Nothing was stuck to the phone itself, and instead I used a pink hard cover bought from eBay. If I had used a black or clear cover the difference between the phone and the cover would be less noticeable, but for my purpose I think the pink worked out fine. Just keep that in mind when you’re deco’ing!

I used epoxy glue this time, a kind called Z-Poxy. This stuff smells poisonous (x_x) Well, at least the hardener really did. My #1 recommendation for epoxy gluing is MAKE SURE YOU CAN OPEN WINDOWS (or provide another form of sufficient ventilation). I’m serious, not only will it smell awful, but I’m pretty sure the fumes are not all that great for you to be inhaling. I had to take breaks and completed this deco over the course of a couple days, rather than 6-7 hours straight like my previous phone, where I used the glue provided by Strapya.

My epoxy glue was 30-minute set, so I would mix a small amount of the liquids, cover a small patch of the phone and decorate it. If there was too much glue and it set before I had a chance to stick anything to it, I just put more glue over it and continued. I didn’t find any problems with this process, although I did tend to use a fairly thin layer of glue when applying. Before the glue sets, you can slide things around a little to position them perfectly. I did find that even after the glue set, it was still possible for pieces to be bumped or misaligned, so please be careful in holding your deco surface after applying parts!

My materials were a plastic nut canister top, which I used as a glue mixing surface, some toothpicks for actually mixing the glue and applying to the cover, and some tweezers for moving the deco parts.

After all portions of the cover had been completed and the glue completely set (I waited an hour or two from the final portion, I think) I coated the entire thing with clear nail polish to secure the hold. Even though epoxy glue has a very strong hold, if a tiny piece is subject to external pressure it might fall off – adding a clearcoat bonds it to the surrounding parts, greatly decreasing the chance that anything will be accidentally lost. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT NAIL POLISH IS MUCH LESS VISCOUS THAN EPOXY GLUE! This means that if you’re gluing directly to an electronic’s surface, you need to be really careful about small holes and gaps in the casing as the polish will just drip in and might damage the internal elements. I felt safe doing this with my casing because it was NOT attached to the phone while I was decorating it.

If you have any further questions about this project, feel free to leave me a comment!

And here’s the final result:

I tend to like a very cluttered random deco style XD

I cover not only the back, but also all sides.

This is a bit of fail on my part – I thought I had more tinytiny pieces than just the clear/silver bits (u_u;)

Okay, I think that’s just about every possible angle XDD

Most, if not all parts (minus the tiny silver ones and the stars) were bought from Mimi Lo Lo on Etsy ♥! She has a great selection and ships pretty fast :D

First, Mio.

She arrived at the beginning of February.

Naturally, she’s wearing the 桜高 winter uniform.

The difference in skirt colors for the school uniform across dolls and figures amuses me a little. The Nendoroid skirts are clearly light blue (although this photo makes them look slightly grey). The Azone fabric skirts are without a doubt completely grey. I’m partial to the plaid skirt used in the original manga/4coma, anyway XD

Mio’s hair actually has highlights/halo effect painted on it, which almost gives the effect of the paint having faded rather than the shiny anime-style XD;

Nendoroids have three head parts: bangs, face/neck and hair. This is Mio without her bangs.

Mio’s bangs and hair pieces

All of the body parts that came with Mio

Some of the hands can be removed from the arms, like this.

Mio’s bass & amp

Mio playing bass

Mio’s o(；△；)/ face

Next up is Yui!

Some box shots:

the insert packaging

Yui’s stand

(kind of looks like mouse ears… XD)

The stand back has a joint so you can tilt up or down as necessary

(if you’re wondering about all the smiley faces you see on joints, the company that’s involved with the nendoroids is called Good Smile…. XD)

And here we have Yui herself, sporting the double v-pose v(^ ^)v

The three faces of (Nendoroid) Yui

All the body parts that came with Yui

Yui’s serious face XD

ギー太! (Giita~!)

Yui’s crying face

close-up of the neck joint

and finally, some pair shots of Yui & Mio together!

Something I noticed when posing them together… the stands are different!

Mio’s has a much higher back:

than Yui’s:

(together, for comparison:)

Strangely enough, Yui’s stand suits Mio better because her stand interfered with her long hair. But overall Mio’s stand is more stable and I like it better. It seems like every Nendoroid I’ve bought has a different style stand… Konata’s is similar to Miku!Kagami, but they have some noticeable differences. I applaud GS for trying to constantly improve their stands, and think they’ve nearly reached a perfect setup. I look forward to seeing how they evolve in the future. (With my first Nendoroid, Kona, I didn’t think much about the stands because her long hair helped her balance enough that she didn’t need one XD;)

See, I went to the mall for dinner (mmm Uno’s :9). But there was a 25 minute wait, so I thought I’d go poke around Claire’s for a bit.

It was empty when I arrived, so I leisurely looked around and eventually settled on a crown keychain (for my car keys!)

and a pink x black polkadot cosmetics case because my Liz Lisa one is too small to hold all of my stuff….

(compared with my rose Liz Lisa cosmetics case)

and all of a sudden the store was full of parents trying to get their two year olds’ ears pierced! (@_@)
so it took me an extra 5-10 minutes just to check out. which led me to grab two sparkly rose hair clips by the register.

Thus accomplished, I headed back to Uno’s, slightly worried that they’d already called for me and I was gone (u_u; )
Dinner was buffalo chicken quesedillas (:9!) and some pounded-flat-and-breaded chicken thing with a heavily dressed salad on top (next time I’d get dressing on the side, I <3 balsamic vinaigrette but not when my greens are drowning in it, thanks)

After dinner the mall was still open for another hour, so naturally I didn't want to waste this valuable time~
First was WetSeal. I don't normally buy much in person there, but I did find some awesome accessories - namely a sparklysparkly key necklace,

pretty large jewel hinge bracelet,

and three pairs of stud earrings including one set of pink sakura-like earrings!! so pretty~~ the website image doesn’t do them any justice at all!

(shinyshiny~ <3)

Still not out of time, I browsed MAC to check out some eyeshadow shades (Pink Venus is <3!), and then walked by bebe and saw...
a black quilted heart purse.
I couldn't pass by. I had to see it.
It was huge! and the last one, apparently. She offered to call another store to see if they had the white but it was white x gold and the black was x silver.
I thought about it. looked in the mirror. checked out the construction (pretty solid!)
and thought about it.
and said....

yes! <3

bebe’s shopping bag. keys for size comparison. there is no pornography inside the bag, sorry. (although thinking about it, if you buy sketchy stuff, you tend to hide it in plain bags, anyway…)

the polka dot tissue paper was too cute! there were HEARTS! <3 <3 <3

it’s a pretty large bag! <3

this was how it was displayed in the window – it holds its shape very well <3

inside – there’s two pockets (one for stuff, one for phone) and a zipper pocket.

zipper pull, might add something to this~

rationally speaking the black won’t get dirty as fast, goes with everything, etc. etc.
I’m still naturally drawn to white bags but realistically I don’t have many nice black ones to use! at least not a large one. I went from having all black stuff to almost none now XD; so I guess it’s a good decision.
and it’s cute!

so after that I went home.

but my shopping wasn’t over yet.
I went to check some things out on wetseal.com, and found some cute belts that are very similar to the white one I bought from Liz Lisa over the summer… and a light pink cardigan… and some light pink rose clips.. and a couple camisoles… and this really cute ivory ruffled jacket.
On the up side, ebates will give me 3% cash back on the purchase, and my credit card gives me 1% on all purchases. Plus I found a code for free shipping :D (I love the internet, srsly <3)

but! not done yet!

I’ve been stalking this lasercut acrylic jewelry shop on etsy for a while and even though I can’t get my custom necklace yet, I bought a couple of the preset designs to try out the quality – the crown (in mirror pink) and kawaii ribbon (in bubblegum pink). I was tempted to get the diamond earrings too, but I thought that was enough for a first purchase.

So finally, I’m done.

Well, as long as I don’t buy almost anything else this month I’m fine… XD

I thought that was interesting XD

I chose a simple sandwich with cucumber salad for the dinner, and it was pretty good :9 The sandwich had a dressing that was probably partially mayonnaise based, and the salad was pretty covered in an oil-based dressing, but other than that I think it met my relatively-low calorie standard okay. It was not at all part of a chain so I can’t easily look up calorie information.

Tomorrow I will aim to take control of my diet XD No family dinners for a whole week! Can I make it all week with no meat? I was able to do it in middle school, don’t see why I can’t now…. XD

….

Yesterday was 60F!

…

What happened?!? D:

It’s been going back and forth between snowing and slushing (that is to say, snow/freezing rain mix) for most of the day. The roads are pretty much clear (if slushy) but still! It’s 35F out now （πーπ） I know snow isn’t impossible for March (the first day of March this year was snow, actually…) but I was so full of hope for the coming Spring~

In unrelated news, I have discovered that there are Lucky Star Nendoroids. Konata~~ ♥♥♥ ebay was full of jacked up prices so I went to y!Ja and scored myself a homepage version Konata （V＾－°）イエイ！ Still looking for a homepage Kagami (that isn’t $150, anyway…). I want to get a Tsukasa and Miyuki eventually but I feel like I should make sure I actually like Nendoroids before I get carried away XD Their shape really compliments the Lucky Star cast, I think. Suzumiya’s can go either way (normally proportioned type or chibi) but Konata looks really weird proportioned like a normal human （＾▽＾笑） it’s just not right! The last DVD of Lucky Star is coming out in the US this month, so I’ll be looking forward to the eventual series box version~ it’s not definite to happen by any means, but publishers seem to be catching on that Box Sets are a Good Idea so one can only hope… I watched a little of the dub on youtube and while it doesn’t make me want to claw my ears off I still prefer the original 声優 – Konata’s has a style I really like (and that isn’t easy to replicate in English anyway).

I have to be careful not to overindulge with Lucky Star merch… （*’‐’*)

Voice lessons have been scheduled, starting this week!

I don’t really know exactly what to expect since I’ve never taken any before, but I’m excited!

Photo is of Big Ben, in London.

It really takes a lot of effort and courage for me to make phone calls to people, much less someone I have never spoken to. But, sometimes there’s nothing to do but bite the bullet and call.

Thankfully I got the answering machine. I really prefer to be called in these situations. Somehow it’s easier.

Although I’m worried I’m going to get a call back tonight, while I’m gone. And then phone tag will begin…

The photo today is from my trip to Paris in 2005.

Well, January has come to a quiet close. I don’t expect February to be super great, but I wonder if anything will change…

The above photo was taken in Harajuku, and I don’t remember much of the circumstances surrounding it, only, I was in Harajuku a lot. XD

Well, actually, that happened on Thursday, but because it’s not a 28-day ban, I thought I would wait another day.
Things are still going well, feeling pretty calm about it all, surprisingly. I think this is definitely helped by the time of year (almost my birthday!) so I have things to look forward to… haha XD But after that, we’ll see how I feel…

Today’s photo is of my favorite Pinky:st girl…. that I took during class (!!) in Japan. To be fair, the class was three hours/1x week so…
It took me a while to find an angle that didn’t show me/my camera but captured the girl in both mirrors. It’s not the perfect shot I was envisioning, but considering the circumstances I thought it was pretty good XD