I like what I like! So there!

I collect the Disney Princesses, specifically the first 6, because I grew up with them. I mostly collect Ariel/Little Mermaid pins because I grew up loving Ariel and admired her as a kid. She is still my favorite princess. My collection is mostly Jasmine, Belle, and Ariel since they were my favorite princesses as a kid.

I guess I should share with the thread too...

Like a lot of other people I loved the Lion King. It came out summer of '94 and it was one of the the movies my grandfather missed taking me to. I remember seeing the commercials for the movie on the Aladdin VHS we had. I had alwasy wanted to see it and though we missed it he still got me the itty bitty poly pocket style pride rock that had Mufasa, Simba and Nala and it closed up and all the figures would fold up with it. I would play with it for hours. Later at the end of the Summer he passed away. He was the only father I ever had, and I was adopted by my grandmother soon after, and when the movie came out I think it was more mentally traumatizing to me then anything. I went to counciling for a long time. It wasn't actually until the SECOND movie came out that I fell in love with it again. I had made a friend who lived across the street from me, he story almost the same, horrible drug addicted mother, no father, rasied by her grandmother and grandfather, and soon after we met she lost her grandfather.

We even looked like sisters! We only had one difference, her grandmother had a LOT of money, mine didn't. So we'd always play with her toys and stuffed animals...she had all the lion king ones. And we'd watch the movies on repeat and laugh and just be kids. That year my grandma scrapped together enough money to get me the entire bed set for the Lion King 2, I still have the sheets (Now curtains). She moved a year or two later, and I lost contact with her about 8 years ago. We only had 3 movies we truly shared: Lion King 2, Mulan and Tarzan.

I drew a lot, vented in my art for years until I finally got internet in my home, in 9th grade. One day I saw a very inspiring picture from the Lion King, but it wasn't official artwork, it was from a fanart site, and in truth one of the largest fanart sites of one movie on the entire internet. I ended up living there practically, drawing everyday, not fanart but animals and african inspired things and eventually I ended up in art college.

So...naturally Lion King is what I collect. A lot of memories hide behind it.


Asie from that...I have a secret collection of secret things for secret reasons...I'd like to collect Tangled for my boyfriend but gave up...and I'm going to be starting a new collection soon for my boyfriend and I.



My grandma says this about her collection:

Why do you like Dumbo? Any special reasons?

No. Papa didn't really care for him, but I collect elephants and I think he's just precious!

My only proper collection is my Walt Disney/Jules Verne set. As one might glean from my banner and blog, I am a huge fan of Jules Verne and early Science Fiction in general. As an author I think he beautifully captures the wonder of exploration and discovery and I love it. I also love work that he's inspired, such as the films of Georges Melies (the movie director that Hugo was about), Karel Zeman and Walt Disney. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a brilliant movie, and In Search of the Castaways is a lot of fun too. 20,000 Leagues was one of the things that got me back into Disney after I stopped paying attention in my teenage years. It's been a minor goal in life to go on all the Verne atrtactions in Disney parks, and just short of taking a cruise to Castaway Cay to snorkel around the last remaining WDW sub, I've accomplished that goal.

That collection started with 3 pins I picked up in Tokyo Disneysea for 20,000 Leagues, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Nautilus Gifts. Then I added a Space Mountain: Mission 2 pin from Disneyland Paris (which is based on Verne's From the Earth to the Moon). I managed to trade for a Stitch on the Astro-Oribtor (it counts by virtue of Discoveryland in Paris), and from then it was game-on. I decided to limit myself to just the pins I like with Disney characters on them, because I like the combination of the cartoony characters in the settings from a live-action film.

My second collection is my mementos. The "been there, done that" group of souvenir pins picked up as memories of parks, tours, events and so on. When I can help it I try to get ones with black-and-white Mickey because he's my favourite version. I love classic animation from the time, whether Mickey or Oswald, Felix or Popeye, Disney or Fleischers. It's very vintage and classy.

I had a pinocchio puppet as a child and even when the strings were so tangled they had to be cut off, I still kept him. I've just always liked Pinocchio. My son got me into collecting Stitch at some stage because he watched the movies and had the toys. And more lately Ive branched out to Alice, Tangled and Brave - watching the movies got me into collecting those.