Crowned with butterflies

I'm a bit late to the party, but Happy New Year guys! ♥ I hope 2017 will be a good year filled with great experiences for you all~

I actually already have the first photos for this year! I was supposed to take just one good shot for a New Year's greeting, but Kasumi looked so pretty that I got carried away and ended up with more than one photo that I liked ^^;

I borrowed this gorgeous Infinite Love kimono and Kuloft hairband from Sarg ♥ I only have a few yukatas from Infinite Love because the kimonos a bit more expensive and I've been too big of a cheapskate to buy even one... >.< Then every time I see the ones that Sarg has, I'm like "SO PRETTYH DO WANT!!" but the prettiest kimonos get sold out fast and there are not many for sale second-hand ;___; I especially love this black & pink one that Kasumi is wearing, fortunately she can at least borrow it~

With the easiest of grace

A few months ago Kasumi got a pretty yukata from my Taobao order~ It's from Infinite Love, my absolute favorite store when it comes to doll kimonos ♥ When I saw this particular yukata on their web store, I knew right away that it'd be the perfect one for Kasumi~ It has many cute elements and details in it, but looks still very mature :)

These photos were taken in the end of last month, but I only finished editing them a couple of days ago... Gosh, I've become so slow and lazy with the photos XD I'm quite happy with how this photoshoot turned out, Kasumi has definitely become one of my muses when it comes to doll photography~ Whatever I do, the camera just seems to love her >w<

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this set~ ♥

A close-up of the beautiful little pouch that came with the yukata ♥

Thanks for looking, and wish you guys have a great start for the new week! ^w^

Cherry blossoms!

On Tuesday I visited a cherry blossom park in Helsinki with Xaya! We spent around 3 hours there, just taking pictures :D The time sure went fast and we had fun. Got pretty nice pictures as well! There were over 200 of them in my camera, so going through them and picking the best ones took quite a while XD

We've been planning a little picnic meet-up with friends for Saturday, but the weather forecasts are promising rain so we might need to move our picnic to another date :/ We specifically tried to have the picnic meet-up when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom and after the upcoming weekend all the flowers might be gone already... But now that I got some pictures taken in advance, I don't mind if the weekend turns up to be all rainy - we can have our picnic whenever the weather seems better, without having to worry about the cherry blossoms. There is still one day before Saturday though, so let's keep our fingers crossed for the weather forecasts being wrong! >3<

Back to Tuesday and the photos~ Be warned, this entry is going to be picture heavy :D Check out Xaya's photos from the day as well!

Last year's cherry blossom photos:
Hanami meetup with friends (meet-up & flower photos)
A thousand cherry blossoms! (photos of the dolls I had with me)

You could notice the beautiful cherry trees in full bloom even from farther away! It was a beautiful day, so there were many people having a picnic, sunbathing, walking and taking pictures of the flowers or themselves/someone else with the flowers :D

When we got closer to the trees, I took many photos of the flowers at first and even forgot about my dolls for a bit X'D The cherry blossoms looked so gorgeous! ♥ I wish I could have my own garden full of them, though I generally don't like gardening at all...

It was hard to take close-up shots of the cherry blossoms, since it was quite windy XD

There were mostly just petals on the ground, but I managed to find one full flower too! :D

We also saw a pretty butterfly! ♥ Thanks to my macro lens, I managed to get a pretty close photo x3

There were also some cute squirrels around the park ;3; Or maybe it was just one squirrel, not sure. Anyway, managed to snag a picture of this cutie as well~ I tried to get a bit closer after this photo, but the squirrel decided that I'm getting too close and ran away ;___;

We walked around the park a bit and saw this little building - the walls were painted with familiar characters from Studio Ghibli movies (Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service).

Then, finally some doll photos! :D

First up is Miu! ♥ She's wearing a yukata that I made :3

Hikari and Mimi, the two Pureneemos that I brought along~ They have these matching kimonos with frill hakamas, so I wanted to get a nice photo of them together x3

Maru-chan~ Her yukata is made by me :) I'm also waiting for a blue Azone kimono set that I won from Yahoo Japan recently, shame that it didn't arrive in time for these photos since the light blue color is more Maru... Everything I touch tends to turn pink, hahah X''D

Last but not least, I had Kasumi with me~ She's wearing a gorgeous dress that I got as a gift from Irene ;3; This is maybe a bit too sweet for Kasumi, as she prefers a bit more mature clothing (as mature as hime gyaru can be), but she works as a model so it's not completely OOC for her to be photographed in clothes like this! Anyway, I'm absolutely in love with this dress, it's one of the most beautiful pieces of doll clothing that I own~ ♥

Here's a group photo of the smaller dolls we had with us. Xaya's lovely Emmi and Mimmi, my Mimi, Hikari and Miu ^^

Xaya also had these two cute Tinyfairies with her!

And that's all! Hope you enjoyed the photos :3 It's really sad that the blooming of the cherry blossoms doesn't last for long, I'd love to take photos in those scenery every day XD Already looking forward to next year~

The complicated arrival of Takane Shijou

This girl already arrived yesterday, but much later than I had expected so I didn't have the energy to write the post and edit the box opening photos last night =.= Getting her was quite a complex process right until the end, so I wanted to share the whole story!

I originally lost Takane in the Volks lottery, but managed to buy her from a person who had won and didn't want her anymore. This great person even sold her to me for the lottery price without asking for any extra, even though Takane was so popular that she was going for almost double price right away... Most of the winners seemed to be in Japan and apparently many of them just scalpers, so I feel so lucky with this amazing deal! ♥

Takane was shipped from the US on February 10th and was supposed to take 6-10 business days to reach Finland by Priority shipping. For 7 days she wandered in the US and on February 17th the tracking updated for the last time... I waited and waited, but there were no news on her so I was getting extremely worried and thought that she was lost or something ;___; But then finally this week I got a letter from the customs about a package from the US, with a completely different tracking code! Apparently the code had changed somewhere along the way before the package had left the country :D In the end, it took exactly a month to the day I got her home.

Yesterday I was up since 8am, anxiously waiting for the mailman to deliver my packages. They usually come somewhere between 8am and 10am, but that was not the case this time. Finally, at around 1pm I saw the mailman drive behind the building to the yard and was expecting the doorbell to rang any second. But nope. A few minutes later, I saw how the van just drives away...

What?!

Apparently the usual delivery person wasn't at work or something, and this other person didn't have the keys to get inside the building =_= If I had known this, I would've run to the front door. But of course I had expected that it's the same woman who always delivers our packages and has the key.

Then, I had to wait for the tracking to update that the package can be picked up from the post office. I had a few other packages waiting there as well, so of course I wanted to pick them up at the same time to save some trouble. They just recently closed our post office and moved their services to a little kiosk, which is a bit farther away from our apartment. At 4pm I was finally able to pick up Takane and the other packages.

The long-waited box!

The inner box

What the heck is wrong with that one eye X'DD

All the accessories were packed carefully

VERY carefully :'D The hairband came in a plastic cover that was inside the little white box...

So pretty! ♥

The boots, these are quite cool XD

The wig, which was quite disappointing... I'll talk more about it a bit later!

A little leaflet that has many useful things, like instructions for doll care, measurements for all the different Dollfie Dream bodies and photos of the different standard head models/eye collection/wig collection.

Another leaflet for Takane

This one only has these two pages - first page just shows the accessories that came with the doll piece by piece

Instructions on how the belt works and how the hands and feet need to be removed to put on the wristbands and pants. My brain was apparently not with me when I took this photo and looked at this page, since I started putting the pants on Takane without taking off the feet and wondered why it doesn't work ^^;; 

Back cover of the leaflet

Moving on to the mummy doll itself!

Almost there...

Yaaay, pretty face! ♥♥ I'd already admired some owner pictures of her, but I have to say that she looks even more stunning in person *3* The faceup looks really pretty too, though I'm not a big fan of the grey eyebrows. I'm planning to re-paint her at some point after I manage to paint my Saber project head first and figure out what kind of faceup I want this girl to have.

A little bit of the side profile, gotta love that cute nose! ♥

Front view

Tried the default wig on her and now you can probably see why I mentioned that this was quite a disappointment... First of all, the fiber quality feels really cheap, like 80s Barbie hair or party wigs D: It's super shiny as well and the curls are really messy. The fiber quality didn't really inspire me to try to do anything to the curls and I doubt you could use heat on this, at least it looks like the whole thing would just melt XDD As a cherry on top of the cake, the head cap shows through on top of the wig.

Better view of the head cap showing through... I tried to move some of the hair to cover it, but they just won't stay there and want to part right there >_<; Usually it doesn't bother me if the wig cap shows where the side bangs part, but this wig has straight bangs so there shouldn't be a parting at all, lol...

It's not so obvious if you don't take closeups and the hairband covers it as well :'D I also dressed Takane in her default outfit. It's pretty and otherwise functional, but the vest thing won't stay on nicely... I was planning to keep her fullset stuff, but I don't like them that much after all so I'll probably try to sell them to someone who's a bigger fan of the character :)

Super shiny plastic hair...

After these fullset photos, I removed the default eyes and started trying out other eyes and wigs. The eyes that I had bought for her didn't look so nice, the style was a bit too round and the blue color too bright. I'm gonna have to order a new pair once I figure out the right color :3

I haven't even mentioned her name yet, have I? I decided to name her Kasumi, which is often translated as "mist". I thought that this name suits her more mature face and a bit mysterious personality perfectly. She's like a big sister / onee-sama type of figure to my other DD girls, who are a few years younger than her ^^

I fell in love with this eye style, though the color is wrong :'D These look pretty for sure, but since Susu already has purple eyes, I don't want another girl with the same eye color.

This wig is one of the two that I bought for Kasumi~ It's more of a casual, daily style for those days when she doesn't have a lot of time for doing her hair and makeup, or doesn't want to look too over the top. She classifies her dressing style as a hime gyaru.

This super poofy hime gyaru wig is for the days when she wants to go the extra mile and look like a true princess~ I wish this style was available in the same color as the other wig >3< I like that color a lot more, but couldn't resist getting this style since it's so perfect for the hime gyaru look! Perhaps the platinum blonde is her "own hair", while this one is just a wig? :'D

Did some eye color testing in Photoshop, need to figure out which one of these I like the most ^^; Right now I'm leaning towards brown...

That's pretty much it for this box opening and the first photos of Kasumi~ Now I have a lot of sewing and accessorizing  to do >3< I'll be sharing more info and photos of Kasumi at least once she gets proper eyes and some clothes! ♥