How did you discover the BJD hobby?

I found it in the manga convention of Barcelona, I saw a stand full of BJDs and I automatically fell in love with them xD I started to save money and the next year I had my first BJD: Bluebell :__3

 

A friend of mine at work bought one. She brought him in a couple of times so I got to play with him and fell in love. I just never really thought I'd own one myself since they were so expensive but I eventually succumbed to the power of BJDs.

 

A friend of mine has been into them for some odd years...she's got a few Pullips and a DZ Feilian if I remember correctly. She kept linking me to sites of dolls asking my opinion on things, and from the start I always thought that they were gorgeous. At first though I kindof wrote it off as something I could only wish to have, and kinda forgot about the whole BJD thing for about a year and a half or so. Recently my friend's interest resparked after she found a Zion Medusa that reminded her of a character she's extremely fond of, and she's been linking me again. Since I had more OCs this go-around, I thought, "Okay, sure, why not look at them and see if I can find one that reminds me of one of my babies." So as I was looking, I found the BBB Pixie, who incredibly was in my price range, seeing as how I was getting some money as a belated Christmas present. I was elated to say the least, lol. >>; So, I've been saving for my little girl and getting my foot in the door with the BJD hobby ever since!

//ends the most boring story ever... >>;

 

i started seeing a few pics around the internet initially, on art sites... i think the first place i saw them was on sheezyart. i found them incredibly weird and creepy at the beginning, to be perfectly honest. they annoyed the hell out of me... the androgyny thing irritated me.

then i came across an artist on devart and her dolls were just mindblowing... so realistic, and her boys actually looked male, and it was almost this immediate switch in me; i fell in love with them i guess. i was lucky enough to grab a head she was selling and lo and behold, i had joined the ranks of creepy doll owners....

lol. funny how things turn out.

 

I was getting into dolls like Mme. Alexander and eventually stumbled my way to DDE. The rest is history.

 

I found them on Deviantart. As a budding artist I had some awesome artists on my watch-list - including Heise. And one day she uploaded a picture of a beautiful doll...a Delf Chiwoo or Shiwoo I think. Then later another, along with a link to her website where she was advertising her clothing line. I clicked the website, and looked in awe at all the dolls there...especially one strangely small headed individual (at least next to the Chiwoo)...a Dollshe Hound.

It took a lot of time to find out the name of that doll...and then to find a website about these dolls (I had no experience with search engines at the time). After a while I found Luts and some other doll companies...then DoA. I registered to DoA just so I could look at pretty pictures of dolls (especially Hounds)...and after a while I realized that just looking is not enough anymore...I wanted a Hound for myself!

Hehe, and now, here I am. With my Hound....and several others that just...came

 

My first encounter with BJDs was on LiveJournal, on a community called wtf_inc. Someone posted to make fun of a girl for owning a doll and "taking porno shots" of it, with a link to her LJ and the pics in question. A lot of people decided to troll her, but when I looked at her LJ out of curiosity, I was facinated by her doll; I'd never heard of or seen a BJD before, and was struck by how beautiful he was. I asked what sort of doll he was and where she'd got him from.

That was KisakiSama, and the doll was her El, Kaitou. She pointed me at Luts and DoA, and it wasn't long before I'd bought my first doll, a 60cm Obitsu - rapidly followed by a DoC Hoo and a Serendipity Shall.

That was 6 years ago. Now I own 15 dolls, one of whom is that same El who got me interested in BJDs in the first place; KisakiSama decided to leave the hobby and sell off all her dolls a while back, and offered me first dibs on Kaitou - so now Kai lives with me.

 

Welll it was pretty random I was on the site deviantart and I think I was searching something up for a project in school when I came across the crow bjd and it struck me lol. After I found out what type of doll he was I started to look through it more and then I really fell in love with them.

 

mostly the internet. deviantart.
my friend had one, and she's a lishe. she's very beautiful, and i fell in love with her when i held her.
and the next time i saw one at an anime convention, it was the first time i had seen one naked. i was fascinated because of it being anatomically correct. i'm an illustration major, so i thought look at all the drawing oppurtunities!
then my ex's dad died and he got an inheritence. my doll was a gift from that money.

 

2002-3... searching on ebay for a wig for an obitsu, started seeing references to Super Dollfies. No actual dolls, just wigs or eyes for them. I learned that you had to buy resin parts for the dolls from Japan using a buying service. I liked the look of the dolls, but was working hard and too busy for a project, buying and assembling and sanding and painting... and then finding clothes and parts for an expensive resin doll...

2004... saw first complete SD being sold on ebay... it was an auction by customizer Satoko Ohno of a Volks, with outfit. He was so gorgeous. I thought the price was so expensive, but the bids went up well over a thousand dollars--so I knew these dolls were expensive!!! I never thought I'd get one, but I was hooked and started researching... looking all over the internet for whatever I could find out.

I saw Volks dolls, but they only had some mini boys as a standard and their fullsets for their SD boys were all limited and sold out. (I liked boys because most dolls are girls and I had always been interested in seeing more boy dolls... and the looks and outfits for SD boys were varied and interesting.) Custom House (non-English site) had Gene as a standard, but I like their limiteds and one-offs better, but they were all sold out and hard to get. Dream of Doll only had their mini brother and sister, and items for dolls were hard to find and most things for minis were very childish and I wanted an older look for my boy. Luts had El, and he was tempting. Then I found out they were going to make an El Elf. I LOVE elves, so that was too tempting to pass-by. Although I thought $600 was insanely expensive, I knew I had to buy or lose my chance. I hoped that I would never have to buy another doll so expensive, and hoped I would find maybe one nice outfit for him... Luts had just started up an English site, but I went through Liria (now with Fairyland), who was acting as an English-speaking rep for Cerberus Project. Luts only had a limited few Normal Skin Elf Els available and sold out immediately. I could request a Beauty White through Liria. Had to do a bank wire-transfer to pay... that was scary.

I joined DoA and then discovered that I actually KNEW some other crazy people who had bought these expensive dolls! I thought I was the only one to be so crazy to pay so much!!! ... and then, of course, the TRUE insanity began! More and more dolls being made, more and more items being made for them... and more and more enablers here on DoA. So, of course, my hopes of being sane and only buying one doll with one or two outfits only disappeared fast!

But I immediately started going to meetups and have been having such a fantastic time with the dolls and with the people here and in-person that it is all a big part of my life now.

 

I stumbled onto some shots on DA a few years ago, which lead me to the websites to look at the prices. I flipped and pretty much forgot about it, sticking with only drooling over what I couldn't have. But when I got into college, I met sleep_pattern and I got into it a bit more with just the normal questions at first. But when he had a doll up for sale, I spoke to him about it and nabbed him up. And now my mom's planning out clothing for him and everything

 

Wow, I'm surprised at how many people found out about BJDs through deviantART... I guess I shouldn't be; that's where I post all my pictures.

I'm a big J-pop culture fan all the way around; anime, manga, goth-loli fashion... I was bound to run into them eventually. ;P But I think I found out about them originally from the book Japan Ai, by Aimee Major-Steinberger. She goes to Japan for a Volks convention, but does a lot of other things along the way. It's a really cute book, and I really recommend it. But I'd never actually seen a Super Dollfie, and I thought that no doll could actually be worth $500, no matter how pretty or customizable it was. And I also thought I'd never buy one. >_> A few years later my sister found a BJD modeling a dress on the Angelic Pretty fashion site, and was completely enamored. That's when we started getting into them for real. I don't think I would've ever bought one if it hadn't been for my sisters, though. ^_^;

Long story is long. >_>

 

Haha, I'm gonna be all unoriginal here because I also found out about these lovelies through deviantART. I love browsing the front page and seeing all of the different art. A few times I would stumble upon a pretty picture that I would think is a person, but is in fact a doll! I had no idea dolls could look so realistic and starting doing some research. At first the price scared me half to death, but I found myself constantly going through doll pictures on deviantART. Here I am now begging for a BJD of my own...

 

My first encounter with ball jointed dolls was when I was around 11-12 ( I am now 20). The mother of my mom's friend had just came to CT from CA and she was obsessed with dolls, at that time I collected porcelain dolls. My collection of porcelain dolls started because everyone in my family would get me a doll for christmas/birthdays etc since I LOVED barbies when I was little and they thought I would like porcelin dolls, though I always hated the fragility and untouchable-ness. Well anyway I was constantly with this woman(almost everyday) and she would talk to me about dolls and I would watch her bid for them on ebay. One day she was showing me a magazine and there was a large ball jointed girl doll and I completely fell in love with her. I had always wanted a pretty marionette (and I had had a few animal marionettes as a kid) and this doll had seemed like a marionette with out the strings . I had tried to carve the ball jointed doll out of wood but I ended up slicing my thumb pretty bad so I gave up and forgot about have a ball jointed doll. I then lost almost all interest in dolls as I got into being a teen.
A couple years ago ( almost 3 years now) I saw an ABJD at a convention with my little sister and we were enamored with the gothic lolita doll. My sister had tried to touch her and , of course I stopped her but the lady was like "OMG~!... ahhh, sorry, she doesn't like to be touched" and walked away. After that I tried to find out what it was so I googled "Japanese jointed dolls" and I cam up with extremely expensive dolls so I gave up... Then about a year and a half ago I was watching a j-horror movie and there was a doll in it, I thought of BJDs ( still not really knowing what they were, then I watched an anime with BJDs and they just kept seeming to pop up everywhere so finally I continued my search for jointed dolls. I started off looking at the ebay dolls and ended up buying a cheap, stained obitsu dX and then I went on to youtube clips to find out how to clean BJDs and I ended up watching this video of a girl with a Suiseiseki ( though I did not know who that was at the time) who mentioned DoA so I came here.
I was frustrated at first that the doll was not what I imagined so I gave up for a couple months while I focused on school and then I came back and since then I have bought a few other dolls and I have really fallen in love with ABJDs