My Growing Dollfie Family

Well I've asked around but nobody in our doll family seems to want to tell Misaki that her cat has died.

 

You have so many cute dolls! I love all of the poses and pictures!

We have some doll sized money now so we could afford another trip to London.

I took Ciel in this maid outfit. We bought it some time ago but I can't remember anybody wearing it before.

Our original mission was to take some photos around the Victorian parts of central London. But we got sidetracked and it all went a bit wrong. I took Ciel around the Tate Modern but it didn't right shooting any photos of her in there.

We did find some fantastic locations for future photoshoots on the other side of the river though. Eventually we did take some photos.

I used to pass this umbrella store on the bus. It's a very famous store and it's good to see it thriving. These days central London has lost so many interesting small stores and Soho is just full of restaurants now.

I was pleased with our choice of props today.

For some reason large doll in Victorian maid outfit wasn't that interesting to the public. We didn't really get noticed much at all.

One final photo. We didn't take a lot of photos. However we found a new astrology shop and bought a set of doll sized books and some small tarot cards.

We decided to take the group photo earlier this year so it coincided with Towa's 5th birthday. Towa was my first doll.

This kind of worked better in the planning stage than irl. Mostly I was too exhausted setting everyone up to take good photos. But anyway, here's the results.

They are arranged in order of their arrival data. Towa is in the white kitty nyan outfit. Fern was the last arrival.

I must say everybody was on their best behaviour. Only Reimu fell over. The initial plan was to line everybody up but I realised I wouldn't have enough room for that.

Mytyl is sitting because SD princess and so is Emilia because of boots.

Sakura Miku is on preorder. We ordered her on the first day so we'll be last to receive her lol.

From start: Towa, Uzuki, Kizuna AI, Misaki (DD-H-21 Mochi Ashi), Yayoi Takatsuki, Rena Ryugu, Asuna Titania, Kagamine Rin, Kirika Towa Alma, Kazuha (duplicate Kirika), Iori Minase, Mytyl (SDGr), Marisa Kirisame (MDD version), Yor Forger, Erica Fontaine, Shin Sato, Ciel, Kaito, Reimu Hakurkei (MDD version), Snek, Hana (DD-H-21 Mochi Ashi), Momo and Reina (MDD rescued from YJA "Junk" category), Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len, Frieren, Miku NT, Megumin, Aqua, Anya, Rem, Ram, Emilia V2, Chisato, Takina, Fumika Fujisawa, Fern.

Spot the difference lol:

Early awards ceremony:

• Worst ever staining: Ciel (default Tsukihime outfit).
• Biggest celebrity moment: Hana for blowing them away with her kawaiiness at Dolly Day and making it onto the Volks blog. Runner up: Ciel being photographed by a tonne of curious tourists in Barcelona's gothic quarter.
• New arrival of the year: It has to be Fumika Sagisawa. Look at those eyes and that lucious black hair.
• Creepiest doll stereotype of the year: Asuna's visit to London in the Prayer Girl outfit. Several people still have recurrent nightmares after spotting her in my bag.
• Rising star award: It has to be Shin Sato. I've not seen her for sale anywhere.
• Coolest accessory: a tie between Ciel's handbag found in Barcelona and Misaki's Halloween eyes found in a £1.50 bag o' eyes in The Works.
• Longest in the same outfit: maybe Kaito because I still haven't found him something to wear. I did sit next to a Kaito in Barcelona and he had a great outfit.
• Best doll outing: It has to be Miku's trip to Hyper Japan London. That was an epic event and we made many doll friends that day.
• Best new things discovered from the doll hobby: I bought doll-sized tarot cards in a London magic shop for use in photoshoots. Just for fun I tried them out on humans (i.e. me). The first two readings have been incredibly spooky. I managed to pull out the same Major Arcana card twice in the same position. The first reading warned of dangerous times. They happened. The second reading presented three high number cards of the same suit, that totally described the problem. The final card presented the resolution. I am absolutely hooked. Runner up: I wanted some doll sized money and now appear to be collecting rare coins. 

Edited October 4, 2025 by Xiongmao

Huge congrats on the 5 year mark!  I love the setup you did in the number five for the photo, that is very cool!  I hope you continue on for another five years and beyond!   

 

Billy

On 10/4/2025 at 11:10 PM, baldylox said:

Huge congrats on the 5 year mark!  I love the setup you did in the number five for the photo, that is very cool!  I hope you continue on for another five years and beyond!   

 

Billy

Cheers! I planned it with Lego but the tail of the 5 went kind of wrong. I blamed Fumika and Fern for being too cute to not add to the collection. I think we'll do another one for 8. That's probably a lot easier.

New outfit time. We have a huge photoshoot planned for Sunday (with other doll owners) but I don't know if we'll wear this outfit. I could take Frieren, but she might complain about it being a not very interesting place. Fern's grounded until I 3D print her a hairpiece before the actual one gets broken.

This is Ciel btw - a truly underrated DD.

Ciel and Hana have been out and about again... this time with a few other doll enthusiasts.

Hana wore the Volks outfit we picked up at Dolly Day in Barcelona. She "borrowed" Misaki's shoes and Mytyl's bird cage. At the start of the shoot Hana had a fit and her leg fell off. Putting it back on when she's wearing a bodysuit is not a trivial operation 🙄.

We went to a vintage toy fair but sadly everything was pretty much out of our price range. We did spot a couple of MDD sized beds though, and a few other things that were the right scale.

In the afternoon we checked out Brompton Cemetery. It's an amazing place full of atmospheric places for taking photos, especially Halloween themed ones. Only one guy thought we were doing voodoo stuff, so that wasn't too bad really.

I like this photo - it looks as if Hana's wearing a cape.

Ciel being Ciel.

We're a bit behind in posting photos. I made my first ever doll outfit and last weekend Miku and I joined 20,000 humans and zero BJDs at London's MCM Comic Con.

Today it's Towa's 5th birthday. So exactly 5 years after she arrived I did a photoshoot of one of her first outfits. Five years on and I feel absolutely nothing has changed.

Apparently the kitty outfit is now a grail and maybe Towa will be also once she is retired as the DDdy standard model.

Happy Birthday Towa! 

And congratulations to five years in the hobby!

It never feels as if it has been that long already, if it weren't for the dolls multiplying as they tend to do... 😆

The girls have been out and about quite a bit lately.

Miku attended Comic Con at the Excel centre in London. There were 20,000 humans and zero BJDs. This outfit might have to be retired soon, because the shoes are looking a bit ragged.

Last weekend Reina and I stopped off at the British Museum on the way to a doll meet. There was a fancy dress competition at the doll meet but costumes had to be hand made. I can't sew, but I can wrap 16 metres of bandages around an MDD.

Strangely nobody asked us what we were doing in the museum, but one girl did show us some photos of her anime doll collection!

Here's Reina posing like an Egyptian. She came joint runner up in the fancy dress and won a Ken. So now we have 3 boy dolls.

And then there was the incident when Asuna fell into the sea 😲.

This was a setback, but the tribe will keep venturing out. There's a beach themed photo contest at next year's BJD Con and how can we not win when we live less than 100 metres from the sea?

Asuna is now safely dried out. I combed the sand out of her hair but the worst task was trying to dry out those yellow Wellington boots.

I find beach photography quite tricky. It's hard to get the exposure right and the photos always turn out looking way different to what my eyes saw. I'm hoping we get a weird freezing foggy day like the day my current Sony SLR arrived. Then we'll get some astounding photos.

Another strange week here. I'm now officially neurodiverse. The girls certainly helped with my diagnosis (I took Pureneemo Lycee along as proof of my special interests) 😁.

The weather has mostly been like you would expect the weather to be in England in November. However we did have two unbelievable late afternoon weather windows, so I took Shin Sato and Fumika out to terrify the local hoomans. I love Fumika's default outfit but she fell over the other day and I was horrified to find her hairpiece in two pieces 😬. Fortunately it turned out the pieces just clip together, and they had become separated. So now she's experimenting with other looks.

I'm still looking for a job so I can top up my pension buy more dolls. But it's looking increasingly likely that the Project Shin Sato Bot I launched last year has huge potential as a small business. It really came about as a way of justifying the purchase of the Re:Zero girls late last year. Shin Sato Bot's in a tough niche but our YouTube channel reached 50 subscribers this week. More importantly, we've been gaining one subscriber for every 12 views. That's way more than my girls' channel ever achieved. [for obvious licensing reasons it's not called Shin Sato Bot - that's just our codename for it].

Shin Sato cosplaying as a Lucky Star character (winter version). She knows how popular she is so she gets to wear what is arguably our best wig.

I took a lot of beach photos too but they're embargoed in case I decide to use one for the next BJD Con photo contest.

Fumika busking as a buffed version of Bocchi the Rock.

Unfortunately Fumika only made one coin, and that's not going to be enough to buy Sasara.

Prop trivia: the doll sized coin is an 1834 silver three half pence. They're a perfect scale for DD.

 

I took Ciel to the town I grew up in - Chichester in West Sussex, England. It's really not that exciting but I now realise it's absolutely amazing for doll photography. I don't know if they filmed any of Harry Potter here, but there's a definite Hogwarts vibe.

First up a homage to my late grandfather, who made this door for the Norman cathedral in the late 1980s. It's probably going to be good for 400 years or so. Sadly I didn't inherit the woodworking genes and ended up with an E for my woodwork secondary school exam. Chemistry was my special interest and I came first in the entire year during the mock exams 🧪.

I didn't realise sometimes the door opens to let hoomans out, but fortunately Ciel didn't topple inwards.

Ciel really is a genius. She stayed by my side for the long evenings last year when I was prototyping Shin Sato Bot. Now she's lecturing at magic school. She's been through a lot what with the Barcelona staining and Hana's antics at Dolly Day, but those eyes shine as bright as ever.

I'll return here with another doll in tow. Another great thing was nobody bothered us at all. Which is kind of rare in itself.

You have such a great collection! Loving looking through your dolls’ pics, especially near traditional looking places! I’d love to do that one day, though I’d be afraid of people bothering me ^^’

Another day, another doll outing. Nobody bothered us on this one.

Sometimes you just have to have a thick skin. But honestly we don't get anywhere as near as much flack with dolls as we do with our stock trading sideline.

Somebody on FB was unkind about the way I style (or rather haven't styled) Ciel's red wig. Honestly the way my dolls style their wigs is up to them. You wouldn't go up to another hooman in the street and say I just hate what you did with your hair.

It's unique, just like each and every one of my doll family.

fdfffdfdfdfdfd.

Anyway, Fumika was itching to go out and as the light faded and I was still inside I thought I'd missed the best of the light, or all of the light. The days are so short now.

Fortunately an amazing weather window happened. The best photos are embargoed until we choose an exclusive shot for the photo contest. But here's Fumika after having had a very quick skate along the promenade.

This is kind of a DDdy outfit but it fits her really well. Her hoodie only blew away once. I don't even know if these skates will fit a DD, but they do fit MDD mochi-ashi.

It's the Volks lacrosse set if anyone's interested. There are two sets and this Burberry style one is the more popular of the two. It also comes with a lacrosse racket.

I took Fumika to our final doll meet of the year. This one had more of a BJD theme. We met some great hoomans (and dolls). The hoomans were kind of more interested in Pureneemo Yaya than Fumika, but Fumika was chill about it. Being a vinyl doll in a largely resin world is something they've learned to deal with.

The venue didn't sound that interesting for doll photography, but it turned out to be rather more interesting than expected.

NEVER STOP is our current motto as we attempt to get our fledgling business off the ground.

I took Kizuna AI out for some fitness training. She's going to be the next DD to appear in Fortnite, after Hatsune Miku.

This is quite a surprise addition and is also fairly controversial because Fortnite players are extremely wary of anyone or anything AI related.

Hopefully they will realise that she's an actual character and not just an AI slop.

I did take some much better photos of her on the beach but all beach photoshoots are embargoed until we choose the photo for the BJD Con photo contest [they have to be unpublished].

After several months between jobs it has come to the stage where I had to send the girls out foraging for supplies.

Thankfully Friday the 13th has apparently been kind to my doll family. While we never released the doll app, the human's ability to build phone apps has resulted in a job offer.

Maybe the first thing we'll buy is a light meter so that Fern can be perfectly exposed in photos.

9 hours ago, Xiongmao said:

Thankfully Friday the 13th has apparently been kind to my doll family. While we never released the doll app, the human's ability to build phone apps has resulted in a job offer.

Congrats! - Regardless, I do hope we'll see your doll app eventually. 😆

9 hours ago, Xiongmao said:

Maybe the first thing we'll buy is a light meter so that Fern can be perfectly exposed in photos.

Unless you're using vintage cameras or have very specific use cases, your camera's internal light metering should be perfectly sufficient to do the job. (That tree branch behind her is perfectly exposed for after all. 🤣) Before you go and spend a bunch of extra money, play around with your camera settings for a bit. Metering modes, exposure lock and exposure compensation would be the settings you're looking for. If you're using exposure preview on your display/EVF, check its brightness setting, as that can throw you off, too.

Hana's still dreaming of that 🐴 but for now she's cool with a very long 🐍.

If we ever find the pink DD sized version of this outfit then she can twin with somebody. Towa has the DDdy version. It was one of the very first outfits I bought for her.

(●´ω｀●)

Saturday was sunny so I bundled Shin Sato up in the Rin carrier and headed to London.

It wasn't as warm as I'd hoped but Shin made a really good effort at cleaning up the tombs around Brompton Cemetery. Later we wandered around central London and even saw some KPOP in public dances being filmed. I would have shown them Shin but I thought her outfit didn't really fit the theme.

Annoyingly she stained one of her hands. I've no idea how it happened as she was in the carrier and I was careful to ensure everything was tucked away in the pockets. Fortunately it was a quick stain to remove.

The broom is new and the hair accessories are from the Claire's Accessories closing down sale. We've had the shrine maiden outfit for ages. It's truly ancient and I have no idea how to fit the sandals. They're far too delicate to take out anyway.

Momi's Ui Shigure cosplay has been at least 2 years in the making now. We found the shoes and now have the alarm.

At some point we might find a better wig.

The great thing about this cosplay is Momo's just so good at free standing.

Alas she spent so much time posing for photos she missed the last train home 😪. I was also really worried because a seagull was also eyeing her up 🐦. That's not really what the alarm is for 😬.

 

Considering the things seagulls around here are up to - stealing people's snacks right out of their hands, divebombing with and without live ammo, ripping up garbage bags to get at the content, and so on - they're like an avian counterpart to violent molesters, so the alarm (both yours and Momi's) should be appropriate.

Another trip to the park. This time there was a curious seed rat (Frieren reference).

I took Shin Sato out for a Hanami photoshoot. As it turned out, this setting's photos turned out a whole lot better.

This is the new Volks stocking set, and it's terrific. The outfit we've had for a long time, and it's become a firm favourite of the tribe. Shin also adores this wig, and it's pretty much her own now.

A few photos from the UK Bjd Mini Con. It was a fun event. It was smaller than the 2025 event but the venue was a lot more photogenic. There was a sea theme so I dressed up Fumika and Hana in our most appropriate outfits.

I really wished I had brought a maid outfit or something along because that would have been so much more in keeping with the place.

I brought Fumika along because a year ago she was my grail and an attendee at last year's event actually had a Fumika.

Hana came along because Hana is Hana.

On the other hand we were really dressed for the occasion with the photo sets.

Hana "Gwar Gura" was adored by all the hoomans of course. I really like these eyes. They're super bright and look great in photos. I think they arrived as part of a consignment of Dream Choice eyes.

Hana thought her costume was 20,000 leagues better than any other dolls' outfit at the event.

This was fun too...