Plastic Fantastic and I hosted a panel at Doll North yesterday morning. This was our most well attended panel yet – both for humans and dollies!
Thank you everyone for coming out, participating and bringing your beautiful dolls!
If you weren’t able to attend, we recorded the panel! Turn the volume up and watch it in HD!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwV7yGoJLb8]
(Bah! WordPress isn’t formatting the embedded video so Click HERE to go to Youtube)
– ♥ Archangeli
A couple of years ago I attended the Hyper Japan Christmas event in London, England – and it just worked out that I was in town for the summer show this year! I met up with GabrielVH and MikeFoxtrot1985 at the venue to shop, eat, hang out and eat some more! Another friend that intended to come had asked me to wear a lolita dress, and it was a bit ambitious of me to bring a full lolita coordinate with me but I did it!
Here we are hanging out with Domo-kun at the NHK Japan booth.
Mike brought his lovely Mirai with him and she got lots of attention! We found this cute Arpakasso backpack for her at one of the vendor booths.
Gabe and I learned from how crowded it was last time and opted to not bring any dolls since it made shopping difficult @_@ I was quite pleasantly surprised that the hall they used this time had a lot more casual seating for guests to rest and relax. It was much more spacious and was properly air conditioned. This was one of the few days this summer that was nice and not, but I was practically melting in all my layers! After walking around we sat down in the food stalls area and I got some yakisoba noodles and takoyaki to snack on.
[This article was originally published by June 10, 2010 by d.ark, who sadly passed away in May 2012. I found this article extremely useful and am republishing it here so that others can benefit from her advice.]
Content of Dolpa for Dummies
Dolpa For Dummies
How to Get Your Dolpa Guide Book
To reserve a Bento Box or not to reserve a Bento Box
Getting to Big Sight
At Big Sight – Getting Into Those Queues
Queuing for Limiteds
Queuing for Sumika items
Doing the Dolpa
Lottery for One Offs and Limiteds
Getting your bingo plates and how to play
Dolpa, Done!
Feedback
I’m totally showing my age when I say that a decade ago I attended Anime Evolution in Vancouver, Canada. It was my first time attending a con outside of my hometown, and my sister and I had awesome time. We actually cosplayed at that convention, entered a cosplay competition and won an awesome award and gift pack! Fast forward 10 years: Anime Evolution doesn’t exist anymore, but this year there was Anime REVOLUTION! I happened to be in Vancouver on a layover last Friday, and woke up bright and early to check out the convention – alas, no room in my tiny carry-on suitcase to pack a cosplay! (… at least not for me! Hehehe! ^__~” )
AlphaZ had wanted to come along with me and meet some of my Vancouver doll collecting friends, but the flights to Vancouver filled up and he wasn’t able to come along T__T” Ah, the risks of traveling on stand-by. . . For this same reason, I didn’t pre=register for my convention pass just in case I ended up somewhere else. Sadly, he had the DSLR camera packed with him, so once we got separated I only had my iPhone to take photos >__<” It turns out that the badge purchase line was shorter than the pre-registration line @__@” I arrived around 9:30 am, and was already in the dealers room shortly after the convention opened at 10am! It was actually very quiet for the first 30 minutes while I was walking around so I was able to shop and look around without hoards of people everywhere! ^__^”
What caught my eye right away were a couple of itasha (cars covered in full decals) decorated with the Anime Revolution character mascot Senkaku-mei on them –
Earlier in August I attended Atomic Lollipop at the Japanese Cultural Center to help out with a mini version of Café Delish. It was nice to relax at a smaller convention and hang out with friends!
Instead of the full afternoon-tea style service that we have at Anime North, we offered three simple food combos at the convention – a traditional combo featuring tea-ceremony-grade matcha green tea and strawberry-red bean mochi, the Café Delish combo featuring Swiss roll cake and Tea-pop, and a special A-pop combo featuring an awesome rainbow cake and Sunrise Punch. Everything was delicious so it was just a matter of choosing what combo you were in the mood for!
Hi everyone! I caught a little cold right after Anime North (a.k.a. “post-con plague”), and have been super busy since so I apologize for this late convention write-up! Machiko and I arrived at the convention early Friday afternoon to pick up our badges, check into our hotel and move our luggage inside and that process took longer than we planned. We then went over to the convention center to visit Whitefrosty in the Crafter’s Corner, and Machiko set up a few little things to sell since they were sharing the table.
Afterward, I met up with Kevin and we walked across to the Crowne Plaza hotel to check out the Doll North events. It was awesome to see the marketplace area completely dedicated to dolls, as well as a room that was for panels, games, and workshop. PlasticFantastic and I presented a couple of panels on Dollfie Dreams and it was great to see some new faces, as well as a few familiar ones too! We had some audience members from as far away as Ottawa, Edmonton and Buffalo! Thank you to those of you that came to the panel! Here’s a lovely group shot of the lovely DD’s that were out for the evening!
Meo brought his beautiful Sasara out, and here she is serenading everyone on her harp.
Photo by: FukamineRiko (Mahoro)
Continue reading
Any Dollfie Dream owning comrades out there coming to Anime North 2013?
If so, bring the girls out for a meetup at the Dollfie Dream panels at Doll North on Friday, May 24, 2013.
PlasticFantastic and I will be presenting 2 panels on Dollfie Dreams and we’d love to have you and your dolls attend. Our panels will be starting at 7:00pm and 8:00pm in the Crowne Plaza Toronto Airport Hotel (33 Carlson Court, Toronto, Ontario, M9W 6H5)
Each panel will have a slightly different focus – so we’ve nicknamed them Dollfie Dream 101 and Dollfie Dream 201! ^__~”
We will be discussing things such as:
– A brief history of Volks and Dollfie Dreams
– Basic care and maintenance
– Evolution and differences between body types
– How to get a DD
– Modifications
– Customization
If there are other topics you’d like us to discuss, please leave a comment!
Here’s a picture from the Dollfie Dream panel last year 🙂
For more information about 6th annual Doll North, visit the Anime North website! There is lots of exciting doll programming and it’s not only about resin BJDS’s – Blythe dolls, Monster High, all are welcome!
I hope to meet some of you there!
♥ Archangeli
My sister and I went to London last week for a short vacation to visit our cousin, and while we were there we met up with several UK-based Dollfie Dream owners at Hyper Japan!
I had arranged to meet up with Jezatron, GabrielVH, CookieDude_2332, Aquilla429, UiNeonSkittles, Pink_Blaise, Fransgaard and Bethykins at Hyper Japan to hang out and of course, the Dollfie Dreams came out as well!
What exactly is Hyper Japan? In my attempt to describe the event: it’s a small Japanese cultural festival + 1-Day Anime convention + Japanese Food Festival. My friends told me that it’s grown a lot but having attended massive anime conventions like Anime North, Otakon and San Diego Comic Con, HJ is very small by comparison. But what it lacked in size, it made up for with substance! What I loved about it was the abundance of Japanese tourist information, language course info, and the food hall which was almost 1:3 of the whole space, since I’m not really into shopping around dealer’s rooms anymore.
Continue reading
As promised, here are more photos from Doll North at Anime North last weekend!
PlasticFantastic, myself, T-Rho and Meo were the only ones that had picked up our passes early on Thursday so it was only our Dollfie Dreams at the start – although a few more attendees arrived later on.
This was the most dolls I’ve ever had out with me at one time and it was quite challenging to transport them all! Continue reading
Another Anime North has come and gone. It’s amazing how fast those three days whirl by but it’s always a lot of fun!
On Friday evening PlasticFantastic and I hosted 2 panels as part of Doll North – which is Anime North’s programming division dedicated to ABJD’s and other related import dolls. We had a nice turnout for our panels, despite the fact that quite a few people missed it because they were still in line trying to pick up their per-registered passes! The first panel we presented was an “Introduction to Dollfie Dreams.” This had been at the request of the Doll North co-coordinators because there had been requests for more info about DD’s and vinyl dolls from members of the community in the past few months. PlasticFantastic was also on hand before our panel to offer some general DD Doctor care. I brought Hinata, Gabrielle, Mélisande, Médée and KOS-MOS with me – which is the most I’ve ever had out of the house in one outing!
The second panel “How to Survive a Dolpa” which was based on our recent adventures at the Volks Dolpa 27. We dedicated it to our friend D.ark Dollhouse who passed away earlier this month. Her Dolpa For Dummies guide proved extremely useful to us when we were preparing for our trip and was an invaluable tool.
Thank you to everyone that came, and to everyone that brought their Dollfie Dreams with them! I hope you found our panels informative! And if you weren’t able to make it, Meo was awesome enough to video the panels so hopefully we’ll have them online at some point so that we can share our knowledge!
Here are some of the awesome DD’s that were on display at our panel. Special guest is the DD custom of Momiji, Anime North’s mascot!
And a funny photo of us during the DD panel –
I’ll have some more photos from Doll North up in the next couple of days.
On Saturday, it was get-up and go to start setting up for Café Delish – Anime North’s maid café. The lineup started really early and con-ops had to weave the line outside and it wove it’s way along the front of the hotel and around the corner before we even started selling tickets! We sold out all of our seatings within a couple of hours – apologies to those who couldn’t make it in! I hope that you at least stopped by the PuriMeido photo booth in the TCC to take a photo with your favourite maid!
I had lots of people asking me – what exactly IS the PuriMeido booth? It’s our own photobooth (yup, our staff built it from scratch!) in the style of the fun purikura booths that you find at arcades in Japan. You get to chose which maid you’d like a photo with, and then you and a friend get to take 4 fun photos, and then your maid hand decorates the photo for you. Here are Susu, Misa and Akane looking adorable at the PuriMeido booth –
Photo by Derwin Mak
If you had a ticket for a seating at the café, it was also a voucher for free photo set at the PuriMeido booth ^__^”
The café went very smoothly this year – there was only 1 behind-the-scenes hiccup regarding catering from the hotel, but overall I think we created a nice, fun oasis from the crazy of the convention for our guests to relax in. Here are Momoko, Misa, Susu, Yumi, Keiko, Chiyou and Akane dancing one of their routines.
Photo by Derwin Mak
Thank you to every for coming to the café and supporting the Hospital for Sick Children. I look forward to seeing you next year!
♥ Archangeli
I’ve had a busy few weeks since I last posted. I’ve been to Shanghai twice, and to London, England too; and completed 2 busy days of my annual training (which consists of written exams, practical exams, drills and first aid training) so I’ve been quite tired.
I just want to catch up on a few things before I make a longer post later this week!
Last month when I met up for brunch with some DD owners in Vancouver, I also picked up some goodies that I had purchased from Puppy52’s online shop. The timing worked out well and here’s the cute loot I scored: a beautiful top, a super cute frilly skirt, Happy Puppy buttons, a Mirai Firefox sticker and an adorable doodle that Chun did of Taiga.
Aerie called first dibs trying the new clothing on the new stuff, but I intended the top to be for Gabrielle since I don’t have a lot of things that suit her DDS body.
Here’s Aerie showing off the new outfit –
And here’s Gabrielle in the top out at a doll meet.
Super cute!
♦♦♦
Over the Easter weekend I was in London, England. I met up with my aunt and cousin for brunch and managed to squeeze in a tiny bit of shopping (since many shops were closed for the holiday weekend!). I had been given a mission by my sister to hunt down the limited edition collaboration macarons between Hello Kitty and Ladurée! They didn’t have everything from the collaboration, but I managed to get her a couple of boxes of her favourite ones, as well as a tin of the Mélange Ladurée tea. The new flavour for spring is Sakura (cherry blossom), which is very fitting for this collaboration. The packaging is so adorable!
♦♦♦
My last bit of news is about Anime North! If you’ve been paying attention to the official website you may have noticed that the Café Delish maids will be pulling double duty this year! In addition to the café itself, they will also be in the Photo Alley at the puriMeido photo booth! Similar to the purikura (print club) photo booth machines that are popular in Japan, this year attendees can stop by to have a photo of their favourite maid(s)! Details on Café Delish and the puriMeido booth can also be found on the Facebook fan page!
Ok, that’s all for now. I have lots of photos from last weekend to edit and then I’ll post again later this week!
~ ♥ Archangeli
Hello friends – it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but I’ve been waiting for the right time to share some exciting news!
Many of you know that I’ve been a member of the operational staff at Anime North’s charity maid café, Café Delish, for the past few years (no, I’m not one of the maids – sorry to disappoint!) and it sells out every year. It’s a huge time commitment from all of the amazing young ladies who volunteer, so despite many requests to expand, the café runs only from 12-6 on Saturday at the convention. Tickets sell out very fast every year, so to try to accommodate our wonderful fans who may not be able to get a ticket to a seating, there will be something very new and exciting happening this year in addition to the regular café setting. This “new addition” is planned to run the whole weekend, so if you cannot get in for a seating (which is always lots of fun!), you can still experience what makes maid café’s so popular!
More details to come, but keep your eyes on the Café Delish Facebook page for updates from our head maid, Yumi L’Amour ♥. We’ll be introducing our maids for 2012 very soon!
♥ ♥ ♥
My next bit of news is that PlasticFantastic and I (as well as several other friends) will be going to Tokyo, Japan in early May. We plan to be at the Volks Doll Party, in addition to shopping and sight-seeing! Why am I telling you guys this? *hold that thought!*
Back in January, I was approached by the co-coordinators of Anime North’s BJD doll division – Doll North – who wanted to see if I’d be interested in hosting a Dollfie Dream panel. I was extremely excited since I really want to do something to help out the growing DD community in Toronto! Since I already have quite a bit on my plate for the convention, I asked the very knowledgeable, and super awesome PlasticFantastic if she’d be interested in this too. We had a meeting with the co-ordinators, Briknits and AgentPanda, a couple of weeks ago to discuss and plan. The panel will be on Friday of the convention (May 25, 2012), exact time to be announced later. If you are a DD owner, want to be or are just curious about these beautiful dolls, we do hope that you’ll stop by! *This is where my mentioning the Tokyo trip comes in* In addition to practical topics like DD care, maintenance, how they differ from conventional resin BJD’s, we’ll also have lots of very recent photos, videos, and first-hand experience from the Dolpa to share from our adventures in Tokyo!
Here’s my Gabrielle and PlasticFantastic’s Elle hanging out with a couple of Tinies, and a custom DD whose secret identity will be revealed soon!
I’m hoping that we may be able to take some time at the end of our panel to have an informal Figure.fm/ Culture Japan gathering and have a photoshoot session afterwards as well, so please bring your DD girls with you!
Unfortunately it’s all a bit of a tease, but I’ll have more details in the weeks to come!
– Archangeli ♥
Most of the month of May has already passed and I spent a good chunk of it on vacation! I went on a cruise again and then had to switch back into high gear to go to work for a couple of days and get packed for my biggest event in May – AN!
I spent the weekend at Anime North. I’ve been attending in some capacity since 2003 but for the past couple of years I’ve been a staff member. I’m the hostess and informal photographer at Café Delish, the charity Maid Café. I also did double duty this weekend by helping my friend Amanda watch over Machiko’s table in the Crafter’s Corner.
Here’s Delilah watching over Machiko’s plushies and other stuff as Kev and I set up her table (she was involved in the Opening Ceremonies and had to high-tail it over to the hotel!).
Since I’m a “behind the scenes” person there aren’t many photos of me during the Café so here’s one of the staff pics from 2010 we took after all the Goshujinsama and Ojousama have left and a photo right before one of our seatings this year.
(Café Delish 2010)
(Café Delish 2011)
The Café takes up pretty much our entire Saturday so the core staff usually go out for dinner and drinks afterwards. This year we went to Moxies in the Sandmand Signature hotel and since it’s further from the convention hotels it was pretty quiet (meaning we were able to get a table instead of waiting 2 hrs!)
On Sunday whitefrosty and Machiko’s dolls hung out at their tables in the Crafter’s Corner 🙂 Here are Delilah, Zephyria, Ventus, Mishka and Myles.
archangeli 