Mistakes You've Made in the Hobby?

Thank you for this advice! I am going to do my first very soon!

I am glad you have given yourself this freedom!

 

When I was first in the hobby I decided I made a hybrid as my first doll… I wanted the head (70cm size) on a smaller body (62cm) and the hybrid did work due to the head being on the smaller end of the scale and a little more stylized. However once I started buying full dolls it made me wish that I had got a full doll as my first doll instead of making a hybrid :’)

 

@Jareth I almost did that type of hybrid, too, recently. So far, I feel neutral about the decision to buy the doll as-is. (It found me when I was looking something up. I was not ready for the purchase.)

 

I've made lots of mistakes xD some may not seem like a mistake to others, but really feel like one to me...

-Trading away an event head because I didn't understand how to swap heads at the time...
-Not understanding how big a 1/3 bjd was (cause even using a measuring tape it just doesnt do them justice) and having this massive boy as my first doll (since traded)
-Buying bjd from outside my country causing me to accrue high delivery fees at the door...
-Buying low cost wigs that just don't fit right cause I was on a budget and couldn't wait.
-Getting a doll without a faceup. I don't know how to do them myself, and can't afford the faceup prices any time soon.
-Not buying the fullset of a doll and then struggling to find clothing for them later...

 

I am never going to unstring a new doll to clean it again. I did it because I wanted to sand her completely to refresh her. She's a very old Spiritdoll and really needed it but my hand got messed up and now I can't open a bottle of Gatorade hardly let alone restring her myself.

If I can get to a meetup in NYC in the Fall I'm hoping I can bribe someone else to help me. I hope so. Right now she's a bunch of parts in a doll box, poor thing! She's such a cool doll. She really deserves better!

 

My only mistakes have been selling any of my dolls. At the time I always feel like I don't want them anymore for whatever reason/can do without/didn't connect, but without fail I've regretted every single one sold! I wish I could have them all back

 

I think the ones I have made are very common. One is having FOMO and buying too many dolls. I have been pretty lucky to sell quite a few without being out too much but maybe that was beginners luck as sales have slowed down a lot.

Another mistake I have made was being impatient about clothes or accessories. I would buy cheaper accessories and clothes made for other similar size dolls and they would not look as nice. So I could have saved a lot of time and money finding and purchasing quality items in the beginning.

 

I have made a lot of mistakes, but I'm proud to say it's a little hard to recall them off the top of my head by now. My dolls have been a part of my life where I have had to learn flexibility and to be forgiving with myself. So I'm not really holding onto the mistakes. (Besides maybe some are humiliating to share, but you can have one humiliating one because I mention it periodically, which was that I completely lost my first doll or it was thrown away or stolen or something, and I don't even know. Horrible.) You can't live life without forgiving your own mistakes, though it's also nice when you can occasionally repair one. I sold off one doll head I had since my earliest days in the hobby a few years ago because I was very heartbroken in my life. I have sold a lot recently when I didn't genuinely want to and I feel sad about how they are gone and I feel nobody understands how much I wished I hadn't had to lose them that way. But some of it must be permanent. With her though, I feel very lucky I was able to get another of the headmold again. And even though it's not the same doll I can remember all those years we had together and keep making memories. So that mistake isn't painful anymore. (It is Omega)

 

That's an excellent idea for a thread!
1) Buying heads separately from the body. In my experience, they will remain Shakespeare's "skull" for philosophical dialogs. Finding the perfect body with skintone match in another company is a real stroke of luck. Even within the same company, skintone can vary over time.
2) Save money on wigs, clothes, and shoes. These will most often be of lower quality, and you won't want to use them. It's better to save up and buy something that will surely not disappoint you.
3) At one point, I thought I was giving up on the hobby and started selling dolls and other items for next to nothing. Remembering some of the items, I wiped away a tear of regret because I could no longer find anything similar and for the same price.
4) Switch to 1/3 format. I have to take out a mortgage to build them a diorama. They've already taken my chair away from me. And moving to another country with them is a real adventure. The officer at customs couldn't believe their eyes when the X-ray showed something that looked like a corpse fitting into a carry-on.
5) Do not post pictures of dolls, thinking they are not good enough.
6) I bought bodies, clothes, and shoes that didn't fit my dolls, and I could have predicted this if I hadn't acted impulsively.
7) Not participating in the community. A community can help you find people close to you or even friends.

 

I really love my 1/4 dolls, I do. But, I wish I would have started with the bigger dolls. I just find the 1/3 and up size so much easier to handle and photograph. My poor smaller dolls just get to sit on my shelf and look cute. I am going to get one more boy in that size as I have outfit, shoes, and wig for one, but after that I just want the bigger dolls.

I also wish I had known more about what kinds of water colour pencils and paints to use. I spent money buying what I thought was a good deal that just didn't work at all on resin. I am actually happy with Prisma and Faber Castel which is what I use now, but I have a bunch of useless water colour pencils from other brands that are only good on paper.

What I don't regret is the mistakes that I made while learning faceups and learning to sew for my dolls. I think the mistakes were good practice and helped me get better and fixing my dolls up and making things.

 

- I know I'm a bit late but if you prefer gouache to acrylics try the best of both worlds - acrylic gouache. They work like gouache but dry like acrylic.

 

Leaving the hobby and coming back to find most of the sculpts I wanted are no longer around as well as some of the doll companies when I come back into it.

 

Succumbing to FOMO so many times instead of saving up for a doll I really wanted.

Being impatient and going for what's in stock or available secondhand instead of preordering.

I think about how much I've spent on half baked ideas and how I could have something really cool now if I wasn't such a shopper then. I've mostly learned from the mistakes at least!

 

Got one: buying a dorrie head with company face-up thinking that it is the same as the one featured in the official page (for $50+ extra). Was pretty bummed after recieving her with an entirely different face-up and finding out that the one on the offical page is a one-off .
That's $50 down the drain when I sent her head for face-up commission and had to pay extra to have that disappointing company face-up wiped off.

 

Leaving my doll in a black wig and blue jeans for 8+ years. Thankfully I'd washed the jeans enough to only leave his legs slightly tinted blue--body blushing would probably compliment it nicely if it can't be completely removed--but I'm worried about his head. To make it worse, turns out I had bought a wig cap, just chose not to use it.

Not buying a once easy to get, off-topic doll that cost $25-$50 and now only able to find a couple of them for over $100. Even when it may knowingly be in poor condition. Nah.

 

Hmmm...I made a few newbie mistakes in the beginning, especially since I had no one else to talk to and had to rely on magazines (I know, I'm old) and word of mouth for things and what was a not as robust internet back then. So I think a lot of my newbie mistakes might not be repeated (hopefully) as there is so much information out there.

One of my biggest mistakes was trying to create dolls from scratch and attempts at face-ups and getting resin poisoning by proxy from a friend doing face-ups and modifications as a side hustle. I thought it would be cheaper to make a doll from scratch than to purchase a fullset doll. Wrong. All the costs of buying doll making material added up to a buying a complete doll a couple times over. My skin and lungs paid for it for a while too. Luckily, no permanent damage as far as I know and the nosebleeds stopped. For all newbies out there, definitely research it ahead of time, invest in PPEs, and do not do any of your doll crafting in living spaces where small children and pets dwell or where you eat at or where you live and breath in there. Oh, and do not invest in dolly crafting and face-ups and mods thinking it will be cheaper. It's not. Hahaha.

Another was thinking making doll clothing is easier and cheaper than making human clothing. It's not. It actually takes more skills to make doll clothes as you have to make the threading and seams tinier, find findings (buttons, zippers, etc) that are BJD scaled down size, and take into consideration the materials won't either permanently stain or scratch your dolls.

Not getting a doll I really liked at the time it was available. It's hard as obviously finances need to be taken into consideration which I did. But if there is a doll you really like, you can afford to do so without hurting your financial situation, get it. Most of my Grail dolls were dolls I could have bought but I didn't and now they are no longer available or Grail dolls for other people so the hunt is on.

Not me, but I've seen a friend do a lot of impulse buying and then regret selling and then regret over regret selling and revenge buying and selling. I think taking a hard look at your own impulsivity and addictive personality is a good thing for any hobby. Just be careful to not become either an enabler or addicted.

I'm still learning even though it's been nearly 20 years in this hobby. Just learn from your mistakes, be careful, do your research, and just have fun.

 

Well, overconsumption definitely was my thing during the first 2-3 years. Now, I’m more picky and I like it. But I’m okay with it – I consider mistakes a part of the learning curve.

 

Absolutely purchases. I should not have bought things thinking that I may need them in the uncertain future or that they are time/quantity limited (that does urge me to buy it). It's a pain to find something on the second hand market but it's even more painful to sell those you don't actually need

Also the one that pay me expensive ......please always bring a doll stand when you are out for photos TAT

 

Staining. I didn't listen to the many people online that told me that dark clothing could stain my dolls. When I got my first two dolls (Dollfies - so yeah, Vinyl...) I was quite shocked to see that they already had some light stains on them after just a couple of days. Learned that lesson the hard way I have to admit that this made me quite paranoid, even though my current collection is resin-only and should be (mostly) fine haha.