It's Christmas!

I recently received a package from my Christmas Swap with Courtney and wanted to share with you guys what she sent me ^^

It was a random figure swap so neither of us knew which critter we would be getting! To be honest, I had totally forgotten about having entered for the figure swap until I received an her package just last week! Thankfully Courtney is very understanding :'(

Anyway, the figure that I got from Courtney was little Bud Timbertop! Courtney was also ultra sweet to include some extra gifts: a red wagon, a roasted marshmallow on a stick and a Christmas wreath!

Thank yous o much Courtney! I love everything you sent me! They go very well together and fit perfectly into the Christmas theme – hence I decided to take a photo of everything she sent me along with my Father Christmas & Tree Set:

Have a blessed X'mas everyone!

Christmas Giveaway Winner!

Apologies for not announcing the winner as I'd intended to on 1st December. I was too tired after work and fell asleep as soon as I got back.

So, the winner of my Christmas Giveaway is.............

Aranera!

I've also decided to give an additional surprise gift to another lucky reader and that is.............

Somnium!

Congratulations Aranera and Somnium!

Do drop me an email at dh7_xie@hotmail.com to claim your prizes ^^

For those who did not win; thank you for participating. I hope I'll be able to do another giveaway again sometime.

Christmas Giveaway!

I chanced upon this really cute retired Sylvanian Families set going at a good price and thought I'd do a Christmas Giveaway to thank all my readers for their constant support!

To participate in my Christmas Giveaway, all you have to do is follow my blog and leave a comment stating why you'd like to win this set and how you intend to use it in your collection! This giveaway is open to everyone and I'll cover the cost of shipping plus tracking to you.

The winner will be announced on 1st December. Good luck everyone ^^

K-ON Figma: Mio Akiyama (#58)

Taking a break from spray painting because the weather has been extremely humid as of late. It's been raining almost every day here, sometimes even twice or thrice a day. Anyway, I managed to capture a few shots of my Mio Figma before the weather started to turn dark again, so here she is!

Mio's bass bag is missing a strap. There's also this strap adjuster piece that my Yui Figma didn't come with. They're probably missing parts since I didn't purchase them sealed :(

Oh well. I do intend to get another Yui Figma set so I can re-enact scenes whereby Ui pretends to be her sister so I guess I could snag those missing parts from there. 

Meanwhile, just slinging the only strap of her bass bag on one arm and taking a shot from this angle works for me :3

Like Yui, Mio also comes with a pair of indoor shoes, 2 additional faceplates and 5 extra pairs of hands. Personally, I'm would have preferred an angry or scared face. But these ones are pretty fun as well!

Think I mistook her shy face for a crying expression ;_;

I usually take boring straight-up shots so I tried taking pictures from dynamic angles this time. Hope you enjoyed the photos :)

Creating a Sylvanian Home (Part 3)

Managed to spray the roof of my SF house as well as prime the door and some of the windows:

I used Tamiya's Linoleum Deck Brown Spray Paint for this. Their spray paint is specifically for plastic so I had no problems with flaking. The paint goes on really well and dries pretty quick. I could apply a second coat after about 30 minutes. It also has a very nice matt finish, unlike other spray paints which often give this semi-glossy look.

Sadly, I got alot of paint on the walls this time :(

I tried using Mr Color Thinner to remove the excess paint but it could only remove some parts of it. One of the walls is badly stained because I didn't fully cover that area with some paper / tape. Silly me. I thought the paint wouldn't be able to get on there but I was wrong:

I had plan to leave the walls in it's original color because I couldn't find a nice shade of yellow to match the roof. But that's alright, I guess I'll just have to pick a color for the walls now :)

Creating a Sylvanian Home (Part 2)

Work has been crazy the past few weeks with lesser days off than usual so I haven't been able to start on my custom SF house until now :(

The first step is to spray a layer of primer over the surface I wish to paint. Some people don't see the need for primer as long as you're using spray paint meant for plastics. But I read priming helps to prevent the original colour of the surface you are painting from showing through.

Preparing to prime:

I used Mr Hobby Surfacer 1500 Gray spray to prime the roof. I taped the areas I didn't want sprayed with masking tape first. I also used a huge piece of plastic to seal the windows so paint wouldn't get inside.

Remember to shake the can well before you start and always use a dust mask. It's also best to do this outside where it's well ventilated. Paint fumes are toxic and can make you ill.

Result:

Pretty proud of how even it looks considering this is the first time I'm spraying something that isn't for practice. Spray cans are really easy to use once you get the hang of it, though I did make a couple of small mistakes:

Got some primer on the inside of the house because I was lazy and didn't tape the inside.

I've yet to decide if I want to paint the ceiling a different colour. If I do, I'll have to prime the whole ceiling anyway. But if I decide to keep the ceiling as it is, I think some rubbing alcohol should remove it. Be careful not to use nail polish remover with acetone in it as it might melt away the plastic. 

I also had these bubbles / bumps on one part of the roof:

This happens when you spray too close and the paint gets too thick; making it hard to dry evenly. But this can easily be fixed with some sanding when the layer has completely dried. It's important to fix bumps before adding more layers of paint because spraying on an uneven surface will only make it look worst.

That's it for now. Can't wait for my next day off to start painting the roof brown!

Haruhi Figma: Haruhi Suzumiya Kyouya Ver. (#77)

I'm back with another Figma review! This time it's Haruhi Suzumiya from the anime series: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

I must admit that I only watched the anime because I felt like collecting more Figmas. I didn't like it at first because the episodes were not shown in chronological order and it confused the crap out of me. But I'm glad I stuck through the entire series because eventually everything made sense.

If you plan on watching the anime, my advice is to stick to the original broadcast order. It'll be confusing at the start but trust me it'll be worth it! Not watching the series in chronological order gives it a different build up towards the last episode. Kinda like the way Star Wars was shown!

I got a pretty good deal for this Figma. It was brand new, unopened and costed me only 28 USD! However, I was a little disappointed with this one because..

#1 – Haruhi's stand came with badly rusted screws even though it was brand new and sealed. Thankfully, I managed to find a tutorial on how to replace them since they don't sell the stands separately

#2 – There was a spot on the short hair piece whereby the paint had come off so I decided to cover it with pastels. I used Mr. Super Clear Flat to seal it but I have no idea why it ended up giving her hair piece a glossy finish. The glossy finish bothers me a little because that's how a fake Figma looks like :\

#3 – Her front fringe piece keeps falling off

At first I thought she could be a fake because her hair pieces aren't in the same colour throughout and her joints were obviously lighter in color than her skin part. But her box came with the authencity seal and her legs didn't look weird like this fake Mikuru Asahina Cheerleader Figma.

Flaws aside, she's really nice to take pictures of:

She comes with a functional sleeping bag (as seen in the anime) as well as a sleeping face-plate:

And lastly, she also comes with 5 extra pairs of hands and an extra face-plate for Nagato Yuki!

Overall, this is a really fun Figma to have despite the minor flaws. Hopefully I'll have better luck with my next Figma purchase!

Creating a Sylvanian Home (Part 1)

When I first started collecting SF, I'd intended to complete the home of my Wildwood family first before moving on to build the rest of my village. Sad to say, that hasn't happened yet because I keep coming across retired items I feel I needed to buy immediately because they are well.. hard to find.

It's boring to just take pictures for reviews. I'd love to take pictures that tell a story but I can't do that because of the lack of props and settings. So I've decided I will finally concentrate on finishing my Wildwoods' home!

My Wildwoods are from the Celebration Set by Flair; which comes with an additional older brother and sister, as well as a baby:

Kinda disappointed that the older brother's clothes isn't the same as the picture on the box. He came in overalls similar to his father's. The little brother's and older sister's clothes are different too. Damn Flair and their often misleading stock pics ;(

As you can tell, my Wildwood family is pretty big so they're going to need a huge house! I also plan for Grandpa and Grandma Wildwood to live in with the rest of the family so that'll be 9 of them sharing the same house!

The first house I ever gotten was the Beechwood Hall (also known as Willow Hall or City House with lights). It's funny how all the SF houses look huge but in reality they are pretty small and cramped once you start placing furniture in it. But that's the beauty of SF; they're not supposed to be exactly to scale.

With 4 rooms (or 5 if you count the little side room as 1) you'd expect it to be big enough for a standard SF family of 4, but apparently not. I had gotten this Luxury Master Bedroom Furniture Set and there was more than enough furniture to take up both rooms on the top level!

Not enough room for a bathtub!

This house is definitely too small for my Wildwood Family. Or at least, for the way I'd like to place my furniture. Not to worry though, because the Beechwood Hall house can be combined with the SF House with Car Porch to form a bigger house like so:

I love the idea of the car porch. It reminds me alot of my aunt's house in The Philippines.

Honestly, I quite like the original color of the houses. I think the cream walls and the red roof is a great combination. However, they don't seem to be the same shade of cream in real life. Also some of the windows come in white whereas some are the same color as the walls. Inconsistencies bother me because I'm such a perfectionist :(

I could just paint all the windows the same color but how about painting the house in an entirely different color?

I'd love for some green windows. Below are my choices for the color scheme of the exterior. I think it'd suit my Wildwoods very well:

Initially, I was pretty skeptical about customizing my own SF house because 1. I kinda like them in their original state 2. I might screw up and end up with something that looks worst than it originally was.

But seeing bbqweasel's work inspires me so much to want to try. Afterall, the whole idea of SF is so that we can use our imagination!

How do you feel about customizing your own Sylvanian home?

K-ON Figma: Yui Hirasawa (#57)

Overblew my budget on toys last month because I couldn't resist a good bargain lol. I caved and bought a set of K-ON Figmas because they only cost 160 USD for the full band!

Absolutely loved the anime and it's definitely my favourite. The K-ON Nendoroids were what drew me to the series, but their Figmas seemed like alot of fun as well especially because they're articulated.

Yui comes with 5 pairs of hands, one of which is actually a picking hand and fretting hand pair!

Wish they added strings to the guitar to make it more detailed though!

But she does have a functional guitar bag you can put her guitar into!

She also comes with a standard Figma stand and an extra side piece so you can have her carry the guitar bag over her shoulders should you need her on the stand:

Yui also includes a 'big face' face-plate and a bigger fringe piece to go with it. The face should come blank if your set is brand new. The previous owner had applied on one of the expressions already:

Not really fond of the 'big face' though. I would've preferred if it's the same size as her other two face-plates. Also, I just found out the previous owner didn't include the sheet of various facial expressions you can apply to the 'big face'. They're supposedly like temporary tattoos and not stickers so they're not reusable.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my purchase! Figmas are indeed alot of fun because of their poseability and changeable parts. They're also of good quality and very nicely painted – definitely worth the money!