BJD Struggles

OH NO... If it's not falling out, it's getting stuck in there, eh... Eyes, why are you like this... Hopefully you'll be able to unstick it next time you try to change them; it can be real hard with the way some eye sockets are constructed!

 

For me it's kind of "all the above"

I just got a new Iplehouse FID woman and her wig is nearly impossible.
It takes me forever to get it on and styled and then when I touch her to
adjust her pose it falls off and I get to start over.

 

Eyes. I have a had time getting them positioned right and then once I do, they usually have putty residue or something on the surface. Wigs are a close second

 

Like a lot of people, restringing is one of them my Mystic Kids Francis is strung SO tight, but I'm scared to try and fix him and then mess up. Also painting the fine line where the top and bottom lip meet. No matter how small my brush is, it always touches the rest of the lips!!!!

 

I'm lucky with that one. I'd be the same except that I don't like the look of a line painted there, so never need to do it.

Teddy

 

Positioning eyes seems to be an universal problem. And in my case, the eyes I bought for my doll have cat pupils, so... The other problem is that I have mostly long nails, and when I position the eyes they get stuck in the putty, so when I think I got the eyes right, they get pulled out when I try to take out my hand. (I mean the eyes, not the nails.) And because I watch the eyes from the front, I don't really know what I'm doing inside the head, so somehow in the end the putty is not even around the eye anymore, it's all over the back of the eye.

I second the jointed hands. Though for me they are good when I have a certain position in mind, but otherwise after posing the doll I have no idea how to pose them, so I just put them in some generic position.

And I haven't restrung my doll yet, but changing the hands was certainly a struggle. I watched a video about it, and it seemed easy, but for me 3 people were needed to do it. We tried to take off the default hand, but we just couldn't get it off the S-hook. After a while we tried the other hand, and it came off. It turned out that the S-hook was a bit bent in the first hand, so we had to bend it with pliers. If someone saw us, it would have looked like some kind of surgery.

 

Everything used to be easy until I developed nerve damage in my hands, and now I struggle with a lot of things. I can string a doll OK, but getting the head on the body is very frustrating. I don't have the strength in my hands to get the s-hook through the neck hole and turned so that the head stays in place. I have tools to use to grab and hold the s-hook, but not the strength in my hands to pull it through. I needed to switch heads from one body to another recently, and it was a huge struggle and painful to get that darn s-hook to co-operate. I was almost in tears.

 

UGH! what a pain! - I feel for you in that situation

Teddy

 

Definitely inserting eyes. The putty is always either too sticky and spreads onto your fingers or then it won't stick at all, and the eyes will fall out of their sockets the moment you lay your doll on its back. I also learned the hard way that one of my dolls' neck hole inside his head fits an eye. Also, eyes on some sculpts just refuse to look straight even if they are low dome. I don't know if I am the only one, but I never managed to make an Iplehouse sculpt look like it's not gazing into the void with eyes facing slightly different directions, and I've tried it on closer to 10 of their sculpts.

 

I used to have trouble with eyes, especially because of the combo of mostly very tiny dolls and also long fingernails. But then I figured to use a chopstick to help! So I put a bit of putty around the eye, slip it in, hold it in place with one hand and turn the head to be facing me. Then I can fix the alignment, and use the chopstick to jab the putty in place! it mostly works. It's a bit more difficult on dolls with perfectly spherical eye wells. Then the cursing starts, haha!

Chopsticks are a lifesaver though, I swear! Disposable ones last a good while (I used to use them for stuffing toys, and only stopped because I bought a tool for it) when you're not eating with them (buy nicer ones for that), and bamboo is pretty sustainable, so win-win.

 

For me it's taking photos... I've gotten better, but I can never attempt anything too ambitious. I feel like no matter how well I pose a doll, something is always off in 99% of the pictures I take. Like the wig cap is showing, or the eyes aren't lit well enough, or the hair is messy, or the clothes are scrunched up weird, or a hand is posed unnaturally. It's always something. I guess these are all problems that most people have, but I just find the whole process grueling.

 

I don't enjoy photographs and only do it as a ncessity of sharing my dollsonline - it's more of a Necessary Evil that has to be put up with rather than something I actively struggle with.

Teddy

 

That really made me laugh as it was so relatable! Sometimes I don't know if the eye putty hates me (different kinds of it, doesn't matter, I'm convinced they hate me ), or if I'm just too delicate when I position the eyes.
Restringing takes a bit of practice, but if you do it a few times, it becomes so much easier. Although...don't you love it when you think you're all done, and then notice you forgot a piece and have to take the whole doll apart again?

 

For me, it's installing eyelashes. If I do individual/smaller bits of lashes, they stick to anything but her eyelid, and if I do a length of lashes cut to the size of her eyelid, I can never get it to lay right

 

BIG AGREE

Eyelashes are the worst

 

I'll agree that eyelashes are a real pain. What I generally do is place the lashes along the edge of a narrow strip of micropore tape, with a very very thin stripe of glue just along the top edge. I poke the micropore through the eyehole, and it gives me something to hold through the back of the head as I position them, and then I use a toothpick to gently press the eyelash strip into place before pressing the micropore flat into the eyewell from behind. It helps hold the lashes in place as the glue dries, and just makes it so much simpler to position them. I usually leave the micropore in place and just carefully brush a little black acrylic paint onto any of the micropore that shows afterwards.

 

No, I com understand the frustration of trying to do something that someone else makes seem super easy. I try to make clothing for.y dolls and my sister-in-law makes my work look like my 6 year old daughter made it in art class

 

Definitely restringing and any time I've moved houses its been a struggle because I end up so panicked about something getting damaged in a move from previous experiences. Also posing some dolls and then they get kicky. My SD when I first got her kicked me in the face so much because I'd get my face close to fix a hand or adjust hair then boom. Shes gotten better

 

I really struggle after I bought fairyline body . I can not make her feet pose . Maybe I will have to insert a wire in it . I do not know yet what to do . Have same problems with wigs . Also I struggle to find one thing for my lucywen minifee . Keep searching for almost a year . It’s a big pain .

 

I noticed that the bigger the doll, the more difficult it is to restring! For example, restringing my 14cm girl was a bit irritating but easy to do, whereas my 60cm girl was much more difficult to restring!

I've had a lot of issues with restringing my 60cm girl! She used to have an AOD body, which didn't pose well! Her torso got loose because I kept pulling up her S hook with a shoelace string to remove and put back her head whenever I dressed her. Her loose torso made her super slouchy, making photo shoots frustrating, so I had to fix it or at least try!

I unstrung her easily, but putting her back together was very difficult! Finally, I managed to restring her, but her torso was still very loose! I unstrung her and restrung her two more times, but I still couldn't fix that loose torso! I ended up selling that body because of the lack of ability to pose in the arms and legs and the loose torso. I bought her an impldoll body, and now she can pose!