Akira just turned 8! EIGHT!!!! WOW. I still can’t get over it! She is still head over heels for all things animals!! For her birthday theme, she requested a Rainbow Unicorn MeeMeow!

She’s not really into frilly, girly things whatsoever; she’s more of a “can I move easily in it and is it cute” kind of kid! So, when I asked her what she wanted her birthday dress to look like, I got a 😶response😂. I rephrased it and asked if she’d rather have a sweater and leggings and she got really animated! She said she wanted a MeeMeow theme, but a unicorn MeeMeow, and it had to be rainbow!

I went to my own, tried-a-zillon-times-and-true sweater pattern, the Touka Sweater PDF as a starting point. And since it wasn’t going to have a ton of technical details, I thought it would be best to make the graphic for the fabric as cute as possible! I designed it so that when her arms are down, it makes a (sorta) rainbow, spaning from arm to arm! The background is a day-to-night scene, gradiating from light aqua at the bottom to a midnight indigo/violet at the top. I made a pattern of glowing stars of various sizes, scattered all over the top. And I made the unicorn a cloud unicorn, so as to better incorporate the rainbowness of it all! I added a bunch of eye shines to it because she is a sucker for super shiny eyes and always draws them that way! I also added animal clouds with lots of funny faces, making sure the elephant cloud was present right up front!

My favorite one is the o_O face on the right sleeve! Oh! And I added little, pink, paw pads on the back, reminiscent of these super stinking cute ones I did back in 2017! On the back of the unicorn I wanted to add her name but I didn’t want it to be super obvious so I used the Kanja for “Akira” (which I know as “ming” from Mandarin).

I was just sponsored the month before for PR&P’s Pantone Color Party by Raspberry Creek Fabrics and I noticed that they also had a minky fabric! So this time I chose to buy some custom yardage from them for this project!!

I figured her pants should be super flashy and fun, so I pulled inspiration from these pants Taemin wore for one of SHINee’s concerts. I used silver iridescent stretch vinyl and a matte black stretch vinyl from Joann Fabrics. To make the striping, I used this thermal lunchbox material for the silver and sandwiched it between two rows of fluorescent yellow trim to emulate the neon zipper he has down both sides of his pants.

Originally I was just going to do an elastic casing at the hem, but the hem seemed a tad too high so I used the selvedge of the fabric to make a hem band instead!!

We did this photoshoot after a day at OMSI, the science museum, and the Oregon Zoo, which are her two favorite places to visit! I decided not to take pictures at either of those places because I just wanted to let her enjoy her time thoroughly. Afterwards, we went to one of my favorite photo locations, near my old job at Hair of the Dog on Water Ave. Honestly, Portland is never shy on intensely amazing murals, and these ones by Calm + Flash are so good. Like I said last time, I spot out their work and my ult favorite: Rather Severe all over the city, jot down the location and visit it later on!

We found this wall that had Heat Miser and Snow Miser (from one of Jon’s favorite Christmas movies) and knew this had to be the location! It made for such a fun and colorful backdrop which was perfect for her super festive birthday outfit! I only wish I would have brought better shoes, but it was raining that day🥲.