What part of the doll customizing process do you DREAD?

Definitely agreeing with finding clothes, mostly because the things I prefer don't seem to be very popular in terms of ready-made items and I sew at the rate of the continental plates shifting. I usually end up buying a bunch of modern fashion for new arrivals just so they don't have to hang out naked, though.

Aside from that my biggest dread is usually waiting for things to arrive, but I guess that's closer to impatience. I don't mind all the DIY I've signed up for as it's the price of having a Vision™, but I hate when I get everything together just to find I'm missing one singular niche item I could've sworn I had two years ago that's disappeared into the either and will take 3 weeks to ship. It almost makes me not want to start projects if I can't immediately think of where something is.

 

Wiping the doll clean, especially if they have a lot of tattoos or heavy blushing. It’s just so annoying and then once they’re clean, I just find more dots with sealant residue and have to redo it. So annoying.

 

I really hate sanding down the seams and sealing everything up. It’s just such a small visual difference it doesn’t seem as worth it lol. But it drives me crazy when I don’t!

 

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Sanding.
Ugh spare me the sanding, when I decide something needs seams removed or a full once over before dyeing.... I sand. and sand and sand and sand...

 

For me it has got to be the purchasing of eyes and when I am doing my faceups. The reason I said eyes is that there are like millions of sellers and pages of eyeballs, I am very picky and until I land on the ones I want it takes me days to decide and even longer to narrow down specifically the ones I want... It's almost like the process of america's got talent but eyeball edition. The faceup process is okay but layering and the sealing before moving on gets a little annoying especially if I am using the spray finishes because I have to gear up so I won't get poisoned and because I live in a humid cold area now the process has changed to be more tedious. I am planning on using a brush on sealant so hopefully that process will be less stressful...

 

Small-channel restringing.

Mainly referring to restringing jointed hands here, but this could easily be applied to any part needing to be strung that's small and narrow. When I had to unstring/restring a set of jointed hands to dip them into the dye vat, the hours (days in some cases) I had to spend putting them back together were the most miserable and expletive-filled I've ever spent on anything hobby-related. My boy with 68cm Loongsoul jointed hands has one in particular that's suffering from string-loosening syndrome, and I've put off trying to remedy it due to sheer dread over the process.

Bonus: wiring those same narrow channels. Nightmare inducing chaos

 

Spraying on sealant. I'm less reckless than I used to be, and haven't had the best luck with higher grade respirators. I also don't feel right spraying where I live now, in a large apartment building where there might be neighbors on nearby balconies. I'd rather use the brush on stuff or save money to send my dolls to another customizer.

 

F-ing eyelashes.
Like seriously? I KNOW how to put them on -in theory.
In practice, I have them in the perfect spot, I think they're dry, and then they get bumped and move. Ugh.

Restringing gives me anxiety, I can do it; and I do it well. But I still have a couple drinks prior to doing it because my fingers have PTSD from getting snapped and pinched.

 

Still the bain of my doll live: faceups, and particularly shading. If you know what you are doing, you can age dolls by decades, or push entire parts around. If you do not know what you do (like me), you basically fly blindly. I often do movie or series characters, so I try to find an image with a expression as neutral and well-lit as possible. Then I try to mimick what I see. I am usually not quite happy with what I achieve...

 

Eyebrows.
Thats it. Just eyebrows. I can never decide what shape to make them, and it usually just ends with me making them oval blobs deciding thats good enough to later regret all my life's decisions and just starting from scratch.

 

At this point it's definitely trying to do wigs. Hand-sewing a wig myself was a mistake. Can't seem to get anything on the dang thing right.

 

Most of the dolls I got blank are still blank because I'm determined to do their face-ups myself, but have barely even done practice face-ups since I have so much trouble using my respirator. Its 3M brand, but the filters fall off easily, one of the buckles to tighten it fell off the first time I tried it on and is now held on with tape, and I couldn't even put it on the last time I tried. How am I ever going to get decent at face-ups if I can't even put the base layer of sealant on them?

 

Wigs… making them doesn't look good. Buying them also doesnt look good. No matter how cheap or expensive, they never look good!!!!! ;_; How to style someone so small…

 

Doing additive mods. I find it nerve wracking trying to get the milliput where I want it to be before it starts hardening up, but the worst part is the endless sanding of tiny little hard-to-reach areas to get the mods perfectly smooth so they disappear under the faceup. I'm trying to finish up additive mods on two of my dolls' faces right now and it's such an endless slog of fiddly little sanding. I just want to get to the part where I hand their nice smooth modded faces over to my faceup artist and get them back looking amazing...it feels like the sanding will never end

 

For the past few years it was faceups, but now since a week ago it seems I've managed to fix that, by allowing myself to work on only 1 at a time rather than multiple in a hurry (because I'd always put it off until fall because of the dread ). Now... hmm. Probably eyelashes, though I also dislike sanding but I don't have to do that as often so it's not that bad, and once it's done it's done, whereas eyelashes have to be re-glued every time I want to change the faceup even a little bit.

 

I agree with many other members on this thread- painting eyebrows! And finding the right shoes! These two things have remained my most frustrating hurdles since day one

@thehiddenapothecary for easy sleeve tutorials, I would recommend looking at YouTube, there are lots of tutorials for different types of doll sleeves (easy, gathered, etc.) and I find it helps a lot to watch someone else do it first, good luck!

 

Although I absolutely LOVE doing faceups, my most dreaded step in the process is symmetry. I can do eye lining to a point of where I'm very happy with it BUT the eyebrows I do always look slightly uneven to me no matter how much I measure them out.

Anyways all in all, eyebrows are the devil.

 

Removing heads on SDs. I haven't had to yet, but oh god I'd dreading the idea. I've popped off MSD heads, and YoSD sized heads, but the tension on SD heads just terrifies me. Either I won't be able to move the s-hook to get it off, or never be able to pull hard enough to get it back on.