A couple of days ago Kev & I met up with another Dollfie Dream collector that lives in Toronto, PlasticFantastic and we got together to chat and eat! It was so cool to have so many lovely DD girls all in one place!
I went to visit PlasticFantastic and Sam this afternoon and I brought Moe, Mélisande and Médée along with me to visit her girls (and her kitties!) Continue reading
When Akira was announced earlier this summer I thought she was really cute, but in the end opted not to get her. I blame Volk’s inability to take good photos of their own dolls, and her default outfit (I still don’t really like it too much, but it’s just me 😉 ).
Then in August, I met GabrielVH’s Akira and person and was completely smitten with her little kitten face! Ugh – instant regret and she’s been on my “want” list ever since.
Seeing so many other people adopt her lately here and there has made me pine for her even more, so when a good deal popped up I couldn’t pass on it.
I recently bought a full-set Akira, and am currently waiting for her arrival!
It’s a bit complicated since the seller only wanted to do a US-only sale, so I had the doll shipped to my aunt who lives in California. She’s coming up to visit for the holidays and she was ok with bringing it up for me 🙂 (and yay for avoiding customs! :P)
Hopefully she'll arrive soon so I'll have my newest girl by Christmas, otherwise she'll have to mail it to me when she gets home. 😥
Either way, doll goods will be arriving since I had my recent Volks USA order mailed to her to bring up for me too!
Here's Jezatron's Yoko, DarkDollhouse's Yuki, GabrielVH's Akira and my Moe from our outing.
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
It’s been a long time since I’ve had all of my DD girls together (partly because Makoto hangs out at Machiko’s house most of the time), and Makoto has never met Médée and Mélisande yet!
I brought Makoto home for a quick family photo with my other Dollfie Dream girls.I dressed the girls up in a red and white colour scheme to welcome their sister home!
And here are all the big girls together – doesn’t Mel look cool with that hair colour? It’s a Miruya brand wig that I picked up originally for Makoto but it doesn’t quite suit her (I can’t say why at the moment… shh!). The pigtails clip onto the wig so I can take them off if I want just a short wig – very clever!
Here are some photos from Mélisande’s day out in Tokyo last month. First I took her to the Volks showroom inside the Shinjuku ALTA building and took some pictures in their photo space. Since it was mid-October it was Halloween themed.
I met up with my sister, Machiko, yesterday and she gave me the HDD-01 head that she painted for me, which mean my little Médée finally has a head! I put in some pretty green 20mm eyes and a cute little blonde wig and she looks so cute and mischievous.
Those of you who remember the arrival of my Dollfie Dream Moe may recall that straight out of the box there was a dilemma – she had 2 left feet! This prompted some joking between me and hubby that poor Moe was never intended to be a dancer >__<”
I’ve since remedied the foot issue – Moe has a right and a left foot now, but the mailman’s visit yesterday prompted me to give her an opportunity to shine! A number of weeks ago I ordered the new “Ballet” feet made by Taiwanese company Peapod Doll and they arrived yesterday.
Without further ado, here is Moe as the Swan Queen ~
Mélisande has been getting lots of attention since she was the only doll I had with me in Tokyo, but when as soon as I got home my other girls were screaming for some camera time and a chance to try on some of the awesome new outfits I brought home for them!
Here’s Moe wearing the newly released Rusty Tartan Set that was part of the Dollfie Dream Gathering last weekend. This outfit is very well made, with lots of little pieces so you can customize the look of the the outfit – and the little hat is so cute!
I got a request to post some pics of the newly released HDD-06 head sculpt for Dollfie Dream so here we go.
I put in the eyes quickly so they are little off center, but these are 22mm eyes and I think you could use 24mm and they would still look good.
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 just got home from Tokyo a last night and it’s been pretty hectic unpacking and settling back in at home. I was there for 10 days with hubby, my sister and 3 friends and we had an awesome time! While I was there, Volks had the Dollfie Dream Gathering event and released lots of new DD clothing, option parts and also the renewal models of Aoi and Yukino with DDIII bodies. I couldn’t resist and adopted a Yukino doll. When I was shopping earlier in the week (and doing a bit of reconnaissance ^__~”) I saw one of the sales girls putting price tags and security stickers on some of the new outfits. I counted about 15 of each “batch” but there may have been multiple batches of each style that I didn’t see. I decided that my chances would be best at the Akihabara showroom since it’d likely have the most stock. When I passed by on Friday evening all of the new items had already been set up, but hidden behind a black curtain.
Saturday morning it was raining and gross. I had hurt my foot a couple of days before (I dropped a suitcase on my big toe…) so hubby went without me to line up at the Volks Akihabara showroom. Just to give a sense of how intense it was: the lineup began forming outside the “exit” of the shop and by the time hubby got there at 7:00am (3 hrs before the shop opened) there was already a huge line. He was about #40 in line and was lucky to be under the covered awning, but there were lots of people in the rain and by the time the shop opened the lineup went to the end of the block (where the McDonald’s is in the photo at the base of the Softmap building) and wrapped around the block. These are photos I took earlier in the week. The main entrance is on the right side of the shop, and the exit is under the red & white awning (near where the couple are walking by in the photo). People that came afterwards could be seen counting the length of the line and contemplating whether or not to join in the lineup or not.
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 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!
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.
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.
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