Playing With BJDs

I've been thinking a fair bit about my ball jointed dolls lately and I don't think I've ever discussed them in much detail here.

(By the way, if anyone (maybe Xanadu) feels bad because her bjds don't have shoes, take comfort in the fact that none of mine have clothes yet! And I've had at least one of them for over five years!)

I may have used this picture before.

I like it too much to feel bad about it.

My first bjd was a Dollmore Zihu. She was bought to be Claudia from Interview with a Vampire. If you don't know the book, or movie, Claudia is a child vampire who continues to age mentally but not physically, which ends up making her all kinds of crazy.

I wanted a Claudia doll because I wanted to make Claudia type clothes. In the book she has an elaborate recency wardrobe and in the movies her clothes are . . . Well, to me, her clothes are the best part of the movie. I especially wanted a doll worthy of a GOOD recreation (I've made several bad ones, for various dolls) of this dress.

Sorry, it's not a great picture but it's the best I can find right now. I am in LOVE with this dress. Frankly, I would probably kill a dozen people (more if I didn't like them) for this gown in my size.

Anyway, I chose Zihu to be Claudia. The only drawback was that she was only available in "Normal" colour.

I did her face up myself. My main concern was to make her not look like all the other Zihus I had seen. Back then (early 2014) if you google image searched "Dollmore Zihu" almost every result had very faded lips, almost no other shading or blushing on the face, especially around the eyes, freckles, and a very light coloured, maybe slightly gingerish wig. It might not have been EVERY one, but I remember it irked me. To me the point of Bjds is how customisable they are. If you're making it identical to everyone else's, you may as well buy a Barbie. So, I actively tried to make her look different. I thought the sculpt itself was beautiful and I wanted her face up to reflect that.

And here she is today. Wigless.

Her eyebrows and lower eyelashes could be better. Her upper eyelashes are frankly awful. I ruined my one set of doll eyelashes and didn't want to wait for another set to arrive by post. So her eyelashes are cheap human falsies from the chemist, cut down to size. And they are fantastically uneven.

But she has never looked vampiric enough to me. Claudia needs to be paler. So currently, I'm saving up, to hopefully buy an Iplehouse KID Celina in white skin. Although in the link, you may not see any resemblance, the sculpt when blank, is quite similar to Zihu's, so hopefully will give me the effect I was going for.

And if it starts to look like I'll be able to get Celina, I can make Zihu over to be someone else.

In the middle I have a weird doll group of kiddelfs by Luts. I thought they'd be comparable to Zihu in size but Zihu is smaller than a MSD sized doll and bigger than a tiny BJD. So no.

Why is it a "weird doll group"? Well, I bought one doll body and three heads. Ok, onesone of the heads was a free gift for spending over a certain amount. I thought I could practice face ups on them, then decide which face I liked best.

If you're wondering which faces, they're Bory, Buzzi and the Summer 2014 Event head and they look like this

Over the years I've had a few insane ideas of what to do with these. One idea that stuck around longer than most, was make the heads over to represent fire, earth and water and make an elaborate costume for each. Then switch them out when I felt like it. But I never got around to doing anything. Now I really want to do something with them. Just not sure what. They've barely been out of their box, but at least now they've had a coat of MSC.



My newest BJD is Paige. A KID sized doll by Iplehouse. She's a similar size to Zihu. Their torsos are nearly identical in size but Paige has longer, slimmer arms and legs. Her hands are smaller too. I did not think to compare their feet.

My Paige has a factory face up. It's very pretty. But very generic. This face should be filled with intelligence and curiosity and cheekiness. Instead, it's pretty. I think it's the lips. She should have a thin lipped, mischevious smile but they've put too much colour on. I want to repaint her but she's so pretty (Which is also WHY I want to repaint her!) and I like pretty things. My brain is a weird place.

Anyway, here's Paige's unnecessarily convoluted story. When I made my dollhouse (Wow! That's some tangent!) I discovered there was a ridiculous amount of dollhouse stuff available. In order to reign in my "I want"s and my spending, I decided I needed to know when my dollhouse was and who lived there. I chose May of 1885 for the date. Specific, I know. I like the 1880s and I happened to have a Bloomingdales (I think) catalogue for May 1885. Since one of my interests is family history, I chose some of my ancestors to live there. . . Actually, I killed off most of their kids (including my great great grandfather) because I couldn't afford that many dolls and didn't think there'd be room for them. So my Great-great-great grandparents and their oldest daughter live in my dollhouse. (Except it's 1885 in the dollhouse and they're the ages they would have been in more like 1865.)

What's this got to do with Paige? My original plan was to also get another dollhouse to represent my nana's family in the early 1930s. This was obviously when I lived alone and had two spare bedrooms. But then the dollhouse I wanted was discontinued, my brother moved in, then the Giant Husband, then the Giant Baby and I realised I would never have room for another dollhouse. But I felt bad. Like I had somehow let Nana down.

I had been eyeing Iplehouse's dolls for a while when they released Paige. And she caught my attention. My Dad used to have a picture of Nana when she was about ten and she looked a LOT like Paige. So, I decided, if I couldn't have a Nana dollhouse, I would have Nana doll.

 My Paige is named Lily. Nana's sisters called her Lily or Tigerlily, because she had yellowish-hazel eyes like a cat. When she finally gets clothes, she will be dressed in late 1920s and early 1930s styles. I'm trying to decide whether to make Zihu one of her sisters, or some other ancestor. Maybe Nana's mum or nana's nana. Not sure yet. I think another ancestor would be more fun as it would give me more time periods to choose clothes from, instead of always the 20s and 30s.

                 

I played around with different wigs on them today, and so I've included some more photos. Neither of them have clothes. For these pictures they shared a Simba dolls blouse that didn't fit either of them well and at one point Zihu was wrapped in the tucked fabric that Tiny bled all over the other week. Being a vampire she didn't mind. I took these in a hurry and it was my first time using my actual camera in over a year so they aren't great. I also cannot work out how to get the pictures to show up side by side. It would be cooler if they did.

This first wig had no hope of fitting either doll. It was bought for a totally different doll and was way too big. I still like how it looks on Zihu though.

                                   
Next is a Dollmore wig with pigtails. I hate these pigtails wigs because I can never make them look even. The two pigtails are always different heights, or one sticks out at a stupid angle. I think they're cute but they make me swear.

The next one is another Dollmore wig. I like how it looks on both girls but I also think it looks a little bland and it belongs to one of my Kish dolls any way, so these girls can't have it.

           

This is a Leekeworld wig. Another one I stole off one of my Kish dolls for today. For some reason it makes me think every doll that wears it looks "French". I don't even know what I mean by that.

Next is another Dollmore wig. This is the one I originally bought for Zihu to wear as Claudia but I don't like her in it. I was disappointed that it didn't make Paige look more like Bernadette Peters.

I hate this next wig so much. The hair fibre is too thick (The individual fibres not the stitching), the styling looks clumsy, the fringe is only ok if it was cut in the dark with a lawnmower, and the "wispy tendrils" are huge hanks of hair!

Next is the default wig that came with Zihu. It confuses me. All the hair comes out kind of sideways like it wants to be tied in pigtails but it's not meant to. I never know what I'm supposed to do with this one. I think it make Zihu look like the little girl from the Beethoven movies.

This next wig is my favourite wig ever. It's by Dollmore and the fit is amazing. It pops straight on these girl's heads like a hat, without any turning inside out or stretching or anything. And then it stays on! And stays in place beautifully!

I love the colour of this wig, which may be why I bought it. But it's the same style as the chocolate coloured pigtails wig and has the same problem.

And finally a Luts wig that I love the colour of.

And finally a picture of the girls together in the wigs that are theirs for the moment. Looking at this I can't help but think Paige desperately needs a new face up. Next to Zihu, even though Paige's face is more professional, it has no personality.

Taking these photos, I discovered that one of the magnets in Paige's headcap was loose. It kept popping out and her headcap kept popping off. So, if Paige looks a bit weird here and there, it's because in about a quarter of the pictures, she doesn't have her headcap on. Not that it's not attached properly. More, I got fed up with fighting with it and took it off and she modelled wigs without it.