Featured in Glamour.com

I'm excited to say that my back bow party dress was featured in Glamour.com! Check out the article, Five Holiday Party Outfit Ideas Courtesy of Real Women.

Also, Jenny, who wrote the article started a fashion website called TweetMyStyle. Great thing about this website is that you can log in using your twitter account, and have a choice whether to post your outfit photo on your facebook account or twitter account at the same time! I think this is awesome because I forget my pass ward all the time.

P.S. Thank you so much for your input on new business card designs!

Need some input on my new business card design...

Hello!
It was raining all day today and I felt sad not being able to get out and feel the sunshine. I was even more sad because I suck at designing stuff on photoshop. I am in disparate need of new business cards, as my current ones are running out pretty soon.
I used a ready-made template before, but I wanted to personalize it a bit more this time. So I'm trying to come up with new design, but none of them seem good enough to print. What do you think?
The reason why I used purple floral and polkadot is that I wanted to be consistent with my website design that Naoko designed for me. Any input is appreciated!

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gift wrapping time

I am not at all an expert with wrapping gifts and presents, but I like to try to decorate gifts and etsy orders as pretty as possible. I know how exciting it is to receive gift in a mail in pretty wrapping papers and ribbons!

So here is what I do usually - I get pretty wrapping papers from store - I tend to go for pink all the time, not sure why. This one in the picture is double sided with two different tones of pink.
Then I cut the paper (this kind of paper is thick, and not easily ripped) in whatever the size I want, and fold it in half. Next I sew the sides together with a sewing machine to create a bag.

Voila! Send it with hand written message and my business card♪

I found some flickr users wrapping gifts really pretty. Here are some.

e&w wrapping idea. I like two different ribbons going around on top of hand drawn card. so pretty!

Gift wrapping idea from lilfishstudio

Some exciting news

I am so excited about this! My clothing will be at a Gallery in Shibuya this month. The event is called "Tokyo Made Market", and they will be showing clothing, accessories and art that are handmade by crafters/designers in Japan. My clothing will be there, on sale, from Dec 20th to 27th, 2009. If you live around Kanto area, please stop by..I'm planning to be there at least a couple of times during the week.

Here is a map to the gallery, mememachine gallery.

Honestly, I was not expecting to have such an opportunity coming in Japan. For some reasons, I was not at all expecting to be able to do consignment/wholesale deals over here in Japan like I did back in the States... So I'm happy when the person from Tokyo Made contacted me about this.

I'm thinking of creating a mini-collection for this gallery, and started sketching some ideas, which was unheard of before. I usually have something in mind, and start cutting out fabric and see where it leads me. But the bad thing about this method is when I want to replicate the same design, I have to do all the work over again, and I'm started thinking I really should make patterns for certain designs that I want to continue using in the future. This should save a lot of time.. When I'm cutting fabric, I'm excited to see what the result would look like and I tend to rush.

Anyhow, here are some ideas that I'm thinking about this mini collection:

• Non black in winter - sick of looking at dark colors in winter, no? I'm thinking maybe pale pink or light gray, or very light pastel green, paired with opaque black tights.
• Round collor, elaborate back detail, cropped sleeves, peterpan collor, A-line, doll like dress, covered buttons...
• Also, I want to make winter shorts. Shorts, but made of thicker fabric and wearable in winter, with suspenders!

I am terrible with sketching. I wish I could draw technical drawing nicely!

Pretty bow

From Left: Philip Lim Spring 2010 RTW from Style.com, Nightingale black dress from itsokmydear, & Sunshine's red dress from Nadinoo.

Influenced by above lovely sweater/dresses, here is my attempt to incorporate bows in my closet...

I did not make sweaters themselves. They were ugly old turtle neck sweaters I found second hand. I cut off the turtle neck, and used that fabric to create bows. I made boat neck cut for gray sweater and back V line for purple sweater and finished them with black bias strips.
I like these much better than turtle neck sweaters, I do not like turtle neck very much... it makes my neck itchy and face look so big and moon-like!

floral + black + red

Wearing Vivat Veritas dress, wet seal leggings, vintage belt and gem pumps from Japan.

I did not go crazy on Black Friday, but I did make one purchase at edor. I love her tiny jewelries, and in fact, I've made one purchase at edor before and totally loved it. So I got another necklace for a Christmas gift.

Here is little diy I did the other day. I had this top in navy blue with a lots of floral, and it's cute but I thought I could add some more to make it little more stylish. So I cropped the top short, and added skirt part with black jersey to make a dress. With the left over fabric from the top, I made some covered buttons, and added three of them in the front.

Happy thanksgiving!

Happy be-lated thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is my most favorite American holiday... I think. I love cooking big dinner, and get together with family and friends and share what each one is thankful for. I think I am thankful for having be able to transition to life back in Japan from the States so smoothly. I anticipated much worse. I thought I would dislike living here. I'm glad it's proven to be wrong! It's so nice to kind of stop and think about all the things that you are blessed with...
We did not have dinner on Thursday night, but we are having a party tomorrow! Mom and I went to Costco to get turkey, and it is de-frosting right now, to be ready to be cooked.. We decided to do it on Saturday so our friends can come (We don't have Thursday off, obviously, it's American holiday).

Anyway, I wanted to post another oatmeal project I created the other day. I made it simple and versatile. Since I had some fabric left over, I made a matching scarf as well. I uploaded this to my shop:)

xo!

Style inspiration: church & state

All images are from church & state.

"If church & state were a day of the week, it would be Sunday. if it were a baked good, it would be a homemade pie if it were a liquor, it would be bourbon and if church & state were a friend, it would be the best one" - quote from church & state

It looks so refreshing to see dresses in color other than black and gray in the winter. I had this thing in mind that I am not allowed to wear pastel color in gloomy weather, but after looking at their fall 2009 collection, I'm convinced that's wrong.

Party dress I

Although I have not invited to any holiday parties (yet, hopefully!), I already started planning for party dresses. Perhaps because it's all about Christmas over here already. Malls and stores put up Christmas decoration right after Halloween, since we do not have Thanksgiving in Japan. Also my little sister had asked me to design her a party dress for her to wear. So this dress I made was just part 1! More party dresses are coming to the shop:)

This dress is a modification of my Kirstin Dunst inspired dress. I made a change in the back, to make a big bow and open back. This came out more clubby than I was expecting... but might be good for new year's eve?

I had a really nice weekend in Nagoya. Met friends over there and their kids. We took a bus to Nagoya , but it was terrible, we got stuck in the traffic and took us almost 7 hours to get there! Thankfully, our friend drove us to Tokyo on Monday, and it took much less. I can't wait for Thanksgiving, we are having a party on Saturday instead of Thursday, which is not a holiday in Japan. I'm going to shopping at Costco this week to get turkey, cranberry sauce etc...

Off to Nagoya

I'm traveling to nagoya for the weekend. My husband is preaching at church in Nagoya, called All Nations Fellowship. I packed clothes and books in my favorite red suit case...

Bye!