What do you wish you would've done differently about your first bjd?

I wish I had had better resources to learn about faceup materials and safety, and in general how to take care of a doll. I got my boy wayyyy back in 2008, didn't know about DoA and there just weren't many other places to learn about these dolls--this was well before Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr or most other places that have tons of useful info now. So the poor guy got an improper faceup with materials that could have stained him and could have harmed me, was taken outside often and not protected from sunlight. I didn't know about staining or how to prevent it. He is a white skin doll who is now closer to a pale normal yellow color, and by some miracle, didn't get horribly stained by the crappy faceups and awful clothes.

I wish I had saved up a little more and got him better quality things. Starting out, I bought the cheapest wig and eyes I could find and made his clothes, and it was not a good look for him. It took me about a year and a half to really figure out his character and how he should look, and I think a lot of that was because he didn't look his best and was so limited by budget. I don't need the most expensive things out there, but sometimes it really is worth it to spend a little bit more for better quality items.

And this is the silliest, but I wish I hadn't given him such a ridiculously over-the-top traumatic backstory. Like I said, this was 2008, emo was in and it seemed like everybody was in competition to make their character suffer the most. At the time, I saw it as this creative, dramatic thing, but now I look at it and think...."well, that's embarrassing." It's so unbelievably tragic and unrealistic that now I prefer to just not address it when role playing him. For both him and my second doll, the backstories would take away the realism of the character, but since both of them are characters who have been with me for 14 years and grown and developed immensely in that time, I don't want to rewrite them and start over again.

 

My first bjd was vinyl and it was an angel philia doll Emmy . She was so lovely from the pictures but when I received her , I could not hold her , I could not touch her . She was so fragile for me . And I did not like her facepaint . She even had some stains from me . I even bought magic sponge to erase them . After one day , I sold her to someone else , and I never regret it . That person again could not bond with her , and sold her after two weeks of having her . My second bjd was minifee ingrid and felt in love with everything from fairyland . After ingrid , I started buying everything from fairyland . Minifee Dina , minifeeLucywen , minifee Sia , minifee Carol , pukifee Ante and last for now feeple60 Lucywen . Also do you think that it’s better to hold them with cotton gloves ? I was thinking to buy too without being sure if it’s better or no .

 

One thing I wish I did with my first bjd is... never take him outside to play. While fun at the time, 12 years later he yellowed much more compared to the one I only played with at home. Although, to be fair, he was a bit more yellow to begin with despite being made by the same company with a difference of 1 year. I tried to give him a rub with some isopropyl + magic sponge, and some of the yellowing, which I suspect was just dirt, came off, but he is still quite yellowed and there is no taking it back. Now I'm not letting my dolls under direct sunlight at all.

As for the face-up, it is very fragile. So much so that I prefer not to touch my bjds' faces at all. I rotate the head by touching it at the back, where everything is covered by a wig, so as not to damage anything. On one of my older bjds the sealant came off right on her nose without me even doing anything to it (as far as I remember), and that's it, you can't fix something like that. It requires to redo the whole thing. Same goes for any body blushing, especially the hands. Since this is one of the places you touch the most on your bjd, there is a higher risk that the blushing will get damaged. I've never had blushing on my bjds, but I'm planning on doing some myself in the future. I know I will have to renew it, like, every year or so, even if I seal it in several layers.
I know that some people use gloves while handling their bjds to not leave any body oils on them, but I've recently watched some youtube video that mentioned how old clothes can get damaged if you handle them with cotton gloves, so nitrile gloves are preferred (?). Some face-up artists I follow do the gloves (I've seen both cotton ones and nitrile ones being used), while others prefer no gloves when handling bjds. I'm still undecided on that one, but no dirty hands are allowed on my dolls for sure!

Speaking of layers, I wish I stored my dolls naked. The yellowed doll I mentioned, yeah, his hands and face probably yellowed the most. You can see the difference if you put his hand on his belly, which was covered by a long sleeve most of the time. Same goes for shoes. My other doll now has a permanent stain on one of her feet from the logo printed on the inside of a shoe. She was stored with her shoes on for several years, and now you can only get rid of that stain by sanding some of the resin off, which is too much work for me.

 

My first bjd is fine (he's the one in my little icon/picture thingie accompanying this post), and still with me seventeen years on, so I'm entirely happy with him, but I wish I hadn't been so worried about:

1) Seeing the actual doll (and faceup) I'd be getting, rather than generic company photo's - I ended up buying him second hand.

2) Dealing with a company in a non-English speaking country - I was concerned about potential probem(s) with my order that might then be exacerbated by the language barrier when I tried to sort out the issue(s). I've bought direct from so many companies since and English not being their first language has never been an issue.

Teddy

 

I'm mostly happy with my first doll purchase. It's a Lati blue Shaina and I bought her back in 2010 after a long wait. I did my research on the company, there were good forums around and most people agreed that ordering from Lati ment long wait times, next to no communication, but the items arrived properly in the end and that is exactly what happend. I waited for over year to be able to order, since Lati didn't produce all their lines at the same time and then about 8 months after ordering.
I bought the doll, one pair of boots, one pair of shoes and one wig, that was it. Not only whas this a very big purchase to me and I couldn't afford to spend on something I could do myself, but the thing that attracted me to the BJD hobby to begin with was the ability to make the doll my own. The company face ups were pretty, but not at all what I wanted.
I did her face up myselfs and all her clothes and while my early attempts are of course rather poor, I would never have goten to where I am today without them so I don't count it as a fail, more as a learning curve.

And don't tell my other dolls, but she is still my favourite.

Over all, the wait did some good. I had time to truly read up on things and think things through. Research is everything in this hobbyand taking the time to do it and let what you've learned sink in can save you from a lot of grief and bad decisions.
I did a lot of research outside of the hobby as well, this was made a lot harder by the hobby lingo that had allready taken hold so many terms used within the hobby med completely different things out in the real world of industrial production, MSDS, and hadware stores. Add to that the language barries, since even if ther actually was a very good swedish BJD forum at the time (that sadly died the facebook death later) the swedish doll people didn't always stanslate the terms but used the english ones or a version of them so it was tricky to navigate. Knowing about the actual materials rather than just the hobby terminology I found alternatives to face up materials and other work arounds that were safe to use, even if not hobby standard and I knew about things like how the material ages and roughly what to expect when it came to weight, hardness and density.
So even if my early attempts at customization was not very pretty, thanks to the reasearch done, no harm was done.

 

I posted about this on another thread I think, but I totally settled for my first doll. I really wanted a Luts doll that I could have saved up for if I had just waited a little longer, but I ended up getting a Bobobie when I visited Denver Doll Emporium because they had him in stock and I was impatient. This was back when I was about 12 maybe? I had fun with him for a little while but he never was what I wanted. I don't have him anymore, but I suspect that if I had been patient and gotten that Luts doll I wanted I still would have had him tot his day.

After having owned more expensive BJDs since then, I think it's definitely worth it to not rush and save up for the one you really want, because settling just does NOT work with dolls, since you need to bond with them. No shade at all to Bobobie dolls, I have seen some really lovely ones, but the face sculpts just never appealed to me and that's like a total death sentence with dolls lol!

 

My first doll is a hybrid of a second-hand Migidoll head and an AoD body. Honestly I wish I'd researched about mobility more and saved up for a bit longer, my first boy sadly ended up with a cheap-ish body which doesn't pose too well, but I've never ended up replacing it and I don't think I ever will I also didn't worry much about matching the resin colour, as the head was quite yellowed when I got it already, so maybe even researching resin matches more would have been a great idea! I still love my first boy though, even if he's an absolute posing nightmare and has to weas mostly turtlenecks!

 

My biggest oopsie was buying my first doll looking more at the budget than the doll, and without any make-up, wig or eyes.
I was unsure at that time and completely broke, so I believed I couldn't afford any better. When the doll came home, seeing her bald and expressionless... I didn't feel as great as I thought I would. It took me months to find a face-up artist that lived in the same city as me so I didn't have to send the head anywhere, and even more till I found a wig and a pair of eyes that fitted my character.
By the time I had completed her, I was very tired of the whole process. And the doll seemed sad too, though this was partially due to the sculpt she was. In the end, I couldn't bond with her at all cause I didn't feel like she was my character.
Luckily, I had the chance to start over again when I could exchange the head sculpt for a second-hand more-smily one who got a face-up pretty fast and, as I already had all the other stuff, she became herself in a matter of a week. That second sculpt is still with me, 9 years later, so I guess I'm grateful for that experience led me to her.

 

My biggest regret with my first doll was not doing enough research on her before making the purchase. I focused mostly on her appearance versus things like how she would pose and her proportions. When she arrived, none of the clothes I bought for her fit, which was really frustrating, as I had no other dolls at the time. I ended up absolutely hating how she posed as well, so I sold her not long after getting her to instead get a doll I spent much, much more time researching.

It's not that she was a bad doll--just that the things I should have known about for her ahead of time I didn't do my due diligence researching on, and it bit me in the butt in the end. So now I spend a LOT of time researching any doll I plan on getting so I know what to expect.

 

Be more careful with him

I sat him down in short shorts on some outdoor stairs that had a pretty rough surface. His thigs got all scratched up and I tried to fix it by sanding and ruining the shape of his thigs. I used "fake nail" glue to try glue a little diamond inside his belly button. Diamond would not stick, belly button got full of glue inside that could not be removed. I did not like quite how his stomach were sculpted, very square muscles. So I tried to soften the look by sanding, it turned out uneven and very shiny. A part of his leg chipped above the ankle. I tried to sand it away, but I may have made one leg a tiny bit shorter than the other! There were some chipping on his back too. Tried to fix that also, got uneven. I suck at sanding

I was way to bold with my first doll, a Dream of Doll Luke. But luckily I had another DOI that I weren't sure if I'd keep, so I gave my Luke "his" body. That body I had not done anything with so he no longer look like a frankenstein project XD

 

Nothing - my Sandor Clegane doll is as close to perfect as I can imagine.

 

Probably to pay more attention to size and proportions. And bouggt a set of clothes from the company. I bout Caedan in 2020 but its 2022 I get him a well fitting set of clothes.