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Getting my grail doll – Unoa Lusis!! :D

As I eluded to in my earlier post, I ordered my grail doll, a Unoa Lusis off of the Mandarake site. She’s been paid for and now I’m just waiting for a shipping notification. She’s going to be a little bit of a fixer-upper since her face-up is pretty bad looking and she’s had some unnatural pink body blushing, but never the less I am very excited!! The pic to the left is what Mandarake had on their site, and yes, she will totes come with an extra faceplate and small bust part for a price of only 45000 yen!! She will however have some yellowing, but from what I understand after reading about other people’s secondhand dolly purchases with Mandarake is that the dolls always appear better in person and yellowing is minimal (it’s just their photos that are poor). I really don’t care much if the doll has mellowed, afterall I’m pretty sure that my AE Yara has yellowed, but she still has a natural looking creamy beige skintone that’s even, and I think no less of her for it.

I don’t know if it seems strange, but for some reason I’m doubly excited to get a secondhand doll. I think it’s because when you get a brand new doll fresh from the factory there is this “newness factor” that comes into play and it makes me super reluctant to do anything to the doll. I swear for the first month I had Sona I didn’t even want to take off her wig!! XD With a secondhand doll I feel much more comfortable with the idea of taking her apart, cleaning and sanding and blushing and etc…. Right now my big excitement aside from getting the doll sculpt I’ve always admired but never thought I could afford or acquire, is that I plan to customize the doody out of her and make her as beautiful as possible! By customize though I mean blushing and face-up, not actually modifications, because I think Unoas are the most perfect dolls out there and need no modding. One of the great things about a Unoa is that their sculpt is so beautiful that even a terrible face-up can’t hide the beauty of the inherent sculpt. Often with other dolls I find that the face-up can so drastically change the look of the doll as to make me reconsider a sculpt. With Unoas that doesn’t happen…of course maybe it’s that I have probably looked through every Unoa on flickr and studied them with great care. I’m sure there are other people who feel as passionate about their own favorite sculpt though.

Well, enough of this random crooning over Unoas, it’s time to ferry my mother about town since she has been cooped up since her knee surgery. You can expect more postings about my new Lusis when she finally arrives!! Yay! So exicted! XD~

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Website “Window Shopping” XD – Mandarake

So I guess I’m “re-discovering” Mandarake after hearing someone gush about a new dolly purchase they made through them. Considering I’m always late to the party it seems, I’m sure everyone knows about this place, but if you don’t then keep reading, heck keep reading even if you do know cause it’s fun! 😀

I had already known about Mandarake and in fact I had ordered used manga from them back in the day when I was a more avid collector of manga. Apparently however back then I never bothered with any other sections of their site, and in truth I was not much interested in dolls back then either. Now that I am revisiting I am discovering they have this huge inventory of pre-owned toys and dolls, that I have been happily browsing for about an hour. In my idle browsing I have discovered that they sell a great deal of second hand Pullips, Dals and Blythes among other things. The Pullips and such though I found surprising because for example I saw a hard to find old Namu doll still in his box going for about $80ish, and an old Pullip Street going for a little less. Now I know that many collectors have paid quite a lot more for those dollies before, and even presuming you tack on EMS shipping, I think you’ll still pay less than you would finding those dolls on the secondhand market here in the US. With this said I think it’s possible to get a good dolly deal if you know what you’re looking for and keep track of the going market.

Aside from finding the occasional bargain, Mandarake also appears to have lots of vintage doll goods. There’s plenty of old school Liccas and Jennies to go around as well as a bunch of older dolls I don’t even recognize. Of course Mandarake knows when they have a good vintage item, so there will be no bargains there….then again I don’t know the going rate for a lot of those types of dolls, so I could be wrong. There’s also a ton of other little toys and knick knacks piled onto those pages, for example I just came across an old 50s bunka style doll, and a cute little egg shaped dollhouse chair, all for reasonable prices and I know it’s nothing I can never find around here. So basically if you have time to kill and some spare moo-lah in your wallet you might go have a browse to see what you can see. 😉

Fufufu….to be honest I’m scouting for something in particular, but I’m gonna keep quiet about it so I don’t jinx anything. 😉 Here is the link: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/ enjoy! <3

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Sleepy eyed tinies

I am such a fan of the sleepy/dreamy eyed tinies, and this new Rustle of Spring Modigli is no exception! Aside from mooning over MSDs, I’ve also been researching and considering getting a 20-30cm tiny that I could use with “The Big House”. XD The sleepy eyed Modigli has I think just the right amount of openess in her eyes if that makes sense. Her eyes are closed enough to have a sweetly dreamy look, but also open enough to let the eyes shine. Modigili’s lips also have nice volume and pout to boot. 😀 The only thing I find fault with in the iMda 3.0 is the body. The body starts out well enough at the top as it doesn’t have the chunkiness of most tinies of this size, and then the fact that she has some semblance of hips is nice, but she definitely has thunder thighs! I guess I shouldn’t be too critical since I have a Dollmore Kid, all of whom have thunder thighs, but in iMda 3.0 it starts looking like it’s a beginner Puns….well this is just my opinion. ^^; So with all this said I still find that my favorite 20-30cm tiny body is Pipos with it’s twig legs and the option for a large bust. However their new body which takes away the lower torso joint leaves a little bit to be desired. 🙁


Speaking of Pipos, their Dreaming Mari was really the first tiny I ever became interested in. This is mainly because of her incredibly cranky look and slightly more mature face. My only concern with Dreaming Mari is that her eyes almost seem too closed so I worry that it might be difficult to get good photos, and she probably shouldn’t have lashes. As I said before though I think the Pipos body is aesthetically superior, though I can still appreciate the Littlefee Body which also has twiggy legs. My only problem with Littlefees are that their faces are a little too babyish for my taste and you also see so gosh darn much of them. I swear there are probably enough Antes out there to start an army big enough to invade a small country. XD Anyhow I think I’m rambling at this point so I will go ahead and cut this posting here. I still have more MSDs I’d like to blabber on about, but that will be for another post. 😉

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Oh dear, more beautiful MSD

It’s been a while since my last posting, and as usual I’ve been busy with my comic work, or more recently struggling with sleep issues. Anyhow I’ve gotten the dolly bug again, for better or worse, lol. I remember reading about Dreaming Doll’s MSD girls Misora and Airi a while back on BJD Collectasy and I remember being super impressed with them, especially Misora, however I was not in a position at that time to purchase a doll. Though considering dolls are a luxury item and in this bad economy is there really ever a time when we’re in a good position to buy a doll? XD I guess the money I’ve been sitting on in my bank account has begun to burn a hole through it’s virtual wall, because I find myself going dolly window shopping again (which is usually a precursor to buying ^^;;;). So it is now that I have rediscovered these fine MSD ladies.

I think I really like Misora the best, but it might just be the dark eyes and cute wig that are drawing me in, as I have a thing for dark eyes. I haven’t been able to dig up too many owner pics of them yet because they are still fairly new on the scene AND everyone seems very taken with Airi, who is also darling with her little teefers. The thing that puts me off Airi though is it seems her eye fills her whole socket so they just look like black pits. HOWEVER, I did find some owner pictures of her where a girl tried 12mm eyes instead of 14mm which seemed to solve that problem, and it put Airi in a new light for me. Anyway the current free shipping offer is tempting along with the fact that they have a lot of TTYA and Nine Style clothing available for purchase on their site. Oh but derp, do I really need another MSD girl? On the one hand, they’ve got clothes and wigs to share, on the other hand, they are MSD and thus can’t play in the dollhouse. XD I’ll dwell on it a little more and hope the free shipping bonus doesn’t go away too soon!

EDIT: I just looked back through my older posts to see when I last purchased a doll and I came to realize that it appears I’ve been buying a doll a year since 2010, except in 2011 I bought Ash and my Brownie. With that said, I guess I’m due for a doll purchase, lol. XD

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Color Matches for Rainbow Dash’s Hair.

So my nylon pony hair arrived from Dolly Hair the other day and I must say I’m pretty happy with my selections. There were only a couple slight misses I think in the matching department, but it really doesn’t matter so much since I have enough hair to redo more than one Rainbow Dash. Anyway I had to use my old camera to take these pics, so they may not be the best, but hopefully they will be good enough to help you choose the proper hair color.

This color photographs more like a dark orange, but this color, Pomme de Amour is actually a very warm true red that matches the red on Rainbow Dash’s factory mane extraordinarily well. As you can see, even though it’s orangey in the picture, that it still matches perfectly with her mane.

I decided to order the color called “Nectarine” for Dash’s orange color, and it’s a pretty close match. The differences are that Dash’s factory mane is just slightly lighter and a little less vivid than nectarine. I’m not sure I have any suggestions for which other colors to try, but there is a new shade called Marmalade at Dolly Hair that I wonder if it might be a better match. If anyone has this hair and has compared it, feel free to leave a comment and share any info you may have!

So the color I ordered for the yellow was called “Napalm”, and I feel it is a very close match. If you mix her default factory hair with napalm you really won’t be able to tell the difference between the fibers. If there is any difference between these two colors it would be that napalm is a teeny tiny bit lighter and more brilliant, but I really have to scrutinize to see it.

Ironically this color, “Key Lime Green” was the most agreed upon green color to match Dash’s factory mane at this forum I visited to gather research. As you can see from the image, so far it is the worst matching color of the bunch….booo! Key lime green is much more vivid and green that leans into the yellow side of the spectrum, more than Dash’s factory default mane which you can see leans more into the blue spectrum of the greens. Unfortunately I don’t really have an idea of what would be a better match because “Unlucky Clover” and “Lucky Clover” look a little too sea green, “Sour Apple Martini” is described as being more fluorescent and vivid than Key Lime, so that’s obviously the wrong direction. Anyway again, if anyone has any experiences with matching Dash’s green hair, please feel free to add your input in the comments!

To be honest I really wanted to order the shade “Bluberry Muffin” to try for a Rainbow Dash match, but since it was sold out I decided to go with “Water Nixie” which was yet another suggestion I had seen on a pony forum. As you can see in the picture, Dash’s blue hair is a little less vibrant and slightly lighter than Water Nixie. I still think Water Nixie is a lovely color if you are replacing Dash’s blue altogether, but if you are really trying to match her factory color I am still going to suggest giving Blueberry Muffin a try since it is described as being a lighter version of Water Nixie on the Dolly Hair site and so I think it might just be the perfect match. 😉

So the final color I ordered was “Sour Grapes” which was another color I had seen suggested on various forums. Sour grapes is a pretty close match to the factory original violet. The only problem with it is that sour grapes is is a little more vibrant and shiny….to be honest Dash’s default violet hair looks kinda dull next to sour grapes, so I would suggest going ahead and just replacing her old violet. However if you don’t want to do that, I think sour grapes is a passable match.

Well that’s it for now. I’ll post more of my adventures in customizing my Rainbow Dash in the future as I make more progress on her. 🙂