About the dolls
My dolls are ball jointed dolls (BJD), hand crafted dolls made of resin. Although I had seen pictures of them I never thought I’d actually buy one until I came across Bluoxide’s blog Rawresin and realized how much potential for creative work this hobby has.
Obviously I changed my mind about owning dolls 🙂
The creative challenge to paint them, invent stories and turn them into characters was just too tempting in a time where I needed a lot of distraction.
There are a lot of different doll companies to choose from, a lot of different aesthetic styles and looks. The Über-cute dolls with anime features, the child like dolls, the more realistic looking dolls. You can chose skin color, breast size, muscularity, the head (sculpt or mold) to go with the (matching) body of choice.
You can order them with a factory face up of course, buy clothes, eyes and wigs, or you can order them blank and paint them yourself, sew clothes, make wigs and all the other props.
I prefer to do as much as I can myself. My dolls come blank, I prefer painting normal skin or white skin and I am partial to Iplehouse dolls. Iplehouse is a Korean company with very realistic sculpts and bodies that are a little less skinny than the usual BJDs. Which might pose a problem clothes-wise, but I usually just buy shoes and make most of their clothes myself.
And since part of the hobby is doll photography I started photographing, something I never really did before. I still have a lot to learn but it’s really fun.
And I thought I’d only ever have three…
But the thing with these dolls is: Once you start customizing them, turn them into little people with stories and their own character they want company. Partners, siblings, family..Oh well…
I want my dolls to be different. Not extreme, just different from the usual look a specific mold seems to sport if you look at pictures searching for this specific doll. I want them to be unique and I try to visualize their character with the face up and clothing style. And I hope that my dolls and this blog are maybe fun and entertaining for people who like BJD, sewing and artsy stuff.
Warning
If you are interested in BJD and want to buy one, make sure you buy a legit doll from the company directly and don’t end up with a so-called Recast. Recasted dolls are pirated dolls from China. Unfortunately the recast industry is a growing business, and when you search for BJD, recast shops are the first results. They are all over the place.
They weren’t an issue when I started in the hobby, but now they have become an existential thread to the doll artisans. Doll companies are usually quite small businesses, most of them located in South Korea. A lot of time and hand crafting goes into making a doll, and the bodies and head sculpts are the work of artists.
Recasters buy a doll and re-cast it. The result is a pirated copy of an original, legit doll.
Recasts are banned from most discussion boards and groups. They might be less expensive, but in buying a recast you support theft and help destroying the hobby. Artists can’t survive on what they earn if people buy recasts instead of originals. As a result they have to stop making dolls and earn their living with something else. But there are some relatively affordable legit doll companies for the smaller budget. Just make sure you read up on the topic before you purchase an illegal copy.
Me & this blog
My name is Mia, but since my Username on most doll discussion boards is ResinRapture, you might as well forget it. My interest in dolls started late in life, I was well over 40. There wasn’t a single doll in the house before, and I am still not interested in “regular” dolls. But I added a small unstrung crowd to the collection in 2020/21 during lock down, Paola Reina dolls, Barbies and Blythes as well as a couple of Asian fashion dolls.
But I have always loved sewing and all things creative. The dolls offer the perfect opportunity to dabble at all sorts of artisanal activity. I am grateful for a couple of genes that enable me to do at least some of the things tolerably successful. Writing about myself is not one of them.
I started to blog a couple of years ago, partly as a way to connect with other doll collectors and partly because blogging was a way to share the character stories of my crew. Somehow it became a habit and I made some blogger-friends I wouldn’t want to miss. As you can see I even invested the time and a lot of work to move the blog from blogger to my own domain.
And I am happy to give something back, whether it’s patterns or badges.
I hope you enjoy the time you spend on this blog.
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