Alice Margatroid 1/6 (T’s System)
The kit that got me into building GKs, it's such a cute one :) (especially with her dolls Shanghai and Hourai). T's System has a lovely Touhou GK line and they're still releasing more. Most of the painting is done with the airbrush, details were hand-brushed (I love doing details!).
She's on display for quite a while now, I forgot when I actually finished her but she had been the reason for much frustration and headache. Every part of her decided to break off spontaneously until I had enough and pinned everything I could! One should still be careful with the dolls but other than that I think she shouldn't be prone to falling apart anymore.
Kawaii gifts, n-th round: Bath-Towel
"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have."
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy writes
Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat;
Or so it goes on...
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Pocky The Review
Finally! We're done with all the photo taking issues. As promised, here's the review I've been wanting to write since I got that Pocky heap last Christmas! They've been lying around for so long...
Flavors are listed in no particular order. Unfortunately, I can't claim this review to be complete. Glico has released so many different Pocky and it's even harder to get everything outside Japan. Nevertheless, I've got quite a bunch and pretty pictures too ;) (And I'll make sure I add future Pocky additions to this review if I should ever get my hands on more.)
Deer me, Deer you, Bookstand-Deer!
And off we go for another nice DIY tinkering howto. Again we needed a birthday present for a friend of ours, which is a deliberate Otaku and IRC-Nerd on #satf, rizon. Those folks happen to have a bot that can draw ASCII-Art pictures mainly of deers - that look just like the bookholder deer below.
As you can imagine our friend was flabbergasted (i somehow like that word) to the last. Read on for more details on how to build it!
Figure Buying Guide
It all started with the Konata Figma that I wanted to have and no matter how hard I looked for her, she wasn't available anywhere (you can always try eBay but in most cases you pay a high price). As ridiculous as it may sound but competition between figure collectors is fierce. Popular figures are gone in no time and people are capable of hogging sites at 4 am in the morning to get limited ones.
From what I've seen, it's easier to get figures when they're available for preorder if you really want them. Of course you can hope for sales (and they happen a lot!) but most probably those for sale aren't the ones you want.
Mina, Model-Kit Diary
As figures are somehow fun and so is tinkering. So how about combining those two? "Garage Modelkits" offer you the (IMO) nicest way of doing so. What you'll get is a resin casted model in parts, you've gotta file it, grind it, polish it, paint it and glue it together. It takes up shitloads of your time, so be careful not to let that new hobby eat too much of your time - if you decide to try it / stick with it.
Anyways, we've (as in Eefi and NebuK :P) tried our first garage kit, Mina, from the Densha Otoko opening:
Mina, our first modelkit, finished :P
As we've run into many problems, gear and methode wise, we thought we'd publish a small "buildlog" or "modelkit diary". Mind you, this is by no means a guide or tutorial as we've only tried to find our way into the Resin Kit World :P. Still if you're preparing to do your first kit this post may give you some kind of idea what you're diving into.
Schwarzwaelder [Cup,Micro]-Cakes
Let me start this Post with a familiar sentence:
Cakes, everyone LOVES Cakes.
"Uuuhm, sure, okay" - but hey, everyone does! So we made a few Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Gateau?) Mini-Cakes. For the ones who don't know, this is a German cake, actually, the most german of all Cakes. Coming from a mountain-region in the south-west it has whipped cream, some more whipped cream on some whipped cream with some whipped cream, cherries, some more whipped cream, a few cherries on top aaaand ... MORE whipped cream.
Happy Chinese New Year!
It's the year of the Tiger :D
While everyone's busy with V-Day and all: Happy Chinese New Year! :)
Gong xi fa cai!
Poring Plush
We've made two Porings and two Poporings already and this is a wonderful plushie for beginners. Having seen Ragnarok cosplayers run around with Porings at a convention, I was determined to buy one too until they told me the ones they were carrying were self-made. I wanted one myself at first but all Porings I've made so far have been given away and this one also had a home before it was made. If you want one as well, drop me a comment (or a mail) xD. I love making those and they come in green, dark blue, light blue or orange if pink doesn't suit you ~
From left to right: Pouring, Marin, Drops, Poporing, Poring
You'll find a lot of Poring plush tutorials on the net and I already forgot which inspired me. This is how it works best for me:
Something green for your flat
You may have some dark or darker places in your Flat/Room/House/Whatever - or - as i do - a complete souterrain flat. Now you may have tried having some indoor plants in there - just to make the rooms nicer. It just didn't work, so you put 'em into trash and never tried again.
Well, maybe i just exaggerated a bit, it isn't that worse most of the time. Still its kinda difficult growing and hatching nice plants virtually anywhere. As i like some green around me and *am* living in a dark souterrain flat i've put some reading and discussion with biologists into this and i think i've got it how to make that work by now.
First off you need to choose the right plants. Not anything is suited for this kind of enviroment, but some nice ones are spathiphyllum, ficus (benjamini), yuca, phoenix (dactylifera), calathea, dracaena, various ivys, but there are many many more. Just check your local library for nice books on that topic - believe me, books are way better than interweb for this :).
Of those examples i have the following ones around:
