Hosting ILD, Beamish (again), & a Summer Solstice Picnic ∣ Coords

 

This is long overdue but here's the rest of my June coords:

Headdress - RR Memorandum

Wig - Maple

Blouse - Cornet

Jumperskirt - Baby the Stars shine Bright

Socks - Baby the Stars shine Bright

Shoes - Demonia (customised)

Bags - Vintage

Parasol - Baby the Stars Shine Bright

The 1st of June was summer International Lolita Day, a holiday created by the EGL LiveJournal community to celebrate wearing the fashion twice a year (once in summer and once in winter). This year, I decided to host a meet up for my comm. I booked afternoon tea somewhere fancy and thought it would be cute to make little goodie bags and activity books for those attending.

For my coord I wanted to wear something special, and since I'd recently acquired yet another long standing dream piece (seriously, 2023 & 2024 are the years of acquiring pieces I've dreamed about for almost a decade!), I decided to wear that. Of course I paired it with my ringlet wig, and went for a pretty standard coord. My one improvement is I think I should've worn lighter lipstick, it was a bit dark for the coord.

Upon arriving, we got some coord photos and a quick group pic while we waited for our reservation time. Once at our table, I handed everyone their goodie bags and activity books. The idea for the goodie bags came when I found these adorable carousel boxes on aliexpress, they're just so cute! I ended up finishing the activity books late the night before, as I had to print then draw on the print outs, and then scan and print again before cutting, folding and stapling. Inside I put together a lolita themed crossword, and a design your own coord game where everyone picked 3 words from a "hat" and had to draw a coord based on that. There was also some drawings if people just wanted to colour. 

If you're interested in having a copy of the activity book, let me know and I'll see if I can make a downloadable file which I'll link here.

Soon enough our food arrived. Those without dietary restrictions had 2 to a stand which were really cute and matched the plates and cups, while Helena and I got an individual one each. These particular afternoon teas were fairly pricey, but it showed in the quality of the food as everything was delicious. 

Before the food arrived we got menus telling us what we'd be eating. The vegan afternoon tea consisted of: Coronation cauliflower, cucumber & chive cream cheese, red pepper & hummus, and beetroot & avocado finger sandwiches, a 'cheese' scone with butter and a sour cherry & orange scone with jam & 'cream', and a lemon & poppyseed cake, blueberry & mint layer cake, coconut lime & mango cheesecake, and strawberry frangipane. It's rare I like everything in an afternoon tea but this time I really did. The cheese scone was even warm which was lovely! We also got to choose what tea we'd be having with our afternoon teas. I ended up taking some of the cakes home in a box.

After a few hours of enjoying our afternoon teas and activity books, our reservation slot was up so we went for a nice walk in the surrounding park. The weather was perfect for the day! Minty and I took turns taking some candid photos, unfortunately my tote bag slightly ruins the ~aesthetique~, but in my defence it's my RRM event tote!

I also filmed the day on my camcorder:

Headdress - Metamorphose Temps de Fille

Wig - Maple

Blouse - Baby the Stars Shine Bright

Necklace - Jan Marple

Brooch - Vintage

Skirt - Metamorphose Temps de Fille

Socks - Metamorphose Temps de Fille

Shoes - An Tai Na 

Bag - Vintage

The very next day I had been invited to Beamish with a different group of friends, and so decided to go. I put together a coord using the Bouquet skirt I had bought a while ago from Amanda (MandaTheStarsShineBright). I went for cream/beige/ivory accessories rather than white.

This time instead of hanging around 1900s town the whole time, we went to Pockerly, the Regency era house & landscape. For whatever reason I haven't been beyond the garden, so it was nice to walk through the landscape and up to the train, where we got to take a ride in it~

After that, we got some ice cream, and headed over to the 1950s pit village where we saw many many lambs and looked around the pits! But we missed the last chance to go down the mine. 

Then in mid June I spent a long weekend in Manchester for The Queen Is Dead, which you can read all about here~

At the end of the month my comm had a summer solstice picnic. Helena had bought a bell tent and barbeque grill so our picnicking experience was going to have an upgrade! I had been wanting to wear my AP strawberry OP in a summery coord, so thought this would be a good time to do it. I paired it with my strawberry OTKs and a straw bag I'd recently gotten from the charity shop. I also wore my white An Ten Na shoes, but you'll never guess what happened to them (spoiler: they broke, so I had to wear brown Mary Janes instead).

Headdress - Innocent World
OP - Angelic Pretty
Necklace - Emily Temple Cute

Ring - Jane Marple

Earrings - Vivienne Westwood

Socks - Jane Marple

Shoes - An Ten Na

Bag - Vintage

Wristcuffs - Bodyline

Unfortunately for us it was boiling hot and super humid that day, but as the evening went on the weather became more comfortable and we had a lovely meet! We were going to make Pimms, but there was a mix up and nobody brought the actual Pimms so we ended up making Wimms, which is like Pimms but with cheap wine instead of the Pimms, and without any mint. Haters will say it's just Sangria, but they just don't get it. It was actually really good too!

 I didn't take many photos, but I did get this cute photo as the meet was ending~

Obviously I'm quite far behind on blog posts atm, I have several historical costume ones to write and obviously all of July to post too! I've just been so busy I haven't had actual time to upload stuff, edit and write blogs. But I'll try and catch up!