My Perfect Lolita Themed Halloween Party

I'm finally getting around to participating in a Lolita Blog Carnival again! This week's theme is just too perfect not to: My Perfect Lolita Themed Halloween Party. You heard that right, not just any Halloween party, but a Lolita one!

 Some classic Halloween costume themes with a Lolita masquerade take.

I think that my ideal Lolita themed Halloween party would be a masquerade, for starters. I love the idea of a Halloween party where everyone goes all out with their outfits and wears fancy masks! Honestly, I think the idea of elaborate masks is more appealing to me than dressing up in an actual costume. I can imagine getting all decked out in an over the top themed outfit with a mask to match! I find that option much more decadent than costumes alone, which is totally befitting of a Lolita themed Halloween party.

Visit my Etsy treasury of masks here!

Etsy has tons of shops selling a variety of different types of masks! From shaped leather, to lace, to metal, to more traditional masks. If you're even a little bit crafty, mask making isn't terribly hard to do yourself, especially if you're just picking up a blank mask at a craft store and decorating it yourself.

As for decorations, personally, I like my Halloweens to be very traditional: spooky decorations, black and purple and orange, cobwebs, tattered table clothes, dim lights, and dry ice. That sort of thing. Whenever I see these super posh black and white Halloween parties that, besides the liberal use of black, the only thing Halloween about them is a centerpiece of chalkboard painted pumpkins with the word "Boo" expertly written on them nestled amongst some gold twigs I can't help but feel a bit sad. Halloween is too great of a holiday to try to "posh it up", and the trend of posh Halloween parties always feels a bit sterile and bland to me. Halloween is an excuse to go all out and pretend to be a Gothic heroine trapped in a spooky castle and be a little bit nostalgic and kitch in the process, we can save our chalkboard paint and pennant garlands for any other day of the year.

Some of my favorite inspirational Halloween party pictures! I keep a whole Pinterst album of them.
1 Love Manor. 2 Martha Stewart. 3 Small Words. 4 Lil Luna. 5 Creative Outlet. 6 Martha Stewart. 7 House of Dewberry. 8 Celebrating Style. 9 Family Chic.

So what sort of traditional Halloween party decorations would I include in my perfect Lolita themed Halloween party? I would definitely aim for something very Victorian inspired and elegant, since this is just a dream we're having here, I would do up the space like a Gothic Victorian parlor, as if a group of vampires got together sometime in the 1880's and had a party that never stopped, and no one had the time to update the decor or dust the cobwebs out of the corners. Think the Addams Family house, but with touches of deep blood red velvet and brocade. Food wise, there would be lots of sweets, from the traditional caramel apples, to an array of spookily designed cakes and finger food.

I love the idea of traditional Halloween games, but let's face it, no one in fancy dress and a mask is going to want to bob for apples, so to harken to a lot of these old games, many of which involve fortune telling or lucky/unlucky aspects, I would have a fortune teller at the party. Just a gloomy little candle lit corner where guests could have their palms or cards read.

To further this fortune-telling theme, I would love to have the event of the evening be an old fashioned Victorian seance, complete with an ectoplasm spewing medium, a spirit cabinet, and a levitating table. Very theatrical, and very spooky (for those who aren't aware of just how the parlor tricks that made seances so popular work!). Something like this would be like a much more exciting, and thematically appropriate, version of a haunted house. Plus wandering around in the dark in a fancy dress and mask isn't any fun, it's much better to be scared while perched on an elegant chair.

Want to see some more dream Halloween parties? Check out these other blogs that participated in this week's Lolita Blog Carnival topic!

Lace a la Mode
Elegant Poupee
Her Lumpiness
The Cute Lifestyle
Northern Star

Suns in Our Hands

My First Time Wearing Circle Lenses, Courtesy of Simply-Subtle

I was recently contacted by the circle lens shop Simply-Subtle asking if I would like to review a pair of the circle lens they stock. Circle lenses are something that are in many Lolita's must-wear makeup boxes, but I personally haven't worn contacts in about 9 years, and only very briefly at that! I explained my lack of practice with contact lenses and we decided that I'd try them anyways, as sort of an adventure in circle lenses.

The lenses Simply-Subtle offers are Geo lenses, US FDA approved and each individual lens container includes a scratch-off section for you to reveal an authentication code that you can look up on Geo Medical's website to make sure everything is legit. This is perfect for anyone who's wary about sticking things in their eyes!

A few short days after agreeing to review their lenses, my package arrived safe and sound! As a contact lens noob, the only thing I needed to do was to pick up a bottle of contact solution and soak the contacts for at least 24 hours. There was an instruction pamphlet included with the package, in case you're unsure of exactly how to go about caring for your lenses.

The package was extra cute, and came with a contact lens case.

As a new circle lens wearer I was a bit lost on what sort of color and size to choose, so I told Danielle my eye color and what I was looking for (which basically amounted to I didn't really want anything too big, for fear of looking like an alien), and she chose Xtra Bella Series in violet, which are 15mm. I have relatively light green eyes, so I was curious how well the violet would blend with them, as I've seen some circle lenses that have a very obvious line where the color stops, making it very obvious if the lenses are slightly off center. However, the Xtra Bella lenses in violet were absolutely perfect! They blended perfectly with my natural eye color, even though my eyes are a significantly different color (green is actually the opposite color of purple, on the color wheel derp, I forgot what colors were, the opposite of green is red), creating not only a very natural blend, but also an incredibly striking effect.

Without lenses, and with crooked bangs. Oops.

With Geo's 15mm Xtra Bella Series in violet.

I know some people are total pros at wearing contact lenses, but I am... not one of those people. As gorgeous as these lenses are, and very easy to wear, once they got in my eyes, I personally had one heck of a time trying to get them in my eyes.  

In my circle lens adventures my first step was working up the nerve to get them in. It's not as if I am squicked out by touching my eyeball, because I'm really not, but the concept of putting something in my eye and keeping it there for an extended period of time was sort of freaking me out. I eventually came to my facebook to ask some friends, who are all much more experienced with circle lenses, for some help. I got a ton of help from Amber, a NYC Lolita and Gal, and Laelette, who runs the Lolita Fashion Mentoring Facebook group. It was largely emotional support that amounted to a lot of "Suck it up and just stick it in your eyeballs! You're going to be so kawaii when you're done!". I also fond the following video to be super helpful, it's specifically for those with long nails (which I don't exactly have) but it's great because this girl makes it look so easy:

Generally though, I found the best advice to be to roll your eye up and aim for applying the contact for the white of your eyes, rather than on the iris. A few blinks will slide it into place like magic, and you don't really experience much reflex blinking that way. I found getting them out to be much easier than putting them in, even though many people experience just the opposite, all I had to do was slide them to my lower eyelid where the seal between my eyeball and contact was easily broken.

I know a lot of people who can pop in lenses for the first time and be totally okay with them, but that person is not me (and it is apparently not most people!). Personally, as someone wearing circle lenses for the first time ever, I had to take a few "test drives" with them before I could wear them for any length of time, so my eyes could simply get used to them and stop trying to blink them out every couple of seconds. The very first time I put them in, after a struggle of about a half hour, I got one in and then had to take it out after a couple minutes. So if your very first time with circle lenses isn't going so well, I would simply suggest taking them out and trying again after your eyes have had a bit of a rest. If you're buying yourself a pair to go with a coordinate or a special event, give yourself a few weeks to get used to them! You might not find that you can just pop them in right before you need to be wearing them. I actually thought this was a me problem until I googled around a bit and found that it's normal for people to a) take forever to put contacts in the first time and b) are not always able to wear them for very long at first. I guess circle lenses are now such a common thing in Lolita that I just assumed they would be as easy to wear as a petticoat!

For 10% off your order with Simply-Subtle, use the code FYL at checkout!

As I mentioned, my lenses came courtesy of Simply-Subtle, and I couldn't be happier with them! They came incredibly fast, Danielle was incredibly helpful for a newbie like myself (as well as incredibly patient!), and they have a wide range of different styles and colors of authentic Geo circle lens in stock.

I'm actually really glad I had this chance to test drive a pair of circle lens. It's something I'd considered, because I really like the dolly look they give a lot of people, and they really do make your eyes pop, but I had no idea what to personally expect. I definitely am going to keep trying these on until I am a total pro at them! But until then, I would absolutely love to hear any advice from veteran circle lens wearers, as well as from people who are very new to wearing them!