Learning the BJD-related craft skills

I don't have a lot of customizing skills per se, but I do enjoy trying all! I've been a traditionally trained artist well before learning about these dolls more than twenty-years-ago (learned about them then, I've been painting since before I could speak, so much longer). I was always into doll collecting and I was interested in customizing my own dolls for a long time, but all I owned back then as far as dolls went were Barbie type fashion dolls. Which, I still love to this day and still hoard, but I was hugely intimidated by the size -- despite me not knowing back then that I had the shakiest hands known to man! Lol! Me knowing how to paint on flat giant canvas, didn't translate well into painting on to smaller 3D surfaces. I don't know how to sew, and I still suck big time at painting miniatures, because as time progresses, your hands don't become steadier, sadly! Still, I have learned a lot of things from customizing BJD, and also branched into customizing Barbie, other fashion dolls and 1:6 action figures, all thanks to me learning, discovering and painting on these dolls. While I am not a huge fan of resin and don't plan on add to my resin doll collection any further, I am super happy that I discovered these and hope to keep painting and customizing further the ones I already own, and other OT toys and dolls until I kick the bucket. I suck at all these, but I sincerely enjoy making my own dolls' wigs, doll clothes, painting them, modifying them and even attempting making shoes now, for my tinier BJD. If only sucking was as easy to avoid, as it is to just plain fun to try. (:

These dolls are the first ones I ever treated like "fashion dolls," and customizable toys since I am a weirdo and only hoard OT fashion dolls to keep MISB (likethehoarderthatIam), BJD were my first "fashion" dolls as an old fart. I never did anything with other dolls, similar or close to playing with them as much as I did when I first discovered BJD, including brushing their hair and making clothes for them -- mostly just for photos, since I don't really "play" with my toys, because I am a weirdo!

 

Everything listed (to some degree or another) except props. My faceups are hit-and-miss, some work, some don't, I'm not good with a brush, My dioramas are more like temporary sets/arrangements of furniture for photo's than detailed construction pieces, my photo's are very basic (I don't enjoy photography, it's more of a "necessary evil" if I want to share my dolls online).

Tried wigmaking but don't have the patience. It's messy (there was mohair fluff all over the house for weeks afterward), time consuing and my results weren't that good. It's a shame because it would solve the problems of finding appropriate period-styled wigs and decent updo styles. Plus, the online wigmaking class was very badly administered, and when I questioned the misinformation, my classmates turned on me - it was like the playground bullies ganging up on me because I dared to criticise the sainted teacher by expecting a quality exoerience in exchange for my class fees. Not a good experience.

Same for shoes - finding the right period styles is difficult, and I've been put off spending the high prices needed for the few that do crop up on the market becuase they're usually faux leather that deteriorates after a few years, ruining those expensive shoes and boots. Making my own rom real leather would be cheaper and longer lasting, but I don't ave the time or patience.

I'm proud of the few faceups that actually worked (the majority, I have a go (or a couple of goes), and if it doesn't work, wipe them and send them to a professional, occasinally, one just works. It's not really progress as my hit-rate hasn't really improved over the seventeen or so years I've been doing it, but even so.

My hit rate is better with making the clothes - I'm fussy about certain details, and a snob about materials, so a lot of clothes that are available to buy just aren't worth me spending out on (plastic-looking synthetic lace, "Anime-historical" or "Manga- historical" instead of actual historical detail, skirts too short, wrong style of sleeves on otherwise nice period garments, waist of trousers too low, and waistcoats too short, wrong fabrics, or wrong patterns on fabrics, wrong scale and/or drape for doll size... etc.

I'm not saying my own are perfect, or completely accurate, but the compromises I've made are ones I've chosen ather than those imposed on me by the available items on the market.

I've been sewing since I was very young, making historical (and other) costumes since the early 90s, and making/dressing dolls since I was a child, so was at an advantage when it came to making BJD clothes, choosing fabrics and scaling down details from full sized to doll scale.

Teddy

 

Ooh this is a fun topic!
1. What can you do 'around' your dolls? (clothes, restringing and sueding, dyeing, faceups, props, photography, diodrama... anything
I can dye them, restring (though it's hard and I usually need to ask for my husband's help on at least some part of it), blushing and faceups, and can make clothes.

2. What do you wish you could do? Do you plan to learn it or have you tried & given up? How was the experience?
I really wish I was better at posing them and taking pictures I only have my cell phone for pictures and it's really hard getting it to cooperate, and I'm not good at posing my dolls nicely or having nice backdrops for pictures for them. Also, wigs and hair styling. I don't like doing it very much, and I find making wigs very frustrating! I can never seem to make the clean, perfectly fitting wig caps I always see in everyone's tutorials and making wefts is so messy!
I've tried my hand at mods and eye making but need a lot more practice.

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you? (measure in time or e.g. the amount heads painted or clothes made)
Well, dying a doll I've only done twice (on the same doll) so I don't have a ton of experience, but I'm pleased with how it came out in the end, and would feel confident dying a doll again in the future.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences? (e.g. being able to sew human clothes did *not* translate to dolly clothes or being able to paint in 2D did not translate to good faceups, etc).
I've been sewing for a long time, both personally and professionally, and yeah, sewing doll clothes and human scale clothes are SO different! I've done a little bit for fashion dolls, so I had some experience there, and luckily my dolls so far are larger 1/3 scale, so I can still use a larger seam allowance on my machine than for fashion dolls. It does take more thought about fabric properties and style lines to know where to put seams to reduce bulk that I might not worry about as much with human scale garments, but it's a fun challenge for me. Picking out fabrics has been the hardest part though, because I find myself paying more attention to the scale of the weave. Matka for example, is just too bulky for doll clothes for my tastes, even though it might be a good material for garments for a character. And finding decorative trims and decorations that are the right scale and style is really hard!
I also had experience doing faceups on fashion dolls. It doesn't translate exactly, and the resin does have more texture than vinyl so pencil lines aren't as smooth, but at least I don't have to draw the entire eye xD

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls?
Making the crafty bits is my favourite bit around dolls so I make as much as possible. I do faceups, wigs, sew clothes.

2. What do you wish you could do? Do you plan to learn it or have you tried & given up? How was the experience?
Hahahaha shoes! I tried so hard - the 5x2cm feet are hard to find affordable shoes for, but the tiny feet are also really tough to make them for. The results I got were terrible, so now I've bought a few pairs that actually look nice on photos/on display instead.

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you?
Making wigs was new to me, but I think I'm getting decent-enough results by now. I don't think I ever ended up with a terrible mess of a wig, but getting the fit right was difficult at first so I've given away quite a few that ended up being too small or poofy for my use.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences?
Sewing skills definitely helped, but I've learned that dolly clothes need a lot more hand sewing and shortcuts to make things look and fit nice. It's so easy to make them seem bulky sloppily made, with human clothes I can still get away with a wonky seam here or there.

 

A lot of faceups, photography, wigs, and props and clothes sometimes. Also restinging and sueding.
I suck at dyeing and never did a diorama.

If I had more time, more clothes! I'm not very good at sewing even if I find it relaxing .And I wish I dare trying diorama. I'm so much intimidate by them! I don't know why.

I definitively made huge progress in faceups. The first was laughable, sadly I don't have picture of it anymore. I quite dislike making faceups for my 6 firsts years in the hobby. Now I have found my style and I enjoy painting them. I also made nice progress in photography. Like my faceups, the firsts weren't nice at all. But I kept taking photos all those years - I own BJD since 2008- and now I like what I can take.
About wigs, sometimes it's a yes and sometimes it's a no. I like making wigs myself but I'm not very happy with my way of doing the finishing touches. Maybe I simply haven't made enough wigs yet (I made around 60, while I took thousands of pictures and painted hundreds of faceups).

I used to paint. It... doesn't really help. I knew faceups were differents, but I didn't expected them to be THAT different to paint. I had some basics in sewing, too.

 

Faceups, additive and subtractive mods, dyeing, wig making, photography, sewing (very occasionally because I don’t find it relaxing at all!). I’ve learned so many skills just for dolls—it really is a hobby that branches out continuously.

I have all the supplies for eye making and I need to get on trying that out! Finding the perfect eyes is so hard!

I’m really proud of how far I’ve come with faceups! I used to tell people I had to commission faceups because I “couldn’t paint to save my life,” but it turned out that I really just needed to give it a serious try and stick with it until I improved. It took me maybe a year before I saw more positives than flaws in a face I painted, but I’m glad I kept going. It’s a completely different hobby now that I can paint my dolls the way I want without trying to explain to an artist exactly what I’m seeing in my head.

I sculpted and sewed a little for cosplay. I pretty much had to start from scratch with doll related skills.

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls? Restringing and sueding is something I can definitely do, even if it doesn't always comes out as good as I hoped. Besides that, wig-making is something I've been doing for years now and I'm proud of what I have achieved.

2. What do you wish you could do? Lately I've been trying to learn how to make furniture for a diorama I have in mind, but I'm still a newbie in that field. I wish I could know how to sculpt or make little props (tea cups, chandeliers, etc.)

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you? Wig-making is the area I have progressed the most. It take me at least five wigs to have something that resembled what I wanted to end up with. Now my main girl is wearing a wig done by me and I smile every time I see her.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences? I had already made life-size props before, like for cosplay and such, but creating dolly-sized props is completely different for me. The scale makes it harder to find the right materials and to get them to look realistic.

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls? I enjoy sewing, faceups, restringing, props, photography, changing clothes, writing characters/backstories, and roleplaying my doll characters

2. What do you wish you could do? Do you plan to learn it or have you tried & given up? How was the experience? Eyes, wigs and shoes! I have tried them all, gotten so frustrated, wasted so many materials, and still ended up with terrible results. In the end, it would have been much cheaper, easier and more enjoyable to just buy these things. I'm really impressed by people who are able to do these things properly!

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you? I've gotten a lot better at sewing, faceups and prop making. I don't really even know how to measure how long it took, since it's a never ending process. I've been in the hobby 15 years, and it's all improved drastically in that time, but there's still room for more improvement.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences? So many!! I have an art degree, and used to make flat cloth dolls whose faces I would paint, and occasionally painted over existing faces on fashion dolls to change the color, but full faceups are so different from anything I'd done before that they were pretty awful at first. It took years to even get pretty good at it. I've been sewing since I was 5 and made a lot of clothes for flat ragdolls and Barbie, but the thickness of a BJD was a lot more to get used to. I kept making everything too small by measuring flat. But I think the biggest adjustment was how to play with the dolls! I've had an active imagination since I was a toddler, and spent years growing up playing dolls with my sister, where it was pretty much the typical child way of playing: hold whichever toy is "talking", move them along to "walk", have them react to whatever is physically in their environment (dollhouse, Barbie car, actually house, yard, etc). That evolved into online chat or penpals, just writing from the doll's point of view. With the BJDs, playing is written roleplay, so I had to learn to write back and forth with people and include actions of what the character is doing, how they're dressed, what setting they're in, full backstories, deep emotions, etc. That felt so weird to write out at first!

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls? Sewing, faceups, tattoos and artwork, modding, restringing and sueding, wigmaking, dioramas, props, character and backstory development.

2. What do you wish you could do? Do you plan to learn it or have you tried & given up? How was the experience? I certainly wish I was better at posing my dolls and photographing them with better backdrops, outdoor shoots, etc. I see it more now as a “necessary evil” sort of thing, something to be done quickly, but I’d really like to take my time and get better at it one day. The problem is all my hobby time has been taken up with the other doll-related things I do to get my dolls completed and displayed, and there’s never enough time to relax and enjoy photography. One day though…I keep telling myself this.

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you? I would have to say it was my sewing. I came into this hobby in the first place to explore my love of fashion, and I have! I’ve worked tirelessly over the years honing my skills and having so much fun researching various fashion styles and eras. It’s been wonderful! Now all my dolls have lavish wardrobes suited to their own specific character.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences? I was always pretty much skilled in multiple art forms, so it was more a case of gathering all my artistic endeavors under a single umbrella. That ‘s why I love this hobby so much! From the very beginning I’ve been willing to try everything and anything when it comes to my dolls. I’ve been “all in” from the get-go. The biggest learning curve was working on a much smaller scale, experimenting with supplies, and adapting what I knew to work in miniature. But otherwise, my artistic interests and skills remained the same.

 

4. I do digital art commissions for people as a hobby, and a few of the things that you have to learn when doing art is anatomy, shapes, what is appealing to the eyes, colors, composition etc. I thought these art skills would be put to great use when doing face ups, but i was totally wrong! Yes, some of my digital art skills did become very useful for faceups, but it was clear that it was not going to carry me all the way lol. Working on something without being able to turn on symmetry is SO painful. Not to mention, drawing on a 3D object is way more difficult than i thought it would be, since my work is flat.

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls?
Faceups, eyes, clothing, jewellery

2. What do you wish you could do?
I'm learning how to make shoes and wigs, but I'm not sure if I will eventually do it myself. Wigs are soooo frustrating!
3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of?
I like how my faceups are, and it did not take a lot of time to learn. However, I have an art degree so this may be the reason. I just had a head-start.
4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help?
As mentioned - I have an art degree. I have learned how to draw, paint, sculpt and sew during my studies, and it helped a lot! I have always been interested in some kind of art/craft related stuff, so it comes in handy now. But as mentioned - wigs are driving me nuts XD

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls?

I can do a lot of things! Most of it I've had to learn just because there aren't (or weren't) any other doll people around. I can restring like a pro, fully clean a doll, do additive modifications, dye a doll, and do the mods required to make weird hybrids work. I make clothes for my dolls, I make jewelry, I make wigs (both for mine and others), and I can usually rig up a prop if I need it. I used to make things like horns/antlers/tails, so I also know molding and casting. I am learning to knit, too!

2. What do you wish you could do? Do you plan to learn it or have you tried & given up? How was the experience?

I'd love to be able to do my own faceups, but I know without trying that I wouldn't be any good at it. My hands are unsteady and symmetry is just not a thing in my art. That said, there are plenty of talented artists that I can pay, so at least there's that.

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you?

I've gotten pretty good at sewing, much better than I was when I started. I went from wonky hand-sewn blobs to decent stuff that actually looks like real clothing. I can sew a lining now, which is something I couldn't even dream of when I started. I have no idea how many items of clothing I've made, but it's A Lot. Most of my dolls are wearing at least one item I've made.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences?

Pretty much the only crafting I did before dolls was sculpting and prop-making for cosplay. My ability to sculpt has helped me a lot with mods and making accessories/parts, and I was actually surprised to find that I enjoy sculpting on the smaller scale more than the larger. I did have to learn to sculpt specifically for molding/casting, though, which requires a little more attention to certain things (like where the seams will go, whether or not it's a two-part mold, how the resin will be poured in, etc.).

Overall I think the doll hobby has made me a lot more crafty of a person, and I've learned a lot of skills as a result of my involvement with it. I'm pretty grateful to these little resin folks for teaching me so many things.

 

1. What can you do 'around' your dolls?
I make clothes for my dolls, paint their face-ups and body blush, and make eyes for them. I really enjoy the eye making, I'm new to working with resin so I had to get molds and learn what types of resin to use. Eyes are pretty simple, but I'm thinking of expanding into making other resin things. I've started learning how to use epoxy sculpt to do ear mods for my dolls, I'm still not used to it and need more practice. Sculpting really isn't my forte.

2. What do you wish you could do? Do you plan to learn it or have you tried & given up? How was the experience?
I kinda wish I could make shoes, but its not a priority since most my dolls are shelled as Elf OCs and don't wear shoes. I tried my hand at wig making when I first started the hobby, but after several failed attempts and a dislike of hair being all over the place I prefer to buy wigs. I could never quite figure out how to do the part to my liking, despite looking up various methods.

I really want to get a 3d resin printer and make props, accessories, and such for my dolls. I've always wanted to get far into 3d modeling but unless I have a use for I won't have the motivation to learn.

3. Have you made a lot of progress in some area that you're proud of? How long did it take you?
I've only done six face-ups so far, but I feel like I'm improving. I did some pretty decent eyebrows recently with watercolor pencil of all things (I usually use acrylic). My most recent face-up came out quite nice and it matches the character well. I'm planning on redoing my earlier face-ups with what I've learned so far. I'll see how that goes this coming week.

4. What crafty skills did you have before joining the hobby? Did it help? Were you surprised about possible differences?
I've always been artistically inclined, I prefer drawing but have done painting (acrylic, watercolor, and oil), inks, and digital art. I've had to learn about pastels, but it wasn't too difficult and I like how the medium works. I usually stay away from colored pencils as I never really liked them, but I have been using the watercolor ones for lips specifically. The major difference is the tools, I've needed to buy several small brushes and I still need to find a really good liner brush. All the small details for eyebrows and lashes is the most difficult

My last skill is sewing, which I really like being able to do for the dolls. I usually design and make my own patterns and being able to test them on smaller dolls is much nicer than spending all the fabric to make person size clothes. I can pick which designs I really like and make them for myself after already going through the process of making them for the doll, it makes it much easier. The sewing isn't much different except that I feel like I can use fabric glue on more things.