Slowly getting back into the swing of things

It's been a stressful time lately for me, we're hitting that point in the year I always start to struggle, I had family visit which is nice but also super depressing because when they leave it's like... that sense of loss all over again (it had been 10 years since I saw them, TEN YEARS, might be another ten before I see them again, so you can see why that might be a bit upsetting?)
plus doll drama and being unwell and still recovering from the whole nearly dying thing and just eugh..

I'm still not totally back to myself. I can't stop sleeping and I don't know how much of that is post sepsis, how much is depression and how much is just the time of year. It's like a big clusterfuck of terrible.

But amid the screaming and gnashing of teeth I decided I needed to get back to faceups.

Mostly this is because i've had a doll sitting on my desk in their original packaging for literally months now and it's making me feel guilty. And also I got sent a Pullip head to paint so I need to get my skills back up before tackling that because omg i'm super nervous about screwing that up.

So this is kinda a.. update kinda post? and a look at my "newest" bjd, who actually arrived like way back in July.

He turned up right at a really bad point for me so he got just sorta, checked over, put back into his bag and set aside till i felt like I could tackle doing something with him.

But let's start from the begining.



Many many years ago, waaaay back when I was still a university student in my second year, i stumbled upon BJDs. I can't remember how this happened, I think I saw a picture and was curious. But somehow I ended up on Blue Fairy's website https://www.bluefairyint.com/index.php and fell in love with one of their sculpts, Louis.
Now, back in 2004 as it was, I was NOT a doll collector. I didn't actually start collecting dolls till 2007ish. I was as I still am a massive geek, big into video games and comics and roleplay but something about the bjds just... appealed to me. But the cost was pretty high and even though I had the money in student loan, it felt really irresponsible to blow such a lot of cash on a whim.
Also I was a bit intimidated by the whole thing. The idea of getting a totally blank doll, having to dress them, get wigs, eyes... buying all that stuff from BF themselves added a lot to the cost so I sort of browsed pictures and lusted but ultimately decided I couldn't justify it.
I even went so far as to join DOA, which back then was a bit of a chore but the elitism of the place scared the crap out of me. I was a total noob, I had no idea about dolls or any reference for the scale of msd or what resin was like or anything and I didn't find the community overly welcoming.
I backed away from it all thinking "hmm this feels a bit too intense for me" and it fell into the background.

Over the years i'd see a Blue Fairy every so often and see Louis and smile. His cute slightly worried face was just endearing to me, but over time tastes change and as I got more into dolls and bjds particularly my collection ended up in a rather different direction.
The BJD hobby and what's available has changed a LOT from 2004.

Still, part of me felt an almost.. obligation to Louis, my first dolly love, the doll that introduced me to BJDs in the first place.
Despite being extremely old fashioned in his sculpting and very different to my usual tastes, a sort of sentimental attachment still made me smile whenever I saw him.
So with my D&D party all purchased and no other pressing WANTS I started to save up for Louis, to finally after 14 years of on and off lusting after him, bring him home.

Now, Blue Fairy has a weird system. They only offer certain sculpts a few times a year, supposedly it reduces wait times and i'll give them that, their wait times aren't bad (a couple of months?)
In Louis' case, his order periods were May or i'd have to wait till August.

Being rather "old school", Blue Fairy also are NOT cheap and come in only 2 colours, white or uh.. white... hahaha. Well a whitish tone or pale peach to be precise. A wide range of colours including tans and browns and fantasy colours is a far more recent addition to the BJD hobby, back at the start you pretty much were limited to white dolls unless you wanted to spend a fortune on the very rare special "slightly brown" editions some companies occassionally did.

But I had christmas money left over, one of the benefits of my Mattel boycott and the general dirth of things on shelves that interest me was that it was way easier to just save up and not be tempted by other things.

I also kinda rushed the order because Blue Fairy had started to discontinue sculpts without any notice at all, and it scared me. Seeing word that they'd discontinued a fair few of the sculpts that were released after Louis I got a little spooked and thought "this is now or never, if I don't order him, I might never have him"

I knew exactly what I wanted, having all those years ago spent many an hour clicking through options.Since then they'd added a third body type to the mix as well, the "Gentle" body but I felt it made the head too small and opted for my original idea, the "Dandy" body, a slightly taller msd body that would make the doll more of a young teen than a child.

I just can't really warm to child dolls, I dunno why.

The other complicating factor Blue Fairy have is that their order periods are NOT for the whole month, oh no, they literally give you 4 or 5 days at the start of the month to order. Wtf? In the May order we had literally 3 days, a 3 day window! what? madness.
Thankfully I was already chatting to Angelesque about the order and could prewarn her of this when I saw the annoucement and she got my order in on time.
I was a bit stressed about it.

I ordered via Angelesque because I didn't want to risk customs and because BF's order system was just flat out confusing and I didn't want to have to deal with it.

And so the wait began.

Finally at the end of July he arrived!
Just in time for Souldoll to annouce their discontinuation of almost all their sculpts, Magic mirror to declare her intention to release Levon and a bunch of other limited things showing up.
*headdesk*

due to that stress I sort of opened him, made sure he was all safe and okay, then put him back into his baggie and left him on my desk. I just couldn't face tackling him at that point, I was too distraught about money and feeling a bit sore about the whole thing.
I couldn't help but feel had I known about all this crap back in May I might have delayed my order till the November order period and had the extra cash but I didn't, I had no way of knowing and eugh.. just.. eugh.

Poor Louis, it wasn't his fault.

I took some photos before I put him away though. After 14 years I was I admit, pretty dang nervous about this. Would I actually like him now he was here?

I was quite surprised when the outer shipping box revealed a bag inside a plastic baggie. I wasn't expecting that at all as from all I had read, Blue Fairy dolls usually came in a small cardboard box.

What I got instead was a damn nice leatherette shoulder bag with a card tag saying who was in there.

Blue Fairy dolls don't have certificates of authenticity, never have, the uh.. luggage tag is about the best you'll get. It literally just says "louis" and "tiny fairy" which is the name of their MSD line.

What a swish bag though, i'm impressed already. It's a VERY nice bag. Sturdy feeling, attractive, it looks fairly expensive.

Inside the bag, wrapped in bubblewrap is the doll. The headcap had come loose so was laying inside the bubblewrap but undamaged.

the other little package is two ankle joint pieces I got at the same time because Angelesque's website wouldn't let me checkout without filling in all the drop boxes. They were like £3 or something and are basically little resin beads that fit into the ankles so his feet can be attached to other bodies or... i'm not actually sure, but I figured random extra bits of resin might come in handy for dye experiments later on.

You never know when you might need two resin beads heh.

I had intended to order a wig at the same time with this order but I think we kinda had a bit of a communication problem and I failed to make that clear, so he came with nothing else. Blue Fairy don't even ship with eyes, which is a bit daunting after being so used to Resinsoul.

Louis is about 42-43cm tall making him a litle short compared to my other boy msd dolls but of a similar height to my girls.
Being a traditional msd doll rather than the more modern "slim" minis, he's quite chunky with thick limbs and he's pretty dang heavy.

The Dandy body has single jointed knees but double jointed arms and a nice ball joint on the wrist that's actually a separate piece so there's quite a decent range of movement for the hands. His hands are HUGE, they're like giant paws!
They're a good 50% bigger than my other msd boys' hands which given he's also shorter is quite a difference.

His ankles also have an indent so unlike a lot of modern bjds who's foot has a ball joint molded to it and connects via S hook into the bottom of the flanged ankle, these have a ball joint on the bottom of the LEG that then slots into the foot, so the S hook is totally concealed inside the foot itself. This is a pretty old school way of doing it but it's why they sell the ankle adapters (the resin beads) so you can put his feet onto a different doll, though i'm not totally sure why you would want or need to. *shrug*

He's very tightly strung meaning he stands well out of the box, only his upper legs swivel in the hip and you have to straighten up his leg to convince him to stand up properly.

I might glue suede his hips to stop that slippage happening. Every other joint seems to be pretty firm except the hips, go figure.

because he's so tightly strung his arms don't really like to pose much beyond a 45 degree angle, sueding might help that as well but i'm not sure. To be honest, only one of my dolls (my impldoll msd) can hold their arms at 90 degrees without some wire or something to help keep it in position.

This is the image I fell in love with all those years ago, that wig, those eyes, just... he's so cute!

I knew I was unlikely to be able to emulate the soft faceup that Blue Fairy themselves do, but I don't like paying someone else to paint my dolls when I can do it myself. Painting them is part of my bonding process, so I ordered my Louis blank and kinda... freaked out over how i'd paint a face so different to the usual heads I paint.

Older style BJD heads are quite a lot well... plainer? sort of softer, more stylised, slightly anime in a lot of ways with big eyes, small noses and teensy little mouths.

Rather different to what I am used to.

I like to do little doodles of what I intend to do with a doll while i'm waiting for them to arrive, so this was what I did for Louis (Who i'm actually naming Jonah)

Of course, I don't have the correct wig atm but i've ordered it now and it'll arrive in about a month, maybe...

still,

Originally I intended to give him hazel eyes but omg finding hazel eyes for bjds is a chore and a half. Getting a set that looked right to my eye just wasn't happening, I couldn't find any that weren't too sparkly and fantastical or too American Girl decal looking. *sigh*

When he arrived I happened to have only a couple of sets of spare 16mm eyes anyway, one of which i've had for years and never found a use for. A pair if very dark blue glass eyes that are super pretty but really heavy and didn't suit any of my dolls.

I also set to work trying to find an outfit for him. I wanted something schoolboyish but didn't want BF's own default outfit. I wanted a blazer or something but again, omg it's hard to find tailored boy clothing in 1/4 scale. Like holy crap.
WHY!?? poor 1/4 boys have like no options for clothing it seems.

I did find a gorgeous school uniform from Sadoll but unwilling to pay £100+ for sodding doll clothing I just couldn't justify it.
I eventually found someone who made cute naval inspired outfits including a blazer! so I commissioned them to make me a dark blue version. Dollhouseshop  did an amazing job, the whole outfit is beautifully made and was pretty reasonably priced I think.

took about a month.

And so here he is! Looking a little less sulky than my artwork and wearing a temporary silly wig that was the only one I had that fitted him.

those are Makie glasses, another thing hard to find for msd are glasses that aren't round or way too small. Eugh.

I think these work, they're a bit oversized but given he's kinda cartoonish I think it looks okay.

He SHOULD look better with his actual reddish brown wig, then his eyebrows will make sense haha.

Gosh he was a tricky thing to paint. I mean it doesn't help that I haven't actually done a faceup on a doll since like.. June.. but I swear he isn't totally symmetrical. One eye is slightly lower than the other which was driving me insane.

I elected to do a sort of simple lip wash for him rather than my usual method of drawing lines then blushing over to give more realistic lips, I just felt like that style wouldn't work for the style of his face.

I was also worried I made his eyelashes too dark but I think once he has his proper darker wig it'll look okay.

He needs upper lashes glued in but i'm all out of lashes. I need to buy some more.

His silly wig looks better with a hat on.

He stole a pair of shoes off one of husband's dolls bwhahaha. They're a little big but they balance him pretty well because he's so chunky. They look a bit clownish on a slim msd but on the chunkier style they look fine I think.

His pants have actual pockets ehehehehe.

His glasses don't always sit straight, I think he might have uneven ears ahahaha.

He made a friend though, a small furby connect toy from Mc Donalds.

I'm waiting till his proper wig is here to decide if i'm okay with his faceup or not. Certain angles I love it, other times i'm nitpicking it. *sigh* such is life I suppose. the strange light purple wig doesn't help, it makes his eyebrows really stand out and it's a bit jarring. It also makes his eyes look a lot daker.
Okay they ARE really dark but it's not helping matters.

He might get lighter eyes, if I can find hazel ones.

He's very cute. He is VERY different to any of my other bjds in so many ways and it means he doesn't really fit in anywhere but I think that's okay. I always knew he was going to be a bit of a black sheep of the collection. He was supposed to be my modern real world kinda dude, so I could actually indulge my "wanna dress up dolly!" urges, which is far harder to do with dolls with specific costumes like my D&D bunch.

I'd like a white shirt and suit pants for him still, but that can wait till I have money again. Right now i'm still saving like mad.
It's a bit painful.

So there's Jonah, my Blue Fairy Louis.

I do love him, even if i'm not entirely certain i've done his sculpt justice with my faceup attempt. His sulky worried little face is kinda endearing, he looks worried from some angles, resigned in others and it's quite amusing.
I think i'll have fun taking photos of him when the weather is a bit less shit.

I'm rather anxious for his proper wig to arrive so he can be done.