Gothic & Lolita Bible Volume 40

The 40th volume of Gothic & Lolita Bible hit jmagazinescans just the other day, it's really hard to believe that there have been 40 volumes of this out so far! In general this issue, like always, was filled with tons of gorgeous eye candy. The summer theme was evident in the vast amounts of flowers and pale, muted tones. My prediction about the Bibles (and thus Lolita in general) leaning more towards the Classic end of the spectrum, and leaving OTT behind, was apparently correct, because this volume is filled to the brim with Classic Lolita coordinates and toned down Sweet Lolitas. Maybe it's the summer heat, but even the Angelic Pretty ads passed up the opportunity to deck them selves out in accessories and extra petticoats.

The one thing that this volume seemed to be lacking was, believe it or not, patterns! I looked through it three times but I couldn't find any patterns in the whole thing! I think the patterns were replaced with a little mini-booklet of different ways to style wigs, which is hardly a compensation. I prefer patterns I can't read and craft tutorials I probably won't try out a million times over "How to make a braid" or "How to clip ponytail falls onto your wig" tutorials.

Check out some of my favorite pages from the 40th Gothic & Lolita Bible! Click to get a larger version.

While this issue was filled with gorgeous outfits, and I am happy to see a return to the art-based covers, this volume felt a little empty. Maybe it was the lack of the patterns and tutorials, which has always been a staple of the Bibles, but maybe it was missing something I just didn't pick up on? Looking back, I can't recall seeing any multi-page editorials about something cute like flowers, art, tea or something like that. Not that I can read them, but they still feel like they give the volumes some sort of substance. This volume was pretty much 100% clothes and coordinates. I'm certainly not complaining! I was very pleased and inspired by a lot of the coordinates in here, but I still felt like "That's it?" when I got to the end. If you want to pick up your own scans of the magazine (because you don't have a single local place that sells the Bibles, right!? You know you should be buying them if you can find them!) you can check out the Jmagazinescans community!

I'm doing a bit of blog housekeeping at the moment! Just straightening stuff up and doing some layout rearranging. I'm still trying to find a way of tackling the tags, a tag cloud is just so ugly, and the list just takes up too much room. I am thinking about streamlining the ones that are listed onto the side into a few very basic groups, all the tags will still be there, and accessible in individual posts (and maybe in a drop down box too), but a visitor to the blog wont need to sort through a sea of tags to find all the how-to posts, or all the lifestyle ones, or the ones labeled "inspirational" or one of the other big tags. What do you think? Is the tag cloud just fine the way it is? Or do you think things need to be a little bit more at-a-glance?

I also added a "Weekly Lolita Prompt" box on the sidebar! I plan on changing it every week with something cute and Lolita related to do, whether it's tutorials, a cute new trend, a Lolita related quote, or some sort of frivolous activity for you to do to add a bit more Lolita in your life. Once I get the second one up, I plan on having a separate page to list all the previous weeks prompts, just in case you miss one. It's just a little something extra I've been thinking about doing for a while!