Ball joint dolls (BJD)

Well it was inevitable wasn't it? that eventually as a doll collector i'd gravitate toward the more expensive end of the spectrum.

I first encountered bjds when I was in university, maaaany years ago now. I cannot recall how I stumbled upon them, but I recall that at the time I didn't collect dolls and I still lusted after one.

Back then the selections were pretty limited, dolls tended to come in well.. fleshtone peach, white or... a bit more peachy with faintly tanned being a limited run they only did for special events.
They were massive expensive and while I had a student loan such frivolous use of it felt wrong so I continued to talk myself out of it.

But I suppose part of that longing stuck with me because every so often i'd find myself looking at them again, pondering, and ultimately deciding they were just too expensive and too big.

Anyway, fast forward many years on and it seems to be a natural progression for people who collect stuff to migrate up from cheap little things to the more elaborate stuff.
I blame Makies really. They were £69 which for me was INSANE money but gosh I wanted them, and each time i'd buy one I guess I convinced that little bit of my brain that it was okay to spend that sort of money on a doll.
So then £100 wasn't that much more... and it's a slippery slippery slope.




Makies also introduced me to dolls coming blank and needing faceups, wigs, eyes and clothing to really shine. Sure they came with default eyes and wigs, but they didn't really become THEM until you gave them a face.

Through Makies I learned to do faceups, I learned not to fear playing with an expensive toy and I got a taste for dolls that were totally customizable and nghhh.. basically they spoiled me.

With Makies gone I started to look to what else could fill that niche. What I loved best about Makies was that it allowed me to create "characters", they weren't just pretty dolls but an extension of my own creativity and that's what I really wanted out of a new doll.
With playline dolls I was attracted by them being pretty and inspiring, with vintage dolls the history of them appealed, but with Makies it was that I gave each their face and their identity.

I looked into Pullip but those big ol' heads, I wasn't sure I could get them looking decent and the bodies are pretty flimsy. Also they all use the same head, I wanted more diversity.
So the only thing that really fit my brief was BJDs.

Now BJDs come in lots of different scales and a lot of different companies make them. Most of them are based out of China or Korea but there's Russian, French, British and American artists who make them as well.
The defining aspect is they're elastic strung and made of resin. (though some would argue the resin isn't as much of a big deal as ball joints and elastic stringing.)

I don't pretend like i'm at all an expert in this, but generally speaking you have tinies which are usually animals or babies and stand about 5 inches tall, YOSD who are about 11 inches tall and usually children, MSD who are 16-17 inches and usually teenagers, SD which are 24inches and then even bigger ones that are closer to 28 inches and ENORMOUS.
The general rule was originally that each size was supposedly "in scale" with one another so the big dolls at 24 inches were adults, then the shorter tweens, then the kids, then the babies but as time has gone on that's sort of gone out the window.
Nowadays you can get yosd/1:6 scale mature dolls (they're rare but they exist), more and more msd/1:4 dolls are being made to look like older teens or young adults and there's a growing number of people interested in strange in between sizes.
Honestly, it's a bit intimidating and overwhelming getting into the hobby because there's SO MANY options omg.

So first thing to decide was scale. I didn't really want to go with YOSD/1:6 because I wanted the expensive dolls to feel more special and decided a larger size would feel a bit more "deluxe" and differentiate them from the playline dolls I have. 

I'd already taken the plunge on Hujoos, buying a Hujoo Arthur a year or so back because I fell in love with his little tusks and adorableness. He isn't ball jointed though, he has weird gears in his arms and legs which restrict his movement, and he's made of plastic.

As an MSD sized doll he's quite a bit bigger than my other dolls and he sort of seemed a bit lonely.

As i'd already handled him and got used to him, I had a feel for what the scale would feel like and so it wasn't that much of a stretch to get my first resin doll in the same scale. At 16 inches (around 42cm) it was big enough to feel special, but not too big so as to feel like another child lol.

I agonized for months over sculpts, fighting myself with expense and uncertainty. Once i picked a sculpt I had weeks of trying to decide on a resin colour. I knew I didn't want just a regular flesh tone doll, if you give me fantasy colours i'm gonna want them you know?
I love rainbow coloured dollies, this is part of why Monster High appealed to me so much.

Finally I had made a decision and in November last year I put in my order and the long painful wait began.

I went with a company called Resinsoul for 3 reasons.

1: they're actually pretty affordable for BJDs coming in at around £150 for an msd sized doll. Which is a LOT for me, but in terms of bjds, is pretty dang cheap. There's quite a few companies of a similar price point, and believe me I poured over them.

2: Of all the cheaper companies, Resinsoul's sculpts appealed to me the most. They do a lot of fantasy sculpts, a lot of pointed ears and there's a cartoonish element to the faces that really appeals to me. They're not overly realistic like many bjds and look more like well... dolls.

3: they come in fantasy colours and in fact will cast ANY colour you want for a small fee. ANY colour!?? HELL YES.

Now, when I got Arthur I decided to make him all Medieval fantasy and decided he was a D&D character because hey, any excuse to have a bit of D&D in my life.
I liked the idea of designing a whole adventuring party, or at least a couple of companions for him to go adventuring with.
So I started brainstorming what sort of characters i'd need.

Arthur is a ranger and for a balanced party that'd mean a rogue/thief, a magic user, a cleric for healing and a Melee fighter of some sort.

now, i had free reign to do whatever the heck I wanted, and what do I like? Planescape.
It's a D&D campaign from the old AD&D days, a very very surreal world where thoughts and belief shapes the universe and everything is a bit odd. There's demons locked in an eternal war, there's angels trying to keep that war going, there are sentient bushes and whole cities that are just one giant Mimic, and there are factions... oh the factions.
Groups of people who share a philosophy from the Sensates who believe everything should be experienced to the Bleak Cabal who believe there's no point to anything. There's people who worship death, who worship entropy, who worship chaos itself, along with groups who believe in law above all else.
It's crazy and awesome and I LOVE IT omg.
So clearly, if i'm gonna make a D&D party, i'm making them a Planescape party.

I also love non human races so that's totally happening.

Resinsoul have sculpts with hooves, with claws, with wings or tails. Pointy ears and horns and any colour you want... oo yes... perfect for a non human party right?

So I sat down and looked through those sculpts and picked out a few that looked like they'd work for a few of the D&D races.
A Satyr, a Tiefling (they have demonic ancestry), an Aasimar (same as tiefling only replace demon with angel) and a Genassi (elemental ancestry) and finally a Bariaur (Goat taur), but Resinsoul don't do msd sized centaur bodies... bah. Impldoll do though. Hehehe.

Anyway, with the rough outline of the party sorted I picked out the sculpt I was most excited to work with. Jun with his finned ears. I picked him to be my Water Genassi because finned ears were so aquatic and he had a pretty smirky expressive face that I just fell in love with.

I have to say, Resinsoul's company photos are rubbish. Jun has amazing ears but they totally hide them with this huge unruly wig and i'm like "why???"
I had to look at owner pics to really get a feel for what he looked like.

Such cool ears.

Now when you order a bjd you often get the option to order the doll blank, or pay extra for a company faceup. I wanted to add my own flair so I opted for blank, but these pics give you a good idea of what the default company face looks like if you pick that.

Resinsoul also have a long list of colours they do for a nominal fee. Free colours include White and generic white person flesh tone peach, then you have light tan, dark tan, green, two blues, two greys, purple (it's a sort of greyish purple) and even strawberry milkshake pink!

I AGONISED. I really wanted a green doll because I love green but I didn't think it'd be totally right for an aquatic elemental, but the blues didn't seem right either...
Someone mentioned I could request a custom colour because I was leaning toward a sort of blue-green tone and the company were more than happy to oblige.

I sent them a pantone colour swatch of the colour I wanted:

I couldn't resist the name okay?

It was an aqua sort of shade, again, seemed appropriate lol, and they were quite happy to mix that for me.
I also decided because I could, to pay extra to have my doll's hands and feet cast in clear resin so they were transparent (like Spectra's limbs)
It meant they'd look more "watery" I thought.

So being the crazy person I am, I bought my first bjd. Not one off the shelf, not one I could see what they'd look like. Heck no to safe options. I was buying a doll who'd be a colour I had no idea what it'd actually turn out like with transparent parts I didn't know would look right and just trusting the company to make it work.
I think I am actually insane.

They don't post images of the dolls as they create them, I wouldn't see my new doll until he arrived at my door.

Yes, it was anxiety inducing.

Now BJDs are cast/made on demand, so it can take a while for them to be produced. Resinsoul are actually very quick, you're in for a 5-6 week wait in most cases. (to compare, many other companies have a minimum wait time of 6-8 MONTHS)
Still, I found the Makies 2 week wait agony. 5-6 weeks was HELL.

I was nervous, would I like the doll? how fragile WAS resin anyway? would I be too scared to actually handle him?
eeeeeerp.

So part way through the wait another doll popped up on Ebay. A dark blue Resinsoul doll who needed some tlc and was honestly, pretty dang cheap.
I ummed and erred, and I talked myself into buying her. (I'm WEAK OKAY?) with the reasoning that she would give me a chance to handle resin, get a feel for how the dolls were put together and if I screwed something up it wouldn't be as huge a deal as my precious custom doll.

She arrived very promptly and yes, she was floppy as all heck.
poor girl was at least 6 years old and her elastic was deteriorating badly, it had lost all elasticity in parts which meant she was like a ragdoll.

She also came with her head not attached to her body so she'd fit in the box lol.
Advantage of strung dolls, you can just pop em apart.

She came with a wig that was too large, several pairs of eyes and a couple of bits of outfit.

Unlike my incoming doll, this girl had a company faceup. Though it was starting to fade a little and needed refreshing and there was some odd grey ghosting around her lips which I found a bit weird.

She's one of Resinsoul's optional colours, Sky Blue which i'd describe as a sort of stormy colour.

Her head is the Song sculpt, usually used for boy dolls but in this case on a female body.
Her unusual combo of head/body and colouration made her not overly difficult to trace the history of.
From what I could establish, i'm her third owner and the clothing she's wearing was actually made for her by someone I by some fluke later ended up buying clothing for this doll from lol.

I named her Lyric, because she's a Song.... *headdesk*
I'm sorry.

I really loved the colour of her wig but it was way too big and kept falling off so I dug through my stash for another one.

I believe i've talked about Lyric on this blog before, so i'll keep it brief,

but suffice to say, she ended up being a really excellent idea.

The first thing I did was update her face, darkening her brows and adding some fantasy markings as well as making her lips darker and trying to remove the worst of that 5 o clock shadow she had going on.

Working on resin for the first time was quite different than working on Makies or fashion dolls. I've repainted plenty of barbies, monster high etc but that squishy plastic has a lot more "tooth" than resin which is insanely smooth and like drawing on glass.

Then she got a new wig which ended up being the absolute character maker.
Red hair and blue skin? it just works lol.

but I had a new problem with this wig. While a 6-7 size IS the correct size for this doll, the slippery smoothness of the resin meant the wig just would not stay on. the slightest movement and PING, off it came.
I remembered reading an old tip of using a balloon as a wig cap underneath, so I found a deflated balloon the kids had brought back from Mc Donalds and cut it to size. Hey presto, works like magic.

YAY.

I also restrung her, I bought some thicker elastic, watched a load of videos online and took like an hour of doing it all wrong before I finally got her back together and able to stand on her own two feet.

PHEW.

It was a bit of a baptism in fire but to be honest, i'm glad I did it because it really did prepare me for the arrival of my boy.
I'd had a play with drawing on a resin surface, seen how the whole thing was put together by taking her apart and putting her back together and problem solved a few other issues. Whoo.

I introduced her to Arthur but... they didn't seem to get along.

She kept trying to smack him in the face. Oops.

The other thing this showed me was how different aesthetically the Hujoo msd faces are. Initially I had intended to buy another Hujoo to play the role of party thief but looking at Lyric and Arthur together I started to doubt that would actually work. they didn't quite look like they belonged in the same world.

though this actually worked out because I planned for Arthur to be from the Prime Material plane trapped in Sigil anyway, so having him look "otherworldly" would work to make him seem "other".
But it did mean i'd need to find a new doll for the thief.
drat.

And then, just after Christmas my boy arrived.

EXCITEMENT!

The box was huge, but inside lay a lovely leatherette carry bag in cream.

Inside the bag was a gold sausage.

And a certificate of authenticity which concerningly, listed colour as "green"
Hmmmm.

Inside the blanket, with no other padding lay my doll.

First impressions? He's exactly the colour I asked for!

See?

tragically, he arrived broken because a blanket isn't very good padding in transit.

The tip of one amazing ear and the little hook for his cap both had snapped off.

I was devastated.

Thankfully their customer service is great and they told me they'd send me out new parts asap.

A few weeks later his new head arrived.

Look at those ears!

Now, as it was, I ended up gluing the broken parts and because i'm a sap like that, decided I couldn't just throw a head aside even if it was damaged.
I have a fondness for damaged dolls as you guys well know.

But I was intensely grateful to Resinsoul for sending me replacements, it was super nice of them.

I ended up selling the spare head.
But I put the money toward saving for my next member of the party so resinsoul got the money anyway hahahah. So I didn't feel too bad about it.

It's worth mentioning that most bjds are er... anatomically correct. So is Arthur (you can see that in my review of him) and I still find it hilarious in an immature sort of way.

Weirdly, while Lyric has nipples like bullets, she's like a barbie doll otherwise anatomy wise. The boys though? yep, they have penises. More hilariously, the resinsoul ones have a little sculpted pee hole and omg it makes me laugh so much more than it should.

I'm an adult.. i'm an adult... i have to keep reminding myself ahahahaha. Pee hole.

But oh man is the slim boy body pretty. All slender and elongated... I like...

Nhar's transparent parts were freaking cool, but they actually cast them in clear resin rather than transparent blue like i'd asked. The perils of the language barrier.
Being awesome, they also sent me those parts.
And earned themselves a customer for life omg.

The transparent blue looks beautiful.. Icy, slightly frosted, gorgeous.

And the transparent white was also very cool. I blushed up the edges to fade into his skin thinking i'd just work with them but then Resinsoul surprised me by sending me the blue parts so I was all "what do I do!??"

In the end I opted for blue arms/hands and clear feet. It looks cool.

You can JUST see the scar from his broken ear tip.

thankfully resin breaks pretty cleanly and superglue binds it amazingly.

I got to work on my first full faceup on a resin doll and yes, it was intimidating and yes, it took foreeeever.

I used chalk pastels, water colour pencils, a little acrylic, a lot of spit (yummy) and then sealed the lot with Purity seal.

I KNOW I dismissed the unruly wig in the company photos, I KNOW, but tussled hair just made sense for a water spirit okay?

I wasn't totally happy with his eyebrows but this was my first try.

I ended up wiping it off months later and doing it again.

Much better.

I comissioned his outfit from Capsule Doll on Etsy. Finding medieval fantasy stuff for this scale doesn't seem to be easy, not unless you're willing to pay as much as a whole new doll. I have started saving any and all shops that sell anything vuagely appropriate lol.

Anyway,

I named this guy Nhar, which means er...River? in arabic.

As a water Genassi I figured he wouldn't be overly strong, but I liked the idea of him being this sort of swashbuckling figure. So he got a piratey arabian style outfit and thematic weapons.
I imagined him as being a fighter who did a lot of weaving and swooping, sort of grabbing people to pull them close and then throw them.
So he got a modified billhook weapon based on the Chicken foot Sickle.
And of course a cutlass to complete the look.

His weapons were 3d printed and designed by Silverbeam, who makes a lot of bjd accessories and even little 3d printed bjds!

Now, when i started this little er.. let's call it a project, I made a deal with myself. No new dolls till I finished the previous one.
that meant I needed wig, eyes, faceup, costume and accessories at least all ORDERED and on the way before I could start thinking about the next one.

So with Nhar all finished I turned my attention back to Lyric who needed some new clothes too.

Unlike Nhar she was getting shoes.

I got her boots off ebay, her weapons again by Silverbeam and her corset and belts made by Etsy User Eternal Dolls who as I mentioned earlier, it seems made the brown undergarments she came with lol.
Awesome.

So, I had some money saved from selling some of my fashion doll collection and I was looking for a doll to play the part of Auriel, the thief of the er.. story these guys were forming in my head (this happens a lot... doh)

Well I happened to have joined the big bjd forum Den Of Angels waaaaaay back in like 2008 presumably when I was bored and thinking about getting into them for the second or third time. I didn't hang around back then, but the account still existed so I logged back in and got involved.
funtimes.

They have a lot of rules I find a bit... ridiculous but it's a good resource for help and expertise and the marketplace is full of temptation.

Late one night when I should have been sleeping I stumbled upon another Resinsoul doll for sale.
Now, I like Resinsoul because they have great customer service and I really was enjoying the two I already had. And the price was omg amazing.
the doll was, I thought, going to be absolutely ideal for this thief character and so I bought him.

He was blank, unused, he'd been in a box since he'd been made. It's exactly the sort of sob story that sells me on toys!

He was a Resinsoul Wu

his sculpt is unusual in that he has enormous jug ears and quite pouty lips.

Now, for Auriel i'd decided he was going to be an Aasimar, and that his ancestry would be specifically, a Lional. They're basically giant angelic lions lol.
The jug ears made me think of animal ears.

He came to me totally disassembled so he'd fit into a box. Good thing I already learned how to restring a doll huh?

Having put him together again, I set to work with his faceup.

I happened to have this RIDICULOUS orange wig that I thought was pretty lion mane-like, plus the image of a thief trying to be stealthy with a mop of hair THIS orange just really cracked me up.

His eyes are marbles. I wanted him to look unearthly so white opalescent eyes seemed appropriate.

 Now his outfit was made by the same person who made Arthur's outfit, but I have to say the whole thing was a bit of a nightmare.
Both transactions with her have been. Seems the postal service in her country are just utterly incompetent and she's not so great with communication, which is a shame because she's one of the few people who makes leather armor for dolls this size arghh.

The outfit wasn't made for him, it was made for a regular MSD doll which are a little chunkier (being tweens) than Resinsoul's slim more mature minis.
But it fits him fine.

I made his pants and his cloak.

The way his hair contrast with his outfit still makes me laugh. I just imagine him trying to sneak through the shadows and this flash of orange giving him away ahahaha.

Auriel is regular flesh tone, a colour referred to usually as "new or normal skin". Normal huh? mmm hmmm.


It's a kind of pale peach tone.

Now it's worth noting that up to this point all the resin dolls i've got have been from the same company, the same style and all on single jointed bodies.

The next doll I got I used the money I got selling the spare parts for Nhar and also selling off a lot of my Monster High collection.

Oisin was planned in dark tan with "normal skin" horns (so they'd look more bone coloured than white) and black hooves.

He's a Ming, which looks like this on the website:

(lol the censor dot. I didn't put that there, the company did!)

the hooved body was too cool not to buy okay? HOOVES man.

Now Ming has double jointed arms. Which in Resinsoul's case mean these strange cup things that mostly just rotate and get in the way.
*sigh*
I don't like them.

The single joints are just a socket with a rounded section that goes into it, so when you bend the elbow or knee you get a gap, which doesn't look so nice. With double jointed dolls there's an extra piece in the knee and elbow that act like a sort of cap to cover that gap and also hold the limb in that extended or bent position.
which is great in theory, but the engineering of the Resinsoul double joints is very strange.
Most companies seem to use a peanut joint, kinda like the Mattel Made to Move Barbies with that funny shaped blob, but Resinsoul use a cup shape and it just rotates around, gets stuck and the arm then won't move or looks awkward.
I prefer the single joints, they're easier to manipulate and hold fine imo.
They're not as "pretty" but honestly I don't much care.

Anyway, Oisin is dark tan, which is a sort of chocolate milk/icecream sort of colour. It's pretty. Quite milky but very nice.
Resinsoul's colours are lovely, they're very vibrant and go through the full thickness of the resin, they aren't just a dye job over the top afterwards. They're also very even. Often they'll have speckles or marks because dark colours are a pain to sand mold lines off but honestly I can't see where the mold lines even WERE, his colour is even and gorgeous all over.

Conversely, husband has a dark grey doll also from resinsoul and she DOES have some sanding marks, mostly on her chest that just look like slight discolouration or swirls. They're very very easy to cover with a little sealant.

Overall though, i'm very impressed. I've heard a lot of complaints about dark colours being mottled and I can't say that's true here.

His hooves are cast in a very very dark brown with some translucency so they actually look like horn. It's amazing.
I just asked them to cast them in "the darkest brown or black you can" lol. It's like coca cola or guinness.

Oisin's wig is from Newmoor Barn and it's made from sheep's wool, so it's naturally curly like that.
His horns attach via magnets and are very very sturdy, they're heavy as heck but the magnets are crazy strong and hold the horns on even through the wig.

His eyes were custom made by En Does Dolls, the brief was "goat eyes" and they're awesome.

My mother knitted his chain shirt out of this metallic yarn I found, it's very effective I think.

The great kilt is just a big rectangle of fabric hahah.

What's cool about this body is that the legs are designed so they hook and lock in a angled position, like a real goat's legs. The only problem is because the doll is really top heavy, he won't stand unaided like this without an awful lot of fiddling.
He will stand fine with his legs in their straight position, but not so well with them in their crouched state. Which is a bummer because they don't really look right straightened.

A little invisible stand I could ram up the back of his kilt would solve the problem i'm sure.

Oisin is the party cleric, even if he doesn't look that priestly.

So now I just have one more character left... the party's Mage. She's going to be from a different company though, and costs quite a bit so that's a loooong saving up process. I'm hoping I get birthday money I can put toward it.
With by Mattel boycott i'll tell you this, saving is getting a whoooole lot easier heh.

And this happened too....

I admit it, this WAS an impulse buy but... I watched this auction on ebay and he just.. called to me and so... I had a little money saved and...

yeah..

This is a Doll Chateau box, their dolls come in these amazing white boxes with a cool logo on in silver.

And inside there's an amazing red bag with a drawstring. It's soooooft.

And of course certificate of authenticity.

Carol was a limited edition release from Doll Chateau, meaning that if you spent over a certain amount you got one of these as well.
Companies quite often do deals like this, either with limited runs that you can only buy for a few months or money off if you buy in a certain month or extras like clothes or even whole dolls like this.
But the amount you have to spend is often really high.

Dealers quite often get extras of these limited run dolls because their group orders meet the spend requirement, so they sell them separate.

This doll was one such doll, who was purchased by someone on impulse but she couldn't bond.

Now, i'll admit, i'd seen blank Carols and thought "that's cool" but not been grabbed.
What sold me, was the half finished faceup the previous owner had started.

Now I would NEVER have been brave enough to paint such large areas of a stark white doll, but gosh I loved the effect. The beak and feet, those feathery lines like eyebrows? even the wig were just perfect and inspired me greatly.
I NEEDED him in my life.

Like all DC dolls he's a really weird shape which makes him a bit tricky to dress.
He has HUGE hips (those are barbie shorts) and a teeeensy upper body. The wings of course mean he can't wear long sleeves and he's so teeny and fragile looking that I really don't want to take him apart at all.

He has magnetic antlers, I like them.

There's something sort of ... froudian? about him. He looks like something out of an 80s fantasy movie. A bit Labyrinth, a bit Dark Crystal... I dig it.

He's very very hard to get to stand up though. His knees like to pull up meaning he likes to be in fetal position, which is rather annoying. It's something to do with how narrow the channels are for the elastic, the tension is just too much for such small pieces. I rammed wire in there to act like bones, which helps a bit, but he still falls over after a few minutes as the tension builds and one or both legs buckle.

He's YOSD sized, so he's about 10 inches tall and adorable.
but SO fragile looking. All his parts are so slender and elongated and his wings are so thin, i'm terrified i'll break him.

He's less a doll, more an ornament I suppose.

I still like him, even if I can't play with him as much.



I really am enjoying these dolls. YES they're expensive, which limits how fast I can amass them but there's a degree of pride in knowing "i designed that, I painted that" and they really are quite characterful. I think i'll be quite happy having a small but well loved collection of BJDs, though... being me, i'm already eying up more expensive dolls to shell very old OCs of mine because omg I always wanted toys of them. Ahem.

I don't have a lot of space though, so i'm going to try to be strict on myself. Also because I only get £75 a month + whatever I can earn selling things on ebay (not much usually) I have to save pretty hard for each doll.
When your budget is so limited, impulse buys aren't quite so easy to splurge on.
And it's helpful because I spend months saving for each doll it gives me plenty of time to really think about the purchase. Unlike fashion dolls where I found I honestly often bought stuff just because it was there and I could, which about 50% of the time resulted in me regretting it and then selling it on for a loss.
Impulse buying fashion dolls was too easy, and feeling guilty for it happened too often.
With BJDs, the creative element means I devote a lot more time to them and while I experience the doubt and anxiety while waiting for them to arrive "nggg did I do the right thing? will I love it? arhhhhh" when they do arrive I do because i'm pouring my creativity into them.
Like Makies, i'm using these to channel my obsessive character creating instinct, something I can't do so easily with mass produced fashion dolls either because they already have a canon character or because they look exactly the same as one another.
Much as I love all my sindy dolls, they don't have nearly as much individuality as a pile of dolls with unique face sculpts.

And I do rather like the msd size. It's nice to hold, kinda.. makes me feel small which is fun and I enjoy posing them even if a few of them are a bit of a PITA to get to hold a position.
My only gripe would be i'm constantly worried about chipping ears or snapping fingers. While resin isn't nearly as fragile as I was lead to believe, I still get worried elastic banding things to the fingers and they can be a little awkward to dress.
While you can remove the hands and feet, getting them back on is a pain and you have to be careful because the elastic can ping back up and the whole leg will come off meaning you have to restring it.
Arghhhh it's a paaaain.

It's takes a fair bit of strength to wrestle the head on and off which thankfully isn't something you have to do often and a few of them have some odd quirks of their elastic meaning they have a kicky leg or a head that likes to tilt or a hip that won't sit properly.
A little hot glue in the joint helps, but it's a pain to have to do and i'm lazy.

But.. yeah... this is my newest obsession so... yeah.. expect to see more of this.

I'll still be buying fashion dolls every so often, i'm sure something I want will come up, and of course i'm still lusting after various plushies and living dead dolls, but I have a D&D party to build and dream dolls to make real!

Stay tuned, because I got awesome post earlier this week and that's gonna take a whole post to detail.