Busy Bee Life and New Kits

Hello everyone, long time no post! I've been very inactive on this blog lately due to a combination of life and venturing out into the real world ^^ I don't want to bore anyone with the details but in short the past few months I've been enjoying gainful employment, moved into a house, and have been doing a bit of travelling (PAX Prime anyone?) so I haven't had much time to sit down and focus on my kits.

This is partially my fault since I now have no work space...the desk I've been using to build stuff on is actually my computer desk but now that we have a dedicated computer room I don't want to haul all my paints and stuff across the house and get everything covered in resin. >_> Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to acquire a desk so I can sit down and focus on kits. This hasn't stopped me from purchasing a number of items though - I still enjoy hoarding and collecting resin when I feel like spoiling myself :p If it isn't clothing or cosmetics (another more recent obsession) it's garage kits hehe.

With that said I just wanted to show off a couple of recent purchases I've made since I've been wanting to gush about them for a while but I don't want to bother anyone. Silly me didn't realize that I could rant on my own blog!

Habenero-tan set by Midass

This was a complete impulse purchase I made on Mandarake back in May. I have no idea why I decide to buy this kit because I'm not familiar with Habenero-tan besides the fact that she's a mascot and likes to sit on a toilet (because it has to do with spicy food I guess???) but I couldn't pass it up for 2,000 yen. The coolest part is that this kit came with an original 4koma and post card. I'm pretty sure the post card is signed by the creator of Habenero-tan but it might also be printed on...either way the quality of the paper is really high quality and it's a pretty cool freebie. I did a ton of hunting on Midass but it appears this is either the only kit or one of very few kits they created so maybe they were just an unfortunate company that flopped. The kit is super straight forward and they're both very small so when/if I build this set I'll be sure to take a bunch of photos of all the bonus goodies.

Hagoromo-chan by Kilohana

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! This kit is an absolutely dream of mine to own and I legitimately freaked out when I found this one for sale. A fellow GK acquaintance CinnamonSwirls recently decided to cut down on her kits and put this original one up for sale and I was lucky enough to see it and snatch her up. I have a very soft spot for small fantasy kits involving skinny/ethereal fairies and this figure is everything that I love all wrapped up into one convenient resin package. The level of detail is perfect for someone like me. To give you an example the flower on the top of her head has these little anthers (see pic to the right)...every single one of those anthers needs to be glued on separately and painted onto the flower petal base. You also can't really tell in the picture but she comes with a bunch of clear parts too! The snail, cherries, wings, little shoes, hair and a couple of other pieces are made of clear resin which adds a very interesting contrast to the rest of the kit. I've never painted clear parts before so I'll most likely have to bring out my airbrush for those. I could rant about this kit a lot because I'm so excited it's in my possession but again that will have to wait until I'm actually building it lol.

Little Bride by Munchkin

Forewarning: This kit is a recast. If you're not OK with that please just skip this little section since I'm not about to discuss the ethics of selling recasts on my blog atm. I really wanted this kit immediately since Halloween is coming up and I want an excuse to paint something a little spookier (not that this is spooky...at all...). After my Mage kit I want to do something darker and a little bloodier and I've been eyeing her since I've seen so many beautiful versions of this kit. She's so versatile too! You can paint her to look more like a normal little girl or go completely Monster High and use all sorts of colors like greens and purples ^^ Every single build I've seen of her looks completely different and unique which isn't something you see too often. She doesn't have very many parts and is pretty small (~15cm fully built) so I'm hoping for a quick and relatively painless build. I have no idea what kind of color scheme to give her though...this will be my next kit though so expect to see a lot more of her soon.



That's all I have for now so thanks for reading ^^ I hope to post a lot more soon.

Even More Life Stuff

Hi everyone I figured it was more than enough time for another life/figure update.

I'm having an incredibly difficult time getting into the habit of using my airbrush. I think it may be because I don't have a dedicated work space and any spraying I do has to be outside on my balcony but it's such a pain to set it up and mixing colors is the worst! I really hate doing it. With craft acrylics I could easily blend two paints together to get an exact shade but with acrylic paint you are forced to drop x drops of yellow and y drops of red to get who knows what shade of orange and then worry "wow this jar cost like $3USD so I better not waste it." It's so bad that I've considered just going back to hand-painting because I miss getting up close and personal with my kits lol. The paint looks so good though when you airbrush it's not fair ;_; and I have like 3 kits pretty much ready to go to paint but I can't bring myself to do it ahaha...

Other life stuff: I posted about my dog breaking his leg back in December and I am extremely happy to report that his leg recovered on his own without needing surgery!!! It took around 3 months and I had to go through a huge ordeal with a local veterinary office in town which led to switching to another vet altogether but I'm just thrilled he's walking around on his leg again.

I also hit my goal weight a couple of weeks ago which is pretty exciting but I'm still in the process of adjusting so I've lost a little more than that. It took me 8 months to get here but I'm officially 30 lbs. down at a safe BMI of 21.8 and was never even this healthy in high school so I'm pretty happy. ^^ It makes me want to try to cosplay or something but I still need to work up on toning up lol. If you want to lose weight and are scared or don't think you can do it I really recommend getting the app MyFitnessPal on your smartphone and buying a food scale. I started logging my calories every day after calculating my total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) and aimed for 20% less calories than that and it has definitely worked. The only exercise I really did was walking, DDR, or biking a couple of miles a week so most of it was diet but it has absolutely made a difference and I just feel so much better about myself. I used the website Scooby's Workshop for my TDEE measurements but all the online calculators vary so it's kind of better to do the calculations manually after you've been counting calories for a few weeks. The hardest part was working up the courage to start.

OK enough ranting about weight when this is supposed to be a figure blog lol. My chibi Remilia kit is currently sitting all primed in white ready to be painted but I need to get out all my airbrush stuff again. I started working on my 7th Dragon kit again because I'm finally inspired and discovered a color scheme! And that is because...

I started playing Final Fantasy 14 (maybe the REAL reason I haven't been getting anything productive done lol)! I started playing with my fiance when we have time together and it's a lot of fun. I have never played a subscription game but it makes the game a little more serious since there aren't bots and younger kids running around all over the place. The graphics are absolutely beautiful and it has a lot to offer so if you are looking for a new MMO I recommend trying before buying. I recommend playing with someone else or in a guild though since it can be lonely running through everything yourself.

Anyway I realized last night in bed when I was thinking about my kit (yes I think about how to paint my kits when I'm in bed >_>) that this mage shares some qualities with my scholar character so I think I'm going to paint her color scheme similarly.

See they both look kind of the same lol...

So her hair is definitely going to be a moss green with bright green eyes and she'll have those little markings/freckles on her skin. I want to add a little summoning book to her as well but I'm not sure if I'll go for the glasses or not. The only thing I'm stuck on is the clothes...blues/greens suit her really well but I also want her to pop out so I want to put some red and yellow in there somewhere.

ALSO I wasn't that impressed by this past Wonder Festival (Feb. 8th) at all. :/ Everything that I have been interested in wasn't re-sold this time which is a shame but is probably for the best because I'm broke. I knew a couple of people who actually went this time and it seems like everyone is so surprised when they take on all sorts of personal orders for others and don't end up with anything at the end because everything sells out so quickly. I've known this for like 2 years now since I've tried to get proxies for the kits and I never end up with anything so just a heads up if you want to go to WF pay for that premium ticket that lets you get in like an hour early and either (a) find 10 equally insane people to run around the event buying resin for you or (b) practice building up your stamina because it's basically the same thing as training for a marathon because you'll have to RUN to get a chance at what you want. As for whether people actually run around in the convention center who knows but it's worth a shot LOL...

This ended up being slightly long-winded and longer than I thought but at least you guys know I'm alive...bye for now!

Quickie Update

Finally almost done with Len, just a few more putty issues with her skirt and then she'll be done “ヽ(´▽｀)ノ”

Sneak peek:

She'll probably be done in a couple of days but now that I think about it I'm probably gonna wait until the WF fever settles to publish all the WIPs and finished pics...dang forgot all about that lol

Yay WF \o/ Too bad there's not that much I want but there are a few gems and things for resale I'd like. Damn though WF is getting expensive, everything I've seen is like 9-10k, even for less-talented sculptors :/ Seems like nowadays all I'm into is Touhou sculpts and original GKs..and the WTF of the season goes to Mad Hand's Amazon chick lol. Anyway here's my super want list:

Come to me my sweet grail OTL
Usagi from G-E+

Marisa from ReplyFrom...

Cute catgirl from QuailEGG

Super cute Cirno by Yutaka House

Hopefully there aren't like 40 Mikus this time and I hope that 7th Dragon Miku looks better cause her face is freaking scary lol. And MAGI FIGS PLEASE! Ok I'm done lol