April Coords Roundup

You know the drill, it’s the last blog post day of the month, so I do a rundown of all the lolita coords I wore.

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Coord 1: Easter All Frills Baking

| Lady Sloth Winter Spices skirt | Axes Femme top | Innocent World Lauretta OTKs | Hush Puppies boots | Haruhi Clover headbow | Once Upon a Cookie Treat Jelly Cookie necklace | Twinkle Kitty Boutique rings | Claire’s earrings |

Keeping things sweet for baking.

And now all I can think of is jammy dodgers...

The day consisted of considerably more than just filming the latest All Frills Baking, but that was the main excuse for why I dressed up the day before Easter Sunday itself, with a to-do list as long as my arm. And while the irony of wearing a print called Winter Spices in spring for a spring holiday is not entirely lost on me, since it’s practically a baking print, how could I not?

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Coord 2: Easter Itself

| BtSSB Polonaise Brillante ~ Ideas of a Maiden ~ Apron JSK | Babysong Lolita blouse | Angelic Pretty Salon de The Rose OTKs | offbrand shoes | Kaneko headdress | Mademoiselle Boutique necklace | Dentelles brooch | offbrand brooch | handmade bracelets |

You know what's the worst? I love how these curls came out, but a month later I can't remember how I did them!

Going for a broad nature theme with my brooches.

And then, of course, we come to Easter itself. A version of this coord from the corresponding 1 Dress 4 Looks post seemed perfectly appropriate, I merely updated it a bit in fanciness to match the occasion. Because heck, I paid good money for this amazing headdress and will be damned if I don’t wear it whenever I can simply because it makes me feel happy and pretty. Whilst my plans for the day were similar to last year, i.e. relax, eat good food and spend as much time offline as possible, last year I was significantly better at that last part. Though I didn’t slip into mindless social media scrolling, which is the most important thing I aimed to avoid with that goal.

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Coord 3: Noir

| Haenuli Just One Bite JSK | Infanta blouse | Baroque Repose of Queen tights | offbrand shoes, hair clips, earrings, bracelet and ring | Puvithel Crystal Heart necklace | Voodoodolly ring |

Really proud of the hair improvisation there.

This colourway of the Crystal Heart necklace is simply magical, I am so happy that I got it!

Having protected the curls from Easter Sunday, it would’ve been criminal not to take advantage. I do enjoy wearing this print in a glam way, it just feels right. The whole coord was also put together in a way to complement this necklace. It made me realise what a fool I was for not ordering at least the earrings to match, because this really isn’t a common colour combination, but that’s a mistake I’ll have to live with. And since I ended up dressing up quite so much, it was imperative to take advantage of the look and the time off, so I filmed a video. Though given my late start to the day, by the time I’d managed to get ready, take some photos and then record the video, it was late enough for me to need to start making dinner, so whilst the outfit still counts as worn, it wasn’t on for particularly long.

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Coord 4 & 5: Twinning with @bumble_tree

| Innocent World Revival Sweet Teddybear JSK | Innocent World bolero | Cutie Creator hat | handmade necklace (not by me) | offbrand socks, shoes and bracelets |

The rare toothy smile selfie that came out nice to my taste.

Bringing sweets with me and on me to that picnic.

| Innocent World Revival Sweet Teddybear JSK | BtSSB blouse | offbrand tights and shoes | Cutie Creator hat | Twinkle Kitty Boutique ring |

You know, I really tried to do the grumpy oldschool face for this, but my resting face just doesn't have enough attitude. So sticking to what I know works.

As much as oldschool is not my thing, I can't help but appreciate this blouse.

Ok, these technically weren’t worn beyond taking the photos, but they’re too cute to not include them. Especially since in the past I shared all my other twinning coordinates too. When @bumble_tree got this dress, we immediately got to planning some twinning outfits and having ended up with two ideas, decided to do both. This is the most elaborate photo editing I’ve ever done, which probably compensates for how similar the outfits are. But what matters is that we had loads of fun doing this!

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Coord 6: Quick Casual

| Violet Fane Charming Town skirt | AatP Poison de l’amour OTKs | Laura Ashley shoes | Tea and Paintwater brooch | handmade pink bracelets | everything else is offbrand |

I genuinely am comfortable being fringeless, but it's nice to have the option for when I feel like it.

It's wild how much I love this tiny jam jar brooch.

I’ve somehow gotten to almost the middle of the month without wearing frills much and it’s actually been eating me up. So I braved creative tiredness and quite literally threw this together the night before to wear for working from home. Comfy? Yes. Cute? Certainly. Happy with the outcome? 100%. It’s amazing how much clothes affect our mood and until I find the will and energy to overhaul my style outside of lolita, these moments of “it’s been too long since I wore frills last and it’s Not Good For Me” will be quite a regular thing. Though hopefully the nice, warm weather will also return soon, that would help with picking what to wear a bit more.

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Coord 7: Trattoria di Zoom

| Angelic Pretty Crystal Dream Carnival Tiered JSK | MuFish tights | Twinkle Kitty Boutique ring | everything else is offbrand |

Feeling like a star, literally and figuratively.

As is this pegasus, very clearly snubbing the rest of the world out.

Or Diana Rigg in Bond, but make it lolita. The outfit is incredibly simple, basic even, but the hair and makeup elevate it to something pretty fun. This is my first ever attempt at a 60s bubble hairstyle and considering all the corners I cut, this isn’t a bad attempt. If I ever manage to get a proper curling iron, it would probably become a lot easier. And I’d like to make it happen because it’s a really cute hairstyle, albeit pretty time intensive with all the teasing. But practice makes perfect and it was worth the effort because I had a dinner night that evening with @lena.golita, which laughingly got called Trattoria di Zoom. Just because you can’t go out to eat in a restaurant doesn’t mean that you can’t make dinner fancy.

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Coord 8: Pink Cossack

| Dangerous Nude Gobelin bloomers | Innocent World Wendy OTKs | Laura Ashley shoes | vintage hat and blouse | Amadea Kingdom The Adventurer D20 and D4 brooches |

Boystyle Paulina is still figuring out how to selfie.

I have a review of these coming up soon, so stay tuned.

I’ve been thinking of different ways that I could wear these bloomers in. For the first time in a while I actually played around the night before with various bits until I landed on this combination. I’ve not done that for a working from home outfit in… I can’t even remember how long. The pinks worked really well with these bloomers, I’m very pleased with that. The hat was mostly because I felt like without it the outfit was just missing something and while a wig or different hair styling probably would’ve solved that, my levels of willingness to put the effort in were low. And since the hat made me think of the whole outfit as quite Cossack - all the better! There’s hardly ever a bad time to look like a Cossack and I have been on a somewhat Slavic binge (which I plan to channel into another outfit at some point in the future).

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Coord 9: Will It Casual Lolita?

| Angelic Pretty Fantasy Theater Gilet JSK | Dream V cardigan | Angelic Pretty Odekake Ribbon OTKs | Hush Puppies boots | Cutie Creator headbow | offbrand necklaces | Axes Femme bow brooch | Wonderbox Designs rosette | Jane Marple ring |

Did I really just use this pearl collar necklace the second time this year? Well, I guess I did.

Speaking of things that never got worn, this particular necklace is one of them!

I know that I can wear this JSK in pretty OTT ways with almost every colour imaginable, but the big question is: will it casual lolita? And I think the answer is yes. Although I realise that this isn’t really casual, just pretty toned down with the muted colour palette. I stand by my verdict and by this outfit.

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Coord 10: Busy Saturday

| AatP Sheherazade JSK I | L’Esprit de la Noblesse Le Nuage blouse | AatP Poison de l’amour OTKs | offbrand shoes, rose clips and earrings | Dreamy Bows headband | Enchantlic Enchantilly necklace |

Another curl salvage hairstyle, this is becoming a habit.

My years of reading Roli's blog have culminated in my stealing her hair clips on shoes trick.

The actual tenth coord of the month was the next AYWi30C one, so you’ll see that one on Tuesday. This was from the day after that, when I ended up going from one Zoom thing to another (though admittedly one of them I was in my pyjamas for). Since the last one was a lolita meetup on the Discord server I joined this month (check me out for figuring out Discord enough to do that!), where the theme was spring, and the other one was a writing webinar workshop, wearing Sheherazade was my ‘themed for writing’ element, while wearing it with pinks and flowers was my ‘themed for spring’ one. I do love how this particular shade of pink works with this dress, pink and red look great together and these shades particularly so. I imagine that I might reach for this blouse and JSK combination in the future again, see how else I can jazz it up.

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Coord 11: Working Not From Home

| Innocent World Georges Rose JSK | everything else is offbrand |

Snapping photos super quickly after getting back home and taking advantage of the 'I just walked for half an hour' natural blush before it fades completely.

Florals get a bad rep sometimes, but to me they're super elegant and this one is an excellent proof of that.

During the last week of April I was due to work from the office rather than from home. It wasn’t particularly fun, in fact it was boring as hell and even physically painful as I managed to give myself muscle pain from my usual walk to and from work, as if I didn’t know how to walk. So to cheer myself up I wore something very casual to the office. Not much to say about the coord itself, my goal was to be as unassuming as possible, which Innocent World is perfect for. Though I do wish that the weather that day was a touch nicer. One of the buildings on the campus I work at has a so called living wall now, which is basically a vertical garden, and it would’ve made for a gorgeous photo backdrop. But it was too windy to bother.

Like, how cool would outfit pictures look against this? I will have to grow a bit bolder so that I can stop giving a toss about what people will think and just bring my tripod and take photos against this when full-time office working resumes.

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Considering that the vast majority of my creative energy in April went to Camp NaNo (btw, I did manage to finish writing the novel, yay!), this isn’t a bad run of outfits. Although I won’t lie, Bilbo Baggins’ quote about feeling like butter scraped over too much bread is very much appropriate here. I do feel very accomplished for having managed so much for myself, but I’m also feeling the price I paid to achieve it. Thankfully the UK is starting a long weekend today which is one day longer for me thanks to having to use up my holiday. And while I will likely learn nothing from what I just said and will still end up busying myself with creative pursuits, I also intend to rest plenty in between that - maybe limit myself to just one creative thing a day.