Things you thought would be easy but actually WERE NOT, and vice versa.

I can draw, and I have basic knowledge of make-up so I thought I can do face-ups easily. I sorta can, with the blushing and the glossing.

But the painted eyelashes and eyebrows. Sweet merciful god I could not draw a decent pair to save my life.

 

^this. Sooo much this.

I still haven't mastered the details for faceups. So much harder than I thought! I see others that only need a few tries to become really good...for me it wasn't that way at all..and I have a long way to go!

Also, putting eyelashes in. It seems like such a simple thing. Cut them to size, place a line of glue on the inner upper lid of the eye hole, place eyelash in. But I have so much trouble with it. orz

On the flip side, restringing was easier than I thought. (for SD's and MSD's anyway) And I was worried I'd have trouble posing and standing dolls..but that, at least, has always been fairly easy for me.

 

I didn't realize how top heavy they can be. So it's harder for me to get Nick to stand than I thought it might be. I thought it would be easier to keep him clean than it is though. D8

 

I found restringing in general to be much easier than I'd expected, except in the case of certain dolls with such thin limbs that the bore-holes were impossibly narrow.
But face-ups, definitely more annoying than I'd thought they'd be.

 

I was seriously scared of restringing my Elfkin... easiest thing in the world. I thought restringing my boy Ariel (MSD) would be hard. Nope, easy, especially as he has actual s-hooks (Bobobie Elfkin tinies and Isabella YoSDs don't). My next thing I'm sure is ridiculously hard? Restringing Asura who is strung so tight I'm not sure I can put him back together if I take him apart for some much needed sueding. Sigh. xD

Harder than I expected... putting on complicated fullset clothing. Way, way harder than expected. Also, cleaning MSC / Purity Seal off heads and body parts, even with 90something% rubbing alcohol and magic erasers.

 

At first I thought it would be easy to put clothes on my dolls and after 7 years, I still struggle with pants and SHOES! >__<

I thought it would be hard to re-string and blush them but I actually love to do that! it's so easy!

Right now I think it will be hard to do face ups, I'm scare to start!! but I'll do it eventually and hopefully, I'll find it easy...*crosses fingers* =.=

 

Harder than expected:
~Faceups! An art degree does not equal instant success...
~wig making! My first yarn attempt was a disaster. Much better now!
~clothing! I was used to flat ragdolls, not 3-D resin, so I had to learn depth
~sculpting my own head- was a total disaster

Easier:
~restringing. I stalled for 2 years before getting the courage to try and it was really easy!
~eye openings - I thought would be some big huge thing requiring all sorts of tools...it was so easy!
~prop making. reading tutorials made me realize such detailed things are often very simple tricks

 

So far... things have been exactly as I expected. What I haven't tried so far is modding my dolls. I think it's not easy, but I've been told that it's very simple, so I guess I won't know till I try it.

 

Making clothes has been harder than I expected. A fun challenge, but not the cake-walk I was somehow expecting it to be.

One thing that's been so much easier than expected was integrating BJDs into my lifestyle and family. There was no awkward phase at all! Just opened the box and BOOM! Instant family member!

 

Sewing dresses. My ex-boyfriend who does not sew is all like "it's just a tube" and I'm like "NO IT'S NOOOOOOOOTTTTT."

Face-ups are hard like I thought they would be, but face-ups on paper white dolls is harder! Tan dolls are so much easier to do than paper white dolls.

Gluing in the eyelashes is hard too. I keep gluing them to my finger instead. >_<' I can't seem to poke them in place with tweezers, toothpicks, or q-tips so I always end up using my hand and then there's bits of glue on my hand and well... oTL


Restringing was a lot easier than I thought. I was a little scared a hand would go flying across the room or something.

 

Harder:
- Faceups: OMG, I royally suck at them. Like, I can not begin to explain how bad.
- Resin matching: I love hybrids, to the point that I'd overall prefer them to a full doll, but they can be some tricky lil suckers!
- Putting on shoes: Seriously some of these kiddos just flat refuse!
- Wig styling: Sweet merciful heavens!

Easier:
- Restringing: Harder when I don't have help, but overall not too bad.
- Body blushing: Still learning things like chest hair on the boys, but overall not too hard.
- Basic sewing: T-shirts, camisoles, skirts, etc.

About what I expected:
- Anything above very basic sewing
- Explaining them to the curious people who stop me to ask what that is I'm carrying around

 

Hmm.
I was afraid of restringing until I was forced to do it with my Bobobie March, who has those pesky tiny arms and tinier arm-holes. So after that all the restringing I've done was a breeze. SD size is particularly easy.

Faceups made me slightly nervous until I realized that my work as a professional face-painter and special effects make-up demonstrator came in handy. At this point I occasionally go on a rampage and start wiping my dolls so I can re-do their faces...

Honestly, though, I didn't really think anything would be too hard. I've been modding and repainting toys for many years, plus I create human-sized costumes and doll-sized fashions (ugh. SO glad to have moved on to BJD from Barbie-size.)

I realize that this isn't really the point of the post, but my advice to anyone who is intimidated by any part of the hobby is this:

No matter what you do, use the best tools that you can get.

Planning to mod the resin? Get a really good filtration mask.
Want to learn face-ups? Get the right sealant (plenty of threads out there on this subject) and start with pastels and watercolor pencils. The pencils can be as vibrant and dramatic as acrylics and are a lot easier to work with (and wipe if you make a mistake.)
Dead-set on acrylics? Invest in some good brushes, and look for the ones designed for miniatures painting.
Working up your courage to re-string that floppy doll? Get the right restringing elastic, and at least two pairs of bulldog clamps/hemostats. A narrow but long ribbon helps a lot, too.
Resetting eyes? Get the right putty, good tweezers, and an orange stick.

And best of all: If you're not sure, have a friend over and work together. I did my first face-up stuff on my own dolls during a get together with other doll folks.

 

Sewing, I learned to use a running stitch in kindergarten and taught my self automatically to whip stitch but finding the time and motivation for it is taxing! Plus, I'm not very good with pattern reading...so yea

 

face-ups.

i am a complete amateur and it's incredibly frustrating because i thought i would be immediately good at them. this might sound arrogant but i was studying illustration for quite a long time (doesnt mean i'm a good artist, i know, plus it was mostly digital painting & drawing projects whenever i had a choice about it) AND i am very good at applying my own make-up (i get a ton of complements on my make-up if i put the time and effort into it... even my dentist said i had amazing make-up skillz, lol!). normally i would not boast like this because i don't want to sound full of myself or build myself up to be something i'm not- anyway, it's quite the contrary, i was all pumped up because i felt "i'm going to be so pro at this" but apparently i just can't put my 2 existing skills together to make an even semi-satisfactory face up so far and i feel like a total failure.

i will keep practicing as i'm a stubborn perfectionist and it's my dream to be a pro at face-ups one day, i'd like to be able to face-up all my own dolls instead of relying on company faceups (even when those are espeially nice at times)

edit: oh, and for what i found weirdly easy? restringing! i hate it like a bitch but i restrung my first doll without ANY instruction or professional tools at all, using only my intuition and a macgyvered bunch of wire hooks and a pocket pen-knife to do it... and i managed this really quickly despite my fears about it. small consolation, i would rather be good at face-ups and have someone else restring my dolls, orz.

 

^ That. The time and motivation part. I've been sewing for years with patterns and all sorts of different things, so the actual sewing isn't the problem. The motivation? Much more difficult. Especially since most of our dolls are boys, and not interested in wearing simple things like skirts.

We found restringing to be quite easy, BUT- there's three of us in our house. Lots of hands to help, which makes a huge difference.

My newest obstacle is not just resin-matching, but body-size-matching. I always thought making doll hybrids would be easy (with the noted resin match issues). Finding bodies that work well with different sized heads is...drama.


Editnote: For the record, our favorite restringing tools are pipe cleaners, plastic Christmas ribbon (the thin kind), and capped/clicky pens as placeholders for hands/feet/heads. XD Can't ever seem to get my 'real' Volks restringing tool to work when I need it.

 

Cleaning my doll head. I looked at tutorial vids and it looked so easy.... and while it wasn't some crazy hard thing to do... it wasn't *as* easy.

 

I have to agree with the majority here and say face-ups were much harder than anticipated. I consider myself a decent artist, both digitally and traditionally, but painting on a 3D surface was something I had never really done before.

On the other hand, something that I first thought would be hard but find incredibly easy is clothes-making. I sew by hand (don't trust machines!!) so it takes a long time, but most of the clothes my resin kids wear were made by me. I've yet to attempt a pair of pants, though, so I may have to eat those words at some point in the future...

 

I thought faceups would be harder than they are for me... My first doll came in last month and I got to work straight away. I thought the faceup would turn out to be an abomination, but really there are only a couple things (including the entire body blush!) that I am dissatisfied with. Nothing major, but enough that I will wipe and spot-fix when things settle down, ha, ha.

 

Faceups turned out to be easier than I thought. I can turn my hand to most mediums to get a decent result, and though mine don't look airbrushy, I like what I've got and I keep improving the more I practice.

Painting over Apoxie to color match it.... AUGH. Way, WAY harder than I thought it would be.