ALIVE & WELL (Updates!)

Well. It would be an understatement to say that I haven't checked in with you guys in a while. The last time I posted on here was last fall.

But let's just try to forget about that for now.

I was originally considering making an updates video for my YouTube, but then I decided, "Why not just make a blog post instead?" So here I am posting for you guys!

This past school year was pretty crazy, as you can probably tell by the lack of videos on my YouTube and photos on my Instagram. At the beginning of the school year, I thought I would have ample time to film. I always thought I would. But of course, life got in the way and I ended up overwhelmed with schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and social obligations—which, in all honestly, isn't completely horrible. However, I had very little time to make videos—even short videos. Looking back, I feel pretty awful about it. I tell myself that I should've squeezed in time to film, that I should've posted something on my YouTube channel. In reality, though, making videos simply wasn't an option this past year. I had far too many things to do and not enough time to do them, and to spend what little time I had on videos was unrealistic.

It's summer now, though, and I have quite a bit more time on my hands—thank god. So, seeing as how I'm actually home and able to film this summer, I thought it would be fun to give you guys some updates on my summer plans!

If you've been keeping up with my Instagram lately, you've probably noticed that I've been posting a whole lot of video updates…and not a whole lot of actual nice doll photos. Again, I feel bad saying this, but I don't feel as interested in doll photography as I did two years ago or even last year. I love dolls—don't get me wrong—but I would rather use my time to create videos for you guys than to take elegant doll photos. For this reason, I've decided that (at least for the most part), my AGIG account will be devoted to video & life updates (think basilmentos, heartag, fivedollstars, etc.). Unfollow if you want; I don't mind. I'm just letting you guys know.

Aside from Instagram, I have a whole ton of doll videos in the works—mostly stop motions, although I will be continuing Infinite ASAP! I need to figure out how to do the sets and everything, since I took all of them down and moved the human furniture in my room around since the last time I filmed. I'm really excited to get back into Infinite, and I hope you guys are, too. I originally planned about 3-4 seasons of the series. As of right now, I'll definitely make 2 seasons, but if things work out, perhaps I'll do more!

Also, I've been seriously considering making a BTS/backup channel! I think it would be a fun way to share random things with you guys, whatever they may be. I would probably post a lot of behind-the-scenes videos for my stopmotions, along with meetup vlogs and other fun things like that. Tell me in the comments if you'd like to see a sparkfireproductions backup channel!

I also came up with a summer movie idea. The only problem is that it's super long and detailed, and because I want it to be stop motion, I don't know if I'll be able to finish it before summer's over. Maybe I'll work on it for two summers and post it next year…? I don't know. I guess we'll figure that out when the time comes.

Hopefully I didn't bore you with all these updates! Tell me what you think in the comments here or on my YT/AGIG. I might not always reply to comments, but I seriously do read each and every one that I get! Love you guys and hope you're all doing well! <3

- Cristina

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving!

Hello, friends. It's been a long couple months, hasn't it? 

I'm currently supposed to be writing an essay for school, but I decided to spend some quality time procrastinating and instead write a blog post. Smart, right? 

I just wanted to say that although I've been much less active on my AG accounts than I've wanted to, I want to get back into uploading (hopefully regularly; if not, then at least uploading in general). I miss making videos! I could write a 20-page long rant about my extreme annoyance with school for essentially taking over all (yes, all) my free time, but I won't. I think we all get the message. 

In other news (you know, aside from the whole I've-tried-to-film-but-haven't-been-able-to-finish-anything story), Thanksgiving is only two days away! I'm psyched, to say the least. I'll be spending the day with my family and some family friends, and it'll be amazing to just relax for a couple days and enjoy life for what it is…which brings me to another point.

I walked around my neighborhood a couple of days ago and looked at all the pretty trees. It's that incredible time of year when the leaves are a wonderful scarlet red but are still perfectly intact on the branches—so gorgeous. My plan is to get some nice photographs of them within the next couple of days, before they fall (which might have happened today, since we had a rainstorm).

Who knows, maybe I'll actually be productive this break and film/edit some stuff for you guys! I really want to. Really, really want to.

I'm alive!

Believe it or not, I'm still here! I've been constantly thinking about filming and editing, yet I haven't actually had the time to do so in a while. And by "a while," I mean over two months. Kind of crazy, right?

Don't worry, though. Despite my disappearance, I'm trying (desperately) to find the time to film. If I accomplish one thing this month, it'll be the creation of my Halloween video. Ever since I started my channel, I've had a dream of one day making an exciting, suspenseful Dolloween video. And that dream isn't going away.

In other news, I noticed that I recently got 5,000 subscribers on YouTube and 10,000 followers on Instagram. Honestly, that's insane! Thank you all so much. <3

HELLO AGAIN

Well. Let's just say it's been a while. A long while.

For those of you who actually read this blog, you guys are awesome, loyal, cool people! Much love for all of you <3

I kind of forgot that I had this thing for the past year and never ended up writing anything on it. Whoops. I hope to write more consistently on here this coming school year, just to keep you guys up to date on big events in my life that may or may not have anything to do with my YouTube/Instagram/other sparkfireproductions stuff. ;)

To say the least, this past year has been a bit crazy. School was okay—not too bad, but still pretty bad. I'm always really busy during the school year with homework and studying and yearbook and dance and other extracurriculars, so I always seem to have a tough time actually making videos, at least during the first semester. By the time January comes along, I tend to have a better hold on everything. Hopefully it'll be the same (or even better) this year.

My summer was also pretty busy—busier than normal, anyway. I usually have at least a month of free time, where I literally don't have to do anything, where I can just sit on my butt for 30 days of my life without accomplishing a single thing (or of course I could make some videos). Well, not this year. We had a guest staying at our house for two-and-a-half weeks in June, before which I was studying for the chem SAT (fun stuff, man). And two days after she left, what did my family do?

Well, we left for Europe, of course. We visited Ireland for a week, then went to Belgium to visit family and celebrate my oldest cousin's wedding. And when the wedding was over, I went with a bunch of family members to Amsterdam. It was a blast, but a busy blast.

Three days after I got home, I attended yearbook camp for my school for a week. Every year, my school's yearbook editors go to this camp to meet with yearbook staff from other schools and to come up with our plan for the next year's book. There's a competition to see which school has the best plan, and this year, my school won first place, which was absolutely crazy, especially since we had never won before.

And now I'm here, trying to enjoy the last few days of summer before it ends and I go back to school. Not excited about that. Really not excited about that.

These last few days (despite the fact that I have umpteen thousand summer assignments to worry about), I've been working on a stopmotion for you guys. I know Infinite's supposed to be going on too, but don't worry, I'm going to continue the series as soon as I'm done with this video. I never meant for it to be very long, but so far it's actually 8 minutes! I can't wait to get it up for you guys!

Updates

Hey, guys! If you actually read this blog, you're totally awesome ^_^

Anyways, I thought I'd do a little post to give you guys updates (and because I really enjoy procrastinating on English homework, but we can just...forget about that little detail for now). School is going pretty well now. If you read my last post, you know that I had some schedule issues last week, but those have been totally resolved and everything is going really well (thank God!). Yeah, life is pretty busy now that I have homework and activities and AN ACTUAL SOCIAL LIFE and other things going on, but that's totally fine with me because I don't know what I would do if I didn't. Well, other than film. And edit. But eventually there's too much empty time to just do that, too...

ANYWAY, life in general is going pretty well for me right now (I hope it is for you guys too!). Next weekend will be a three-day weekend thanks to Labor Day (!!!), so I'll hopefully get in some filming time! I've started planning my Dolloween video, and I'm thinking about beginning the long process of filming it over the coming weekend. I know it's early, but if I don't start now, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to finish it in time XD

Also, I know a lot of you are probably wondering where my fifth AGMA assignment is.

And I'm sorry to disappoint you guys, but I'm not going to make it. AGMA is a great opportunity and everything, I know, but it just wasn't as much fun anymore. I love photography (A LOT!), but spending all my free time making photoshoots (and of the same doll!) wasn't so appealing to me anymore, especially considering the fact that I could instead spend that good time filming stop motions or other videos.

So I decided to drop out of AGMA. Not officially or anything, but I just didn't make my assignment, and I'll be eliminated from the competition. It was fun while it lasted, but now it's time for me to move on to something else.

So yeah...that's pretty much all I have for you guys. As for other YouTube-related news, I applied for a YouTube partnership and am now officially a YouTube partner, which is totally awesome and exciting for me.

I hope you guys are doing well! BeForever releases tomorrow (well, tonight at midnight, if you want to be technical about it). I'm really excited to see what's in store for the AG community, and I'll probably do a little post showing my personal opinion about the new items. Would you guys like to see something like that? Tell me in the comments if you do. :)

-Cristina

SCHOOL?!?!

Hi, guys! As much as I wish I could spend my entire life filming and editing videos, I simply cannot.

Especially now that school has started.

I'm honestly super bummed that summer ended. I know there are a whole bunch of people in this world who love school more than anything else in the entire existing world. I, however, am not one of them. Sure, school gives me something to do with my life (if it didn't exist, who knows where I'd be right now? I probably would've gone insane by this point in time. XD), it teaches me things (even if I'm not too keen on actually learning them), and it gives me a chance to meet and hang out with other people my age... But let's just say I'm a tad bit antisocial and awkward around actual humans. And there's a huge amount of work involved in school.

So much work that I wasn't able to make anything but photoshoots last school year.

I'm hoping to change that, though. I'm actually planning on dropping out of AGMA on YouTube simply because I don't want to use all my free time to make photoshoots when I could be using that time to film actual stopmotions. Stopmotions are quite a bit more fun to make, exciting to watch, and just satisfying in general. ;)

But anywho, school began yesterday, on August 18th, and is already in full swing.

Well, sort of.

I'm actually very stressed out and annoyed right now (that's probably the number one reason why I decided to write this rant) due to the insanity of school right now. A couple of days before it began, I had a bit of a mental breakdown at home, which led me to want to change a few of the classes on my school schedule. Currently, I'm still in the process of doing this. It's quite annoying too because I haven't received my new official schedule yet. That's been driving me crazy.

I hate not knowing things—not knowing what is going to happen to me. Thus, I absolutely hate being unsure of my classes and schedule and whatnot. Not know what classes I'm SUPPOSED to be in is truly a pain in the butt. Currently, I'm just going by my old schedule, but my classes and periods and teachers are all going to change when I get my new schedule, and not knowing where I'm technically SUPPOSED to be makes me extremely nervous, anxious, and (more than anything) stressed.

I don't know if you guys reading this, or if you even care, but I thought I would post this for my own good, just to make myself feel a little better and more confident.

Now to go do homework...for a class that I might not even be taking in two days... :/

Meetup With Basilmentos!

While I was on vacation with my family a couple of weeks ago, I met up with Anna basilmentos! We had an amazing time meeting up, and I thought I'd make a little blog post about it for all of you.

A few weeks before we left on our trip, I told Anna that we would be going on vacation, and we realized that we would be in the same location at the same time during the trip. She suggested that we meet up somewhere, and we planned it from there. Honestly, I couldn't believe that I would be meeting the one and only Anna basilmentos. Again.

Technically, I had already met her. Back in March, she held a HUGE meetup at the AGP San Francisco. Almost 100 people showed up, including my sisters and me. It was truly an amazing experience to attend her big meetup, but it was crazy. There were so many people there to see her—so many that it was practically impossible to get a word in edgewise and speak to Anna myself. I still had a blast, but when Anna suggested meeting her again (without the crowd!), I couldn't resist. I mean, seriously, who WOULD resist?!

We decided to meet at a park in the area. She would bring her doll Julia, and I would bring my doll Ruby. My three younger sisters also came, although they weren't originally planning to stay with Anna and me while we hung out.

My family arrived at the park a little early to give ourselves a chance to look around and have lunch before Anna arrived. Then it was time to meet her. We all went to our planned meeting spot and waited. During that waiting time, I was so excited and nervous, I almost started shaking! It was crazy! Somehow I had managed to plan a meetup with Anna—it was a dream come true.

Then Anna arrived. She brought a backpack with all her supplies—Julia, her camera, and her tripod. She was going to bring a bag with some props as well, but she forgot the bag, which was fine with me because the meetup was still more than amazing.

We went out to take photos and film. Although it was initially going to be a meetup just with Anna and me, we decided to have my sisters help us and hang out with us as well. Anna was so welcoming of them! I totally wasn't expecting her to be kind and patient with the "unexpected guests" at the meetup, but she was. We stopped at all sorts of random places throughout the park to film little clips of our dolls. It was truly a great experience. Other people walking around noticed us filming too! Despite the few people who seemed to find it unusual, most people thought our stop motioning was actually pretty cool! Some people even stopped to take photos of it. At one point, Julia was sitting down on a little rock while we took a filming break, and a few people walked by just to photograph her as if she was part of an exhibit!

There were even a couple of people who wanted to know where they could find our videos, so we told them to check out basilmentos or sparkfireproductions on YouTube. Who knew you could get YouTube publicity just by filming in public?!

After we were done filming, my parents bought ice cream for all of us. There was a place to purchase ice cream at the park, so Anna, my sisters, and I all got some. We went to sit in the grass below a beautiful tree and just talked while eating ice cream. It was such an amazing feeling. We got along so well, it was like we were actually long-time friends. When we were finished with our ice cream, we hung out some more and took doll photos together. My sister and I even got to play around with Julia's hair. She is a truly beautiful doll, and I'm definitely considering purchasing her for myself. ;)

We took quite a few doll photos and even some human photos with each other; then it was time for Anna to leave. We packed up our things and headed back to the park entrance to say goodbye.

Even after Anna had left and my family and I were still spending time at the park together, I felt a crazy sense of exhilaration spread throughout me. I suddenly didn't care if the other people at the park saw me with a doll (I had cared before Anna arrived, and I was nervous about taking Ruby out of my bag). I mean, what does it matter if other people know you like dolls? They're just dolls after all. If it makes you happy and it's not anything harmful, there is absolutely nothing to be worried or ashamed about. I couldn't stop smiling after Anna was gone. She was such an inspiration and an incredible person—she still is—and meeting her in person was absolutely wonderful.

I had an amazing time. <3

-Cristina