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~!! ★

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^

Summer memories

The Finnish summer is pretty much gone and we're moving towards autumn, so I thought this would be a good moment to look back and reminisce the summer days ^^ I have been very inactive with photographing during the summer, which is quite sad since I had so many ideas and plans on my mind... But there's always next year! :D

Anyway, let me share some photos that I took in mid July when I was at my parents' summer cottage!

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Just one photo of Kaori :<

Funny fact: those white bokeh things are actually two swans that were flying over the lake X'D Their reflections show up as bokeh on the water too, lol.

I forgot to take extra clothes for Momo (besides the beach flip flops), so that's why she's still in her default gear in these photos ^^; I would've wanted her to wear something else, but oh well, she still looks cute :D

Am I the only one that gets a "goodbye summer" vibe from this photo? ;___;

As an extra photo from the cottage...

...have some camera-shy ducks :'D They were swimming towards our dock, but turned away when they saw me with the camera XDD

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I also have some swan photos from Helsinki! Me and Sarg were just randomly walking when we came across a swarm of Canada Geese AND an adorable swan couple with four little cygnets ;___; ♥♥ Luckily I had the camera with me, so I managed to get some quick photos. I'd never been so close to a swan before, they're such majestic creatures!

One of the geese decided to photobomb when I tried to get closer, thanks a lot... =_=

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Hope you all had a lovely summer! ♥

Sugar Dream Koron arrival

If you know me at all, you know that I love pastel colors and everything cute, so these super pastel collaboration Neemos that have been announced/released recently are very deadly to my wallet ^^; Of course I had to pre-order this Sugar Dream Koron! ♥

I was originally not a big fan of the shirt, since I generally don't like bunny things that much and the cat print on Chiika's shirt seemed much cuter. At some point I thought about buying her as well, just to get her outfit (or swap the shirts), but in the end I started to like the bunny shirt and didn't feel the need to buy Chiika anymore X'D

The package screams cuteness ;3;

Do you guys know the heart-shaped candy with cute words on them? I looove how Azone has used them for this box design ♥ After starting my media studies I've started to pay a lot more attention to different kinds of packaging designs, typography, etc. It'd be a dream job to create cute doll box designs :D

Cover of the leaflet

The outfit piece by piece

On this page Koron is pictured together with Chiika, which was the other collaboration doll announced at the same time (though her pre-orders started a month later than Koron's).

Hello there! Her bangs were quite messy and too long for my taste, so I cut them a bit...

Here she is with her shortened bangs :3 

This girl is my new Momo! Previously Momo was Rose Quartz Sahra, but I ended up not bonding with her so I sold her. My original plan was to have three different Sahra releases as sisters Miki, Misa and Momo, but they all are going to have different faces and only one of them (Miki) is still a Sahra ^^; Still haven't found a new Misa, but I must say that I'm very tempted to hunt down Sugar Dream Miu...

Close-up of the bunny print

And a close-up of the bag. It would've been nice if there had been an animal illustration on the bag as well, but this works too :)

The doll is really cute, but there's quite a noticeable color difference between the head and body. I don't know why it doesn't really bother me when it comes to Pureneemos, if this was a BJD, the difference would drive me insane X'D I still don't think that Azone should sell the brand new dolls looking like this, though... If there's no color difference in the promo photos, there shouldn't be color difference in the products they send out either =.= But I guess people don't really care about such things, especially in Japan where most doll collectors probably just buy these dolls to put them on display.

Three of my pink-haired Neemos ♥ Love how they all have pink hair, but the shades are different :3 I think this Koron has the most beautiful shade of pink so far, it's like bubblegum or cotton candy~

I just had to take a picture of Momo with Bulla, this round super soft cat plushie that I got from the latest anime convention :D If only this exact plushie also existed in a tiny size...

I'm excited to see if there will be more dolls in this Sugar Dream series (besides Koron, Chiika and Miu), would love to see some pastel purple hair *o* Although at the same time I'm also hoping that there won't be any new Neemos that I need to get, since I really need to save up for next year's travelling plans XD

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I'm currently at my parents and we'll leave to our summer cottage tomorrow. Gonna stay there for a week and hopefully get some nice photos, as I have 2 Dollfie Dreams and 3 Pureneemos with me :) The weather forecast for the week seems quite promising so far! 

July meet-up with friends

Last Sunday I was at a small meet-up that Tsuki organized! There were six of us (me, Sarg, Tsuki, Tiinyan, Xaya and Shara) and a bunch of lovely dolls ♥

I only had my phone camera, so unfortunately the photo quality is not the best possible... But since we were outside, I guess it doesn't look too bad ^^; These photos are mainly for capturing the memory anyway, so maybe they don't even need to be the highest quality!

We managed to fit all the food and dolls on one table :D 

Xaya had made such yummy blueberry pie! *o* I wish I had taken a close-up of it (love taking photos of food, hahah), but of course I ate it without thinking... So, the only evidence of the pie ever existing can be found from this photo XD

Tsuki's lovely Soom Luchy ♥

Two Volks Lorina *w* The brown-haired one belongs to Shara and the blonde girl belongs to Tsuki.

My Lisanna (Souldoll Vito Calia) and Sarg's Nemora (Souldoll Vito Riris)

Shiori found a few cat-eared friends :D

Kitty with a cookie ♥

Miyadoll power!! ♥♥ My Miina (Vivienne), Sarg's Haneul (Dreaming Tory) and Shara's girl (Poppy). Everyone should have at least one doll from Miyadoll :3

Here's a group photo of all the BJDs!

And here are the Azone dolls! Sadly Xaya had to leave a bit earlier, so her girls are not in this photo :/

Me and Tiinyan moving the Neemos next to the BJDs :D It was a bit chilly because of the wind, so I borrowed Sarg's jacket for a while... Even though it looked pretty silly with my outfit XD

Combined group photo ♥

Tsuki showed us some stuff she had for sale and I ended up buying this table & chairs set and some food props that are perfect size for both Picconeemo and Pureneemo :3 Only a few of the props are pictures here, though.

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Had such a great time, hope we can have another meet-up soon! ♥