Bjd frustrations

Clothing, styles and the colors they are available in.
Back when I first started collecting BJDs I noticed that clothes are rarely available in colors outside of what I think of as the BJD color palate: Black, white (sometimes grey), pink and red. Good luck finding anything else. Yellow? Nope. Green? Oh hell no. Blue? Sometimes, but only in certain styles, not usually what I want. Everything comes in pink! Everything!!

Add that to the styles available and it's a mess. Yes, I will admit that there are more modern styles available than there used to be when all it was was gothic punk, elegant goth or lolita (or gothic lolita!!) and my personal favorite (gags) casual prep. But even in modern clothes (like mens suits) try and find anything outside of the old BJD colors. Oh, you can add blue. They all come in the same shade of blue. Sometimes earth tones. Anything outside of that box is LE and impossible to find after it's gone forever. And I'm not afraid to pay the price for a thing, I spent a fortune buying one of my dolls a jacket because it was "purple" and when I got it, guess what? it was RED. Because we can't seem to get out of that stupid color box.

Also just going to toss out my age-old complaint that there is nothing grunge readily available. T-shirts all look like they need sweaters tied around their shoulders, plaid is pink and in shorts and I can never find any flannel shirts other than that one IP one I bought that's been out of stock for a million years now. 10 years into the hobby and I have one doll who can dress grunge. And the shirt he's got I made myself. *rant*

 

Yeah, lot of frustations.
Amazing bodies with stupid posability limitations, small heads, find the perfect wig, find the perfect clothes... SO now Instead of trying to make my dolls what I want them to be, I let fate making them who they are and let them find their own identity, lot of fun, less stress, I use to be about perfection but know I appraciate defects too and take advantage of them.

 

Most doll legs are too long!

It frustrates me because I like bigger dolls but their legs often make up >50% of their height, which looks really ridiculous to me since I like the traditional bisque doll aesthetic. Fortunately the BB (big baby) trend introduced a lot of great options even though some companies like Doll Zone have discontinued theirs. I have one body with SD torso proportions but shorter legs (Dollmore Illua) and another on the way (Alice in Labyrinth 52cm body) which I’m really excited about because it’s important to me that I can still easily buy standard size blouses and dresses since I can’t sew myself (but learning is on my to-do list).

 

someone mentioned it already, but finding tan resin options and resins that are darker than that since "tan"s are typically still pretty light. the undertones are always SO different too, i can't imagine trying to match resins or trying to hybrid especially if there are no good owner pics floating around to see how they look in natural sunlight and whatnot ... oof.

 

For me the biggest frustration is engineering and posing issues. I came to bjds from collecting action figures, so articulation is huge for me. The last time I had my FID apart to apply pliver sueding and wiring my boyfriend commented that it was odd how much work I had to do to make the body functional when the doll was so expensive from the outset. Sueding and restringing and re-restringing and wiring a doll just so it can stand up without collapsing like a broken lawn chair or kicking out every which way, or bend its arm and have it stay put, drives me absolutely nuts. If it weren't for the prettier and more diverse face sculpts, it'd be enough to drive me to vinyl instead.

 

Most frustrating thing for me? Websites that don't clearly explain what you're buying and don't list measurements or a link to measurements on the sales page. I hate having to search all over the site (then sometimes OTHER sites) just to find out the size of a doll. Also, if the description says you can choose options (like resin color, bust size, body type, etc) but doesn't have those options to choose when ordering. I always worry that just writing my choices in a note might not get noticed.

I love when websites divide everything by category and size! It makes finding what I want so easy without having to filter through all the stuff I don't want. The websites who remove sold out items, or move them to an archived section are wonderful too. Then I don't have to see all the beautiful things I want that end up being the wrong size or not available at all!

 

I don't have a lot of frustrations with this hobby really... except when it comes to waiting time. I'm so fed up with companies taking 6-7 months (and sometimes longer) in order to ship out orders. I definitely prefer to buy dolls 2nd hand/pre-loved simply because of this

 

One of my biggest frustrations is with sizing. 1/6 can either mean mature tinies (which is what is should mean) or child-like. And most mature tiny dolls are limited.

 

Photography. They look gorgeous to me, but I photograph them and they look suddenly crummy. Not sure if it's something to do with my wonky eyes (my right eye is lazy), but I can hardly ever photograph them just as they look to me. If that makes sense...

Hybridising. Most 65cm+ guy bodies have necks too thin for the heads I want to put on them. My one hybrid has a pencil neck for that exact reason, but I love him on the body he's on regardless.

 

More of a life frustration, but certainly applies to dolls. There is a lot of stuff that I know I need to do. My girl needs to be unstrung, scrubbed (she has a small black mark on her torso that seems like it would come off if I scrubbed enough) and body blushed. She needs actual clothes. She probably needs a better wig, the one I have right now was from amazon. She 100% needs new eyes, and definitely needs shoes. I also have a blank event fish that I would want to scrub and paint.

But doing all of that requires energy and time that I just don't have after a long day of running around on my feet. I don't have a machine, so clothes take a long time to make. I have so many projects going at once, and starting on one makes me feel guilty for not doing the other.

 

Eyelashes. Just...eyelashes. I can no longer count the amount of times I'd had to reglue in those pesky little buggers. I must be doing something wrong lol....

 

Echoing those who said photography. Through the lenses of my eyeballs, my dolls are everything that is beautiful and elegant. Through the lens of any camera I pick up, they are stiff plastic mannequins.

 

I have two. One is that I want to be able to personally customize my dolls more, but my hands are so shaky that I can't draw straight or pretty lines on certain days which means I am useless on stuff like faceups. I am starting to do wigs so I'm a little optimistic I can get good at something at least. I also have trouble finding clothes that I really like for the style I want. Tons of cute stuff, but not what I'm looking for. Maybe I will try to make clothes someday...

 

Scale issues, foremostly giant disproportionate noggins. Many if not most dolls have heads too large for their own bodies, and not many artists seem to take into account the added bulk of a wig when deciding how far down the skull to place the eyes. I realize in many cases it’s a stylistic choice, but it’s one of those things... if it doesn’t bother you, great, but once it does, you can never unsee it.

A second frustration would be how long it takes to do anything in this hobby. I’ve been in the process of reshelling certain characters for over a year and I’m still waiting on pieces to arrive so I can compare and determine which parts I need to order next, and so on... at this rate the crew will be back together around winter 2019.

 

Some things that tick me is restringing a doll or trying to restring a doll from having loose joints is always hard to master. In my opinion I often try wiring and that seems to do the work, this regards to resin bjds. Other than that trying to attach their eyes is also a little bug that frustrates me.

 

Mine is I am having trouble finding the perfect SD male body. They're either way too thin or way too shredded. I am looking for an iOS white body for a guy that is built but not with an 8-pack. It is damn near impossible.