Love this totebag for grocery shopping. Now if only I could remember to actually USE it!

Sweet little mini-baguette purse in pink and green. Very PREPPY combination.

Adorable memo pad with hard to find Hello Kitty dressed as a geisha.

Sweet pink Hello Kitty geisha charm. I go crazy for these, I must have about twenty or more.

Hello Kitty chopsticks with towel wrap. Oh if only I had dishes to match!

This was a stocking stuffer for me, a great set of STILA mini lip glazes. These are so sweet and portable and have yummy flavors too. My faves are the pearly and sparkly colors.

This great beauty kit is from POPBeauty and is much more vibrant than it looks in this photo. This is a treasure trove of festive colors ready made for parties and the winter months. You get five eye shadow/liners, two shades of bronzer, two shades of face powder, a multi-hued shimmer palette and eight lip colors, all in a velvet covered box.  It is called Cabaret Bouquet and was on sale at ULTA.

Another great make-up kit this one is from Pixi Beauty. I mean it has a little twee fairy on the box! All the colors are shimmery and sweet. You can get this right in Target and it was on sale to boot. You can also get it online at pixibeauty.com.

My sister-in-law was kind enough to get me this adorable Bare Minerals Sweet Obsession mineral powder eye kit. The smaller size jars come in a little foil candy cups. Arrragghhh – cute overload! So yummy I want to eat them!

Since I get cold tootsies in the winter (yes, even in Florida, what can I say, I am a big baby!) I looked for a pair of faux fur lined boots online and came up with these which were sent overnight from endless.com and arrived on my doorstep on the 24th. I’ve barely taken them off since. Except to put on these:

These are called Chastity Sweater Slippers and were $18 at Target. They are completely faux fur lined and delicious on cold toesies.

Hope your Christmas was loaded with kawaii goodies and joyful happiness. Remember to hit all the After Christmas sales too!

I’ve been away from the kawaii a bit so I have lots to catch up on. You’ll be seeing me more regular-like from now on.

Happy Kawaii New Year!

Don’t you love shoes? For many women this is a huge part of their wardrobe (think Imelda!) and for kawaii lovers it is a downright obsession. I found some incredibly adorable shoes out there ranging in prices from pretty reasonable to totally ridiculous (almost $70 for a pair of custom kawaii Keds? Puhleeeze!).

Speaking of cute Keds, here was a pair I found at a Zazzle Shop called Mashusik. They are cute for sure, but for $67.50 that’s a bit steep for canvas shoes.

You can get these Hello Kitty Chooka rubber boots for only $67.00 at shoes.com. These are pretty adorable but unless you live in a pretty rainy place I have my doubts about wearability.

These sexy Harajuku Lovers punk rock plaid platform heels are too cute for words. I would absolutely break my neck if I wore them but I can still think they are super kawaii. You can find these at endless.com.

These kitty-cat platform heels from Irregular Choice are some of the cutest shoes – ever! Irregular Choice is hands down my favorite kawaii shoes I’ve found available in the US thus far. You can find these at endless.com.

Here are more from Irregular Choice:

These below are from Betsey Johnson and are also available from endless.com. I love Betsey Johnson and the plus side is I find tons of her stuff at TJ Maxx and for clearance prices (yay clearance!). These are more spring shoes so I believe they were on sale too. Here in Florida I wear shoes like this (only not as high!) all year long:

Finally these shoes are from the Japanese brand Wano Nano and are especially unique. I don’t know if you can get them here in the US at all because the site is in Japanese but I really thought they were terrific! I love these moccasin style shoes the most – they look so comfy!

You might be thinking – what? Do they even have anything kawaii?

Well, listen up and listen good kawaii lovers – you will be surprised to find that in HSN’s CLEARANCE section  you can not only find adorable and fun things to satisfy your kawaii-loving self but for CHEAP too!

Here are a few of my recent finds from HSN:

This is theBalm Read My Lips Kit in Nude on Clearance at HSN for $10! (from regular price of $40). I don’t know if the company is still in business since I saw some of their cute cosmetics for sale at Sephora too. You cannot beat this price though for 2 lipsticks, a lip pencil and lipstain. Holy Kawaii Clearance!

Along those same lines is this sweet little kit from theBalm for your eyes. It comes with a luggage tag and is portable itself with a wee little mini-brush. You can actually use one of the shades as a blush if you’ve got a teeny tiny blush brush. This was originally $18.50 marked down to $5.00. No mistake there – that’s right – five bucks!

This Barbie Loves Stila Collection (in Jewel Doll)  comes in a paint can (so adorable) and includes a Barbie palette, yummy lipgloss and gorgeous black mascara. The original price was $40 and is on sale for $13.98. You must trust me that you will never find  even one single Stila item for this price let alone, three! These are full-size products too and you get a blush and two eyeshadows in the palette. Worth every penny!

They offer another kit too, so if you can just get both! This is called Foxy Doll kit and comes with a different mascara, palette and lip glaze. The kits mimic the make-up on the dolls to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of your favorite girly-girl Barbie.

I know it’s not Easter but since when do kawaii bunnies have anything to do with holidays? To be fair these are more retro kawaii. These are perfect for springtime or just to put out something cute. The plates are unfortunately sold out but the bowl is on clearance for $19.00 from $49.00. Great value. This comes from the catalog company Grandin Road on HSN.

This is the Garden Party ring from Hot in Hollywood, a costume jewelry designer brand on HSN. The enamel flowers are so sweet and the crystal stone looks like a piece of candy. This is on sale in two colors for only $29.95.

Also by Hot in Hollywood is this saints crystal bracelet. So completely funky and cool I just had to have it. It is on sale for only$19.95 and comes in four crystal colors.

Next time I will focus on finds from QVC, Sephora and whomever strikes my fancy. And has CLEARANCE! Polish up your credit cards girlies!

The first thing you will see when you get to the site is a rainbow of color and cuteness that pulls you into the site so fast your wallet will not even know what’s hit it!

There are so many brands to chose from, some that are new to me (like Ruby Gloom) and others that are old faves like Tokidoki, Pucca, Paul Frank, Loungefly, Scrummy, Ukiyo5 and Gloomy Bear.

You’ve got all kinds of items to choose from  clothes, bags, jewelry, stationery and cute toys too.

Here are some of the goodies I got:

Adorable candy bottle necklace from Scrummyland.

Ruby Gloom medium handbag with ribbons.

Ruby Gloom Doom Kitty bag in bright red.

Tokidoki Bad Trip punk rock bag with pins.

This is an old Tokidoki European bag from before Tokidoki was branded with LeSportsac and before it became its own brand. They are rare and hard to find and the price was superb. They are not as high quality as the current Tokidoki bag but the print is totally awesome.

After I got my first shipment from Shana Logic, I went right back to do more shopping. I really adore the unique items they offer and found a couple of brands like Ukiyo-5 and mymimi that I simply cannot be without. Since I am not a crafty person I like to shop from those who do have talent by purchasing what they offer. Plus I love to support artist collectives.

Tonight I wore a totally unique bracelet from pinkSpiderwebs.com and people were grabbing my wrist asking me – hey where did you get a bracelet so cute? I got to tell them where and hopefully send some new customers to that site to enjoy all the kawaii jewelry the artist creates. Thus the artist gets more customers and their art is more lucrative, then they make more! Yay! Everybody wins!

Prices here run from $5 for a ring to $12 for a necklace and $30 for sterling silver items. On the whole the prices are very good but remember most of the items offered are costume jewelry. You will pay more for sterling silver.

This is the stuff that came today:

Sparkle skull necklace from Kara Lee Designs.

Pink and sterling silver skull necklace from Lauren King.

Shaan Logic pin set. So kawaii!

Geisha ring from mymimi.

Happy cupcake necklace from Xenos Designs.

Happy cupcake earrings from Xenos Designs.

Poison rainbow necklace from Shana Logic.

Apple necklace with crystal from Shana Logic.

Ukiyo-5 wallet. Don't you love a pink octopus?

Some of the artists don’t have their own websites but check out the ones who do!

Ukiyo-5

mymimi

Xenos Designs

Kara Lee Designs

Now when I say this is cute stuff, I mean super-cute. This is the kind of unique jewelry you will simply not find anywhere else. It is also I am happy to say, well-made, so with the terrific price-point ($4 for a ring, $12 for a bracelet) you are getting items that are sturdy and wear well.

Here is what crafty queen Sylvia has to say for herself:

“My name is Sylvia, and i love creating bright and colorful and jewelry!! I am inspired by the Harajuku Japanese street style, and consider my work kawaii (“cute” in Japanese). Hope you enjoy it as well! By the way…I do trades, so let me know if you do as well! I love similar funky jewelry as mine, or anything hello kitty, san x, cupcake, gloomy bear, skulls, etc!”

My purchases below:

Adorable charm bracelet. Quality and unique.

Candy ring, so cute matches my heart necklace.

My favorite little pink bear necklace. Very kawaii!

Adorable chunky cupcake ring.

There were other brands I used to buy like Pinkie Swear, Girlactik, Rocket City, Dessert and Sugar but most of those brands have disappeared from Sephora and ULTA and some have disappeared completely as in – sorry not making them anymore.

Dessert Beauty which was Jessica Simpson’s entre into cosmetics was a huge hit at first and I loved the products – I think I bought everything they made! They barely produced two collections and then trouble with lawsuits (one was settled and one was found in their favor) ended up putting the kibosh on the line prematurely. I was sad to see them go since their products were excellent, reasonably priced and tasted yummy. Oh and had super kawaii packaging too. Who wouldn’t love a little tube of “Belly Button Love Potion”?

Sugar, a cute brand that produced a wonderful sugary tasting lip-gloss and a number of other products now has really no make-up to speak of but a few pairs of cute shoes at their website. I don’t really understand what happened with them but they had a great line at one time. I was able to get some of the last of their line so look for an upcoming review.

Sadly my favorite from long ago, Hard Candy didn’t last and they folded their tent up by selling every last thing they had online at 75 percent off. I bought tons. Now they have been sold to Walmart and will be re-branded and appearing in stores next month. I am anxious to see how they represent because they were my first fave and I feel a kind of loyalty to them after twenty years.

I am eager to investigate some of the new lines appearing in Target since they are always on the cutting edge and I have a feeling that I will find kawaii there too.

As for POPBeauty, I was surprised to find their products to be not only terribly cute (and British to boot) but super high quality.

Here’s a run down of what I have tried and loved:

Minty lip gloss

This is for fresh breath and a nice lip glow. It’s not cloying and it doesn’t sting, so you can use this to plump up your pucker before you pucker. I really like this and the bonus was it came in a kit from ULTA (only in the stores) that had the Little Black Dress make-up kit, Sparkle Sauce eyeliner creator and a mini eye shadow primer called Eye Magnet. The kit was only $15! Run now to the ULTA store!

Sheer lipstick

I love the Lip Lust lipstick. It comes in a super kawaii little case and it is very emollient, doesn’t taste awful and gives a sheer glow to your lips. Don’t be scared if you think the color is a bit bold it goes on sheer and gives so much love to your lips.

Lip Cushion lip plumper with bonus

This is not your regular lip plumper -first of all it doesn’t sting like others and you get a little bonus that you can attach to your cell phone (OMG – cell phone charm, how kawaii!). I used this first then put the Lip Lust lipstick over it and had great color and plumpage too. It is tasty so you won’t be going ick when you lick your lips.

Little Black Dress Kit

It is hard to see in this photo but you’ve got an entire wardrobe of perfect make-up in this tiny little compact. The top row of eyeshadow pans contain glittery liners, the middle row are lid colors and the bottom row are highlights. There is a face powder, bronzer/blush and gorgeous lip gloss. All you need is your teeny-tiny lip plumper and a twee little mascara and you have everything you would need plus it could fit in an evening bag. I was impressed with the quality of the products – the eye shadow’s are deeply pigmented and non-talc-y. The eyeliners went on perfectly and I was able to create an alluring day-time look from a kit that at first glance seems destined for night. This bad boy does it all – day to night. Why are you still reading this? Go to ULTA now and get yours in the set I told you about for $15!

Goddess Clutch in Rockstar

I decided to go with the Rockstar version of the Goddess Clutch (it comes in two other versions in a silver case and a gold case with different colors each $32) and wow am I a happy girl! The shadows are awesome, there is a matte brown you can use as an eyebrow shade, two liners (the dark metallic grey and plum), three lid shades and two highlight shades. The blush is gorgeous, very silky, the highlighter is glowy and you get a huge pan of frosty lipgloss too. All you need are teeny brushes, a mascara and you have lift-off. The case is very secure and your make-up won’t get crunched which is always good.

You can find POPBeauty online and at ULTA (in store and online).

I cannot recommend the eyeshadows enough. You will have a ball with all the unusual colors they offer as well as adore how well they go on and stay. They don’t cake or crease even with glittery sparkles in them. I did use their new Eye Magnet primer and it was excellent but Urban Decay’s Primer Potion would be good or Too Faced’s Eyeshadow Insurance would also work well.

Here is some background on Eyeko:

Eyeko means LOVE in Japanese and is the brainchild of beauty innovators Max and Nina Leykind (they helped begin Hard Candy long ago) who began the collection in 2000 with Eyeko Cream. Created for girls to perk up their skin counteracting the draining effects of staring at their computer screens, late nights and city life – Eyeko Cream remains the No.1 best seller to date. A triple duty moisturizer, eye cream and highlighter with an antioxidant boost plus Vitamin C makes for a radiant complexion. Try Eyeko 3 in 1 Cream and NEW Eyeko Tinted Cream and treat yourself to perfect skin.

The hottest stars cite Eyeko Beauty as their most wanted for creating glowing skin, big eyes and lush lips. Innovative, feel-good, top quality formulations result in easy-to-use, multi-tasking products that flatter everyone. Eyeko Beauty tests on celebrities not animals! All that and it’s affordable too.

I promised I would review and comment on everything I bought so here we go:

Eyeko pink glowy 3 in 1 cream

This is like whipped cream for your face. It gives you a rosy, pink, healthy glow as well as moisturizes and give a vitamin C boost for a clearer complexion. It is $9 US and there is a ton of product. It is kawaii, pink, frosty and whipped and smells really good. It’s like the strawberry whip of face creams. But seriously nine bucks? This stuff is great. If you buy only one thing from Eyeko (and you will buy more because it is ridiculously reasonably priced) make it this cream.

Eyeko tinted cream is a bronzer that is sheer and good for skin.

This is the same formulation as the cream above but with a golden bronze glow. It is very sheer so don’t be freaked out when you open the jar and see how dark it is. It goes on lovingly light and burnished you up proper. This is great for summer to get the glow. It will also wake-up your complexion in those dull-skin winter months. It is only $8 US. Buy them both – there is enough to last a long time.

Lickable, tasty, glossy, yummy lip glosses (cherry, cupcake and rose).

At $6 US per tin (and there is a lot in each tin) you can afford to buy all three! Cherry is red with sparkly glitter (it is sheer), Cupcake is all glitter clear with a chocolate cupcake flavor and the Rose is rose flavored and tinted gorgeous pink. These glosses moisturize, go on well and are not sticky. They will glamorize your pout.

Yummy fat little lip balms in strawberry, raspberry and mint.

These little chubby lip balms are adorable, tasty and good for your lips. You can use them as a cheeky blush too. I love them all and at $8 US each, you can try them all. Once again there is a ton of lip balm here. It will last and last. I have it on my lips right now and it is heavenly (the strawberry one).

This is the perfect way to try it all plus get a great kawaii tote!

For $41 US, you can try almost everything. Here is what you will get: Eyeko Mascara for long and luscious lashes, skin perfectors Eyeko Touch Up & Go Concealer and Eyeko Touch Up & Glow Highlighter and nail polish must-haves Punk and Vamp. Topped off with Eyeko Glitter Liquid Eyeliner, Eyeko Minty Fat Balm for lips and Eyeko Rosy Pink Lip Gloss.  It comes all wrapped up in the limited edition Eyeko Silver Shopper complete with 5 cute Eyeko badges.

This is an incredible deal (really a steal) and you can purchase only a few other items and have the full compliment of Eyeko products. Lucky you!

Here is what illi has to say for herself:

My name is illi.
I love all things kawaii.
I’ve had my ears pierced since age 2.
When I was little my mom always found some cute little studs usually Sanrio, Hello Kitty, Keroppi, etc.
After a while, I started making my own earrings.
Earrings turned to necklaces, then necklaces turned to barrettes, and after I while I started putting smiling faces on everything I could find.
My designs are unique and cute, I like to give faces and emotions to otherwise inanimate objects.

Here is what I bought: