FACEUP LOG 01: contrast / "instagram" faceup

I started a series called “Faceup Log” to share some of my observations and what I learnt during my own faceup journey. The first log is about contrast, or the “instagram” faceup vs “natural/in person/naked eye” faceup.

 TL;DR: I switched to a heavily blushing to make my faceups look better on camera ~

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I've been wanting to share some of my faceup learnings and I was deciding between a long blog post here, or via multiple youtube videos. I went with videos in the end because I feel like there is more opportunities for people to find it than if I put it on this blog, but if anyone thinks a blogpost would be better, do let me know?

Visiting Switch Platina showroom in Seoul | 2018.11.01

In my recent trip to Seoul, I had the chance to visit Switch's Platina Showroom, so I thought I'll do a post on my experience~

Before I start, I should mention that just before I went, a dolly friend of mine (dtpconcepts on instagram) had just visited Platina. Her photos from Platina are here. She was the one who shared that Platina was not just a showroom, which was what I thought, but also a shop. They had wigs, clothes, doll heads (blank), doll bodies, and also raffle dolls (if any, depending on when you visit). After she told me that, I was really tempted to go. I knew it'll cost my wallet (lol) but I have also always wanted a Waseon, but never managed to buy him online, so I thought, why not?

So after that, I decided to go visit Platina, and here's how it went~~


1. RSVP via email
First of all, Switch has instructions on how overseas guests can write in to visit Platina on their website here. The website actually says to "Please RSVP at least one month in advance. No visits are guaranteed otherwise". I was hesitant to email them at first because I only had two weeks to my trip in Seoul (it was a last minute trip to catch a concert), but I decided to try and see if they could accommodate me. Luckily, they accepted my request :D

Switch gave me a date and time for the visit, and also a rough list of items available on the day I'll visit. Of course, the items available is subject to change, and I didn't see Waseon on the list, but (spoiler alert) he was available when I went. So yeah. If you have anything specific in mind, you can always consider asking Switch. They were really helpful in replying any queries I had. :)


2. Getting to Platina
Switch has provided a map, which I followed. I went by subway, so I exited Pyeongchon Station, Exit 3.

This is the building you will see at the first traffic crossing, which is the "NEON" building in the map. The crossings are further apart than I thought from the map, but they should be the most helpful in judging where you are, especially if you can't read Korean at all. There might have been smaller crossings (without traffic lights) in between, but just look out for the two main traffic crossings with traffic lights, and you should be fine.

The second crossing:

This is what the "KIA MOTORS" building look like. The logo was quite high up so it took me a while to recognise the building, haha.

After that, the map from Switch seems to show that the building immediately next to "KIA MOTORS" should be the correct building, but it wasn't. I got confused climbing up a random building, but eventually I went back down and walked a little further, and viola, I finally see the correct building. You should be able to see the "PLATINA" signboard on the 2nd storey from the streets. This is what the building looks like:

There is a convenience store on the first storey. The elevator is behind the store (you don't have to go through the convenience store). There was a sign for Platina on the side of the elevator door when I went, showing that it's on the 2nd storey:

Press 2 and we're ready to go:

You'll see the Platina poster once you exit the lift.

I didn't take photos of the dolls in the front display because I went in fairly quickly. I can't remember if I knocked first, or if the staff opened the door first, but either way, I went in before I looked at the display at all lol. There were two staff there that day, one was a lady with chin-length hair and she spoke to me in English, while the other lady stayed at the back for most of the time I visited (I think she might not speak much English?). Anyway, they were really nice and welcomed me in.


3. Inside Platina
Once inside, the first thing they did was bring me to a table in the middle of the room to show me the catalogue. They let me sit down to look through the catalogue, and the lady who spoke English sat behind the counter, and told me I can just ask for her when I have any questions.

Anyway, I wanted to quickly see all the dolls on display first, so I did a quick round around the room. The showroom is not super big, about 5m by 5m or so, with a storage/staff room next to the counter. It's a good thing I quickly took some photos before I sat down to look through the catalogue, because I realised afterwards that I didn't really take any photos inside! OTL I was too excited about buying things from Switch lol. The lack of photos means I'm going to be just describing some things, but hopefully it's still useful or interesting, haha.

So, displays first. There were 4 when I went. The first one was some art students kind of setting:

This boy is so pretty. I forgot to ask what sculpt he is (or if I did ask, I forgot what sculpt he is already ah... haha).

The second display.

The third display:


The fourth one which actually has one more doll but I wanted a closer photo of the Mocha skinned Waseon. He's so gorgeous ahh~

A further shot of the room from left to right when I was seated. There's drawings from various artists hanging on the walls. I think one was done by laminarflow.

If you see behind, there are those tall display cases right next to the walls/windows. Those had the raffle dolls when dtpconcepts went (in Oct 2018), but they were already empty when I got there because the raffle event has ended. It was a pity I couldn't see those, but oh well.

This is the cashier/counter. You can see a bit of the corner of the table I was browsing the catalogue at on the bottom of this photo.

Some of the stuff at the cashier/counter area. They have things behind the counter, and also in the room that is to the side of the counter (I didn't take any photo of this haha). I think the room is where they store their bodies because the lady went into it when I asked to see the Switch Attractive 65 body. And for dtpconcepts, she mentioned that someone was inside the room painting when she went (probably their faceup artist?).

This was what was on my table after a while. The catalogue on the bottom, and a bunch of wigs and the Waseon head in the back. I did end up buying most of the stuff I asked to see... hahahaha

Okay, that's all the photos I have inside the shop. I'll be describing the rest in words~

So when I first got to the shop, I took a look at all the dolls on display. The 2 staff stayed behind the counter to let me roam (lol), and I was free to see all the dolls on display. There are signs saying do not touch, if I remember correctly. I only had my phone, so I took photos with those.

At the table, there were a few things:

1. The clear file with the main catalogue showing a photo of the product and the price in Korean won. There were clothes, wigs, shoes and other miscellaneous items. In my photo above, you can see the misc items in the catalogue.
2. A page showing the wigs available (style, size, colours). I suppose this is because the wig stock changes often, so they prepared a separate sheet to show the wigs they have.
3. A stack of photocards/postcard-sized photos of the doll heads that are available. 

I immediately started finding Waseon in the list of photos (lol). The staff left me alone to browse, and I could just wave/motion to get them if I have any questions. It was a very pleasant experience overall. Anyway, I asked for the price of the blank head, which she informed was only available in Normal skin. The head was 160,000won blank. I'm not sure if they might have other colours because I didn't think to ask (I just assumed they don't, since Mocha and white skin were limited edition).

Anyway, I also asked to see a bunch of wigs in various sizes. Switch wigs are available in 3 sizes, M, B and L. I can't remember the exact sizing but L is closest to 9inch, while B and M are slightly smaller, to fit the various sized Switch heads better, I think. Since there was more size choices than the usual 8-9inch I was expecting, I decided to ask which size they thought would be better for my incoming Kanadoll Adrian. They were very helpful and searched up the doll for me to see the head size (which just wrote 8-9inch lol). Although the lady spoke English, I found it better to speak simple English to avoid confusion., and to show any photos for clarification. I ended up showing a photo of Kanadoll to help her understand what I was asking, and we realised Kanadoll didn't have a more specific head size so I just bought some L wigs thinking I can have someone else in my crew wear it if it didn't fit. I also picked up some wigs for Waseon, who wears M sized wigs.

For clothing, I didn't have much cash budgeted for spending after the head and wigs, so I just bought a Soave (turtleneck) in an olive green colour. They have more colours than on the Switch website, but I think you can also find these colours on Faythz (according to another dolly friend), so there's that. Regardless, Platina has items that were out of stock on the online Switch website, so I was super tempted to buy alot of things. The prices are also slightly lower than the English Switch website. For example, the wigs were 27,000won in Platina while they sell for 30USD on the website.

But alas, my wallet has a limit, so I just bought a Waseon head (blank), 5 wigs, and a Soave top. They're the items shown in the top row. The striped top in the bottom row was a gift, and the silver package had my ticket for visiting Platina and some photos of their dolls.

The ticket for my visit:

For all the items above, I paid in cash. I also bought a Switch Attractive 65 body, which I paid with a debit card. In the first RSVP email, Switch did mention that they accept credit card, but may not be able to accept all cards. Mine was a VISA and it worked, so there's that, if anyone is interested in getting things by card. The staff actually brought out both the old body and the Attractive body when I asked what the differences in the bodies were, because I couldn't tell from the photos on the website. Apparently the hands and feet are bigger, and there are slight updates to the detailing of the body overall, the back being the most obvious one. It's not so easy to tell unless you have both bodies side by side!

They left the bodies for me to look at, and unlike Volks (when I visited Volks Korea in 2014), they didn't need me to wear gloves or anything to handle the body. Side note, Volks Korea has either moved, or the shop is no longer there... because I went to find it on this trip but there was another shop in its location :(

Anyway, Switch let me handle the 2 bodies but I didn't move the dolls too much because I was worried my hands were leaving prints (I am a bit paranoid when it's not my own dolls xD). I ended up getting the new body (aka the Attractive body), and asked if they could ship it back by EMS. They said it's okay, and I paid for the body and shipping (555,000won total). I forgot the exact cost of each, but I think the body was 525,000won? Anyway, it's cheaper than the online price ahhh. The body has arrived on the day I'm typing this (9 Nov 2018), and overall it's been a very pleasant and lovely experience going to Platina. They were super helpful and nice, both in person and on email, and I really had fun~

Back to the visit, in total I spent about 1.5-2 hours there. I brought the head, wigs and clothes home with my luggage, and only the body was shipped via EMS.

If anyone is going to Korea and is considering visiting Switch, I hope this post has been informative! Or at least entertaining in some way, haha. I recommend visiting if you like Switch dolls and have time when you go to Seoul, but do budget for the amount you'll spend because it's super tempting to just buy everything when you're inside.... ahhhh. Well, it's money spent without regrets, so I really don't mind.

Anyway, the next part would be after visiting Platina, aka the box opening photos of my loot from Korea, which I'll do as a separate blog post :) I'll have a link here when it's up~

Thank you for reading~ :)

In the middle of cutting down my collection and basically, I'm constantly stuck in indecision at who to sell.

I've sold Tiyana, while Nat and Jack are both for sale on DoA at the moment. I'm staring at the rest who are on the potential cut list - Kristolf, Caillen, Zeke, Freddie - and wondering if I am willing to part with them.

The thing is. I love parts of the doll, like Caillen I love his face, I love how his nose is roundish (modded) and his smile but his body? I'm not such a fan. It looks good enough but eh. I think I just prefer shorter dolls (~60-65cm) while Caillen's 68cm Popodoll body is a bit too much legs for me to play comfortably. Or maybe it's because he's loose so he keeps flopping. I'm not sure. But I am definitely more comfortable with dolls that are under 65cm tall.

Well. I don't know. I really really want to thin down my collection so I can focus my limited amount of time on the rest I have left but it's so hard to cut down, like choose who to sell. And let's not even start on all the clothes and wigs etc. that I should sort out to list for sale :/

Man. I'm lazy.

2nd doll to potentially faceup - Joe. It's on a whim, I think, but I'm searching up images right now. The usual bunch, search for mood images, makeup images/tutorials, search for bjd faceups in general (switch's photos have been particularly high on the list also because Ching loves switch faceups and we talk about faceups so you know, I get influenced), search for the sculpt name. The funny thing is now, when I type esthy peroth into google, I see some of my own photos as results and -

1) I'm kind of happy and it's kind of cute because I remember when I was a newbie I would search up my first doll (CP lishe aka Gabby), type in 'luts lishe boy' and see if any of my photos would turn up. They didn't back then, but it's also good because looking back now, my photos then were kind of terrible.

2) But also, when my purpose of searching up sculpt name is to look for potential reference images for faceups, it kind of defeats the purpose to see my own photos lol.

Anyway, the urge to faceup Joe is kind of stronger than my urge to faceup Nat even though Nat is the one that probably needs a faceup more (but then again, Joe's wearing my 2? 3? years old faceup so who's saying?) so I'm going to go unbox him from when I packed him to move, and maybe I'll actually just remove his faceup first even though my doll stuff haven't been all unpacked. It's just one of those rare moods, you know.

I just realise this is the first post of 2017, which means I've not posted here for ages. Oops. Anyway, I moved, and I haven't unpacked all my dolls, but there's 7 of the SDs sitting around and most of the small ones except Pebbles and Foggy (my Blythe) are out, so that's still better than nothing. I took Nat out today, remembering that his faceup needs to be redone, and it kind of pains me because the cats10 faceup is still nice although there are yellow spots on it. Sigh. But well, I'm going to be searching up ideas on how I want to redo his faceup, so hopefully that will get me back on track in doing something doll-related. I've not really been touching my dolls lately.

I'm gearing towards something with nicely blushed cheeks. Something a little more oomph than the rest of my dolls would be fun. Most of these would be makeup tutorials, because there's some nice ideas there. Maybe if I come across nice reference of faceup ideas I'll add links at the bottom.







The question now is also, besides the blushed cheeks, if there's a way to make the eyes more glittery. There's pearlescent powder, of course, but I'm wondering if that might be too subtle (also the containers sold are in pretty large quantities). Or maybe I can stick nail art type of glitter? If I can find anything small? Or maybe even those for makeup though that might be more expensive.

Was looking at the likes on my doa page when I realised someone liked this post I made in "What is the meaning behind your DOA username" discussion thread.

My reply back in Jun19, 2015:

I used 1675alf back when I was on livejournal for other stuff. Doa was probably when I started using cian as a username. Cian was the name of the doll sculpt I wanted then (Luts cian, haha. He doesn't fit my aesthetics now though, which is somewhat sad) and also the hero of a novel I was reading at the time I signed up. So I thought, why not? I go by cian, or cian1675 if cian isn't available. Unfortunately this name gets mispronouced a lot. >_< The common mispronunciation is see-urn, which sounds like "sian" which means bored in Singlish (the slang we use in Singapore), so that's a bit unfortunate. Haha.

I totally don't use my lj anymore. Think I really only signed up because sd_sg, a Singapore BJD livejournal group was the place to go for BJD stuff in Singapore back then? (Along with SGcafe which has also died down, at least for doll stuff).

And I forgot how Luts Cian was my dream sculpt back then. Hahahaha. Well I mean, I do have a Luts Bliss and they have somewhat similar aesthetics but it's still different. I also forgot about the hero of the novel I was reading (I really don't remember what it is I read at that time. Must have been like 7-8 years ago).

As for the pronunciation of Cian... it's Key-urn. Everyone mispronounces it, tbh. But I don't actually use the name in any real life capacity; people just call me by my actual name if I do meet them in person. Or if it's just a meet to sell/buy things kind of meetup, no names are actually spoken during the exchange, so there's that. But yeah, the username keeps getting mispronounced. And at this point I'm cian on so many platforms that I don't even think about WHY I use the name as much as I just do it. Lol. I don't actually want to be called cian outside...my brother's sniggers when he tried calling me cian aside, it's just... not my name? Haha. It's really just a username that stuck because of how much I used it, but it's just that.

This is pretty random, I guess, but I just felt like writing about it. I realise my blogger account is also under cian, which must mean that I actually started using this name since I was like 14? That's 9 years already, wow...

Also I have an issue with thinking up new usernames so even my kpop tumblr blog is cian related (it's stillcian1675.tumblr.com lol). And my ao3 and AFF accounts are cian1675 too. I think if anyone googles cian1675, all my accounts will come up. The weirdest part about all this is that all my accounts are for different things - personal stuff, doll stuff, kpop stuff... but they're all under the same username because I never thought I would/should separate them? Hmm... I'm in too deep to go changing now (Okay, I'm lazy), but yeah.

Anyway, this has been a username version of rambling on "What's in a name?" (I don't remember the rest of the poem except "Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet". Not even sure if the quote is exact but I'm too lazy to google.)

I think I won't be doing faceup commissions for a while after I finish up the ones I already took. I'm starting to get to the point where I'm busy with school and my faceup skill levels aren't good enough for me to charge more, but at the same time I feel like what I'm currently charging isn't enough for the amount of time I spend doing it. Unfortunately, the last commission I have right now, I'm still waiting for the customer to tell me what they want on the faceup... communication is less than satisfactory but I think I just have to hope it goes on eventually, if slowly. To be honest, I just kind of want to finish up that commission so I won't have that on my mind anymore, and then I can temporarily close my faceup services.

My faceup skills have improved a bit while doing commissions, but I still spend more time than I would like doing each faceup. I'm more careful with commissions than I am with my own dolls' faceup, and that translates to drawing lines slower, leaving more time between layers so I know I'm happy with each layer before I move on to the next. I think it'll be nice to go back to just doing faceups without that kind of pressure. My own Unoa Lilin default is still like lying there in my drawer. I did lines already, and I can count the faceup as done if I just seal it and gloss, but I feel like I want to do more when I have time and/or inspiration so I haven't sealed that faceplate yet.

Not really in a doll playing mood recently. I still think they're all cute but I guess I just don't have the energy to pick them up and play for the moment. School and thesis sucks. It's the holidays right now but I'm supposed to still be working on my thesis. :/