Lens review: Dueba Volte Green

 Hello everyone!

It's time for another contact lens review guys! This time for the Dueba Volte Green lenses. Seemingly they are also known under the name Dueba Twinkle Green...

Lenses in solution. (normal room light)

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.5 mm

Water content: 38%

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

I actually bought these some weeks ago and used them for when I cosplayed Okita at the latest photoshoot. I must say I've been wanting green lenses for quite some time and these catched my fancy – even though it was quite the challenge to find a lens store that carried them. Oh well, my persistence was rewarded and heeeeey, let's get on with the review!

Lens on my finger. Flash photo.

I must say I really like the pattern/design on these, they have this cool swirly design. It's quite unique and pretty. The diameter is 14.5 mm so they are enlarging but not very much so, which I personally prefer.
I like how these are kinda muted and subtle, there's no huge sparkles or anything. I assume that might be because seemingly these contacts are advertised for guys which is, quite interesting. *feels included in the fabulous world of circle lenses* <3

Oh well, here's two pictures taken in the bathroom.
I know, the lighting is not good and it's pretty yellow (and I used my old digital camera so quality is not the best, meh) but hey, still pictures!

With just one lens in, mostly to show enlargement.
(my natural eye color is a gray-blue with a slight greenish tint)

Both lenses in.

My old camera has a really merciless and harsh flash sometimes (eww) but here's a flash photo anyway:

Excuse my absolutely hideous eyebrows.. x_x

I must say that when it comes to comfort these must be the most comfortable lenses I've ever worn, like, seriously. Period.

I can't get over how comfortable they are! I swear the first time I ever wore them I just popped them in with no problems, didn't feel them at all when I had them in my eyes and seriously, I could easily wear them 8+ hours with no discomfort whatsoever! Nothing at all, I didn't even feel them in my eyes! I'm pretty damn sure I actually ended up wearing them for 15 hours straight that day oops and I still didn't feel I had contacts on after all that time – no drying, no discomfort, no scratching feelings, no eyes getting tired, nada! Color me impressed. 

And yeah, I closed my eyes at some point a lot (it was late night) and still no problems, no headaches or blurry visions. Needless to say nothing beats these for me when it comes to comfort, at least not yet and I don't think anything will for a long time even though I'm still very new to contact lenses. Hell, I'd wear them any day –just for the hell of it– because they are that comfy! 

Photo taken with SLR camera in normal room light without flash.

Oh, and these are pretty noticeable when worn but I definitely wouldn't say that they are in the IN_YOUR_FACE range because nope, they aren't. I actually wore these to school today and after class my philosophy teacher talked to me, stopped and stared with this "wait, something is different, but what?"-face and then he said "it must be because of the green shirt.." half-thinking to himself; soon after he added "your eyes are normally blue, right?" :'D So yeah, definitely people can tell there's something different about your eyes if they are close enough or/and pay attention but it's not gonna freak anyone out. Seemingly.

 ~ EDIT 2015 ~

Here's 3 extra photos I found while digging in my computer's darkest corners. These are all old and taken with my crappy camera outdoors during winter.

Flash photo outdoors.

Only bummer about these lenses is that they don't always show up as being green, it depends on the lighting – but maybe that's because I have light colored eyes and these contacts let some of my natural eye color through at the middle/pupil hole..? Then again, most circle lenses do that anyway so. *shrugs* Oh well, it's not really much of a disappointment at all, if at all, and seeing how comfortable these are for me I would buy a second pair when these expire because c'mon, they are so comfy to wear!

Contacts seen from a distance.

Curious about other colors? Check out these reviews: Violet, Gray, Brown

Short summary:

Color: 5/10 
A nice shade of green, but it doesn't always show up on light colored eyes; highly depending on the light.
Design: 8/10 
Cool swirl design which I really like, also black outer rim looks really good and gives anime look.
Opacity: 3/10
The edges have better color coverage than the center. Blends a lot with my light eyes and thus doesn't always look green. 
Enlargement: 4/10 
Doesn't seem to enlarge much but this is what I personally prefer.
Comfort: 10/10 
I can't get over how comfortable these contacts are. Blows everything else I've tried out of the water!
Naturalness: 4/10 
Except for the black outer rim these look surprisingly natural.

I don't have much more else to say about these, if you have any questions just leave a comment!

Into the beginning cold - Okita & Chizuru photoshoot

Hi guys!

As I mentioned on the Kemi's manga day summary post after the event Sairu-chan came over to my place and we had a fabulous gaming night! What we also had was a cosplay photoshoot on the next morning. I'll tell you shortly about it but it's not like there's that much to tell so, err. Oh well, originally we had planned to do a photoshoot with me as rasetsu! Hijikata, Sairu-chan as normal Chizuru and Hasakitsuki as oni!Chizuru. Then again, what we didn't realize until Sunday morning (aka photoshoot day, 6th October) was that.. well.. my swords broke after Tracon and I haven't got new ones yet and rasetsu!Hijikata -or hell, even normal Hijikata- just doesn't work that well without swords. Fuck. :)
Needless to say we put our three morning-braindead heads together and after some brainstorming I had these cosplay options: 1) SSL!Hijikata 2) artbook!Saitou 3) Kondou, and lastly 4) Okita in that yukata he wears in bed/while sick. I ended up thinking that Okita would be the best candidate for this because c'mon, lack of swords and Okita is the best. <3 Oh well, we rolled with that decision and changed into our cosplays on the morning. I must say while dressing I totally remembered why I wanted to remake this version of Okita because seriously, I made it in a rush like 3 days before the con and it shows; I screwed up while cutting so there's seams where there shouldn't be any, I cut the lining too short (I wonder why I even lined it in the first place.. c'mon it's a yukata..) and the thing that bugs me the most is that it is too damn short!! Again, cutting mistake. Oh, and need I mention that this thing likes to go everywhere all the time? It's like wrestling with a dragon when you try to keep it in place - it's just, nope.

Except the fact that this yukata is pure troll and pure crap I managed to wear it sort-of-without-flashing-my-legs-all-the-time. I can deal with wearing it once more so that I could at least get some better photos of this cosplay (don't really have any) and possibly just for a last wear before I make a new one and very likely blood down this one because really, I don't care about staining it and could get some cool pictures when that time comes! But now I'm getting way ahead so let's get back to what this post was to be about - cosplay photoshoot!

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (Souji Okita), Hasakitsuki (Chizuru Yukimura) 
Photographer: Sairu-chan

Before someone tells me, yes, my foot is still wrapped in bandages, it hasn't fully healed yet. Can't really do much about it for now so let's just deal with it discreetly photobombing. Oh, and double yes, I'm barefoot and yes, it was cold and my feet turned purple-ish at some point.

My personal favorite of the shoot ;w; <3

We did have a change of photographer and thus a Chizuru swap but I'll let Sairu-chan post those photos on which she is with me. First I need to send them to her though.. whoops haven't had time to check all the pics yet.
The photoshoot was fun but we didn't shoot really long because it wasn't the warmest weather and well, when a worried Chizuru -or two- tells Okita to get inside before he gets sick one does not simply refuse.. and it's not like I want to get badly sick again now when the winter is coming.. especially not a second lung sickness, it was horrible enough a few years ago so no thanks, I'd rather not have another not-far-from-death experience. ;_; 

There's not really so much more to say - I want to have more home cosplay photoshoots with friends from now on, Sairu-chan you need to come and sleep over more often! >8D The more the merrier!

But.. before you go I have exactly one bonus picture to share!

I DON'T KNOWWWWWWWWW

I'm out!

Kemi's manga day 2013 - Hakuouki: Sweet School Derp

On 5th October I attended Kemin mangapäivä (Kemi's manga day), a local small 8-hour event. As far as I can remember the past years it has been only 4 hours but seemingly this year they decided to add another 4 hours, booyah! 

So me and Hasakitsuki had my mom drive us to Kemi on the morning and we arrived a little past the opening time (10:00 Finnish time) and just when we stepped out of the car a wild Sairu-chan appears! She cosplayed SSL!Chizuru and with her came Cissydella who cosplayed SSL!Harada. So we chatted a short while and then headed inside and soon enough I noticed that -at least in my eyes- it seemed like there were less people around compared to earlier years. Then again it was rather early so I assumed more people would show up later... it didn't. We just hung around for a while, checked the con merchandise and went to sit in the library (yes, there's one in the con building) to wait for our Shinpachi to arrive. How else to kill time than to geek Monster Hunter on PSP?

When our Shinpachi Jennysja showed up we decided to go outside to photoshoot. Noh.. ei siitä tullut helvettiäkään. :-DD So yeah, needless to say every picture was something of this caliber:

Basically always someone (or everyone) cracking up left and right xD

It didn't help that it was windy and that a random old man in a car drove by and stared with these huge eyes - that was enough to completely kill my pokerface for the rest of the photoshoot. Durr.

Oh well, we figured it was better to move inside and photoshoot and so we headed for the library again. We took some books and went to sit at the round table and.. well, the quality of the photos didn't turn out much better. lol At least not everything was utter and complete derp.

I love how that biking E.T. is discreetly photobombing.. xD

But then Hijikata noticed that Chizuru wasn't studying and took a closer look...

"What the hell is that supposed to be?"

It didn't take that long until the clock had turned 13:00 or something and we decided to go eat outside. Our journey took us to a nearby Chinese restaurant and we had some food.. and Harada had fun photobombing.

After eating a shitlot of food and having everyone wait for me we headed back for the con building and -surprise surprise- back into the library again. This time it was only me, Hasakitsuki and Sairu-chan. We tried our hands on a follow-up photoshoot...

... but it quickly escalated when Harada appeared and decided that it is way more

FUN

TO

PHOTOBOMB!!!

Yeaaaaah... no comment.

Oh well, we kind of split up after this and at some point I (and later Hasakitsuki) got bored and went to watch people playing those dance mat game things. It was surprisingly entertaining but while I was watching -and waiting for Sairu-chan's mom to come pick us up and drive home- Hasakitsuki decided to have a quick sort-of-photoshoot.

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (Toshizo Hijikata)
Photographer: Hasakitsuki

That's about all we did. We left one or two hours before closing time because there wasn't really anything to do. Sairu-chan's mom drove us three back to our apartment and of course Sairu-chan stayed to sleep over the Saturday-Sunday night so yeah, we totally had a follow-up party gaming night! 8D We also had a cosplay photoshoot on the morning of 6th October but I'll post about it when I'm done checking through the photos soooooooo, until then... smell ya!

PS.

I know you want them! Bonus derps! Like there wasn't enough already lol

I can has moustache

SMURFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFS

SSL!Hijikata preview

Today I did a very quick Sweet School Life version Hijikata preview just to check that everything looked, well, sort-of-okay.. at least. I couldn't be bothered doing any proper cosplay make-up, except for filling in my eyebrows and some rather sloppy eyeliner and I didn't find some of my stuff at first. So yeah, I'm gonna look something like this next Saturday at Kemin mangapäivä (Kemi's manga day)!

Excuse the mess in the background..
(photo by Hasakitsuki)

Oh, I couldn't be bothered to put on violet contact lenses so I just edited my eye color on this one. Of course I will wear the contacts at the event. Nothing else to say, see you there!

Kemi's manga day 2013 - cosplay plans!

The next anime event I will be going to is Kemi's manga day; it's held on 5th October so there's a little more than one week left. It's an 8 hour event in Kemi duh in Finland.
I decided who to cosplay there already pretty long ago so why keep it a secret well, some people know already any longer?

Toshizo Hijikata (Sweet School Life version) from Hakuouki

Yup, basically I'm being lazy. :'DD I don't feel like donning a cosplay that takes time to put on for such a small event - aka no kimono-time this time. So yeah, SSL!Hijikata to the rescue! Being lazy is not the only reason I do this version over the kimono version though; truth is, I can't even do half my cosplays right now -because my sword broke after Tracon- but I'll do a post about that some other day... Luckily I already have everything for this version, except for the violet tie but I found one at eBay so it should arrive any day now. Gonna do a cosplay preview when it gets here.
As far as I know at least Sairu-chan will cosplay SSL!Chizuru and she said something that there might be a few other SSL Hakuouki cosplayers running around; we might have a cosplay group, yes!

Not so much more to say. My con season for this year is drawing to an end; after Kemi's manga day Chibicon in Oulu might very well be the last convention I will be seen at 2013. But before I start thinking such depressing thoughts I need to remember that Kemi's manga day is still ahead! Forward we go!

Masamune arm guards pt.2

I guess no one remembers how I back in April this year started working on Masamune's arm guards? Feels like so long time ago, heh. But hey, guess what? Today on 22 September I finally finished them! .. or well, sort of.

Needless to say I went to mom's place today and started painting!

This is where I stopped last time and thus started with today

And of course I need dem references:

Reference picture

Now I checked several references of Masamune and noticed that the patterns on his arm guards change on pretty much every picture; sometimes they were these softer "waves" and sometimes more like jagged lighting bolts. I decided to go with the more wavy approach. Oh, and I just free-hand painted all the designs instead of doing exactly like they were on a specific picture.

I used a metallic gold colored paint. When I started painting it didn't look like it would turn out good.. but luckily when the paint dried it went from crappy looking to pretty fabulous. Yes!

Painting in progress ~
You can see here that parts of it has started to dry and turn goldish and shiny

And here's some more painting progress pictures!

To the left is a sort-of-dry guard and on the right an unfinished one

The painting mission didn't take very long and they dried surprisingly quick too. This is what all pieces looked like after I had added the golden "waves" to them:

I let them dry for a while more -just to be on the safe side- and a little bit later I figured I could paint the undersides black so that, eh, if anyone would catch a glimpse of them when I'm wearing this cosplay at least the color would be black. Not so much more to do than grab the black paint can (it's actually paint for walls but who cares, still paint!) and start painting! One, two, three, go!

The piece closer to the paint can has been painted and the one farther away is still its original color - dark blue

I finished painting all undersides black and left them to dry at mom's place; I had to go back home to my own apartment at some point ya know. They will be dry the next time I go there and with that the arm guards should be finished unless something crappy happens. You won't get any try-them-on pictures now because I don't have any (and it's hard to put them on alone, yes, I tried) but you'll get to see them worn whenever I do either a second "this is what I have so far!" post or at the very least when I do the cosplay preview or a test-run photoshoot or something.

Bye ~