Quick Update

Happy 2015 my fellow readers!

I have so much updating to do but I can hardly take new photos or spray paint because of constant rain and humidity the past months. I hope the rainy season passes soon so I can update my blog more :(

Meanwhile, I finally got my hands on my very first Nendoroid (Pokemon Trainer Red)! It was so frustrating trying to get it to stand and pose because of it's extremely large and heavy head so I only managed to get 1 good picture:

I really wish I had my own backyard to take photos in! I love using natural settings as backgrounds but I dread shooting outdoors. Whenever I take my toys outside, I feel that I always have to rush to avoid attracting attention from passer-bys. I'm just not comfortable with people stopping to stare or make comments about what I'm doing ;(

Question: Do you take photos of your figures outside? What are some of the challenges you face when shooting outdoors?

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?

SF Post Office & Postman

Sorry for the really long inactivity! I started on this blog post over a month ago but never had the attention span to complete it.

Anyway, I've finally gotten myself a camera! Which explains why there weren't any posts since January because I had nothing to take pictures with.

Now onto my review of the Post Office & Postman set by Flair which I'd gotten from ebay sometime in February this year:

This is my most expensive SF purchase till date. Costed me about 280 USD. It's a brand new set and I've not seen other Post Office sets for sale so far except a pretty used one by TOMY going at 145 USD including shipping. Still pretty expensive considering how badly worn the set looked but I will consider getting a used one to make into a police post!

The window sills are of a rustic shade of brown - very nice contrast with rest of the building.

And instead of stickers, the decorations for this set came in card form with double-sided tape attached. Personally, I prefer this because you can easily remove your decorations if you've pasted them wrongly the first time. I always tend to stick my stickers slightly off-center or slanted and it saddens me that I can't peel them off and re-apply without creasing or damaging the stickers :(

The set also came with some postcards, letters and delivery papers. I just love how SF made the words on these tiny documents readable!

The wordings on the special delivery card are actually readable! I hadn't bought my macro lens yet when I took pictures for this review.

And here's the little post box that comes with the building:

It can be opened so that Postman Samuel can retrieve those letters!

A pity my Postman Samuel had some staining on his head. Probably from the hat being on his head for very long.

And one last picture of Postman Samuel at work! His little bag is functional and I absolutely love the wall telephone behind him: