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Narrowing down the focus of collecting?

Jun 23, 2020

    1. @CutieKitty In that case you are probably just as sentimental about stuff as I get! I just hit 10 years in the hobby.. o_o;;
      I too struggle with decision making when it comes to big changes in my crew. Still to this day. So maybe that never changes. xD

      I have kept a doll longer than I should have even though I didn't feel as if it was working well just because it was cute and I had fond memories of owning it. I did feel better after selling it. Styles and tastes do change! The Kon Marie method can be super challenging to do with dolls. Specially in a sentimental and collectors aspect, and they are dolls, so I feel they carry a certain amount of special energy too.

      Fashion dolls are super versatile and fun and there's a lot of cool ones out there. I hope you have good luck finding your crew's style!
       
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    2. @Zodiac thank you <3 It was tough, but I've made a decision and I'm now so much happier. I decided to stay by one size only for now and I picked it up :)

      And I guess with Konmari it's still useful to see which sparks joy by interacting with a doll. Sometimes, I do what I heard a lot of other dolly folks find useful: hide a doll in the box and take out after a month to see what feelings it awakens ;) But I like Marie Kondo a lot, so I am not objective in assessing her method :D
       
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    3. As someone who doesn't create characters and backstories for my dolls, I have a really tough time understanding how to keep my doll population under control :XD:. I think since there's no concept of "falling out of love with their character" and "reshelling", Im scared that at this rate, I'll have too many for me to handle. That said, I'm glad to hear this will be a passing storm (I'm a newbie :sweat)! I don't mind leaving dolls in a box until I take them out for photos & dolly crafts but I def wouldn't want to get to the point where I take a doll out once a month lol
       
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    4. I'm having the same worry too, with mine. I also don't shell specific characters or have stories, so I'm just getting dolls I like. Storage is starting to become an issue, so even though I have lots of small dolls I'm going to need to invest in more shelving soon. I want to be able to display all of my dolls without it looking really cluttered.
       
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    5. I sew, and knit, I'm a historical reenactor, and costumer, so all three of those work well with my dolls ( not just BJD) as I sew modern clothes, historical styles, and costume for them. I have more hobbies too (more than I'll ever have time ro concentrate on properly - I tend to dip in and out of them as and when I'm in the mood, and sign up for classes and workshops for new ones I want to have a go at. Sometimes there's an opportunity to overlap one or mor of these other hobbies with the dolls. As examples: I made some tiny silver buttons with the leftover scraps of clay when doing a precious-metal-clay workshop some years back (that obverlaps it quite neatly with both dolls and sewing). When learning bookbinding, I made a doll sized book with a leather cover

      Dolls have been a lifelong interest and, like all my other hobbies, it's one that gets dipped into when I'm in the mood, so has more of my attention at some times than others.

      When it becomes apparent that a particular doll or dolls aren't being played with, I tend to sell them on (though I find lettign go of dolls, once they're mine, difficult - almost as if it's a betrayal of them or something). I've found in particular that size plays into this. BJDs of around 8 inches just don't seem to gel well with me - I fall for them, buy them, dress them... then leave them sat untouched on the shelf for weeks/months, until I redress them... and leave them on the shelf again. There have been a few of toher sizes but that size consistently doesn't tend to stay so I don't really look at that size much any more.

      That's a different matter - with me, the boys are the "poor relations" when it comes ot clothes and accessories

      I prefer sewing girl clothes, I just find sewing for boys... boring... I suppose. Cerrtainly a less attractive prospect to sew a pair of trousers than a dress. So my boys get slim pickings from my sewing room, and they also tend to get fewer bought outfits because it's so hard to find the right stuff for them (most of my SD's, for example are Victorian, children - and finding non-fantasy Victorian boys clothes with the right details, fit, colours, and fabrics is difficult - and so many of the potentially good ones are ruined by having the trouser-waist at the modern, low-slung level instead of higher-up at the natural waist level) . Commissioning is expensive. I do commission stuff for my boys, it but not often (and even that proved expensively disasterous on one occasion)

      I briefly resisted getting any slim-mini's as I didn't feel I needed to start another size/scale of BJD's... but not for long. My BJDs fall into distinct groupings (partly by size, mainly by character.backstory), but several of the groupings overlap, so interaction between the groupings works too.

      Given space restricutions, they're nearly all kept in close proximity to one another anyway so it's only in terms of their individual backstories that they really form those distinct groupings, not in terms of day-to-day-display. The only ral stand-alone is My Lusion Daish, Daisy Bacon, who is so much bigger than even my biggest SD size BJD that they just don't overlap. But she's of a size that works very well with some fo my larger antique and reproduction porcelain dolls if/when she needs companions.

      Teddy
       
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    6. Can you/How to combine the bjd hobby with other hobbies? Is it possible to successfully maintain several other hobbies or do the dolls tend to take over your life? (in terms of money, time, space)
      My main hobby is dollhouse miniatures and writing stories. I also like photography. So i guess there would be an overlap in some way. Normally my dollhouses don't have dolls in them and my plan is to make separate houses/roomboxes for my BJDs. Money wise it is hard as dollhouses and BJD's are expensive but I just save and plan on what needs to be done/is most important first.
      I hope to start to sew, learning in the process so I can make clothes for my dolls but not sure if that will be possible as I want a Realpuki and they are very small.

      Have you ever tried to collect only particular sizes, genders, kinds (anthro/realistic), so that the dolly accessories take less space and time to maintain/purchase/sew for?
      At the moment I plan on only buying tinies- the largest around 12/13cm high so that they take up less space but you never know that could change.

      I am the same with me. Dolls that I am interested in need to have a character or the possibility otherwise I am sure I would neglect it.
       
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    7. I already have too many hobbies, so adding another into the mix isn't a problem XD especially as I collect a lot of stuff (plushies, amiibos, nendoroids, books/comics, videogames...) I already like sewing, though I'm not great at it (I'm okay). I knit and crochet too, although mostly toys. And I started making jewellery because it's relaxing. A bunch of those hobbies are transferable to dolls. Making tiny jewellery and plushies for dolls is fun!

      I switch between my interests a lot, just because I'm not always in the headspace for videogames or art. So it actually helps to have a lot of options.

      I haven't reached the point where I want to sell any bjds. I have sometimes looked at my Blythe collection and wondered if I could do with a couple less... but I still like them too much. Right now the problem is that I need to move house, and then I can have space for my dolls.

      I have kinda naturally gravitated towards smaller and anthro dolls. I try not to get multiples of the same kind of animal (the exception is dogs, where I still have a dog sculpt on my wishlist despite ordering a shiba inu doll. They look totally different, so I'm making an exception). I might buy the same animal in different sizes though. XD Oddly I have bought a few female dolls recently - it just kinda happened and I didn't plan it. Since then, I've decided to focus on completing my wishlist :D and when I'm done with that, I can start thinking about what else might fit in my little menagerie :3

      Oh, I almost forgot. My job actually fits in with the bjd hobby quite well, because I used to work as a 3D artist. I want to make dolls in 3D and print them, but so far life has gotten in the way. (There are other reasons that I won't go into... ^^;; ) I still want to do it though, and am really excited by the impact of tech on bjd making!
       
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    8. Can you/How to combine the bjd hobby with other hobbies? Is it possible to successfully maintain several other hobbies or do the dolls tend to take over your life? (in terms of money, time, space)
      Yes, you can! Besides BJD-collecting, I'm an avid videogame player and an amateur writer (though this doesn't consume much money but most of my time xD). I hadn't bought new dolls for a while (since 2016) till I got one of my grails a month ago and I don't usually do more that one big purchase (100$ or so) of clothing and stuff for them a year so, even though my income is little, I have enough money to spend in videogames and writing-related stuff from time to time.
      That said, I try not to be a hoarder so I'm not afraid of selling, specially videogames once I have completed them, to make room for new stuff. I keep everything in my tiny bedroom, so I think I'm doing ok on that xD
      I think my writer side has helped me narrowing my dolly focus as I feel the need to create characters for my dolls and to link up all the dolls in my collection to each other within their stories and, if I'm not able to do it, I won't bring said doll home.

      How to narrow down/broaden the collection so that none of the dolls is neglected? In particular, when you need to find time for making (or money for buying) clothes and accessories?
      That is a hot topic for me that I have been thinking about a lot for the past four-five years while I decided if I should keep buying dolls or close my resin family in 5. I don't usually do much with my dolls in social media or in my daily life and at that time I felt like I was neglecting all of them. Now I understand that, as long as the doll is "complete" (hair, eyes, face-up, 2 or more sets of clothing and at least 1 pair of shoes) and it brings me joy, there is no such thing as neglecting.

      Have you ever tried to collect only particular sizes, genders, kinds (anthro/realistic), so that the dolly accessories take less space and time to maintain/purchase/sew for?

      I have two separate collections: a human story (involving 2 mature MSDs and 1 Yo-SD) and a fantasy story (involving 3 tiny anthros who only have one set of clothes so they don't need much space in any way).
      I don't collect them that way so I save space or money, just because I like them. It is true that I will never purchase anything bigger than MSD but not only cause I don't really have the space nor money to afford it but because I do not feel comfortable with something so big (in fact, I have been pruchasing smaller and smaller withing time).
       
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