Shopping for Doll Goods in Hong Kong

Posted on September 28, 2011 by archangeli

I was in Hong Kong over the weekend and took advantage of the visit (and the good weather!!) to check out a couple of doll shops that I’ve been itching to visit for almost a year: namely Dollfie World, Doll Hearts and JR Toys. All of them are located very close to each other in the Mong Kok area of Kowloon, Hong Kong and the purpose of this post is to give you very simple, idiot-proof directions especially if you’ve never been to Hong Kong. Most of the places I’ll mention open later in the afternoon and stay open until around 10pm at night so you can do other things during the day and come here afterwards.

If you’ve never been to Hong Kong before, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the sights, sounds, smells (good and bad…) and huge crowds of people everywhere. I still get a bit overloaded every time I’m there but it’s a very easy city to get around in due to the excellent transit system (the MTR) and 90% of the signs have English on them since Hong Kong was a British colony up until very recently. Space is limited everywhere so as a result there are many tall skyscrapers, very close together. To break it down very simply, you have Hong Kong Island at the south, the mainland part which is Kowloon and north of that you’ll be in China. This is a portion of the skyline of Hong Kong Island as viewed from the harbour area of Kowloon – you can see the Hong Kong Convention Centre which was modeled in the shape of a pigeon or seagull or some other bird…

To get to Mong Kok, get onto the MTR subway system and direct yourself on to the Kwun Tong Line (green line) or the Tsuen Wan Line (red line). You can buy tickets from the machine or if you’re going to be there for several days get yourself an Octopus Card. An Octopus is the electronic pass that is used on buses, subways, many stores and restaurants and credit is automatically deducted when you tap your card on the Octopus reader. It’s just really convenient because you’re not always rummaging for small change or lining up at machines to buy tickets. Anyone who’s been to London should be familiar with this system since they have the Oyster card for their Underground system (but it’s not as well integrated into the city as HK’s Octopus in terms of being able to use it at so many stores!).

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Fashion Friday with Saber Lily

Posted on September 23, 2011 by archangeli

It’s a bit of a gloomy, rainy day today so I couldn’t take my girls out for a nice outdoor shoot, but that didn’t stop me from taking some lovely pictures of a few of the girls in their new clothes from Nine9style – a Korean company that makes doll clothes and accessories. I really like the casual doll clothing that Nine9style makes and most of the items that they make for SD13 dolls fit Dollfie Dreams very nicely. The pieces come with red labels inside that I’ve carefully cut out because they look like they’d stain my dolls.

Here’s Saber Lily showing off the “Mink Ball Knitwear & One-Piece” outfit. It comes with a long caminsole-stype dress with tulle on the bottom, this cute knitted sweater and a little black puff brooch. The shoulder straps on the dress are not adjustable, but it fits the L-bust very nicely. I’ve had this outfit on Lily for 3 days and there’s been no sign of staining.

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Chibi-Aerie’s Food and Fun in London

Posted on September 20, 2011 by archangeli

This weekend I had another awesome meetup with DarkDollhouse, fransgaard, GabrielVH and Jezatron in London, England. This time I brought my new MDD with me, but since Medée’s head isn’t completed yet, I chibi-fied Aerie (Airy) and brought her instead!

I did a lot during the day that I want to share before I get to the meetup. First off, since the MDD body is so small, it didn’t make sense for me to lug around a big pillow-carry case (like the one my Volks SD16 came in) so I wrapped Chibi-Aerie up in a large sheet of bubble wrap, then in a t-shirt and tucked her lengthwise into my carry-on suitcase. She fits almost perfectly – I only had to bed her knees a little bit. Chibi-Aerie heard stories about her sister Moe’s trip to London so she was really excited to go herself too!

Chibi-Aerie also travelled in Executive First Class, and she got settled in right away and tried out the lay-flat bed in the pod-like seat.

But as soon as it got dark she couldn’t sleep anymore so as a special treat I let her visit the cockpit to meet the pilots. They were very curious to meet her and the First Officer was quite amused by her. Not many people get to see the inside of a cockpit nowadays so Chibi-Aerie was very lucky to get this special visit. There are so many dials and buttons! Be careful not to press anything Chibi-Aerie!

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Chibi-Moe meets her cousins!

Posted on September 10, 2011 by archangeli

I was heading over to my sister’s place yesterday so I took Medée and Moe (head only) with me. I left the blank head with my sister so that she can do a face-up for Medée so Moe got to wear the MDD body and be chibi-fied LOL

I forgot my camera, so these were taken with my rather craptastic iPhone (I can’t wait to upgrade to a new one), so I apologize in advance! >__<”

Here’s Medée meeting her cousin Zephyria. She brought over one of her spare Hello Kitty plushies as a gift for her cousin.

medee

One of the things I was curious about was to see how well MSD and MDD (Mini Super Dollfie and Mini Dollfie Dream) outfits can be interchanged since the Volks website has them listed as such, but there are bound to be some differences. So Medée and Zephy swapped outfits and the results were interesting. The MSD has somewhat broader shoulders and waist so it fits a bit snugly in the MDD outfit, and as a result the MSD dress is loose on the MDD. I also noted that since MDD’s have thinner ankles most of Zephy’s shoes didn’t look right on Medée, even though when I compared their feet they are roughly the same size. It was quite peculiar!

And then they had some fun dressing up in Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma pajamas! Aren’t they cute?! (Hmm, Zephy was a little short so I had her stand on a box! LOL)

And then the yellow birds came out to join them!

Later on Zephyria borrowed some stuff from Ventus’ wardrobe and dressed up as a dandy. Here they both are looking very spiffy! Ventus is wearing his Ciel Phantomhive cosplay made by Machiko.

Here’s Makoto finally meeting Moe! They look so cute. Unfortunately Makoto will be staying with auntie Machiko for a bit longer so she didn’t come home yet.

My friend’s Abio Angel doll, Kaiyouko (Kioko?), was also visiting, but she’s undergoing a new faceup at the moment so I didn’t take photos of her.

If anyone is curious about the bear PJ’s, you can contact my sister through her blog. I know she had some for sale on etsy before, but I think she sold out out of her pre-made ones at Anime North.

My first Mini Dollfie Dream: Médée

Posted on September 7, 2011 by archangeli

I recently bought a Mini Dollfie Dream of the marketplace on Den of Angels and she arrived yesterday. I opened her up to check that everything was ok and then she immediately went into dolly surgery ^__~” She came with some minor staining on her legs – nothing too bad, but a bit of a nuisance. Since I was planning on removing the vinyl calves off of her plastic skeleton I took the time to install kips into her knees since I’ve heard that MDD knee joints are weak, sometimes loose and the dolls can’t stand on their own very well. I did take photos of this process so I’ll do a mini tutorial at some point but it was very simple. Kips are little silicone discs that are usually used in the joints of resin BJD’s to add friction and improve posing. Just handling her, her body is more “floppy” than my large Dollfie Dreams but her arms have a better range of posability.

After the kip instanllation, I slathered her thighs, calves and feet with Remove-Zit, a very powerful stain removal product designed for vinyl dolls. It stinks to high heaven but it works. After an overnight application the stains on her legs are reduced about 70% – which tells me they were quite superficial to begin with. I’ll need to do at least 1, possibly 2 more treatments to remove all the stains and then she’ll be as good as new. It’s a good thing I have a spare bedroom to leave her in because the stuff really stinks! >__<”

Also, she was sent to me with blank HDD-01 head so I’m going to take her over to Machiko’s later this week so that she can give my new doll a faceup. I had Kev cut notches into her headcap so that it’s easier to remove and put back on since the original DD vinyl is very stiff – not like the new squishy heads that Airy and Moe v.2 have. I had a pair of stray 20mm animetic eyes laying about so I put them in, and they suit her.

I think I’ll call her Médée (pronoucned “meh-DAY”) – a cute little name for a cute little girl. Here’s a quick photo of her hanging around with Bubba – she’s about the same height as him! ^__^” I’ll do a formal welcoming for her when she’s done with all her surgical procedures.