Lens review: Vassen Bambi Pink

What's up peeps?

I'm trying to continue my reviewing roll while we still have plenty of daylight hours aaaand so here I present to you, a review of Vassen Bambi Pink! Sometimes these lenses might also be known under the name Vassen Bambi Queen Pink. They are also most likely identical to the Kimchi Bambi Pink as well, since Vassen is to my knowledge the company that manufactures the lenses that both Kimchi and I.Fairy sell. 

Let's roll~

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.5 mm

Water content: 42%

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

These lenses have an immensely similar design to the highly popular GEO Princess Mimi series, so if you recognize the print from somewhere then that's likely why. But I should mention that GEO's series doesn't come in pink so these are unique in that sense, haha.

Remember to always put your lenses to soak over the night before wearing them for the first time! The reason is that the solution in the little glass bottles is much stronger than ordinary lens solution that you buy from the pharmacy etc.

One lens in.

My first impression was that these don't pop quite as much as the other colors that I've already reviewed, especially when compared to the blue pair. I can still tell it's pink but it gets a bit overshadowed by the huge amount of orangeish brown that makes up the center of the lens. Sadly this orange tone clashes with my natural eye color quite much (especially because there's so much of it, it's almost half the lens!) and so it looks a bit weird to me. :/ I mean if you compare to the inner ring on the blue pair there's a huge difference in both color and intensity! I honestly want to like these lenses but I can't help but feel like they are not meant for light-eyed people because seriously, that orange really throws me off. Ugh.

It's a big and a somewhat anime looking lens. The limbal ring is really bold and creates the look of super dolly eyes. My natural eye color shines through a bit on the pink parts of the lens but not enough to make the color indistinguishable.

Lens photos below!

All photos taken by me during a September noon with a clear sky. There's no color filters or such on the close-up photos and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Natural room light indoors.

Yellow room light indoors.

Facing a window, not sun side.

Poor distant natural light. Unlit corridor.

Flash photo indoors.

Outdoors, back against the sun. (facing wall)

Outdoors, facing the sun.

Outdoors in the backyard. Shadow side.

Comfort seems good based on my quick run with these (lenses had expired so I only wore them for these photos and then they went into the trash) as I didn't feel them in my eyes and they felt pretty thin too. I would estimate wearing time anywhere between 3-5 hours, which is better than average on my super dry eyes. These lenses felt like they might potentially start drying a bit fast though, not sure.

Okay so, my summary of these lenses is that they are really big and provide a dolly effect but like, they are not the best choice for pink lenses and especially not if you have light eyes like me. Seriously only like half the lens is pink and the orange inner half shows up a lot more and it makes me think jokingly that maybe these should have been called Vassen Bambi Orange instead, lmao! But I guess that if you want this kind of unnatural looking obviously two-color lens for whatever wacky and bold fashion style you might have then why not? :D It's not a bad lens by any means but I personally ain't that thrilled by it. I do have to admit though that when seen from a distance it looks a lot better!

Distance photo below.

Wanna see more Vassen Bambi lenses?

I got you covered: Green, Blue

Short summary:

Color: 4/10
For being a pink lens these are very.. orange. The pink honestly feels more like a secondary color.
Design: 8/10
The design itself is beautiful and makes my eyes look young and lively.
Opacity: 7/10 
Nothing really wrong with the color coverage, my eyes don't look blue.
Enlargement: 8/10
Dolly and cutesy.
Comfort: 7/10 
Appears to be above average. Thin and comfy but maybe drying? 3-5 hours estimated wear on super dry eyes.
Naturalness: 1/10

Maybe more believable on brown eyes but the size and design alone already gives them away.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Shiro Samurai says bye.

Lens review: GEO Xtra Lotus Green

Good morning everyone!

Today I'll review the GEO Xtra Lotus Green circle lenses, which can also be identified by their code number thingy WFL-A13. It's a big, really sparkly and wonderful lens that I absolutely adore!

Now let's go~

Base curve: 8.8 mm
Diameter: 14.8 mm

Water content: 40±2%

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

This is a really big GEO lens, so if that's not your cup of tea you might want to steer clear from these. GEO is one of the few brands that carries both big and small circle lenses so one should always pay attention to the diameter with them, even though based on my experiences the stated diameter doesn't always accurately reflect the actual size of the lens when worn.

The Xtra Lotus lenses are a part of GEO's Xtra Flower series – and the extra in the name of course refers to the extra big size! And as with any genuine GEO lenses they should come with authenticity stickers that you can check up online to prove that your received pair is real. Yes, counterfeit lenses exist and should be avoided at all costs – if a lens store looks shady and too good to be true, it probably is.

One lens in.

It's a lovely lens with a crystal-like appearance. The blending effect is beautiful and the jagged limbal ring actually doesn't look jarring at all! One might think that such a fancy pattern would be all over your face but it hits that mark of perfection on which it's discreet and absolutely gorgeous at the same time. There's something with the artsy design that makes the lenses look delicate and lively, it could be how the design makes the lenses appear several different shades of green and these shades create a depth and a "soul" to the eye. I feel like I'm just rambling on by now but there's something special with these lenses that really appeals to me!

Lens photos incoming!

All photos taken by me during a September noon with a clear sky.
There's no color filters or such on the close-up photos and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Natural room light indoors.

Yellow room light indoors.

Facing a window, not sun side.

Poor distant natural light. Unlit corridor.

Flash photo indoors.

Outdoors, back against the sun. Facing wall.

Outdoors, facing the sun.

Outdoors on the backyard. (shadow side)

I feel like these lenses really brings out the little hints of green that I have in my natural eye color, which is a grayish blue in most lights. The transition between the lens and my eye is almost seamless and I love the effect. These lenses makes my eyes look youthful and sparkling and, while I personally don't care much for a "moe" effect I feel like these lenses stay within a sorta natural realm and thus don't look very anime at all and instead feel versatile.

Comfort appeared to be great based on my short time with these lenses (they had expired, I took these photos and threw them away after ;_; *sniff*) as I literally didn't feel them in my eyes at all and they were super thin too! I would estimate wearing time at least around the 4-5 hours on super dry eyes, and yes, that is more than average for me as my eyes really are insanely dry.

All in all I would recommend these lenses if you like this kind of, umm what should I call it, "everyday fantasy" look. It's a lovely lens, really alluring and I can't help but think of beautiful beings like elves and fairies when I saw how these lenses glistened in the sun. Great for fashion, live-action roleplaying and possibly also cosplay. I would repurchase these lenses just for fun because they are that pretty!

Distance photo~

Want to see Xtra Lotus lenses in other colors?
I have reviewed a few: Gray, Violet, Brown

 

Short summary:

Color: 8/10
Beautiful, alluring and fantasy-like forest green.

Design: 8/10

Detailed and artistic lotus inspired print that looks like crystals. It's mesmerizing!

Opacity: 5/10

Makes my eyes look clearly green but in a semi-natural way. Extremely smooth blending effect.

Enlargement: 7/10

On the bigger side but they lack a distinct artificially dolly look, in my opinion.

Comfort: 7/10

Invisible to wear, thin and super comfy. Estimated wearing time 4-5 hours on mega dry eyes.

Naturalness: 5/10

Ignore the size and these look far more natural than what one might initially expect.

Thanks for reading! I hope you found this review helpful~
Shiro Samurai out.

Lens review: Vassen Sweet Bliss Pink

Hello folks~

Today's review will be about the Vassen Sweet Bliss Pink, sometimes also known as Vassen Cloud Nine Pink. This is a very anime looking lens, in my opinion, and thus I feel like it works best for j-fashion and cosplay. I'm falling behind again with reviews, I really need to pick up speed before polar night kicks in and makes reviewing a lot harder.

Let's do this!

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.5 mm

Water content: 42% 

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

I remember being super curious about these lenses when I bought them a long-ass time ago, but because I've had a really rough time the past years I completely forgot to do reviews, while I still had plenty of time, and so I am now rushing to review lenses that have, in fact, already expired. :( I immediately threw these away after taking the photos for this review; I do not recommend wearing expired lenses.

One lens in.

This is a lens with a quite unique design! There's this thick, striking black rim with black lines running along it that creates a very cartoony effect. The color is within these "teary eye" styled blocks with different levels of transparency, which in turn makes it so that the lenses don't look as crazy and over-the-top as they might otherwise have looked. Also, because of the transparent lines separating the, well, color blocks, your real eye color will show through between the lines but this actually creates a nice effect! And if anyone wonders my natural eye color is a light grayish blue.

Lens photos below!

All photos taken by me during a September noon with a clear sky. There's no color filters or such on the close-up photos and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Natural room light indoors.

Yellow room light indoors.

Facing a window. (not sun side)

Poor distant natural light, aka unlit corridor.

Flash photo indoors.

Outdoors, back against the sun. (facing the wall)

Outdoors, facing the sun.

Outdoors, on the backyard. (shadow side)

This is a big, bold and colorful lens – just like Vassen lenses usually are. There's a distinct dolly eye effect and the color is really vibrant and shows up from quite afar, which is always a good thing when posing for photographs. The Sweet Bliss series are definitely cute and look really youthful and almost innocent in a way, it's a fun lens and I must admit that one thing that surprised me was how different the color appeared depending on the lights!

My first mpressions of comfort were good, better than average. Again, do note that my comfort grade is based solely on the time I spent taking the review photos (10-30 minutes) and thus it's not necessarily very accurate nor fair (as the lenses had expired) and thus I remind you all to take comfort grades with a grain of salt. But from what I could tell these lenses are on the thinner side and felt comfortable and I didn't feel them much at all in my eyes. I would estimate wearing time to be around the 4-5 hour mark on my super dry eyes, which is generous.

If you want a pink lens that really pops and looks super adorable then you might want to consider getting the Vassen Sweet Bliss Pinks! It's not a lens for everyone but if you prefer fancy and colorful over natural and discreet then you're in for a treat with these. These lenses sport a great color coverage and will work really well for any bishoujo and bishounen characters in particular – for some reason series like Sailor Moon comes to mind!

Distance photo below~

Want to see Sweet Bliss lenses in other colors?
Check these out: Gray, Brown, Green, Red, Violet, Blue

 

Short summary:

Color: 8/10
Really sweet, intense and cute pink shade!
Design: 9/10
Cartoony "teary eye" look that reminds me of mahou shoujo (magical girl) anime series.
Opacity: 7/10 

Good coverage, my eyes look clearly pink. Real eye color does peek through in some parts though, due to the transparency in the design.
Enlargement: 8/10
Very dolly and adorable! Big size.

Comfort: 7/10 

Better than average. Thin, comfy and quite invisible to wear. Estimated wearing time 4-5 hours on ultra dry eyes.
Naturalness: 2/10

These surely won't fly if you're trying to convince someone it's your actual eyes...

Thanks for reading my blog!

Shiro Samurai out.

[Sponsored] Allstarco review: acrylic gems store

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the silence, I got the flu last week and have had no energy nor time to blog in a lil' while. But today I will do a review for a store that sells acrylic jewellery in all shapes, colors and sizes and it's very useful for cosplayers and costumers alike! 

Allstarco contacted me during summer asking if I wanted to review their products and after a quick check online I decided to accept the offer, thinking that this review could be useful for a lot of people out there who lack the materials or skills to cast their own resin gems etc and are looking to just buy them ready-made!

Let's do this~

Kindly note that the items I'm reviewing in this post were sponsored, for review purposes, by Allstarco but that all opinions and text is my own. I never compromise my honesty regardless of if I paid for the products with my own money or not.

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My order arrived like this, nice and simple.

Shipping & customer service: I placed the order on 29th June and I think it was shipped somewhere near 2nd July and arrived in my country on 11th July. Pretty fast considering it came from over the Atlantic ocean! Yes, Allstarco is based in Canada which actually had me surprised because I'm so used to almost everything being from China lol. But yeah, because Sweden's postal company is a bunch of greedy turds whom half the country hates I was not surprised to receive pure rip-off level customs to pay. Thankfully Allstarco was super sweet and understanding and actually helped me pay for the customs which I'm really thankful for as I'm a broke-ass student with literally almost no income, not even study grant. I am 99% sure this was a special privilege I enjoyed purely for being in a collaboration with them (and for being really poor) so don't expect to get your custom costs etc covered as a regular customer. ^^" But I'm mentioning it as this level of kindness and customer service was way over my expectations and super kind of them! Speaking of customer service – the contact person I had, named Adil, was really friendly, thorough and almost always replied to my emails within 24 hours, which is always a plus.

Package contents.

Products: On 19th July I finally got the package in my hands and opened it up. All my chosen gems were separately packaged inside a big ziplock bag and then I also received a business card and something that I later learned was a color chart that is, in fact, a request-only product (meaning it's not for sale) that is sent to influencers like me to show off their range of colors. I got the type H, which kinda implies that there's more color charts than just one. Hmm.

Color chart!

So many pretty colors... ~

I guess one could find a way to use the tiny example gems in this chart if one really wanted but I'm not gonna try it. Yet.

Allstarco sells a whole lot of acrylic gems with different fastening methods (sew-on, glue on, self-adhesive) and in a myriad of different colors, shapes and sixes! Their products range from plastic rhinestones, gems and diamonds to studs, cabochons and specialized tools and accessories like stud setters etc. You're almost certain to find what you might need for your costume, in other words. I was honestly really positively surprised by the amount of variation, it shows the dedication and knowledge of the needs of the creative and crafting communities – there's even a category for extra-large cosplay gems!

The diamond packs.

The round "pirate treasure" packs.

The octagon "pirate treasure" packs.

Here's a list below of the items I ordered, along with links to the product pages:

Acrylic Diamond Confetti AB Coating 5mm 1000 Pcs

Acrylic Diamond Confetti AB Coating 12mm 50 Pcs

Plastic Diamonds AB Coating 20mm 25 Pcs

Octagon Pirate Jewels For Treasure 25x18mm 40 Pcs

Round Pirate Jewels For Treasure 27mm 25 Pcs

Quality: The quality is as one might expect of plastic gems in general, nothing ultra amazing but seem durable and certainly fun for parties and games. The gems are pretty lightweight and look cool, they shine nicely when the light hits them (I love sparkly things!) but I sadly didn't manage to capture this effect well on the camera for some reason – they look a lot nicer in person, I promise! Especially the red ones were really hard to photograph and look more dull and dark than what they actually are.
I don't think that the gems feel cheap but rather affordable for the price. I did notice though that they are not in mint condition by any means; there's visible surface scratches on pretty much every gemstone (possibly from rubbing againt each other?) but it's nothing that really bothers me that much personally. There might also be imperfections such as small air bubbles trapped within the gems or various marks and snags from the production. Again, this kind of damage does not bother me in this particular case as it's minor and not super visible, unless you look closely or the light hits a certain way to reveal the imperfections.
The visibility of the gems is generally good and clear, as in that when you look through/into the plastic it doesn't seem overly dim, blurry or dirty. It's not crystal clear but clear enough to still look valuable, if that makes sense. xD Sure that these acrylic gems still look fake, especially when compared to real gemstones because these gems are obviously plastic, but you get the point.

I couldn't find the information on the site but I asked through mail and was told that most of the products are made in Canada, which gets a thumb up from me. But some of the newer products (I don't know which ones are concerned) have moved production to Asia because of the cost, most likely to China.

Product close-up images below, all photos taken by me outdoors:

5mm clear diamonds.

12mm clear diamonds

20mm clear diamonds.

Blue round "pirate jewels".

Red round "pirate jewels".

Amber octagon "pirate jewels".

Green octagon "pirate jewels".

Purple octagon "pirate jewels".

None of my chosen gems are of the various flat back types, meaning that these are purely decorational and used as-is and thus can't be attached to any surfaces. There are a lot of choices for sewn-on gems, self-adhesive gems and flat back gems that you can glue on yourself but I wanted the "normal" gems for my project. And what is my project you ask, why would a cosplayer like me not take flat back gems at all? BECAUSE I'M PREPARING A PIRATE TREASURE CHEST FILLED WITH BOOTY. :D Yep, and I want it to have a lot of different fillings in many colors and shapes! I find it funny how some of the products on Allstarco are even named and marketed for pirate treasure as that was my first thought too and I immediately decided on that I want to make a Sea of Thieves inspired cosplay and carry around some serious loot!

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That's about all I had to say for this review about Allstarco, based on my experiences and impressions! Below's some quick grades and summary for the lazier readers.

Quality ★★★☆☆

Price  ★★★★☆

Value ★★★★☆

Shipping  ★★★★★

Customer service ★★★★★

Summary: Allstarco is a Canada based specialty online store with a focus on all kinds of acrylic gems for cosplay, costuming (including live-action roleplay) and crafting projects. There's a huge sortiment of shapes, sizes, colors and styles and at generally affordable prices too. Allstarco carries rhinestones, studs, acrylic gems, cabochons etc and even stick-on gems for your face! If your next cosplay is from Sailor Moon, Steven Universe, League of Legends or even Fortnite and you are stuck on the gem part then give Allstarco a shot, odds are they have what you need! And even if you aren't a costumer you can have use of their products for things like wedding decorations, table scatters, parties and games with kids, Halloween, school projects and much more! Only your imagination is the limit. I'm surprised I did not know of them before this, especially as I've several times had the thought  of "okay so where the heck can I get a gem like that?" lol.

Use exclusive discount coupon 20SHIROSAMURAI for 20% off on your purchase!

I also feel a need to state a small disclaimer and say that I am very well aware that, as a blogger and reviewer, that I'm more likely to be given better service than average. But based on this collaboration and the products that I received I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Allstarco. I will surely keep them in mind for future projects as it's great to know that there's a dedicated store for crafters and cosplayers out there that focuses on filling all your gem needs, in one place.

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Thank you for reading. Thank you Allstarco for this opportunity!

~  Shiro Samurai out.