Vancouver is one of my favourite cities in Canada, and I love being greeted by the beautiful mountains every time I visit. I haven’t been to Vancouver since last spring so when the opportunity arose this month I made plans with some of the Vancouver-based doll collectors to meet up! The weather was completely wonky! There was hail, snow and rain showers all within a few hours – so we stayed indoors and enjoyed a lovely brunch & afternoon tea at the Urban Tea Merchant.
Here are most the lovely girls that came along with their owners, gathered at the head of the table!
My sister and I are London, England right now, and luckily for us, our visit coincided with a get-together of the Pygmalion Society! They are the local doll collectors who meet up on the last Sunday of every month, usually organized through the Den of Angel forum. I’ve been hoping for almost a year to be able to attend one of these meets so I was very excited that my schedule allowed me to attend! I would have loved to bring a resin girl with me, but I was travelling light so I opted to bring a couple of DD girls since they are easier to transport.
I went to visit whitefrosty and her friend KTCY today because I had a few things to pick up from a group order she placed for me a few weeks ago. Since KTCY ordered a Crobidoll B-Line doll for herself I was quite surprised how quickly the whole shipment took to arrive! I think I’ve heard too many horror stories about Soom dolls taking up to 6 months to arrives >__>”
This was the first time I’ve brought any of my resin dolls out with me, but whitefrosty really loves Alisanne so I decided I’d bring her along. I was really nervous so I took a lot of care in packing her up: I wrapped her hands in bubble wrap, put on her face-guard and put her in her pillow from Volks before putting her into my Volks doll carrier bag. There was still room, so Gabrielle jumped in too!
Here’s whitefrosty’s Kaede, KTCY’s B-Line Yuri, named Tatsuya, Alisanne and Gabrielle.
Happy New Year everyone! This past year has been an amazing one, for certain. For one thing, I started collecting Dollfie Dreams and resin BJD’s! I’ve made lots of wonderful new friends all over the world that are also interested in this hobby, and had the opportunity to meet some of these wonderful people in person!
I’ve been working nonstop this holiday season, and haven’t had time to prepare something for New Years, so here is a previously unpublished photo of Mélisande at Senso-ji Temple in Tokyo. I wish all of you all the best for 2012 and may it be even better than 2011! ♥
To all the wonderful friends that I’ve made this year after starting to collect resin BJD’s and Dollfie Dreams, I want to wish you all a very wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Yule and Winter Solstice, and the best wishes that 2012 will be filled with health, prosperity and more beautiful dolls!
This past Sunday I had the chance to meetup with some BJD owners from my own stomping grounds – Toronto. It’s a rare occasion that I’m not working on a weekend so when this opportunity popped up I braved the rain and took Moe-chan and little Médée out to meet some new friends. (Dreaming El Jareth belonging to Sugar Kat (from the GTA Dolls forum), and next to him are Loki’s Mom’s OceanMoon Eun-Ryoung (in blue striped shirt) , Liliana; the second little one (in the lilac dragon hat) is a LittleFee Shiwoo, Bran; and the one on the right is a Blue Fairy Tiny Fairy Xiao, Laika)
We met up at the Village by the Grange in downtown Toronto, which has a food court area with lots of seating and there’s an area with a glass ceiling so there’s natural light which helped with taking pictures. It was funny because as a few people came back with food, then let their dolls chill out on the table and ate their food on a ledge in the corner because they didn’t want to risk getting their dolls dirty. Oh, we’re a funny bunch! Continue reading →
I adopted a Yukino v. 2 doll while I was in Tokyo last weekend at the Dollfie Dream Gathering (which I blogged about here) and she’s settled in at home with her new sisters already, but I wanted to share some photos of her at the Volks Akihabara showroom. I brought some little things like stockings, shoes, a wig and Water Wax with me since I didn’t want her to be in her little white nightie and it was a great opportunity to show off the new Stylish Tartan Set that was released last weekend. I’ve named my new girl Mélisande d’Archangeli, but I’ll probably call her Mel or Melissa for short.
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!).
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.
This weekend Moe came along with me to London, England and we met up with fellow Dollfie Dream owners Dark Dollhouse, GabrielVH, Jezatron and fransgaard for lunch.
I was quite concerned about how to pack her compactly and safely into my carry-on luggage but I shouldn’t have been worried at all. The best way for a Dollfie Dream to travel is in First Class! ^__~”
After getting off the plane and traveling to our hotel in London, Moe was nice and fresh – but that didn’t stop her from claiming the bed all to herself!
Moe got very excited when she spotted a double-decker red bus on the street! It’s one of those sure signs that you really are in London.
Moe got to ride on one of those buses, but she was safely packed away in my bag for transit so no pictures of that journey. However, we did take a short stop at Picadilly Circus to take a photo of the Eros Statue.
Kev and I have been waiting around today since Canada Post’s website shows that our new DD daughter has gone through customs and is in their hands now – but it’s now past 7pm and she hasn’t shown up so I guess she’ll be arriving tomorrow. Boo.
The mailman did deliver a box today while I was out, but as Saber Lily’s expression shows, it’s certainly not a DD and I didn’t remember what it was that I had ordered.
Saber Lily: “Maybe it’s clothes?”
Possibly… Let’s look and see.
Upon opening the box, Saber Lily was just as confused since there are some miniature belts, some hairclips and a bunch few packages wrapped in foam. Nothing looks remotely like a doll or new clothes.
After taking everything out and unwrapping things she discovers a vinyl makeup bag with a cushioned pouch inside. And suddenly out pops a little kitty cat!
Saber Lily: “Oooh! Mom, you adopted a pet kitty for us! Can I call him Suki?”
Hmm… Suki sounds too much like “Sookie” from True Blood.
Saber Lily: “That’s true. How about Snuggles then?”
Sure Saber. He looks like a “snuggles” doesn’t he? Hehe.
Snuggles is actually a resin doll from Korean brand Hujoo. He’s fully articulated and strung up inside with elastics like a resin BJD doll. I also ordered a pair of green eyes for him, but I think changing them will be an interesting challenge so these pretty baby blues will be staying for a while! Snuggles is a Hujoo “Dorothy” Siamese cat. I’m actually very impressed with them – I ordered him 15 days ago and was told it’s take 30 days for him to arrive, but he only took half that!
Snuggles and Saber Lily immediately take a liking to one another.
At least waiting around for the mailman today ended up being productive!
—–
And finally, I got a couple of comments on my Flickr yesterday after I posted the photo of the Goody mini spin pins so I made a quick tutorial video showing how I use them. I hope it’s helpful! 😀
I took a moment to re-dress my girls last night in anticipation of a box opening that will be happening soon. Yes, that’s right I’ll be welcoming home another daughter in the next few days. She’s already in transit but every time I check her tracking number it says she’s still “enroute to Canada” so I just have to wait it out. Have I mentioned that I’m horribly impatient?! This is why I give myself little “make-work” projects to keep me occupied or else I go bonkers.
So last night I re-dressed Airy and Alisanne in a black & white scheme. Airy is wearing pieces from the Volks Gothic Striped Jacket set again but I really like that set. The corset top is pinned at the back because it’s much too big for her M-bust but it still looks very good.
Alisanne is wearing a SD13-sized dress from Nine9style that I wasn’t sure would fit her SD16 body but with a bit of careful maneuvering over her shoulders I got it on her! It actually fits her quite nicely since the shoulder straps are adjustable. You can’t see the bottom but I have black leggings on her lower half and some strappy black sandals. I ordered a huge batch of stuff from Nine9style last month and I’m really impressed with the quality of their stuff. Kev had one of our DD girls wearing a black cotton t-shirt for 3 days and it didn’t stain (thank goodness!) although I’ve taken most of their red “Nine*style” labesl out from the insides just to be safe. The long-sleeved cotton shirt stained quite badly though – it left dye stains just from being put on.
For their clothes, I bought everything in SD13 size and it fits my DD girls quite well. Obviously it fits the larger busts a bit better since they have a bit more to “fill out” the tops. The t-shirts are a bit loose around the waist so I sometimes pin them at the back to get a better fit, or tuck them into a skirt. Their flat shoes are a little bit big on DD bare feet, although wearing stockings helps, but I adore their little ankle bootees!
Hopefully I’ll get around to taking more pics of my Nine9Style goodies soon!
My sister recently completed a Volks old resin kit called Miisha for me. It was first released in 2001 and after a bit of searching I was able to acquire one that had never been opened! It was quite a labour of love to assemble her and was much more work than we originally anticipated! She did an amazing job, and when she brought the doll over today all my girls came out to greet her.
If you’d like to read about how she was put together, check out my sister’s blog about it here. It’s really very interesting to read her observations about old resin vs new resin.
My girls are Saber Lily (Dollfie Dream, Alisanne (Volks SD16 Daria), Airy (Dollfie Dream) and Makoto (custom Dollfie Dream) and the little one is Delilah (my sister’s DollnDoll ♥ Mo).
The box has aged quite a bit over time, but all of her paperwork was still sealed in the plastic when I got her! Machiko had to open it up to read the manual since there were some very strange bits and pieces in this kit that she’d never encountered before with her 2008 and 2010 Volks MSD kits.
Face-up and face guard! I didn’t really like the default grey eyes that Miisha comes with so I ordered these, but I think they look a bit bug-eyed. We’ll see what I can do about it later. Notice she doesn’t have ears? There’s something special about this head mold ^__~”
She has wing-ears!
Here she is all dressed up out of the box now.
I’ve decided to call her Yukiko (雪子) which means “child of snow” to match her angelic nature.
Here she is with Airy in matching outfits. They look like lovely nymphs or faeries!
The postman came to the door with a couple of boxes for me today! Since Makoto doesn’t need to sleep, she was awake when my boxes arrived early this morning! She’s very curious as to what I’ve bought.
Ta-da! It’s a new Dollfie Dream Airy figure by Volks.
Makoto quickly rouses Saber and Alisanne to come greet our new family member.
Here’s Airy fresh out of the box. Makoto lends her a Gloomy Bear to cover herself up with.
(Notice Angry Bunny supervising?! He doesn’t like naked pictures of his girlies online!) LOL
Here’s all of Airy’s accessories that came with her:
Saber is thinking that she came with infinitely more stuff!
Here’s Airy all dressed up in her outfit. She looks so sweet, but those eyes are super creepy and simply HAVE to go!
After a bit of work I was able to get her eyes out.
The softer vinyl made it much easier to remove her headcap and also to get the glue and eyes out in one piece by carefully squeezing the head and pressure from a metal cuticle pusher.
Here are some pictures of various eyes while I was trying to decide which would suit Airy best.
In the end I chose the Volks Animetic eyes F Type in Bright Blue (RURI)eyes.
I think they really suit her. They still maintain the integrity of her character but don’t have that creepy emtpy look to them!
I invited whitefrosty and Machiko over to my house for a little doll party. Since I was busy hosting I didn’t get a chance to take many photos, so most of these are gacked from whitefrosty’s blog. Here are a few of the dolls: my Saber Lily, my sister’s dolls Zephyria, Ventus and Delilah, and whitefrosty’s Myles.
Photo credit: whitefrosty
Here are Ventus, Delilah and Myles – the blondes!~ hehe!
Photo credit: Machiko
Here’s Alisanne watching over the whole affair. While she wasn’t looking someone put bunny ears on her! LOL
Photo credit: whitefrosty
And notice something?! She’s got both shoes from her default outfit now! Hurray!
Photo credit: whitefrosty
And here’s Myles and Delilah rocking out in their Volks ducky suits! I could die from the cuteness!
I baked a batch of lemon scones so that we could have afternoon tea. I had Devon Cream in my fridge but didn’t have any jam, so we had to make due with creamed honey! Tasty, but not quite the same…
archangeli 