Review: Princess Pinky Twilight Brown from PinkyParadise

GoldenEye!

 I have heard that Princess Pinky Twilight Brown is the circle lens for cosplay of a character with yellow eyes. Since I am intending to cosplay Chuunibyou's Rikka (who has a single yellow contact lens in her right eye), I figured I'd give a pair of these a shot. I bought them from PinkyParadise.

I bought these at the same time as my Venus Eye Aqua (here) in which I mentioned that I got a defective one which felt scratchy and painful (in the right eye no less!) But pinkyparadise were great about sending me a replacement, with a really quick turnaround too. <3 I'm glad to say the new lens was absolutely fine.

I've been Tango'ed! Nah, I was standing in natural light, in front of an orange towel.  Looks like the mother of all tans.

Indoor lighting. They look more yellow than gold like that.

   The colouring on these is great. Under natural light, they're a beautifully wild-looking gold colour, which added a nice touch of evil to my normal look without being those freaky, fluorescent yellow Hallowe'en types. They were great on my dark eyes, blending well with the pupil while being opaque where it counted.

Look how well they show up!

  I really wanted to love these, however! There was a downside. My eyes felt dry and uncomfortable after only an hour. I didn't use any eyedrops, true, but should I really have to resort to that after only an hour? This is only my second pair, so I'd like to hear more about it, but I wore the Venus Eye Aqua for three hours before any sort of dryness happened.

It is a shame that they are not very comfortable for long use, as the colour is nice! I think these might be good for a photoshoot, but too irritating for long wear.

Review: Venus Eye, Princess Pinky lenses from PinkyParadise

The alien-like baby blues I never had!

   I am a longtime daily contact lens wearer, but this was my first foray into circle lenses. These are lenses from Asia with a black 'limbal ring' round the edge, which is supposed to make your iris look bigger and thus make your eyes adorable and sparkly and anime-like. Or something.

And so the fashion bloggers and Korea fanatics weep as they
meet their overlord in the king of ridiculously huge irises,
Mr Burns.

They're very popular, and apparently addictive in the same way as makeup. But to be honest, this aspect didn't interest me much. My irises are fine without The Fly transformations. What I really wanted was to be able to colour my eyes for cosplay. My irises are deep, tar-black pools of hatred and despair. None of those pathetic 'fresh tint~', 'clear shade~' style English lenses would be able to make a dent on their utter darkness, but be CONSUMED into their murky depths. In other words, I needed something with a nice block of opaque colour.

I bought two prescription pairs from Malaysian vendor PinkyParadise. Title aside, I must give a warning for the Pink and Sparkly. Even a four-year-old in her 'fairy princess' stage might twist her mouth and say, 'That's a bit... much.' But they have a wonderful range of different colours at reasonable prices, many of which come in prescription.

It was very tempting to go nuts on the colours, but I held off and selected two pairs, blue and yellow, in my prescription of -2.75 on the left and -3.5 on the right. I got two cute little animal lens cases and two gifts, an eye mask and a Japanese pink... hair thing. It looks like Velcro and is very puzzling.

Venus Eye Aqua
'Venus Eye' sounds rather romantic and pretty, doesn't it? Anyway, here is a fairly dark and rubbish pic of my eyes with one on and one off.

Go go heterochromia!

See how dark my natural colour is? Yet it still shows up. Here's a better picture under daylight.

These were actually really comfortable. I didn't have any eye drops, so I only wore them for three hours, but I hardly felt them for that time, and I didn't experience any vision obstruction at all!

I then played with wigs and took some pics in indoor lighting. This is my chuu2wig for Rikka from Chuunibyou, and my orange wig for drunken oni Suika from Touhou.

Fear my completely average eye.

Watashi no Eyebrows ga Konna ni UNMATCHED Wake ga Nai!

The colour is always visible close up, and probably visible from the mid-distance in good light. Probably better under natural light though, as you can't see in much in the Chuunibyou picture. Yes, the orange wig one is lazy with black hair sticking out, I had a critical wig cap failure.

Overall, I liked these a lot. <3

Princess Pinky - Twilight Brown
I won't be reviewing these this time... the right one was scratchy and stung and moved around on my eyeball, not sitting correctly on it. Now, I'm pretty sure my eyes can handle contacts - they're the same base curve as my dailies and all. I also prepared it correctly, washing them with the proper solution and storing them in the right way. Also, when I tried the blues above, they worked fine. So I think the most likely cause is that the right eye's one was defective. A pity, since that's the one I need for Rikka!
I have contacted PinkyParadise, hopefully they can do something about it. :3

EDIT: PinkyParadise got back to me super quickly and are sending me a replacement for the defective lens! Very friendly and good service. Hopefully I can make a proper review for them later!

EDIT 2 - Revenge of the Edit: I made a review for the Princess Pinky Twilight Browns!

A health warning
Two days after my extremely brief try with the yellows and one day after the blues, my eyes seemed to react oddly to my normal daily contact lenses, going dry very easily, and things seemed a bit blurrier than usual. This was greatly worrying to me, as I hadn't even worn the lenses for long. I hope that this was unrelated and just bad timing, but if it's not, I will take a trip to the optician's.

Obligatory link to this blog post about possible permanent damage resulting from circle lenses. If you wear lenses, it is worth a read - these things can be pretty and interesting, but stay safe and use a good supplier!

Kitty hat, and a sewing machine!

Nyaa!

I got a kitty hat! It has little ears and is soft. OwO It's based on Asuka's hat from the third Evangelion Rebuild film, which won't be here for a looong time. But yes, it keeps my head warm and makes me look like a weirdo when running around London.

In other news, I have started using my sewing machine, a Brother CS6000i, which I imported from the US a month or so ago. I am merrily making an array of wonky lines of stitches on some waste cloth in bizarre thread colours. It's all computerised, so the machine also beeps angrily at me when I try and do something stupid! It's pretty good fun. My first project with it will be Suika Ibuki from Touhou, a drunken, flat-chested oni. I have my wig now, so I will get cracking on the horns fairly soon.

...

I swear to god I didn't mean for that pic to come out like some terrible attempt at being gangsta.

Review: Garnier B.B. Creams - a miracle?

Looks like the typical tall and skinny,
short and squat pair...

Well, not only have I pretty much missed the boat on this one, it's had the chance to do a trip of the world before I so much as got to the pier. But I have tried out BB cream!

BB cream stands for 'blemish balm', originating from Asia. There, it is touted as an idol's secret, a superb miracle of skincare, skin-smoothening, soothing and sun protecting all in one! Sssss. Well, that's Asia, and whether these claims are true or not, Western ones are said to be a rather different beast, with fewer features but more of a 'baby foundation', maybe. No-makeup makeup.

I've not tried foundation before as my skin is fairly well behaved. I usually have maybe one or two spots and they are more likely to be little pimples (or ex-pimples...) than 'I AM CYST, DESTROYER OF WORLDS' type pustules. But England has been going through a cold snap (thanks, Siberia) and my usually oily skin has gone combination, drying out in random areas. Not much I could do about flaky eyebrows short of massaging half a bottle of Head and Shoulders into it, but I figured maybe I could give BB cream a go to cover up dryness on my cheekbones.

In a giveaway, I got a free bottle of Garnier BB Miracle Skin Perfector cream in 'light' and 'age-defying'. Age defying isn't what I really go for, but if it's free... Still, can I sue Garnier if I don't look 12 afterwards?

The colour was good (though surprising - I am not 'light' by most standards) but I wasn't terribly happy with the look - it was shiny! So shiny. But I dusted some translucent powder over it (incidentally, half the bathroom too) and soon both me and the sink had a lovely matte complexion. That is, until the next day, when I broke out. :/ And that never happens!

But it seemed like a pity. I bought a bottle in 'light' and 'oil-free' instead. The oil-free version was a lot more runny (more a liquid than a cream) and less pink. Also smelled more strongly of alcohol. However, it seemed that light actually was now light. Too light for me! :c I wanted the colour of the old one but the properties of the new... so I put blobs of both on my face! Science.

HELP, HELP, SKIN DISEASE

Aaaaand we're done! Just kidding. The next step is to blend it all in. I tie my hair back to do makeup, so... forehead warning.

FOREHEAD

The mix is pretty good! It helped conceal the remnants of spots past on my forehead. I'm not too fond of the SPF 25, because that would cause a cast in photos, but I'm sure for people who want to just wear it every day instead of foundation it would be useful. Using mostly the oil-free version prevented me from breaking out too, so I'd definitely recommend that for oily skin type.

All done!

So that's that. Pretty good for everyday wear, but I need something a bit better for cosplaying. I have a MAC concealer and really like it, so perhaps I will take a trip down to the store and get colour matched for some proper foundation sometime.

New glasses! ~ A tale of Japan and customs fees

じーっ

I got some new glasses! Some cheap half-price frames from Japan, by glasses company JINS. Unfortunately, it also became a cautionary tale about proxy delivery and customs charges.

The proxy - Tenso
Company doesn't deliver outside of Japan? Got no Japanese friends? Now you do, because this is where proxy delivery services like Tenso come in. The product is shipped to this company's address within Japan, and they forward it on to you. Their site was in clear English and within a few minutes I had my own address in Tokyo to send mail to. Very fast and cool service.

The problem - Parcelforce
It was when it hit England that things went wrong. For future reference, here's how you calculate customs and taxes when importing goods into the UK.

• Customs Duty - Only charged on items worth over £270 at 2.5%. If your total duties come to less than £9, though, this is waived.
• Excise Duty - Only if you're bringing in alcohol or cigarettes. Excise duty rates here. 
• VAT - Charged on the cost of item, shipping and duties at 20%.
• Handling fee by carrier - THIS IS THE KICKER. I had no idea about this one. You see, my parcel was picked up by Parcelforce. And Parcelforce 'kindly' pay your fees to customs for you to release your parcel, then hold it hostage themselves and demand a flat £13.50 for the pleasure. This nearly tripled my border fees.

Another thing to note about Parcelforce is though you may see 'Awaiting payment of charges' through their online tracking, you cannot immediately pay online. You either ring them up and give them your credit card details over the phone (not an option for me when I'm at work) or you have to wait a day or two for them to send you a letter with a reference code, and then you can pay online. Just... what?

I tried to speed it up by ringing up the depot to get my code over the phone, but the operator stubbornly maintained that she was not allowed to release it as 'We wouldn't know if you are who you say you are.' Seriously? Why does it matter who pays it, if it gets paid? Is there some problem with reverse-bandits paying people's customs fees?

Being unable to wait around at home for a parcel, I went up to Camden myself and reluctantly coughed up the fees. I noticed there were multiple signs and leaflets by the window proclaiming the handling fee as 'legal', and 'very reasonable' - it seems that quite a few complaints had been made in the past. Personally, I too cannot even begin to imagine the amount of arduous labour which justifies £13.50 in a single parcel's handling fee. I expect it to be along the lines of at least three postal workers breaking their fingers while punching numbers into a calculator.

But at least that saga is over. If these are okay, I might get prescription lenses fitted.