JC-PUNK (ebay store) wig review

I’m finally getting around to writing a wig review! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Finding wig reviews for ebay sellers is quite challenging, and more often than not the reviews lack pictures or solid descriptions. So hopefully I’ll be able to remedy that just a bit, one review at a time.

For today I’ll be reviewing a wig I purchased from  jcpunk, you can check out their store here: http://stores.ebay.com/JC-PUNK

I had searched around for a wig in this pale milky gold color for several weeks and nothing seemed to suit my needs. This wig looked more or less, perfect. After searching around I found mixed reviews, but for the most part people seemed to like their wigs. So I bit my lip and ordered it despite the cheap price and obviously stolen photos.

Heres what the listing looked like

And here are the stock photos JC-PUNK provided on the auction, they are very obviously stolen from taobao (another thing that made me quite uneasy.)

Shipping: The wig was ordered on the tenth of February and arrived today, the twenty-third, so it took a total of 13 days to arrive. Not bad! They provided me with a tracking number, which is usually a plus, but this tracking number was really glitchy and never updated. Up until the 21^st it claimed my package was still in China awaiting acceptance.

The packaging was really nice! Poorly packaged wigs are a huge peeve of mine, so I’m very pleased with this one

The package consisted of 2 hair nets, one for the clip ons, and one for the main wig. I wish they had used three hair nets and separated the pigtails, since they were slightly tangled together. The package also included a “thank you for ordering” card, and a wig cap. I really like it when wig caps are included; I think it’s a nice touch.

The base wig is okay at best. It will work for a base wig, but I would never wear it on it’s own, as it is not thick at all and very flat when put on your head, which makes it very unflattering. I tend to like my wigs full, and thicker near the base to give volume.

The worst part are the bangs which are very thin and awkward to work with or attempt to part.

The clip ons, however, are really nice! Very thick and easy to detangle! But my favorite part has to be the clips themselves, which are really strong and hold quite well. Oddly enough the clips seem to be made of a different type of (nicer) less shiny and courser fiber.

“]

I must say that these photos don’t really capture the true color of the wig, the actual color is very close to the advertised photos!

Now, for photos with the flash on. I used a direct box flash, no diffusers or speedlights. And as you can see, the result isn’t very attractive. It’s a bit better then I expected, but still not very good. Luckily, it would look far better in a photoshoot environment with softboxes and such…..just hall photos will make it look really cheap.

Example of clips

Wefting on the base wig.

Wefting compared to a Fantasy Sheep wig that cost me $15

I must also mention that this wig is quite small! I have a 21″ head and it’s *almost* too tight for me. So if you have an average sized american head there is a good chance this won’t fit you.

Picture of me wearing it, please note this is AFTER cutting the wig.

All and all, it’s not a great wig. But it’s decent, usable, and in the color I wanted, but I don’t think I wouldn’t buy from JC-PUNK again unless it was a last resort.

Price: ♚♚♚♚♔

Accuracy to listing: ♚♚♚♚♚

Overall quality: ♚♚♚♔♔

Shipping: ♚♚♚♚♔

 

The magical adventures of becoming a red head.

Why hello there~

I’m sorry for being so inactive recently, I just haven’t had much to say. But tonight I’m DOUBLE posting, so hopefully that will make up for it just a little bit. Though this first post is on a bit of a silly topic, I’m excited to post about it nonetheless.

For months now I’ve wanted to dye my hair. I think ever since I got into wigs the idea has appealed to me. It’s just so fun in neat, I mean colored hair, how cool! But I’m a wimp, so the thought was never a serious one…at least not until recently.  I decided a few weeks ago that I didn’t have much to lose, so I picked up a 28 shampoo wash out color. That way, if I didn’t like it I would only have to deal with it for a month.

For starters, here is my “natural” color, it’s a weird mix of brown, gray, and blonde tones. It’s quite odd and difficult to classify as a single color.

Heres the box of dye I chose, a nice darkish reddish brown

And the nerve wracking adventure of actually dying it. I was so scared through this, my mind kept saying “Oh god what if I hate it”

Ten minutes later I washed it out and was left with an awkward color. The color wasn’t BAD it just didn’t dye evenly, so parts of my hair were blondish, others were brown, and then the top was a coppery color. Heres a picture of how it looked the day after, very uneven and bad looking.

I blurred my face out since my expression was very sad and depressing looking.

I figured the problem was that I hadn’t left it on long enough, which made me want to re-dye it. Dyeing your hair twice in one week is a big no-no but I was really unhappy with the color, so I decided it was worth the risk of drying out my hair.

This time I left the dye on for 25 minutes instead of the suggested 10.

It's a good look for me, right?

And i’m really pleased with the results! It’s a dark reddish brown, pretty much exactly what I wanted. And after 2 deep conditions my hair is back to it’s original quality with zero  damage despite re-dyeing it so quickly.

Here are some photos :3

 

 

The making of a Maijima Academy uniform – “The world god only knows” – part 1

I hope you are all prepared for a super long progress post relating to my most recent attempt at sewing, because that is exactly what i’m going to share right now! 

I started watching ‘The world God Only Knows’ several months ago, but it was only recently that I picked it up again. After breezing through the first season, several novels, and the first few episodes of season two I was dazzled by how incredible the series was. It doesn’t have an amazingly original plot line, or really great characters…but something about it came together and made me really enjoy it.

It didn’t take me too long to become dead set on attempting to make one of the girls Majima Academy uniforms, which are infamous for the bright red jackets and sharp pleated skirts.

Here are a few reference examples:

Step one was a mock up, I knew the entire design would be complicated since I have never attempted something so structured. Surprisingly, the mock up was really easy and came out quite well. The shape and sleeves were almost spot on. The fit was pretty decent, too.

Next up was making a mock up of the skirt, which ended up being a HUGE mess. But luckily it was pretty easy to tell where I had gone wrong. I took some of the pins out right after sewing the area they tacked down, that was a huge mistake. It ended up pulling out the pleats next to it and looking ugly.

I also made the pleats too big 2 1/2″ seemed about right to me, but it ended up looking odd.

For the ACTUAL skirt I chose 1 3/4″ wide pleats which looked much better!

By now I felt prepared enough (or as prepared as I’d ever feel) to use my actual fabric- which was purchased on a very recent trip into NYC. The red was actually really difficult to find, it seems the only fabric in that color is very heavy -really expensive- wool. The only material that was even half decent is the one pictured- and i’m still not fully happy with it.

Both materials are stretchy, the jackets/sweaters/whateveryoucallthem don’t look like they are made of uniform cloth, at least not to me. They look soft and comfortable, yet very fitted. So I chose a 2 way stretch knit. So soft, mm! I’m not sure what the skirt is made of, its a bit of a mystery fabric. It has a subtle sheen and nice stretch.

The materials in question.

For the skirt, I started out by cutting my material into a long strips which I later sewed together. Each pleat takes up 3x the amount of material as the desired width, so a 3″ pleat takes a 9″ of material. Since I have a 28″ waist I knew I needed somewhere around 90″ of fabric, but I cut 100″ for safety.

I cut the strips 15″ wide and ironed a 1/2 hem that I secured with hem tape. Then I measured my pleats out /very carefully/ attempting to get them all equal. Each pleat should be 1 3/4″ wide. I tried very hard to get them all equal, though i’m pretty sure I failed.

The strip all pleated~

How it looked when pinned on.

The next step was sewing across all the pleats, then adding a waist band.

And, finally, adding a zipper, which proved quite challenging! I’m lucky that the jacket will cover the zipper completely, otherwise I would be tempted to redo it. (it’s pretty ugly…) I still need to add a snap on the waist band, but it’s pretty much done.

How the skirt looks on.

Then it came time to piece together my jacket.

Front pieces.

Sleeve.

And after basic assembly – please excuse how the skirt looks here, it was quite literally, thrown onto the dress form. As you can see, the jacket came out to big (got a little over enthusiastic whith my seem allowances                        there…). Though this was later fixed with a dart up the back.

How it looks on – pinned to keep it fitted.

Then, today I ironed all my seems, added interfacing to the inner portion, took around 4″ of material to make it fit properly, and finished a few seems. Still a very long way to go, but it’s getting there!

 

30 days of photography : Day 3 : Something you love

Today I was tasked with taking a picture of something I loved. So obviously, I chose my darling dog Guinevere.

I decided it would be best to photograph her in her “natural” position. (also known as sleeping.) Which proved the challenge of waking her up to the point where she would look at the camera. Needless to say, she wasn’t too happy. But she was willing to give me a sarcastic glare before going back to bed.

I’ll be the first to admit that none of these pictures are that great, but hopefully i’ll get make up points for cuteness!

Another photoshoot finished, all tucked in and ready for bed.

 

30 days of photography : Day 2 : Breakfast

Pretty shitty/lame photo for this one. I spent 2 hours attempting to get photos of stream coming out of a coffee mug, but I failed horribly, so you get this instead!

This is quite accurate to what I eat in the morning, I’m never hungry within 2 hours of awaking, but I have to take pills on a “full” stomach so I do need to eat a little something. And this is generally it, some sort of coffee drink for a kick start, with ginger snaps/toast/rice crisps/whatever sounds delicious on the side.

 

30 days of photography : Day 1 : A picture of yourself

So over the next month or two i’ll be doing this 30 day photography assignment. I’ve been given a list of things to photograph over these months and plan to post three a week. I’m not exactly looking forward to this but I don’t really have a choice, so I shall try to make the best of it!

Day 1: You. A picture of yourself or something that greatly represents you.

Being oh so creative I decided to take a photo of myself…

One of my first attempts! My big issue was things not focusing right. As you can see here the background is better focused then I am, which makes it pretty crappy from a photographers viewpoint.

And I have a new found respect for people who take many self portraits. They would appear to be quite easy, but they really, really aren’t. Especially when your outside and the lighting is nearly impossible to get right. I think this really shows in these shots- it’s hard to get the desired result without the camera physically in your hands. 

Though I do think this would have been easier with a clicker that instantly starts the timer, I do not have one of those so I manually set it to a 5 second delay, then run off and try to pose nicely in that small amount of time. It’s more stressful then one might think! 

In the hour I was outside I took 100someodd pictures of myself, the majority were to blurry, had lighting troubles, or were overall unflattering. Poses are really not my specialty, which became clear when trying this out. Luckily this one came out okay…or at the very least, okay enough to post here. 

 

Amulet Heart ~ Shugo Chara ~ Fan art

 

CC – Code Geass – Christmas Fan Art

Another DeviantART bonus post, this time around CC / C2 from the glorious anime that is “Code Geass”

 

“A very Christmasy Canada” Axis Powers Hetalia fan art and tutorial

A drawing of Canada from the anime Hetalia. This is a bonus post for DeviantArt, so it’s mostly WIP photos.

All done!

 

The making of Anya Alstreims Pink Dress – Christmas Cosplay

It has been far to long since I last did a progress report. I would have done one sooner..but I’ve been pretty lazy as of recently, so nothing exciting has been going on. The convention season is very much over, my next con is in late April, so it’s almost depressing working hard on something that has no purpose until that much later. 

But last Saturday my mom and I were in Joann’s for the Black Friday sale that extended into the weekend, I had planned to get white material for sleeves, and a few buttons. That was it. But then I saw the gorgeous Christmas materials that were on sale, (all of them 60% off) I couldn’t resist,  how could ANYONE resist that? I left the store with my white material…3 yards of red velvety material, 1/2 a yard of green material, and cardigan pattern. 

I had a project in mind for all of this, a version of Anya Alstreim I have fawned over for ages. I really like this design, it’s obviously lolita inspired, and very cute. Something about it always struck me as Christmasy. Upon seeing the Christmas fabric collection I was inspired to give this costume a try. I figure I can get some cute X-mas themed photos, maybe play around with my camera and tri pod to get some neat shots. 

But before anything else happens, I must make this beauty…or try to!

 

 

I had a half dozen yards of pink material laying around from another planned project that didn’t happen. This proved pretty convenient, so I got right to pattern drafting/cutting. I actually used the pattern I made for my Lichtenstein dress as a base. Of course I altered a lot of aspects, but it ended up being quite similar. Looking back I could have saved myself an awful lot of trouble if I just bought a pattern.

I’m really proud of how this worked out, despite the issues I learned SO MUCH, and tried SO MANY new things it was a really wonderful crash course in sewing a “different” type of thing. Some of the things I did for the first time on this include sewing in a zipper and making “seamless” pockets. 

Sadly, I didn’t take any WIP’s throughout this process, I was to ‘in the moment’ to even think of picking up my camera. Next I got to work on the bolero, I had a cardigan pattern to help me out, but the mock up was hideous, I have no clue who designs these patterns they are all so unfitted and ugly. I ended up altering it heavily, pinning away and marking lines. If you couldn’t tell, the left side of the garment is the original, the right is the edited version. 

A few minutes after completing this part, my sewing machine decided to break. I’m not sure what happened, but it ended up being beyond repairable with my own skills. We sent it to a shop where they said it would take 3 weeks to fix. I was beyond upset..this is a project I was enjoying and having fun with, working to get it done before Christmas, and then to hear I wouldn’t even have my machine back before Christmas. How horribly discouraging! 

Luckily, my mom is being nice enough to let me use her backup machine while mines in the shop. So tonight I resumed progress! I cut apart the bolero mock up and created a more stream lined pattern from it. Here is how it looked on the final fabric without sleeves, all pinned together.

If actually looked far better then I had expected, I thought the fit would be quite poor, boleros aren’t meant to be fitted, but I wanted mine to be a bit snuggly and have some real shape to it.

Once I got the shape right I went ahead and pinned the line to cut on, Anya has a ruffle/trim piece going through the middle of each side, to achieve this effect I cut each side in half, attached the ruffle and made a new seam embedding the ruffle into the seam. 

Heres the halfway picture:

 

Around this time I pulled the pink dress out and really realized how unhappy I was with it. The pockets and ruffles were really wrong. I ended up ripping a lot out, so now it looks pretty bad. I WILL fix it up, but for right now the bolero is my priority. 

Skipping ahead a few steps, the bolero sewn together. Everything needs to be ironed, and I really must tack those ruffles down. For right now the side seams and sleeves are just pinned on, I need to take them in a fair bit before actually sewing them. 

The final project I managed to get working on before “bed time” was the bow, I played around with the size A LOT but this is the one I like best, it’s oversized but not ridiculously so. I think it’s pretty cute, but I might be a bit biased since I love bows. Seriously, everything needs more bows. They are just awesome. It still needs to fixing up, and tails, but it’s okay for right now.

So that’s that! Still tons left to fix up, but i’m looking forward to working on it more. It’s been a really fun project, so far.