Doll year 2017

The year of 2017 is almost at its end, so it's time to take a look at what kind of doll year this was for me. I've usually also made a separate post about annual goals, but this year I'm skipping that... I miserably failed to reach any of the goals that I had set for this year and I also think that I won't try to make any for next year, because there's no telling how lazy or busy I'll be ^^; I'll just do whatever I feel like doing and try not to stress about things :3

Previous years:
2016
2015
2014

• Arrivals

BJD:
Soom York (ordered in 2016)
Miyadoll Dreaming Tory

My plan for this year was not to get more BJDs, but I still ended up getting one (York doesn't count, since he was ordered last year) :D That's pretty good though, luckily this year I didn't see any new releases that would've tempted me enough to order them. I'm pretty happy with my BJD crew currently, though sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed since I do have quite many... >.< I'm hoping that their numbers won't increase next year!

Dollfie Dream:
DDS Freyja

One of my goals for this year was to get DDS Freyja and I managed to get her home, even though I didn't win in the Volks lottery! I've been really happy with her, though I'm still not quite sure about her character...

Azone Pureneemo:
Meow x Meow Lycee
Meow x Meow Sahra
Snow Queen Mia
Sugar Dream Koron

Azone Picconeemo:
Raili (ordered in 2016)

Azone dolls continue being my weakness, hahah XD Still, I'm quite surprised that I managed not to buy more than 4 Pureneemos and 1 Picconeemo! I do have my eyes on the new Picco Aika and Koron that were released a while ago, though I probably only want to get Aika for her clothes... I love my older Picco Koron and Aika! ♥

• Rehomed

Azone 48cm Mocha
Pureneemo Tsukiha
Heartful Kiss Maya
Punk Girl Koron
Secret Garden Chisa
Twinkle a la Mode Sahra standard ver.
Twinkle a la Mode Sahra DS ver.

DDS Rin

Luts Tiny Delf Gretel elf
Pipos Ringo
Soom Clozel
Soom Minette (still for sale)
Soom Nelen (still for sale)
Soom Nyer
Soom Sweet Witch
Souldoll Junia

I sold quite many dolls during this year, since I started to feel like there were some that didn't get much attention from me and I wanted to let those dolls go. I do miss some of them because of their characters, but selling them as dolls was still the right decision.

• Other thoughts on 2017

Overall 2017 was quite a shitty year for me, since I've been so tired and stressed because of the school etc... That has naturally affected my hobbies as well and I haven't been inspired to do much with my dolls :c On the other hand, just having them around in the house relieves the stress and reminds me why I am in the hobby ♥ I wish I would've been more active, taken more photos and sewn more - hopefully that will happen in 2018!

• Doll plans for 2018

The only solid doll plan that have I for now is to get a Dollfie Dream in TAN! I'm finally going to Japan in spring 2018 and that gives me the chance to bring home a tan girl, which can only be purchased from the Volks store in Akihabara! ♥ Besides her, I don't really have any plans. Actually, I'd prefer not to buy more dolls and focus on the ones I have, but we'll see... :D

Merry Christmas 2017!

This year I didn't have the time nor energy to come up with a new Christmas photo shoot, so I'm just posting some older photos that I haven't shared before ^^; (even though these were taken a year ago...)

Hope you all have a great Christmas with your families, friends and loved ones~ ♥

★ Merry Christmas~!! ★

Aranea Highwind Play Arts Kai

Today I picked up a figure that I’ve been super excited about! It’s a Play Arts Kai figure of Aranea Highwind from Final Fantasy XV! She is my absolute favorite character in the game, so I was really happy when they announced a figure of her and of course I had to pre-order~

Aranea arrived at a perfect time, since yesterday was the one-year anniversary for Final Fantasy XV! ♥ I was really surprised how fast the Air Small Packet shipping was - it took less than a week to arrive, so pretty much EMS speed D: The actual EMS shipping would've been double the amount I paid, lol.

Anyway, let's move on!

Here's the box from front!

And from back

The front of the box actually opens like a book, on the other side there is some information on Aranea's character and a bad ass photo of her >:3 ♥

The figure and all its accessories are packed really nicely. If someone prefers to collect figures leaving them inside their boxes for display, this is one of those figures that looks pretty neat in a box!

Love this art! ♥

I tried to get a close-up of her face through the plastic, sorry about the light reflections... :'D

The stand

Some instructions on how to change the parts

Aaand instructions on assembling the stand... This kinda reminds me of Ikea furniture XDD And let me tell you, assembling it really felt like putting together an Ikea furniture, hahah! I'm still not sure if I did everything 100% correctly...

Removed the plastic cover! I didn't realize it until later, but as you can see from the photo, her helmet is missing from the package ;___; There's just an empty space on upper right where it should be. I double checked the outer box and everything, but there's no sign of it anywhere. I've already contacted Amiami customer service about it and hopefully they'll send me the missing piece... *fingers crossed* I hope that they won't ask me to send back the whole figure and then send a new one to me... That would be much more complicated and end up costing them a lot more too, since shipping from Finland to Japan is quite expensive. But yeah, we'll see what they answer!

Ms. Aranea is out of the box! I absolutely love her, she's looks lovely and has so many nice details ♥ Her armor looks really nice too. The paint job isn't 100% perfect and there are some slight imperfections here and there, but overall I'm very happy with the quality!

From side

From back

Posing with her lance! *o* You definitely don't wanna make this gal angry... The lance came in two parts that were attached together, but I forgot to take a photo.

Face close-up! The paint job doesn't look the most flattering if you look closely, but I'd say that it's understandable for such a tiny face. But I don't think it's too bad! She even has eyelashes, that's so cute! :D

Details on her... skirt? Or whatever that's called :D

I loooove her boots! ♥ I think they were painted to look worn out on purpose.

The "tail" for her helmet that doesn't exist... :'D It can be bent from multiple places, I can imagine that being useful for action poses.

I realized that she can make a heart with one pair of the extra hands! ♥

I need to take some proper photos of this girl at some point! I don't have any photo ideas for her yet, but maybe something will come to my mind later, at least once I get the helmet (if I ever get it XD). I also plan to buy the Ignis figure to accompany Aranea, because I totally ship them!! ♥ That might have to wait for a while though, since I have some expensive figures on pre-order and my Japan trip is getting closer too...

The time has gone SO fast, it's hard to believe that it's December already! Are you ready for the Christmas season? :3 I've usually bought a Christmas chocolate calendar every year, but this time I'm skipping since I couldn't find a Hello Kitty calendar, hahah. Me and Sarg made the first Christmas tarts of the year yesterday and maybe during the weekend we'll put some Christmas decorations around the house \o/

Autumn photo spam!

There are some autumn photos from last month that I still haven't shared, so I thought I'd do that now after finally editing them! I was spending the weekend at my parents' cottage at the time and had two dolls with me, in hopes of getting some final autumn photos before the snow.

I'm really happy with how the photos of Janna turned out! ♥ The colors of her outfit blend in the scenery so nicely :3

She found a flower that hadn't withered yet :)

I also had Miina (Miyadoll Vivienne) with me, but her photos didn't succeed very well... That happens sometimes, especially since I'm such a perfectionist :'D

It was a positive surprise to see how sturdily she can stand on one feet without any extra support!

Lately the weather has been really crappy and dark, so I haven't been able to take any decent photos (only some phone snapshots for Instagram). The Finnish autumn/winter is not very co-operative with doll photography: indoors it's too dark 95% of the time and outside it's always rain/mud/other crap XDD So instead of photography, I've been focusing on sewing. The dolls are always in need of new clothes :D

Picconeemo Halloween party

I think in most countries the "official" Halloween was celebrated on October 31st, so I'm just a little bit late with these photos ^^; I did take them in time, but once again the editing took a bit more time than I had expected... I'm currently practicing shooting and editing in RAW (now that I finally have a Photoshop version that can actually open those files!) and while I've done plenty of that at school, it's much more difficult on my laptop because all the settings are such a mess >.< So yeah, it'll still take me some time and practice to get everything just the way I want, after that things will be a lot faster and easier :)

But back to the subject of this post, Halloween! I absolutely love Halloween, have always loved it, and I've been happy to notice that it keeps getting more and more popular here in Finland :) Many stores have a selection of Halloween goodies, such as themed food, candy, decorations (which often can be used as doll-sized props) and even clothes! Me and Sarg didn't buy any new decorations this year, but we tried out some french fries and chicken nuggets that were shaped like different Halloween creatures XD Those were actually quite yummy! Oh and we also got a tiny bat and ghost that were originally hair clips (from H&M), they are perfect doll-sized plushies~ On the photo below, you can see Miu holding the ghost and the bat is on top of the pumpkin lantern >:3

HAPPY HALLOWEEN~!!

A close-up of the table! Besides the tableware, everything is self-made (by either Sarg or me). Sarg even made that awesome pumpkin "basket" for the lollipops! *o* Most of this stuff was already made a few years ago, we didn't have a lot of time to make more this year...

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Hope you all had a wonderful day, whether or not you celebrate Halloween ^3^

Dreaming wide awake

A while ago I had a quick photoshoot with Ciriel (Miyadoll Dreaming Tory)~ I wanted to get some proper photos of her after finishing sewing her first outfit! I hadn't found any shoes that would suit her perfectly, but then remembered a pair that I have for Lulu... And now those shoes belong to Ciri, I guess X'D

The title of this post comes from a song by Poets of the Fall ♥ They're one of my favorite bands ever and a big inspiration for me~ Especially their lyrics are so inspirational ♥♥

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Big thanks to Sarg for the headdress and wrist cuffs ♥

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I wanted to include some photos of Ciri together with her mom, Gwyn, but that has to wait as Gwyn needs to get some new clothes first... ^^; It would be super cute if they had matching outfits! ♥

Guilty eyes, guilty kiss

I have some photos to share from this little photoshoot of Renate and Zinnia! Something happened between them in our RP story, so we were inspired to take some fluffy pictures... All of this better remain as a secret though, since both are actually taken and their significant others would not be happy to find out about this little moment =_=

If you follow Sarg on Instagram, you might've seen shots of this photoshoot already a few weeks ago when the photos were actually taken - I'm just super slow and didn't manage to edit all the photos (and finish the blog post) until now ;___; Time just flies, it feels like it has only been a week...

Renate (Iplehouse EID Raffine) is Sarg's doll, Zinnia (Iplehouse SID Stella) is mine :3

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