Today whitefrosty and Machiko came over for a little bit to hang out and play around with my dolls. Machiko’s yo-SD Sora was still at my place, but she also brought over the LUTS winter event head from last year to try out on Thaddeus’ body.
Thaddeus, Annalise and Sora look like a cute BJD family – except that Anna isn’t resin! ^__~”
Last Saturday morning I met up with fellow Dollfie Dream owners Innocentsaké, her husband David, BerzerkFuryZero, Kenny_Ngyuen and Vicky for breakfast in Torrance, California. I was in Los Angeles for a very short layover, but it was great that everyone was able to make time to come hang out!
Here are InnocentSaké’s Momoko (Volks pre-painted DDH-06), my Aerie, BerzerkFuryZero’s Shino (custom DDH-04) and Kiriha, my Rin and Vicky’s Cirno hanging out at a bus stop in “London” ! ^__^”
First things first – fuelling up! We had a gluttonous breakfast at Polly’s Pies, and then went over to the Volks USA showroom. Continue reading
PlasticFantastic brought her Yuki Morikawa over to meet Serena – and a few cute photos ensued 🙂
This past weekend a few of the Toronto Dollfie Dream owners got together for another meetup! We met up on Ward’s Island again, in the same lovely spot as our June meetup and it was a perfect day to head out to the Toronto Islands! With 16 people, this was also our largest meetup so far – both in terms of attendees and dolls! How fantastic! The theme of this meet was “Your First” – but it was left fairly open ended as to what it was your first of!
Since it was a lot of work bringing food and drinks for a full potluck lunch, we decided to meet a little later so that everyone could have lunch first and then we would have lots of desserts on the island! There was so much delicious sugary awesomeness! There were cupcakes, a coffee cakes, homemade cookies, matcha shortbread, doughnuts, candy kebabs! Oh my goodness!!
This past weekend a few of the local Dollfie Dream owners met up for lunch and a doll meetup. We had the optional theme of “Default Day” for the doll meet – so hopefully a few people would bring some of their girls in default outfit sets!
Here we have Meo’s Tamaki (wearing her default set!), kai-suteki’s Tai, PlasticFantastic’s custom HDD06 Madeleine and my Moe both wearing the Moe v.2 default outfit (yay twinsies!), PlasticFantastic’s White Christmas Alna in her default, T-Rho’s Maeve (Alna wearing her default outfit), my Sidonie (Saber Extra) in her steampunk outfit (sorry, I wasn’t about to bring her out in her Saber default outfit >__<“) and juu-yuki’s Sakura wearing Neris’ default outfit.
Sitting on the top row are Machiko’s Volks MSD Zephyria, PlasticFantastic’s Cirno and AgentPanda’s Penny!
Volks has been very slow in re-stocking the Dollfie Dream DDII base bodies for many months, so I went ahead and decided to piece together a Dollfie Dream Sister (DDS) body myself. The DDS is actually my favourite of the body types right now – I like the size, the posing ability and it’s not as tall and lanky as the new DDIII bodies. If you’re interested in doing this yourself, it’s not cheap since you have to purchase all the body pieces from Volks, and hopefully they will all be in stock >__<”
To build a complete body you will need:
Last weekend, I met up with a few Dollfie Dream owners and we took the ferry from downtown Toronto to Ward’s Island for a potluck picnic and a lovely afternoon in the sun. The weather was perfect and we found a beautiful spot on the island with a gorgeous view of the Toronto skyline and a little piece of beach nearby.
We originally had the dolls sitting underneath parasols to protect them from UV exposure, but as the afternoon wore on the shade shifted. Here are all of the beautiful dolls relaxing in the shade.
Here are PlasticFantastic’s Amber, and Machiko’s little resin girls Lareine and Delilah. The UV sunlight exposure isn’t a huge issue with the vinyl Dollfie Dream girls, but it was important to keep the little resin dolls out of direct sunlight since it can cause yellowing of the resin over time. Continue reading
While I was in Tokyo last month Danny Choo announced that he would be hosting a Culture Japan Night at the Good Smile Café in Akihabara, Tokyo. It just happened that our group of friends had decided to extend our trip by one more night so that my sister and Bosu could go to a live by Golden Bomber – and the rest of us were just going to do some last minute shopping so it worked out well for PlasticFantastic, Sam, Kevin and I to stop by the CJN event.
I’m sure DannyChoo.com readers will recognize some of his girls dressed up in various Mirai costumes (meido-Mirai, Mirai Millenium and the Winter Uniform). My newest girl, Hinata, a DD Shino is sitting at the front of the table.
Since KOS-MOS was already packed up, it was easy to bring her along.
Photo by: Haduki_fff on Flickr
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 am still in shock after receiving very sad news while I was in Tokyo that a wonderful friend that I met through the Dollfie Dream and resin BJD community has passed away earlier this week. It was even more of a shock since I had just met up with D.ark Dollhouse and her husband, Robert, at the Tokyo Dolpa last Sunday.
Words can’t express the sadness that I feel. D.ark Dollhouse, Anja – I will miss you very much. I’m so grateful that I was able to know you, even if it was only for a little while. You were always eager to share your knowledge with me, and I respected you a lot. I will miss your smiling face and kind heart. ♥
Photo by Robert Tolton (GabrielVH)
Last weekend a few Dollfie Dream owners got together at Café Princess in Toronto for our monthly meet. Unfortunately a few of our regulars couldn’t make it, but we were glad to welcome some new faces to our merry band of DD parents! Here’s a group shot of all the DD girls –
We have Nanoha, Aoife, Rina, Asuka and Rei in the back row; Meo’s Obitsu twins, Ryoko, Delilahm, Médée and Maeve in the middle; Tai, Lareine and Haruka are sitting in front – with Woody taking a group photo of them!
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
A few of the Toronto-area based Dollfie Dream owners got together last week and had another meetup at Café Princess to enjoy each others company and stuff our faces on yummy cake! It was an interesting challenge to get all the dolls together for a group photo, but we managed! Here they all are –
We had quite the turn out! In the back row we have my Aerie, di-chan123’s Yami piggybacking on her custom Haruhi, jun97’s Ryoko who is visiting T-Rho, PlasticFantastic’s Asuka and nkei’s new Beatrice. In the middle row is PF’s Madeleine (Maddy), my Médée, Gabrielle and PF’s Yoko; and in the front row is PF’s Elle hugging Machiko’s Lareine, juu-yuki’s Airi (Rina), Machiko’s Delilah, and kai-suteki’s custom girl Tai.
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!
Mmmm…. doll meat! Omnomnom!
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archangeli 