Dollfie Dream Meetup in Toronto – August 18, 2012

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!

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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!!

A sampling of the sweets and treats!

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Dollfie Dream Picnic on Ward’s Island, Toronto

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.
DD picnic on Ward Island

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

Anime North 2012: Doll North & Café Delish!

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!

Doll North at Anime North 2012

And a funny photo of us during the DD panel –
Doll North at Anime North 2012

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 –
PuriMeido Photo 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.

Café Delish at Anime North
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

Dollfie Dream Meetup in Toronto – April 28, 2012

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 –

April DD Meetup

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!

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Dollfie Dream Meetup in Toronto – March 24, 2012

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 –

Doll Meet at Café Princess - cropped

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.

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Exciting News for Anime North 2012!

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!
Fabric origami nightmare

♥ ♥ ♥

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!
Afternoon doll outing

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 ♥

Dollfie Dream Meetup in Toronto – February 18, 2012

This past weekend a few of the local Dollfie Dream owners got together to hang out, chat, swap items and eat cake! nkei recommended we meet at Café Princess up in North York, and it was a lovely venue for our meet! We had a nice, private room to ourselves and there was a great turn-out!

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Dollfie Dream Meetup in Toronto – January 14, 2012

Yesterday a few Dollfie Dream owners met up for lunch and to show off their dolls. I’d previously attended a meetup organized on the GTA Dolls forum, but it was mostly resin owners and PlasticFantastic and I really wanted to try to organizes something for the Dollfie Dream owners. Most of us met up first at Manpuku Modern Japanese Eatery for some delicious udon and rice-bowl goodness before heading out to the food court area in Village by the Grange.

Here are some of the dishes we had: Niku Udon, Curry Vegetable Don,
Niku udon (beef) at Manpuku Curry vegetable don at Manpuku
Natto Udon, Wakame Udon,
Natto udon at Manpuku Wakame udon at Manpuku
Una-tama don (BBQ eel with egg on rice) and takoyaki
Unagi tama don at Manpuku Takoyaki

After stuffing ourselves silly we didn’t have to go far to the food court area where we quickly took over a nice area underneath the skylight to take advantage of the sun, and set up our dolls. Here are the DD & MDD girls that PlasticFantastic, Di-Chan123 and I brought with us-
Dollfie Dream group shot :)
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Meeting up with Plastic Fantastic!

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