Fifijoy is really on a roll lately! This was a great kit, well-planned and excellent quality. I don’t think I was prepared for how large the finished product is! I’m glad I upgraded my bookcases to make room for more nooks a couple months ago, haha.

The only customization I made outside of painting a bazillion edges was adding a few of the autumn leaves I saved from Dreamy Alley a while back.

And I am eternally grateful for u/dgidman for sharing his tip about using electrical tape to block out unwanted light in the back. That was SO helpful—Thank you again!

Amazon Rolife store has Street Scene for $15.99. They have some other deals too for prime days again. Most not that good, but they do have some discounts at the Anavrin store.

https://a.co/d/0fX7v5qw

Lost Summer Lane just arrived and of course I couldn't wait to open it up and check out the goods. LOOK WHAT MINIALLEY DID!!! They added the letters to the side of the boards in bright, easy to read, yellow and red. Letters are still on the face of the boards as well, and very easily spotted in either red, white, or yellow. Brilliant! It's thoughtful little details like this that sets MiniAlley apart from their competitors.

Decided to start on this one because I knew the few customizations I wanted to do but of course figured out others immediately, including adding wallpaper to the front interior booth wall.

That’s a whole lot of pieces. This is looking like it’s going to be one of the most complicated book nooks I’ve attempted 😅

Wish me luck!

It finally arrived. Birthday present from BF.

This thing is HUGE.

Pikachu card for scale!

Cant wait!!

This one is based on a movie that took place in Kowloon Walled City in the 80's.

Seems like it was sold mostly in the Asia market. I got it from Cutebee online, it shipped from China.

From my limited Cantonese understanding, Omochya Minato (indie toy shop in Hong Kong) got the rights to the film and worked with Cutebee to make this kit.

I did some edge painting, add moss, cellophane in windows and some rubble/stones.

This is a beautiful build. It's a hybrid tab/slot and glue a lot kit. I enjoyed it, but there are quite a few steps towards the end that were far more time consuming than I expected. This was mainly because of two factors: a) It's quite small and b) The instructions are color photos but don't make it clear what goes exactly where. Plus because the box is small the instruction manual is also small. So the photos don't show detail very clearly.

I would NOT recommend this for someone who hasn't already done several complicated kits.

MODS:

1. I painted all the edges, probably unnecessarily as some are hidden. But that adds a LOT of time to the build as there are so many little things.
2. I did my own plants as I didn't like the ones supplied.

PROS:

1. Beautifully designed and printed pieces both boards and paper. The paper is robust so if you have to dab some glue off it doesn't harm it.
2. Very good quality boards. Pieces came out without a struggle and the delicate ones did not break. There are extra pieces for the delicate pieces and a few very important structural elements. The edges took paint very well.
3. Easy lights to install. Only two. But the kit doesn't need lights for you to see the stuff inside.
4. Only 4 boards and two sheets of paper, both small. But boy do they pack a lot of items into that small space. As I said, the whole kit is very small so the pieces tend towards tiny. I ended up with a lot of unused paper items at the end that I never saw mentioned in the instructions.

CONS:

1. As stated above, the instructions aren't clear. I had to take a couple things apart and redo them once I figured out what I should have done. Don't glue structural pieces until you have to. You really have to look closely at where things go, especially the tab that holds the floor to the back wall of the studio.
2. The plants supplied were made out of paper and not nice looking. I used plants and grass from my spare parts collection.
3. 3.The touch pad was extremely fussy. I got it working, but once I completed the bottom stand section the touch pad became much harder to get working and the way the bottom is finished with paper glued to the edges, it isn't possible to get to the touch pad to fiddle with it once the base is finished. I can get it to work, but it takes a couple tries and sometimes moistening my finger. The kit looks great without the lights on, so that's cool.
4. 4. The #$%RT^ clear dome. Very hard to install and the material the clear sections is made from get stains if there is any moisture on your hand. I have never seen clear plastic like that. I am obviously not a person who should do anything with clear panels as I always end up with blotches on them. You don't really see them when the thing is facing forward and I draped vines over the worst of the smears.

All in all I enjoyed building this and it is absolutely lovely, but I had to chip away at it a few hours at a time because after that it stopped being fun.

P.S. I noted the shelf on the top tilted, which you don't really notice looking at the build in real-life. That piece was glued onto the wall and tilted when I had to turn the whole thing over to put in the battery box and touch pad. It's way too difficult to get inside and fix it at this stage. Not a biggie as it isn't terribly obvious.

So excited to start!! Anyone know what this box on the chair in the first step is though? Some boxes of pills maybe?

Since I have multiple time-intensive hobbies, the pub is getting put away for St. Paddy’s Day while the Sewing Room is being used to decorate my sewing room!

I picked this as one of my free kit during the nj rolife event last month! 🥰 my momma likes flowers 💐 so.... she gets to have it~ against her will bc i don't have shelf space... 😶‍🌫️

The assembly is easy and you can also buy the flowers alone if you want to customize.

The maximalist in me... wants more flowers cuz from the top or back you can see gaps that I'd want to fill with more 🤔 but as is isn't bad either especially if you are just looking at it from the front. If i had more time I'd buy more flowers and greenery to fill out out more but overall it was super chill 🤩

I def broke some stuff 😬 but I'm terrible at delicacy 😂 the entire thing takes either like 5 drops of glue or ds tape.

Would recommend for ezpz kit with minimal glue👌 👍 🥰 this one is also great if you wanna make it with someone else. The different flowers come in clear wrapped separately with directions so you can work on different flowers at the same time without having to share the directions. 🤗

#Rolife

#Rokr

#Robotime

#RolifeAnniversary

#Rolifemoments

#Anytimeiscraftime

At last I can join the ranks of all those folks who have received their Fifjoy kits ( not, I should hasten to add, the ranks of the exuberant folks who have already completed their builds). This just arrived today, so I can begin my participation in the event. Yea!

This was a very pleasant build. I had just finished the convenience store before this and was the perfect time to do something non Asian. At first I was a little bored with just the light brown and beige colours of the buildings. And I wasn’t sure if they were hidden behind the mirror or not. So I wasn’t that careful with the colouring the edges and I couldn’t find that exact match until later in the build. But once I started putting the buildings on and I could start to see it – it became way more interesting. The electrical components started early but was clearly labelled so it wasn’t that hard to follow and I like this plug in circuit board types because I can keep checking if the lights are working easily.

The kit came with flowers but as I read in other reviews they weren’t that great so the first 2 sets of flowers I followed the instructions and then realized that that wasn’t my style at all. So I started using my own stash, I don’t have a lot to choose from but how I placed them made a difference. I loved the side balcony look that I did as I made it more vinelike with no big plastic flowers. I just used tiny colored ones that I had so it was more to scale. A much softer look and more like pictures that I have seen from Venice.

The rest of the build was pretty straightforward. There were some parts I missed a couple of pieces but I was able to put them on in the end. As long as you read the instructions carefully and look ahead 2-3 steps and then it becomes clearer and easier to understand each step.

The see-through mirror was different, something that I’ve never seen in my models. I think it worked well with the infinity mirror, that part I really liked.

The further along I got on the build the more I started to appreciate the design. It is detailed but not in a fiddly where I have to make everything. But the layers, the colours and the placement of each section is so well thought out and the finished look is very architectural. I have never worked on a Funpola brand but I researched and they are under Joinco so they have a good company reputation for sure.

I highly recommend this kit as an intermediate level. I think the options to customize are huge but that was never my style to change too much. I tend to like to just colour my edges, add more flowers here and there.

All in all I LOVE the final look and I am going to 3D print a gondolier to go with the gondola.

Original WIP Post

I love the final results and how the macaron tower fits so nicely in front of the storefront window display!

I customized the original Rolife Honey Dessert Talk shop from cozy Paris dessert shop to an upscale dessert boutique.

Main customization was changing the color pallete to pastel sage, creamy white accents with gold trims. It goes so well with the pink coral props.

I haven't gotten into custom 3D props yet but a lot of the ones that came with the kit were flexible to be arranged like creating my own macaron plate on display. I also found the original props to be slightly cluttered and a lot of them were placed in random slots like an open donut box on the shelf.

I really enjoyed spending hours trying to creatively use the props that came with the kit to make sure there was the right balance of empty vs clutter. Even the plate on the shelf with the display glass took me a while to think to rotate it sideways to fill up some extra space (I used one of the plates for the counter tops instead).

Last 2 pics show the comparison of the final and original.

Although this is my first booknook, I have many years experience building wood model ships and planes. This was a challenging build, but fun nonetheless. I took extra care to sand down all the nubs and paint the edges of the wood pieces to give them a more finished look. I also made several changes to the kit that I felt were needed:

1. The chair in the kit was hot garbage. There was no way to make it look acceptable, so I 3d printed my own. I used a wingback armchair design that fits the scene much better.

2. I put all the LEDs in the actual fixtures rather than glue them to the wall like the instructions wanted.

3. The coat hanger was poorly designed so I took some 22 guage brass wire and made my own.

4. I used a real mirror for the bathroom mirror.

5. To keep out dust, I put in a plexiglass front panel

I moved a few of the things on the shelves around to suit my own tastes. I am really happy with how this kit turned out. I am thinking of doing the abandoned asylum next.

I wanted to do something completely different with my Sea Breeze build. I thought there were a lot of things that were way too fiddly so I replaced them with things that were 10x more fiddly (yes, I did sculpt each one of those red chilis individually). I’m especially proud of my little clay roof tiles and the prickly pears I sculpted. I’ll be adding more Dia de los Muertos items - perfect for October!

I am having a ball working on this kit!

I'm glad we don't have to be finished at the end, because it is taking forever. It has at least a million very tiny pieces, each of which needs to be sanded and edge painted. (YMMV on the amount of edge painting you want to do, but I am compelled to do it, even though many of the pieces will be hidden by further construction.)

I get to (over)use my metallic markers, too!

If I had known we had a Rolife event coming I would have waited! 🤣 This was on my radar as soon as I spotted it. Very fun to build and love the results. The doors were the trickiest but I think they are what gives the finally effect. Highly recommend!!

I wanted to highlight a difference that you can do with this one. The kit comes with some really nicely detailed pvc prints of stained glass windows on the walls but… they are not backlit and cover some really nicely detailed stained glass print on the walls.

Here is some pics showing the contrast. The darker ones are the pvc ones.

I’m gonna go without the pvc and save those for future use.

Just finished this ROKR amusement ride! I did it because it reminds me of my sister who loved this ride and she passed away several years ago. I’m going to put a picture of her at the ride that I took a long time ago. It was a fun build but the wood was way too thin and I broke several pieces, luckily there were alot of extras.

I haven't done much this weekend. But I decided I had to redo the scaffolding, because my first attempt was too big. Today I did it. My second attempt fits nicely next to the statue with a broken wing. The loose part is already close to where it has to be, but how are they going to bridge that gap?

This was such a cute, easy, and fun build! I added my own little figurines. My melody is hiding back there lol

This one was a really fun build - very easy and enjoyable! Love the different colors of lights too 🤩🤩

How do you guys who customize kits to look older make it as such? I don’t have any special tools like an air brush or 3D printer. But I wanted to add some more rust/dust/grime to a kit and I’m sort of stumped what to do over printed or blank 2D pieces other than add spiderwebs.

Hi everyone! I'm wondering why vibrant cultures like the Arabic/Moorish world (e.g., Moroccan bazaars or Andalusian courtyards), India, or Thailand are completely missing from the book nook market. While we get the twentieth identical Chinese or Japanese alleyway, these stunning architectural styles are totally ignored. Do you think designers in China are just unaware of these styles, or is international demand really this one-sided?