A-chan’s Neighborhood

[Deadcraft.Com]: Dir En Grey: Kyo & X-Japan: Yoshikitty Dolls A few more Japanese rock-themed crochet dolls for your enjoyment! I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I've crafted quite a few dolls based on popular J-rock band Dir en Grey; well, someone specifically requested a couple more Dir en grey dolls; this time of an 8 inch high Kyo! To showcase the different looks Kyo has had throughout the years, one doll sports a pretty shiny tracksuit, while the other sports a little eyepatch, from his Vulgar era.

And if that's not odd enough, a friend has also requested that I make a Hello Kitty version of Yoshi from X-Japan. As most X-Japan fans know, little Yoshikitty is not a new concept; back in Japan, Hello Kitty versions of Yoshi has been sold out all throughout the year, no kidding.

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/12/15/dir-en-grey-kyo-x-japan-yoshikitty-dolls/

[Deadcraft.Com]: Pirates of the Carribean: Jack Sparrow

With all the yummy Johnny Depp characters coming up in movies nowadays (and let's not forget that he's also 2009's Sexiest Man of the Year? Take that, Brad Pitt!) it's hard not to want to make something based on him to some degree. So it's probably best to start out with the character that he is currently most known by - Jack Sparrow from the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean!

This little tyke is going to be making its rounds frequently over at my deadcraft store in etsy. Bug me if there isn't one in stock!

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/12/11/pirates-of-the-carribean-jack-sparrow/

[Deadcraft.Com]: Dragonball: Son Gohan Crochet Doll A large 8 inches high Son Gohan doll that I had commissioned for a customer in the past, based on the character from the Dragonball series! And of course, being the absolute masochist that I am, also agreed to do Son Gohan's more complicated Chineseque suit instead of his regular martial arts garb. And let's not forget the monkey tail!

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/11/29/dragonball-son-gohan-crochet-doll/

1. My life. It IS material and it is something that's ultimately mine.
2. My eyeglasses. I have terrible vision (short-sightedness/myopia plus astigmatism on the left eye), and I don't tear up easily, which is why I prefer glasses over invasive contact lenses. My current pair is extra-special because I bought it myself.
   
3. Everything that was given to me as a present which I currently use. Whether it's something edible or useful, something large or small, something worn or held or simply kept, I know that the person that gave that item to me gave much time, effort and money up just to give something of great value to me.
   
4. All the clothes I bought with my own money.
5. All the belts and accessories (especially costume jewelry) I bought with my own money.
6. All the shoes I bought with my own money.
7. All the bags I bought with my own money.
8. All the make-up I bought with my own money.
   
9. My Panasonic CCD video camera (mini-DV). I wish I could use it more often though. I miss making videos!
10. My costumes, because that meant I DID enjoy being a geeky and creative kid. dXDb Especially Danaya of Encantadia because she literally opened doors for me - new friends, newfound appreciation for myself, newfound appreciation for Filipino culture (you need to see the show to see why), and new cosplay possibilities. 
11. My anime and manga collection, which have influenced my tastes and my worldview profoundly. I've collected them even before being a geek was cool. They entertain me and make me happy. dXDb
12. My lovely wigs, for the same reasons as above. Also, they give me a new look and a measure of confidence to try new things ... notably new hair styles and colours. dXDb
    
13. My impulse buy, my white MacBook Pro 2008. I wanted to give her up, but she's become so useful to me especially for doing work outside of the office and the house. I still need to pay Mum my share of her though. XD;;;
14. My Sony Ericsson Walkman w801i, who at her prime was the most gorgeous phone ever. She's a grande old dame now. <3 Thanks for selling this beautiful baby to me, Carlo San (former colleague at my former office)! :D
15. The house I currently live in, La Casa Nueva. Part of my life savings went into this beauty. And now I have my own room too! <3 We've definitely come a long way from renting a tiny flat full of mice and cockroaches which barely had any running water. 
    
16. My paper journals, organizers and diaries. They are terribly cheesy and melodramatic but they link me to the Ligayas of years past.
    
17. My built-from-scratch desktop, Anthy. From an ASUS-Seagate-Intel base, she's now a hybrid Gigabyte-ASUS-Seagate-Intel-Samsung baby. dXDb

[Deadcraft.Com]: Twilight Crochet Dolls I'm going to be honest. I am not a fan of the Twilight series. When I think of the perfect, ideal man, my heart shall always remain entirely with Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. As an admitted bibliophile who grew up with monsters on the brain, as you can probably see with not only my dolls but in other artworks I've made / stories I've written, I like the writing styles of Umberto Eco and Jeffrey Eugenides, and am probably too old to be fully regaled with a four-book romantic story geared primarily for teens. However, I do have a lot of friends who are stark raving mad, crazed to the point of wtfness huge fans of the series, and I have eventually learned to deal with their moments of squee-ness if I am to maintain the friendship, despite their sometimes inability to deal with my poor fanpire-related barbed quips at their expense. They are also the same lovably exasperating people who had first requested me to make Edward Cullen dolls in the first place, so you also have them to thank for the series of dolls shown below. I have been making Edward Cullen and Jacob Black dolls for awhile now, and one out of every five customers who make the purchases inevitably asks me: "When are you ever going to make a Bella Swan doll?" While I could confess to a certain level of procrastination there, along with a truckload of other priority commissions and custom requests that took up most of my time for the better part of a year, one glaring reason it took me so long to make Bella was simply because she didn't have particular features that could easily be showcased in a doll and therefore easily observed to be a "Bella". Edward has his golden eyes and manly pomade. For the Jacob Black doll I settled for adding a tiny paw print on his lower back. But unless I stitchedthe word 'Bella' right across her shirt, I didn't know how people could easily discern her to be a Bella doll. A few people suggested Bella in her prom dress, or of her wearing an engagement ring. But she only wears her prom dress for a couple of scenes all in all and would have no further basis in later books, nor is a ring easy to do in miniature. The requests for her doll increased; in my Ravelry account, my Bella doll was still a work in progress, without any pictures to show, but four users had it listed as their favorite, and the entr viewed over a hundred times without my ever promoting or showcasing the attempt in groups. In the end, I decided to just make her without any "Bella" markings. I supposed that if Stephanie Meyer intended for her to look plain and normal and doe-eyed (and oddly enough, to also look a lot like Stephanie Meyer) then I supposed this would just reinforce the statement.

And so little Bella joins the cast of little deadcraft Twilight dolls. Apologies to everyone who waited for over a year for this! Here's my small attempt at an apology.

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/11/17/twilight-crochet-dolls/

[Deadcraft.Com]: Dir en Grey Crochet Dolls I don't always have the opportunity to collaborate with a lot of other people in this crocheting business, so when you have friends over in Japan who also happen to maintain one of the best and most popular Dir En Grey websites on the web, then you tend to jump all over their offer to do something in tandem with the fandom. And so presenting, the current incarnation of Dir En Grey!

Given that the band look tends to change often in the same way seasons change, this is their current Autumn 2009 regalia. Of course, a few people who'd been with me way back when I was crocheting long before I'd had a website know that this isn't the first time I've crocheted Kyo.

Risu and Nao have been kind enough to promote these little dolls for me at their Dir en Grey site, http://www.orchestrated-chaos.com - and to my surprise, the dolls promptly sold out in a matter of days. So if any of you guys would like to purchase more Dir en Grey dolls, either with their current look, or in any previous costumes / wardrobes, head on over to their site and put in a request! They do a far lot better job at organizing these things than I could ever do!

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/11/12/dir-en-grey-crochet-dolls/

[Deadcraft.Com]: Odin Sphere: Gwendolyn and Oswald Dolls Odin Sphere was my favorite game of 2008. Okay, so maybe God of War 2 was my favorite game of 2008, but this was a very, very close second. Ingway is possibly the most adorable character that no one has ever heard of. So you can say that this was something of a labor of love, because I nearly broke my brain making two of its five main characters, Oswald and Gwendolyn. Not since my Valkyrie Profile Lenneth Valkyrie doll had there been so many details that I'd willingly made on something roughly 4 inches tall. I'm pretty happy about how then result is though, although Oswald's armor was harder to imagine than Gwenolyn's feather-and-armor affair.

Gwendolyn and Oswald

Gwendolyn

Oswald

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/11/03/odin-sphere-gwendolyn-and-oswald-dolls/

Here's a full year - and hopefully more to come - in VPRI! Please click photos to get to the news. v^_^v The account I was team leader for: Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2008 The account I won mid-2009: Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) BlackBerry I seriously have to start fixing the VPRI site though. =_=000

[Deadcraft.Com]: Gensomaden Saiyuki Dolls

I've already mentioned making my little Genjo Sanzo doll, and have even showcased him in an earlier post - so I figured, why not make the whole gang instead? I remember being absolutely hooked on this TV series not too long ago, and while Saiyuki Reload and Saiyuki Reload Gunlock were good enough, Gensomaden Saiyuki was the series I always adored. Genjo Sanzo - the only Buddhist priest who smokes, drinks, plays mahjongs, shoots at people, is nastily rude, doesn't care whether his friends lived or died, is unrepentantly trigger-happy, and still POPULAR.

Sha Gojyo, possibly the only kappa character I am aware of in the history of anime, and he has a sob stepmama-tried-to-kill-me story to go along with it. Who can't resist a redhaired kappa with a sobby stepmama-tried-to-kill-me story?

Cho Hakkai - I notice that with each character the angst just increases like a thousandfold. Hakkai's the obligatory human-turned-demon of the main cast, and he had to do so in order t save his beloved, who'd been carried off by lusty demons. He failed, by the way. Ouch.

Son Goku - the most annoyingly 500 year old brat demon ever. Also the most powerful of the quartet, how's that for irony?

All dolls are available at my deadcraft etsy shop!

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/10/26/gensomaden-saiyuki-dolls/

[Deadcraft.Com]: Tim Burton's Nine Doll In honor of the awesome new Tim Burton movie out, here's my version of its main character, the lovable Nine doll (voiced by Elijah Wood)I tried to get most of the details as I was able to, and I'm proud of actually being able to scrounge up some push buttons for the eyes, especially. This is deviating slightly from most of my other dolls in that this is roughly 6 - 7 inches high, with a pattern I made up on the spot while I was crocheting. And on a slightly related note, anyone as excited over the new Alice in Wonderland animation coming out as I am, too?

This was specially made for a customr, and can be seen in my deadcraft etsy shop!

http://www.deadcraft.com/2009/10/22/tim-burtons-nine-doll/