BJDs - a little ramble about community, the issues and positivity.

Okay disclaimer here, this is gonna get a bit rambly and be long. If you want to skip the DRAMA (tm) scroll down for dolly stuff and pics and all that nice fun stuff.

Otherwise, strap in.


Some may not watch youtubers, but I know a lot of my readers probably DO watch doll videos there.

and may indeed already be aware of the most recent shittiness from renouned counterfeiter Luo and his ongoing petty grudge against artists.

For those who don't know what i'm on about, Luo is a recaster. What's a recast you ask? It's a counterfeit. Basically they take a doll, make a new mold from that doll and churn out substandard copies for a fraction of the price to unknowing people, or people who don't care.

It's more unscrupulous than that though.

See, unlike fake barbie dolls or whatever, you're not talking companies with thousands of employees who churn out millions of dolls a year. You're talking at most a dozen people hand casting and finishing these dolls, not to mention the person who sculpted and engineered them in the first place who in many cases is a member of perminant staff and not a random contractor. These companies do not make millions of dolls a year, at most they might make a few hundred or so a year.
it's a very niche, very small market that has a large time investment and a lot of these companies don't really make huge megabucks. Their products cost a lot because of the time it takes to make the damn things.
You can't machine churn out a resin doll. The resin must be mixed, then poured into molds, then there's a wait for it to all set. Then you have to remove the pieces and this is a situation where you can get breakages or bubbles and thus have to do that piece all over again, resulting in wastage.
The more fragile the part, the more wastage there's gonna be.
Once you have all the bits out you have to sand each piece fully to remove any extra mold seams and unevenness.
then it has to be strung together and all the joints checked to be sure the engineering is working correctly.

If the customer also wanted the doll with a faceup painted that has to be hand painted. It's not a case of spray layers like fashion dolls, each brush stroke is HAND DONE. that takes time too.

And then it has to be carefully packaged up and sent to its new home.

Even before any of this happens the artist has to sit and sculpt the head, the body, every single joint and be sure it all works before they can make a mold and start casting. It can take months, if not years to engineer a doll body from scratch. If you've ever tried to sculpt anything you'll know the massive investment in time and materials it takes to craft something.

The end result is a deluxe product, a collector doll, a piece of art. And because it's a teensy company, every sale MATTERS.

Recasters skip the whole sculping stage, they just steal that. They also skip a lot of other stages by cutting corners to maximise profits. The resin used isn't neccisarily going to be good or indeed particularly safe, much like plastic and vinyl clones. You don't really KNOW what shit they put in there.
They're not gonna care if engineering doesn't quite work right, they're not gonna care about marbling of the resin or air bubbles or flashing or warping from resin not quite set when it was strung up. You aren't paying them enough to care. These are rushed out counterfeits to grab a quick buck.

On top of that, there's no aftercare.

With a legit bjd in most cases, you have a degree of warrenty. At the very least that item should arrive to you intact. Any breakages in transit will be replaced by most legit companies at no cost and many of them allow you to purchase replacement parts in the case of later breakages.
Recasters don't care, if your doll arrives with snapped off fingers they don't care. It's not their problem. You're shit outta luck if you want a replacement. You again, aren't paying them enough to give a shit.

So why do people buy recasts?

In most cases they genuinely don't know. The term "recast" is, in itself pretty vuage and doesn't really make it clear to a person outside the bjd community that this is a fake.
A lot of recasts are purchased by wellmeaning family members for someone, they're tricked by a nice looking website (in fact depressingly if you google bjd the first things that pop up are almost all recast sites so yeah) and ambiguous terminology.

But there are other people who intentionally buy recasts. They do so because they CLAIM legit dolls are "too expensive" or that the community is "elitist" and "toxic".

this is not true.

As  in all communities there are of course some unpleasant individuals and some overzealous people who can come across as hostile, but the vast majority of bjd people are not bad people. They're creative sorts, artists and seamstresses (what's the male equivilant? tailor?) and crafters, writers and designers. They see the dolls as a canvas upon which to pour their own creativity as well, a sort of collaberation between sculptor and crafter.
They use bjds to represent roleplay or book characters, as avatars, to tell stories or simply to look pretty.
But I can tell you under no uncertain terms, the "elitism" that is often cited as existing in the bjd community is only a very tiny minority of assholes.
the vast majority just love their dolls.

On top of that, hurting an artist because their fans are assholes is really cruel. it's not the sculptor's fault their fans are dicks! Why should they be hurt because a couple of their fans are unpleasant?

It's very flawed rationale.

So why am I talking about this?

well, I have to tell you a little more about Luo the master asshole.

A while back he started to file trademarks for companies that were not his own across the world, forcing those companies to spend money to defend their copyrights and trademarks.

Not content with that, he also started to create fake certificates of authenticity and replicating the logos of legitimate companies so that the final product looked to the unknown eye to be legitimate.

That's pretty scummy in itself.

but then he upped the anti.

He sent out a bunch of counterfeit dolls to doll youtubers recently. Not bjd youtubers because they'd KNOW, but to youtubers who usually talked about LOL or Barbie or other playline stuff who he rightfully assumed wouldn't have any clue about this niche hobby or his shenanagins.

Several of these youtubers, in good faith, then did a review and linked Luo's webpage (which I will NOT be mentioning here because I don't want that dick getting more traffic)

they were being used and they had no idea.

One of them at least did some research, but not enough. She still did the review, she still directed people to the store, she still failed to realise why recasts were such a major issue. It wasn't really her fault though, she was decieved.

Now I didn't see the fallout because when I saw the video all the comments I could see were wellmeaning people politely explaining why recasts were bad or expressing shock that Luo would sink to such a new low.

But apparently a few toxic people got hostile.

and now the video has been removed and replaced by a video about this which sadly, gives the false impression that bjd people are all bullies. Granted she specifically states that not ALL bjd people are toxic, but those toxic few were enough to put her off and worse, put others off too.

Already the comments section is full of people saying "eugh bjd people are such elitists, i'll never buy a legit one!"

and this is EXACTLY what Luo wanted, mark my words.

These youtubers were pawns. They played into his hands. Not only did they give him free publicity but the fallout means the recasters and their supporters can continue their narrative that bjd collectors are elitist bullies and horrible people and that you don't want to be part of the community or support it in any way.

and that is horrifying.

No offense to the youtubers, they were duped. They were utterly and completely used and that's awful. I really feel bad for them (there were multiple) and even worse that they got hate for it from a small minority of dicks.
It makes me angry and frustrated to see Luo yet again manipulating things and getting what he wants. This guy is SCUM, manipulative conniving scum.

But he's extremely good at turning the narrative and making it seem like those who knowingly buy recasts are just "poor victims of elitism" and that it's the "big companies" (again, they're like 12 people, that's not a big company) are just greedy and overcharging.

But here's the thing, bjds aren't actually THAT expensive when compared to other collector line dolls. There are plenty of options that simply aren't megabucks when you actually look into it.

Yes, to a playline barbie collector $140 might seem like a crazy amount of money for a doll, but let's actually look at the collector market.

Collector line Barbies themselves retail for up to £150
Collector line Disney dolls are similarly priced.

Tonner dolls were about $100-150
Integrity toys you're looking at similarly about $150

Pullips can go up to $300 depending on how fancy they are!

Blythes cost upward of $100 too.

When you consider how expensive 1/6 scale collector line is, suddenly 150-300 for a resin 1/4 doll doesn't sound so horrifying does it?

And unlike with a lot of these examples, bjd companies offer layaway.

Since when did Disney or Mattel offer layaway options? Never.

So unlike these where you have to drop that in one lump sum, with bjds you can slowly pay it off over several months.
This is extremely helpful.

Bjd companies are well aware their products are expensive and most of them are quite willing to do what they can to make it all easier for you.

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DOLL TALK STARTS HERE:

So, let's talk about my own dolls.

Now, as I mention a lot, I don't have a HUGE amount of money. I wouldn't call us massively poor, we're fortunate that i'm good at budgeting so we can keep our heads above water, but we ARE on benefits and have three children, rent, groceries, heating etc to pay for. these take priority.

Every month my husband and I allow ourselves a little bit of money for "play". It's supposed to be used for all those frivolous non esentials for ourselves. In my case that's 90% dolls and 10% video games on sale (lol). In husband's case it's mostly Warhammer miniatures and games.

It's good for your mental health to have "play money" but in times of great need it's the first thing to be cut off.


I top up my allowance by selling things. I scour charity shops in my spare time and pick up bargains to resell for profit. It makes me not a huge amount, maybe an extra £50 at most, but it helps.

Anyway,

It took me a very long time to work my way up to the point where I felt comfortable shelling out over £100 for a doll. Years and years in fact.

I won't lie, when I first stumbled upon bjds back in the early 2000s I was intimidated and put off by how much there seemed to be to learn and how inpenetrable the whole thing felt. msd? sd? yosd? What IS this jargon? thankfully things are a lot more accessable nowadays.

Websites like ACBJD are great for window shopping multiple different companies at once (Acbjd are a dealer for a good 20 or more companies so it's quite a variety) and that's really helpful because there are HUNDREDS of bjd companies and it can get super overwhelming trying to figure out who's who and what's what without something like a big dealer storefront.

In the US you have Denver Doll and Junky Spot as well, though neither are as varied in their selection as ACBJD.
The UK DID have Angelesque but she's recently annouced she's shutting up shop which is very disappointing.
But as of right now, her website is still up and has a large selection of companies to browse too.
She just isn't taking new orders.

There's also plenty of resources explaining the jargon, what all the scales MEAN and how they correspond with one another. For simplicity though, i'm gonna try to avoid the jargon and stick with simple scales. 

My first doll was a Resinsoul, one of the cheaper of the bjd companies out there. Their 1/4 scale dolls (42ish cm tall) come in at around $140 which is about on par with a Tonner of the same scale.
Their 1/6 dolls are under $100 and their 1/3 ones are about $200.

Now Resinsoul has a reputation for being the big "starter bjd company" and a lot of that is to do with price.
They also have one of the shorter wait times.
bjds take time to make, you're looking at at least a month's wait, some bigger and more popular companies are closer to 9 months due to backlog.

the bjd hobby requires a lot of patience. I don't have patience. lol.

I chose Resinsoul partially because of price but also because of all the companies in that price bracket, they offered the largest range of resin colours including fantasy colours (Which I LOVE) and their face sculpts weren't overly anime or doll-like but rather more characterful which I liked.
Husband pointed out they look rather like how I draw which might have also drawn me to them hahah.

I agonised for ages over what to get. As with a lot of bjd companies, there's a lot of options for your doll. Multiple bodies are pretty common, resin colour, head sculpt. In Resinsoul's case they also let you mix and match bits so you can have horns on a sculpt that doesn't usually have them, have ears from one sculpt on a different one for an added fee, have them custom mix you a resin colour, multiple arms, multiple eyes, I mean seriously resinsoul are nuts for choice.

and that is why I kept going back.

Back when i first stumbled upon BJDs in the early 2000s you were lucky to get two resin options, white or peach/pink. You certainly didn't get fantasy tones or mix and matching to this extent. You bought a doll, as it was, at most you could choose a slightly taller body or a shorter one. that was IT.

Now most companies offer quite a selection, though a few still stick with the old way of having white or pink as your only options and only a half dozen head options.

But my first doll was a Resinsoul Jun. I chose him for a few reasons.
His smirking face appealed to me. His big ol' finned ears were awesome and he was a BOY, as regular readers likely know, I predominantly collect boy dolls.

I decided I was going to come up with a plan if I was gonna get into bjds, I designed a D&D party I was going to have them represent. Which meant a strict list of 6 dolls and ONLY 6 dolls.

ahahahah ahahahahah

oh yeah, sure, that was gonna work right?

Now Jun wasn't my first 1/4 scale doll, but he was my first resin doll. I already had a Hujoo Arthur who i'd bought a year or so earlier and wanted a companion for. I fell in love with his goofy little face. If I remember rightly, he was about £80 and he's made of ABS plastic.

My pale little goober. lol.

Hujoo sadly seem to have ceased producing most anything so I dunno what happened there, but it doesn't look like you can buy their 1/4 dolls anymore. Which is a shame.

Like resin bjds, he arrived to me nude, blank, eyeless and wigless. Poor baby.

He filled the role of second rank fighter in the D&D party, he's a Ranger. 

Now the Resinsoul,

Jun, or Nhar to give him his proper name, was a custom order.
Because why not?

I wanted to go a little crazy if I was gonna be spending a load of cash okay?

So I ordered him in a custom colour (I sent a digital colour swatch) with transparent parts. His arms are transparent blue from the elbow down and his legs are clear from the knee down.

He's a water elemental so the clear parts made sense to me, plus they look cool.

He actually arrived to me broken. One of his ears was chipped and due to a communication error they cast his limbs the wrong colour. But Resinsoul are AMAZING and cast me a new head and new limbs free of charge and sent them out priority.

It was awesome!

I ended up selling the extra bits and used that money to buy ANOTHER Resinsoul doll because it seemed fair heh. Also, I like giving nice companies money.

Nahr has a wonderfully characterful face, even with my terrible faceup attempts hahah.

He filled the roll of front line combat, he's a fighter. I know, he really doesn't look it, that was sort of the point. I was playing around subverting tropes. You try hitting a guy who can turn into water at will, hah.

I love this guy.

He cost me the base cost plus a custom fee of $30 to get his resin the way I wanted.
His outfit was custom made for him (Capsuledoll on etsy) and his wig came from Etsy too (akasarushi). His eyes are the ones he came with. (resinsoul send their dolls with eyes which is nice, not every company does) and his weapons are 3d printed and from Shapeways (Silverbeam designed them).

I think all in with postage and wig, outfit etc he was all in probably just under £200 to get all put together.  I made his shoes, pants and turban and I did his faceup myself which kept costs down. 

While I was waiting for Nhar to arrive I was fretting and obsessing. I'd never handled resin before, would it be super fragile? Was it heavy?
What had I gotten myself into arghhh!

On ebay a secondhand (or rather thirdhand) Resinsoul girl was being sold in a fantasy colour (you know it's my weakness) and I couldn't resist taking a punt.

I was panicking about whether i'd made the right call and figured if she was cheap enough it would at least let me know what to expect and ease my mind a bit.

Lyric arrived in an oversized wig with a grubby old resinsoul default faceup (read: bland and grey as shit) and faded sky blue resin that had over the years turned a lovely stormy colour.

She needed some tlc, complete restringing and a clean as well as new wig, new face, eyelashes and so on but I was ready for the challenge.

As it was, she worked out really well. I fell in love with her but also she gave me a very good grounding in bjd maintanance without the fear of damaging a custom made brand new doll.

Lyric got a spare Makies wig I had (I have a lot of Makies wigs lol) and the eyes she came with which are yellow, interestingly. She's a Resinsoul Song on a girl body.

She came with part of her outfit, the other bits (the corset, paldron and bracers) were made by Eternaldoll on Etsy and her shoes came from Fatio.
Like Nhar, her daggers are 3dprinted from Shapeways and designed by Silverbeam.
Her cape is from a 1/6 Disney doll ahahah.

She cost me £80ish and came with a load of stuff extra. Her outfit and accessories probably cost me £70 so all in she set me back about £150 which isn't too bad I don't think.

the big thing with BJDs is that because they often come blank a lot of the cost is getting wigs, eyes and clothes for them. But at least you can sort of spread that out over time. Or be like me and just have a stash ahahah.

Honestly though, often the clothing and accessories will cost you as much as the doll itself!

So there's a big interest in cheap alternatives. As it stands, I know that Teen Trends clothing and shoes fits Resinsoul dolls but they're quite skinny and have small feet.
 Glitter Girls/wellie wishers sized stuff seems to fit regular 1/4 dolls too, which is cool.

 And of course now I was addicted.

And still looking for the rogue for my D&D party.

He was originally going to be another Hujoo but i'd long come to the realisation the Hujoo body engineering pissed me off and getting their heads open was painful.

I stumbled upon someone selling a Resinsoul Wu on the popular BJD forum Den Of Angels for not a huge amount. He'd never been given a faceup, never really been taken out of his box (Daaaamn) and I thought he'd work for the Rogue I had planned. I wanted an unusual face and Wu certainly has an unusual face.

He has huge pouty lips and jug ears!

Years ago I had bought this ridiculous orange wig on a whim because it made me smile. It's massive and poofy and insane. I got it secondhand so i'm not sure where it's from originally but it's made of some sort of natural fibre and sooo soft.

My design for Auriel involved him having creepy blank eyes and a big ol' mane of hair, and so that's what happened here. Though instead of the dirty blonde i'd planned he became a redhead. Something about a rogue with fluro orange hair just really amuses me okay?

His outfit was bought from Wikitoria (sp?) who I have to admit, isn't that reliable but makes damn nice clothes.
This was a premade outfit, unlike Arthur's which was custom made for him by the same person.

His boot are again, Fatio and the bracers are from Eternal Doll. I made his cape. His eyes are marbles I got in a charity shop lol.

His sword is a letter opener/souvineer thing.

His hair doesn't like to cooperate in photos but it's actually tied back in a ribbon. It's quite long and well.. floofy. Moving him around though means it does this rather than laying flat.

Oh well.

Auriel is the rogue of the party and defacto leader.

I don't remember what he cost me but it was probably something similar to Lyric and Nhar.

The money I made selling Nhar's spare parts went toward buying Ming from Resinsoul direct.

He's dark tan with Yao horns (they're magnetic)

He's quite difficult to get to stand up because of how his legs are engineered.

His eyes were made by a friend in the Makies community, I wanted goat eyes damnit.

His wig is from a company called Newmoor Barn who sell various goat and sheep wools and suchforth. It's made of er... wensleydale fleece? I think? It smells a bit sheepy and also of soap lol.

I made most of his clothes.

The kilt is literally a piece of fabric tied like a great kilt, his pants I made and his shirt is actually an oversized ken shirt I found that somehow fits.
My mother knitted his chain shirt which is underneath all this. It's made from a metallic crochet yarn.

He usually has a parrot feather in his hair because why the heck not? lol.

The brooch interestingly enough actually came from a clone sindy doll I found in a charity shop in a hand made nurse outfit. The broach was being used to hold her cape shut and had some paper glued to it. I removed the paper and it turned out it was a perfect little brooch for clasping a kilt.

Oisin is the party's Cleric, of all things. Hahaha.

His wig was about £30 (ouch) and his eyes cost me £10-15 but I didn't need to buy shoes or clothes for him so... all in all he cost about £160ish?

and this is the point I fell off the wagon.

Remember I was supposed to ONLY get D&D party dolls?

yeaaaaah.... that didn't happen.

I fell down the rabbit hole.

completely.

But we'll get to those dolls soon.

We had our rogue(s), our fighter, our cleric and our ranger... we needed a mage!

Ignore my leg. lol.

the big problem was, for my mage I wanted a specific doll to be a Bariaur (er.. goat/sheep taur) and Impldoll who made goat-taurs were significantly more expensive than Resinsoul. Centaur dolls in general are expensive, they're pretty hefty.

So i put it off, dithered on it till Impldoll did their yearly special deal. Spend $300, get one 1/6 doll free.

It made the money a little less painful to part with.

So Impldoll Trista came with a friend, a dark skinned 1/6 doll who I decided would be a gnome because why the heck not?

Sigrud was to be my party mage, but her unique body shape makes her very difficult to dress. I've honestly been meaning to sew her a dress for like 2 years now but I keep wussing out because I suck at sewing.

I'm a slacker, poor girl NEEDS proper clothes.

She has a very stern face. Impldoll's sculpting is honestly a little odd, really big foreheads. But she fits well with the rest of the group to my eye.

She was originally supposed to have horns but I couldn't get them to work with the wig so I decided not to bother.

Her wig is from Fatio I THINK and her eyes are Candy Kitten who makes awesome eyes.

I keep putting off taking photos of this poor girl because I feel bad she hasn't got her outfit sorted yet.

But what of her travel companion?

Zynfi is an Impldoll Abby in their darkest resin which is spectacularly dark.

She wasn't a planned member of the D&D party but I decided she was an enchanter and retailer of rare and magical artifacts who didn't really care where those artifacts came from. A no questions asked sort of merchant who'd buy anything that took her eye.

Her face was really hard to paint because she's SO dark.

Her wig is Monique in a strawberry blonde sort of colour. Her eyes are from my stash.

Her hat is from a Moxie Teen and is slightly too small with her wig on.

Her waistcoat came with Lyric and the rest of her outfit I made.

Even her shoes haha.

Very dark resin has a tendecy to look a little dewy when you spray it with sealant. In the case of impldoll's resin it's also quite shiny without sealant.

I used some christmas money to get my next few dolls.

Lidara was a little bit of an impulse to be honest. She's a Resinsoul Bei, she's 1/6 scale and fits Barbie sized clothes (but not shoes) which is useful.

She's teensy tiny and I kinda need to redo her faceup, it's messy.

She's my halfling girl and she fills the role of Fence and informant and generally underworld contact gal, heh.

Her wig is Monique and most of her clothes are pilfered from my stash or made by me.

She was about £100 all in.

Sage was another Ebay find. She's a Bobobie (resinsoul's sister company) Ariel. The body Bobobie dolls come on isn't very pretty but I loved her face sculpt and she was really cheap because she'd yellowed and was a cheap doll to begin with.

She came with a really dirty old faceup, glue residue all over her head and was generally a bit gross. I gave her a good scrub, restrung her and redid her face. I also sanded her breasts because they were enormous and pillow-like and just fugly as all hell.

Her clothes are from my stash. The cape and cloak thing are Capsuledoll but I don't know what the skirt is from. It's actually too big for her, I stitched it smaller at the back.

Her wig is Hazelsaesthetics and her eyes are from Littlekatherinedolls

She is "coffee" or "light tan" but has yellowed a bit.

She's a mage.

The same seller who sold Sage also had a Resinsoul Long

Now Long is a BIG doll, he's 1/3 scale and 70cm tall. He's enormous.
I got him for less than £100 though.

He's old, yellowed and had a grubby old faceup too but he needed less tlc than Sage.

He got a bath and a restring and a new face. His name is Selador.

His wig is from Etsy user SartoriaJ and he came with these beautiful eyes.

His outfit was custom made by AzuriellesGrove

He came with the boots too.

He's a Woadkyn, a sort of elf giant.

He's also a Druid.

Rowan is a Resinsoul Rong on a Yao body with Ming horns (phew that's complicated huh?)

She's in red resin which is a sort of terracotta colour.

She also has jointed hands because they were part of a special deal heh.

Her wig was custom made by Twinstarsbjd

Her skirt is from an etsy store called Mysteriousdollworld

Her eyes are Candy Kitten

I made her top and shrug and my father 3d printed her bottles.

She's an alchemist and she's deaf.

At the same time I ordered Rowan I also ordered Silas. He's a half hag and fighter.

It took me a LONG time to get his outfit sorted though, I didnt' have the money and it was complicated. He needed a custom wig too which meant I needed cash.

He's a Resinsoul Yao on the Tang body with Sui hands in purple. 

He has Candy Kitten eyes (well, eye, the other one is a marble haha) and a wig custom made by Twinstarsbjd.

His outfit was made by Capsuledoll

I still haven't made his breastplate, or managed to obtain his weapons.

at this point I decided I should probably step away from D&D medieval fantasy themed dolls.
it was getting silly.

But I still couldn't resist dollies.

Creedance is a Resinsoul An on a Sui body with extra arms in green and dark tan.

Resinsoul did this mod for me for like $30 because they're awesome.

Cree's eyes are marbles and his wig is "formydoll"

He's so damn pretty. An's face sculpt is one of my all time favourites.

Hugo WAS a very battered and heavily modded Song head that I stripped, removed the mods, did my own mods and turned into my sad little clown boy.

I sculpted him a new nose and chin, opened his eyes back up (they'd been modded closed) and reshaped them.

He no longer looks like Song heh.

He's in dark grey but his face was blushed and is a few shades darker, it photographs darker than it actually is.

His outfit is from multiple sources. The wig came with a bundle of other stuff off ebay so i'm not sure where it was from originally.

Eyes are Candy Kitten.

Stockings are Caramelone, shoes are from Teashaped on Ebay, Corset cinch thing is from Mysteriousdollworld  and the bloomers  think are from ACBJD.
His vest is Barbie (lol) and his shirt came from acbjd? I can't remember.

Leif is a Featherfall Uruhi.

This was a sculpt sculpted and cast by Resinsoul but licensed to another company called Featherfall who no longer exist. I don't know, it's a bit complicated.

Whatever the case, it's a fairly rare sculpt and I was pretty surprised to find a blank one for sale on DOA for a really good price. Of course I jumped at the chance.

He came with huge resin ears which I find silly so he doesnt' wear them.

His clothes are from ACBJD and his wig is Fatio. Eyes are, as usual, Candy Kitten lol.

Li here arrived to me as a floating head. As in, a head without a body hahah.
I got her in a trade with someone. I sent them some playline stuff, they sent me some playline stuff and a bundle of resin bits and bobs including this head.

She's a Resinsoul Li in dark tan though I have no idea how old the head is, it's a lot darker than the current dark tan.

The body that she's on is a Resinsoul body, it's the newer Shi body which is taller and lankier than the standard body.

It's a nice body.

The Li head sculpt is an unusual one I think, but I quite enjoy how unconventionally pretty she is.

Her wig is from Ebay, I don't know where it came from as it was a random secondhand one. Her eyes are from my stash (they came in a big bundle of random eyes) and her antlers are Impldoll, they were Trista's.

Her currently outfit is a combination of a Souldoll outfit I got off DOA and a corset I got off Ebay in a bundle which I believe was made by CeressBJDclothes on etsy, I THINK.

And that I think covers my Resinsoul/BBB dolls hahaha.

This girl is a Doll Zone Moon head on a 1/4 mirodoll body.

I dyed the head to match the body.

Mirodoll are the cheapest of cheap bjd companies and haven't been without their controversy, but generally speaking they're extremely low cost, have pretty shit engineering and spotty customer service. Still, if you don't want to spend a lot and don't care if your doll can't hold a pose so easily, they're servicable.

I'm not overly impressed with their bodies, this girl needed a lot of work. I had to sand a lot of things and she's still pretty floppy but it was the easiest way to get a body that didn't require neck mods for the head and in the colour I wanted for a low price.

She actually has Resinsoul hands because Mirodoll's hands SUCK. They're ugly and they can't rotate because the joint is oval not round. It's wierd.

I'm not sure i'd ever buy another Mirodoll body, they're a bit too clunky and i'd rather spend more and get something that can stand up properly and not need modding out the box. Also, aesthetics. It's a pretty boxy body with awful knees and terrible hands. 

Her knees are terrible. So terrible. Look at that shelf of a knee!

Her outfit is all bits I had around the place. I need to get her a proper outfit but it'll do for now.

I made the wig years ago, it's on backwards because it looks better that way lol.

She can't sit gracefully, poor thing.

This is Jonah. Jonah is the doll who started my interest in bjds.

Waaaaay back in the early 2000s he was the doll who stole my heart, who I seriously considered spending a large chunk of my student loan on but ultimately decided it was a silly idea.

He's a Blue Fairy Louis.

Blue Fairy are an OLD bjd company and as a result they're pretty old fashioned in their jointing and styling. He's very different to any of my other dolls in the style of his face and body shape.
He's chunky and baby faced, while most of my other 1/4 dolls are slender and more grown up looking.

His eyes are off FLEURDELYSDOLL on etsy who were the only place I could get hazel eyes from.

His wig is Blue Fairy

His clothing is partially ACBJD (the jumper and shirt), the pants are Teen Trends (hahaha) and the jacket is from Dollhouseshop on Etsy.

His glasses are 3d printed from MoonProps but they're extremely flimsy and prone to falling apart which is frustrating. i keep thinking I should just glue the damn hinges.

It took me years and years to work up the courage to order Jonah. He meant a lot sentimentally because of that history but I was also nervous because Blue Fairy is a bit expensive and they have really really short order windows (like a week a month)
at over $300 that's a LOT for a doll to me. That's like 2 whole resinsouls! So yeah, I saved my butt off to justify it

Pumpkin is an Island doll "Monster"

I fell in love with this random thing and wanted it, badly.

He's 1/6 scale. I try to avoid impulse buying bjds because let's face it, I do not have the expendable income to impulse buy things that are £100++ but I really really fell head over heels for this critter.

I took a few days AGONISING before my husband said "just buy the damn thing!"

 

Pumpkin's dress is by Dollheart and came from Ebay secondhand.

The eye was in my stash and i'm not sure of the origin of it.

The hat is resin and held on with magnets.

I love this wierd little dude. 

I love Doll Chateau, they make sure WIERD dolls. They are kinda.. middle range in terms of price. Some of their dolls are quite expensive and others aren't so bad.  They do however have a REALLY long wait time (up to 9 months at this point) which is quite offputting.

Ludwig here is a DC Carol, a special limited release doll they made that you got for spending over £599. Eeep.

But a lot of dealers, because they do bulk orders, got several extra ones in as a result and then resold them.

Ludwig here was sold by the UK's old dealer Angelesque and the original owner couldn't bond with him so sold him on.

I bought him for £80, stained and unfinished. But I really liked what they'd started to do with him (the yellow feet and beak were their idea, as were the bird markings on his face) so I refined and finished it up and I ADORE HIM.

He doesn't stand up himself. His legs buckle. He's too top heavy and strangely proportioned to really be able to stand without a stand or some sort of support. 

But he's so dang cute. 

He's 1/6 scale as well, and teensy tiny fragile looking. His wings especially scare me to handle but resin is much harder than I keep thinking it is. Still, he's a doll to be treated gently for sure.

His antlers are on magnets and he fits into Bratz tops but has very very very wide hips. 

Another Doll Chateau 1/6 limited time doll. 

Xaveira was one of those dolls I lusted for but could NOT justify. Being quite a complicated sculpt she wasn't cheap, and the price was something I couldn't bring myself to part with. I just couldn't justify it at the time, it made me feel too guilty. 

But oh how I loved her. She's a spider taur man! I love spiders! 

As it was, I resigned myself to loving her from afar. Until an extraordinarily generous person offered her to me as a gift!

I was STUNNED.

I absolutely treasure her and the kindness and generosity that brought her into my home. 

Her wig was made by a friend years ago for monster high dolls, her skirt is barbie sized and her jacket is Bratz. Her "top" is a barbie shrug tied around her for modesty lol.

She's so teensy tiny. 

Her hat is Monster High and her eyes are painted beads.

She's technically 1/6 scale but she's quite a small delicate little thing. She's absolutely wonderful though, the sculpting of her body is just incredible! 

DC did a great job here.

God damn I love this doll. 

I have a few incoming in the next however long too.

I paid off the Dream Valley order which is 2 1/4 scale dolls and I qualified for their event tiny doll as a result, which i'll likely sell on to offeset the rather painful cost. Those should be here probably feb at the earliest.

I'm still paying off a Doll Chateau small layaway for their halloween doll Julienne. DC's wait time is looking like 6-9 months at this point so she'll turn up... some time.. 

And Gem of Doll sent my Sofiar out I believe, or were about to. So she should hopefully be here in the new year. Christmas post will probably delay her.

so that's 4 dolls coming in the new year. I freely admit I have a problem lol. 

But that's sort of wiped me out for a few months. I have a little bit of christmas money but i'm going to try to use that to pay for clothes and wigs and stuff for the incoming lot. Trying to be responsible and all that. 

I've also got a wishlist that i'm trying to stick to a little more strictly. I really haven't got much space now and that coupled with the ever increasing expense of everything (not just toys but the cost of living in general) is making me a little more wary of splurging too much too often. Now we've lost our UK dealer as well, we're looking at import fees and all that as well on top. It means adjusting my budgets a little to accomidate and looking at our incoming and outgoing to see if we need to drop our monthly stipends back down a bit. Such is life.

In summary:

And so that's I think all of them. 20? bjds. Did I count right?

whatever.

20 bjds, almost all of whom were less than £200 all in. Impldoll Trista and Blue Fairy Louis I think are the two I paid the most for at about £300 and it HURT to do so. I saved like hell for months and used birthday or christmas money to fund it.
My inlaws give me about £100 for my birthday and another £100 every christmas which is all "thanks for the doll inlaws" lol. My parents often give me £50 as well. And that helps a LOT.

And that's how i've managed to afford these deluxe items, by writing endless long budgets (i have literally got pages upon pages of budget calculations in my sketchbooks), saving saving saving and putting gift money toward it.

I recently finished paying off a long layaway for my most expensive purchase to date from Dream Valley (It HURT) and I found it honestly really stressful to have to find that amount of money every month. Should i do it again, I wouldn't make the layaway payments so high and i'd try to get a longer layaway. I did 4 months and honestly 6 would have been far less stress. But you live and you learn.
What I learned from that experience was hat just because I COULD afford the payments every month, didn't mean it was very pleasant. It was so close to my monthly stipend that I was left with nothing after paying the layaway payment and that meant not even any small £5 or £10 purchases. THAT was hard. Don't do that.
If you're gonna do layaway, leave yourself wriggle room.

You may also notice that of my dolls, very few of them are high priced deluxe big bucks ones. This is for  two reasons.

1: I simply cannot justify the cost of the higher end dolls to myself and

2: the majority of the really really expensive dolls simply don't appeal to me. Either they're too realistic or they're too blandly pretty and neither of those appeals to me.

but of course your tastes may differ.
I suppose i'm lucky that a lot of the dolls I ADORE have ended up being lower cost dolls, but I do also kinda limit my searches by budget for my own sanity. It sucks when you fall in love with something discontinued or like ££££££.

But if you do really fall in love with a Granado or a Fairyland or something, there are options. Secondhand is one, though the prices often aren't that much lower than new, you just miss the wait time in many cases.
The other is dealers who offer longer than usual layaways. I know that BJdivas often advertises that they do the longest layaways available and will work with a customer to help them bring a legit doll home.
and that's lovely! the owners are bjd collectors themselves and know first hand how hard it can be to juggle that budget. They are US based though and i'm not sure how that translates with shipping internationally, EU countries often get hit with customs charges with stuff coming from the US so that's something to be aware of. I've not purchased from them myself, yet. But with Angelesque shutting her doors I may have to start shopping around for a new dealer to simplify matters. (Why buy via a dealer? their layaway options, also they can chase things for you so it removes the stress from you lol. If you're in the same country it also means you don't get hit with a large customs fee)

A lot of companies will do layways direct with themselves too. Most often it's 3 months, but some offer longer.

Gem of Doll for example recently was quite happy to take any payment at any time and simply hang onto my order till i'd paid it off. (and DAMN they're fast, they cast a doll in 3 weeks! Wth?)

Resinsoul too is often quite ready to bend over backwards to accomodate a customer.

It's always worth asking, you lose nothing doing so after all.

I love my bjds and i'm honestly glad I jumped into the hobby. I won't say the community is without flaws or warts, any niche hobby has it's nasty corners, but there are some really lovely people too and some really fun groups to hang out and chat.
The Resinsoul group on facebook for example is lovely!

But you know, ultimately, while community is great and sharing photos and stuff is lovely, ultimately aren't most of us doll people into dolls becuase of the DOLLS?

I get a lot out of sitting and working on a doll's character, their faceup, their styling. Hours window shopping clothes and shoes and wigs to get the right look, doodling ideas, costing things up.
It can take me months and months to get a doll finished to a standard i'm happy with, to afford all the little bits and bobs I need to finish them off but they get finished eventually.

to me, it's worth the money. I get more out of a bjd in terms of hours spent than I do from playline stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love playline dolls but in most cases it's open, comb hair, dress, take a few photos and onto the shelf you go.
with a blank resin doll there's all the parts to bring together, stuff to craft, stuff to paint and I can while away happy hours with my pastels and pencils and brushes giving a doll a face and a personality.

And then when I look up at them on the shelf beside my desk I smile becuase I see all that work and all of myself poured into them. And I feel proud of them. They aren't just "pretty things", they're things I had a hand in bringing to life and that's lovely.

Sure I could do the same with repainting playline dolls but I hate stripping the paint and I find resin far more pleasant to work with and far more forgiving.

least this is how I justify it to myself hahah.

So thank you to the artists and companies who made these dolls possible. You've given me so many hours of enjoyment and every time I look at the little faces staring back at me from the shelf I smile. I honestly find myself reaching out and brushing hair from their faces or just looking at them a lot.


I look foward to the incoming bunch in the new year, i'm sure i'll have a lot of fun getting them all painted and dressed over the coming year or so heh.

It's gonna be great.