Resin Rose 2026 Recap
Hi everyone! (˶ᵔᗜᵔ˶)ﾉﾞ Did you make it to Resin Rose this year? It was the biggest one yet, coming in at around 500 people!
We hit a special milestone this year: Resin Rose’s 10th birthday — wow!! A special year deserves a special theme, right? This year’s theme was Birthday Bash: Celebrating a Decade of Memories. There was a DIY cake station, trading cards celebrating the themes throughout the years, and even throwback sets in the photography room.
I arrived on Thursday evening, so I was able to do some exploring during the day on Friday. By exploring, I mean eating and shopping. If you’re not familiar with the location of Resin Rose, it’s in Clackamas, which is a little suburb about 30 minutes from Portland. You’re also pretty close to Oregon City, where there are some more unique dining and shopping options than what Clackamas has to offer if you don’t want to go all the way to Portland.
But despite there being so many restaurants, I’m boring and went to lunch at Canard in Oregon City again.
（ゝڡ∂)ᕗ⌒☆ Just as delicious as last year!
There were also some really cute stores in downtown Oregon City. I visited a couple of antique stores (although there were definitely more than a couple on my walk), an independent bookstore, and even a toy store. If you find yourself in the area before the con has actually started next year, take the trip over there! You’ll have lots of fun and make it back in time for the con.
Speaking of the con…
Resin Rose was in the same location this year, although the hotel is now called the Hilton Garden Inn Clackamas Portland instead of the Monarch Hotel. Same spot, just renovated and rebranded. I purchased a 3-day pass again this year. The 3-day and 2-day passes get you almost the same experience, with two major differences.
There is a Friday night dinner that is only open to 3-day attendees. There are also small giveaways during this dinner! I won a sticker, but there are definitely larger prizes. I donated a few things to Resin Rose this year, so I can tell you for sure there were some eyes and hair accessories to be won, but I also saw accessories from other makers and even dolls! You’ll also get your little swag bag on your way into dinner (photos of that later on).
Additionally, you get to enter the vendor room an hour early on Saturday, which is great since some vendors definitely do sell out!
Here are my dolls at the dinner party. I had them all dressed up in Raouken corsets this year. ( ˘ ³˘)♥ I’m a little obsessed with how gorgeous they all look standing together.
It’s a bit of a tight fit since there’s only so much room for dolls and food, but I took better photos of them later on.
The 3-day passes have sold out every year since I’ve started attending Resin Rose, and I would recommend getting one if it’s in your budget. The dinner is one of my favorite events of the weekend. It’s a great place to sit down and catch up with doll friends (or make new doll friends if you don’t have any yet!) before the weekend starts and we all get swept away into our own schedules. I was seated with my lovely friends Rap1993 and Ryo’s Dollhaus again this year. ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )
Are they not just the cutest? I love how coordinated the outfits were!!
As always, there were tons of cool dolls! These are just a few that I managed to take photos of.
I think one of the coolest parts about any doll event is how many different types of dolls you get to see. The hobby is so huge now compared to what it was when I first discovered it. Back in the day, there were just a handful of doll companies, but now there are so many. There’s a good chance you’ll actually miss most of them unless you’re just really good at keeping up with BJD news, especially since there’s not really one community hub everyone is on anymore. It’s really easy to just fall into your niche and not really be aware of what else is getting released, but at doll events, you can end up with a whole 77cm of resin man on your table. (ﾉ≧∀≦)ﾉ
As previously mentioned, 3-day attendees do get a little Resin Rose swag bag. This year’s bag is super cute!! It has all of the little Rosette designs from over the years, plus it’s holographic. We also got a bunch of little goodies like postcards, doll goodies, candy (my favorite part of these bags hehe), and trading cards. The bag contents differ from bag to bag just because it’s a little difficult to craft enough tiny doll things for 185 bags. I really like the necklace I got from aurum79. It’s made with real jade!! How cool is that?
Day 2 (Saturday) started off with the early vendor room entrance for 3-day attendees. I swear the vendor room gets larger every year! This year, we had over 75 vendors. The vendor room is actually really nicely set up with ample room to move around and shop, and there are even photo booths in here.
I’m always amazed by how creative everyone is.
Anything tempting you? (≧▽≦)
There were so many amazing displays and lots of goodies to buy, no matter what you’re looking for! The Resin Rose vendor room is pretty calm compared to NYCDC, but there will definitely still be tables that sell out of some items, or just sell out completely from what I was seeing as the weekend went on. I’d recommend having at least a general idea of where you’d like to go first. Most vendors will share what they’re bringing ahead of time, so you can just check social media and/or websites leading up to the con.
I had one single mission: obtain Cocoriang Rosette. Thankfully, there were still quite a few of her left by the time I made it over to the table. Cocoriang was also selling adorable outfits, which I figured would fit my Volks Rei-Tenshi. And they did! You know you’ve been in this hobby for way too long when you can just eyeball this stuff.
Are they not just the cutest little things? I know Cocoriang ended up selling out of the Rosettes, but I’m hoping that will encourage them to bring more next year!
The raffle goodies were also in the vendor room! I wasn’t able to attend the closing ceremony this year, so no raffle for me. I did manage to donate some eyes and accessories this year, though! I hope the winners enjoyed their prizes. I’d love to see your dolls wearing what they won. (*ˊ˘ˋ*) I’m always so impressed by how many donations there are. It’s all for a good cause! The Resin Rose raffle money is donated to a local shelter for cats.
One hilarious quirk about this hotel is that for whatever reason, the conference rooms are on the same floors as actual hotel rooms. I have never seen this in any other hotel, and I for sure thought they were going to fix this during the renovation! Maybe management considers it a feature? (꒪▿꒪) So because of that, I had a very funny neighbor…the crafting room!
Side note: This room stays surprisingly neat the whole weekend. Good job, Resin Rose attendees!
This year’s crafting room had the return of the restringing and the headband decoration stations, and there was also a new, theme-appropriate craft: cakes! I kept refilling my water bottle in this room over the weekend (it was literally right in front of my hotel room), so I got to see everyone’s creative cakes drying off every time I came in here!
I had just enough time between shopping and some back-to-back meets for lunch. If you’ve never been to Resin Rose, there is a shopping center down the hill and a mall about 10-15 minutes away, depending on how fast you walk. The food options have previously been kind of meh (mostly just fast food or chain restaurants), but a new restaurant opened up in the nearby shopping center that I really enjoyed. It’s called Master Kong. And of course, you have to have T4 after your meal. It’s basically a Resin Rose requirement. ꉂꉂ(ˊᗜˋ) So there’s your lunch suggestion for next year!
Resin Rose has various doll meets throughout the weekend. Anyone is allowed to submit a meet idea, so if you want a meet for a specific doll, you better submit that idea next year! I like seeing art dolls, so I submitted the Art Dolls meet for Saturday afternoon. We had not one, not two, but three Raspberrys show up! I wish we had a little fairy forest backdrop for these girls. They look like they’d all be in the same fantasy story together or something.
Some amazingly crafted dolls by Glace. Momonita made some new friends, too!
Big thank you to everyone who showed up for the Art Dolls meet! I did this meet theme two years in a row, so I think I’ll switch it up next year. But what should the theme be? I guess I have a whole year to figure it out!
The next event was something truly amazing. We had a Den of Angels funeral, complete with drinks, snacks, a memory book, FLOWERS, and a coffin. Oh, and there were even badge ribbons! The organizer truly went all out for this one. I think this may have been my favorite part of the con.
Seriously, this was an event.
As everyone knows, funerals are a great place to snack, have photoshoots, make friends, and gossip about the deceased.
“We’re dressed appropriately for this, right?”
If you’re not familiar with it, Den of Angels was a forum focusing on ball-jointed dolls that had a run of over 20 years. If you missed out, don’t you worry, because there is a new forum you can join called Lovely Everyone. Join us!
You can also meet people you know from the Internet when you go to doll events! I met up with the lovely Hat and her adorable Hina at the DOA funeral. Don’t forget to read Hat’s recap of the con, too! Hina has a little zine! It’s kind of the cutest thing ever.
Saturday evening was the Swap Meet. I just barely managed to set everything up before the doors opened, so unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a photo of my table! The swap is a super fun event, but it is definitely a busy one as well. Come prepared! If you’ve never attended, there are 50 tables in a ballroom, and each table has someone selling things. There’s a mix of new, handmade goods and secondhand goods from personal collections, mostly leaning towards the latter.
I did better than I expected and managed to downsize quite a bit. Surprisingly, the handmade stuff did better than the secondhand stuff at my table, although I was able to trade some of my secondhand leftovers with the awesome LoganDolls for a couple of his new 6-inch garage kits.
As always, Sunday is a lot more relaxing, but I did still go to a couple of meets! The first meet I went to was the Dream of Doll meet.
Dream of Doll was the company that got me into this hobby. Naturally, by the time I could afford the hobby, Dream of Doll had died. Such is life. It’s probably for the best that middle school me didn’t get my dream doll (my dream Dream of Doll doll?). My tastes have changed so, so much since then, but it was still really magical seeing all of these dolls that made me obsessed with BJDs in person after all of these years. And so many of them, too! Huge thank you to everyone who brought these wonderful dolls to Resin Rose for us to admire. :)
Later in the afternoon, we had a Volks meet. I brought my little Rei-Tenshi hoping that maybe there would be another one there. Sadly, no other Rei-Tenshis, but I did get to see a lot of other amazing dolls! Look at the variety! Volks has such lovely sculpts. The faces are always so sweet and just classically doll-like.
I just wish they had pinchable cheeks. (´-ω-`)
A little close-up of Hina with my significantly tinier doll.
I finally made it to the photo room on Sunday afternoon. It was super busy! Everyone was really friendly, though, and we did our little scene rotations, so everyone got to use the photo sets they wanted photos with.
I’m so obsessed with this clamshell prop. I need one.
Look how gorgeous they are. I always feel so lucky to own these girls.
The iconic bridge is back! It’s been repurposed a few times since I started attending Resin Rose. This year, it was used as the 10th anniversary theme showcase. This one felt like taking an obligatory family photo at Disneyland or something haha!
So, I’m bad and I ended up skipping the opening ceremony to watch anime. There was a double feature with Appleseed and Black Magic at the historic Hollywood Theatre that a couple of great friends invited me to, and unfortunately, it did conflict with the closing ceremony! But hey — that’s one less person to compete with for the raffles, so actually, you’re welcome! (*ˊᗜˋ*)
I liked their sign.
I did get an update on the closing ceremony announcements, though! Next year’s theme will be Murder and Mysteries. Ooh, how exciting! We also had over 500 attendees at Resin Rose, it was the most attended Resin Rose yet, and $540 was donated to the Spokane fire victim. Attendees raised $270, and Resin Rose matched it for another $270. There will be an additional donation to CatAdoptPDX. Dates for next year are to be announced, so keep an eye on the Resin Rose website for more news.
Resin Rose is so special to me, and I will definitely be back next year. I had such an amazing time with everyone, and I hope to see you all again next year! And if you didn’t go this year, you should totally go next year!! I’d also like to extend a special thank you to all of the staff, volunteers, and vendors who put their all into this event every year.
Here’s my haul! Sorry if you were hoping for a massive one! I tend to have a specific idea of what I’m looking for, so my hauls are usually on the smaller side for that reason unless someone I normally shop from is attending. I bought goodies from Cocoriang and Space Studio this year.
See you next time!
