

Tomorrow, I am going to take my dad to the hospital -- he's had a stroke last week so he's finally taking better care of himself, after all the years we've been trying to tell him to. I guess sometimes it just takes something really big and serious for people to get in reality and realize what they do and how it can affect themselves and others. I'm just happy that he's not too bad off from the stroke and hopefully it is not too late to make changes for him. 

Change is good. 

Oh yeah, I updated: the gallery with some pictures from A Runway Epic, the commissions page for jackets and corsets. I also added a new "Full outfits" gallery page. 

I finally added a feedback page, it's under the "shops" tab. So if you guys ever bought or commissioned anything from me, please leave a feedback. Help a sista out, yo!