The funniest part about my BJD association is that, not too long ago, I was not fond of dolls at all.
Back in 2004, I remember vaguely hearing about “dollfies”. I absolutely ignored them. In 2006, a friend of mine brought doll clothing and her Souldoll Tiffee to an artist alley that we were doing. I saw the doll, went “uh-huh, that’s nice” and tried not to get too close to the doll. It was very pretty but kind of freaked me out. And it didn’t help when another BJD owner brought their doll to our table and began to hold a conversation with the doll, ignoring us the whole time. I was pretty sure at that point that dolls were not my forte. Little did I know what the future would hold!
A few years later, in 2009, we again were doing an artist alley. By this point, I had several friends who were into the hobby, so I had definitely heard of Volks and Luts in particular in passing reference. I had never bothered to look up any of the dolls, so when my friend with the Souldoll Tiffee brought her Obitsu to the artist alley to model some awesome wings, I was surprised by how lovely she looked. She was also one of the larger dolls. At that point I had no idea the differences between resin and vinyl, etc, but I was totally taken with the Obitsu. Since we had doll items at our table, we got a lot more BJD people and I found them perfectly normal. :) After that con, I remember posting in my livejournal that I was researching the hobby, amazingly. And I was loving what I was finding. My friends cackled at me because I was the last person they expected to fall for BJDs. Another friend of mine was going to be doing a BJD panel at an upcoming convention and so she brought a ton of her dolls. When I made it to the con, I headed to her panel and she shoved some huge Luts senior or super senior delf who was the size of a toddler at me. I stared at it, it stared at me and I was traumatized, lol.
But that was the last straw for my resistance. He was a beautifully crafted doll. I was amazed at the artistry. I began to research in depth the hobby. Joined Den of Angels…and stumbled upon the artist workshop area ( which is closed now). And I saw that other people were sculpting dolls. And I had the crazy thought: I could do that…I’ve sculpted before, this might be fun.
So in October 2009, I started sculpting. And a month later, I bought my first BJD, an Iplehouse JID Tatiana. And the month after that, a Souldoll Kid Liddell. Then another month later, a Fairyland MNF Shiwoo. The slope was very slippery. Today, I’ve sculpted 2.5 BJDs of my own, have several in the works and 7 company dolls of my own and counting. I really enjoy the work an the artisty – it hits all my buttons. I plan to continue in this hobby for a long time :)
And that’s how/why I got into the BJD hobby.
