Any silly mistakes you're embarassed by/frustrated about?

Oh that really sucks! Maybe you can disguise the Resin mismatch with certain clothes? But I suppose that limits what they can wear.

Well, I've made a mistake recently. Last year I joined a pre-order for a doll I really loved despite her being the polar opposite of the dolls I collect. And despite dolls that are different to what I collect never lasting long. I even bought 2 of the same sculpt in different skin colours.

I have both dolls now. I sold my soul to release them from customs. I've already put so much money into them and they don't even have face ups yet... and I'm just not excited to do anything with them. But I'm going to persevere and hope I'm not just making another mistake

 

I haven't really been active in this hobby for long enough to make many mistakes, but I can say this: my first doll was a complete panic buy. Bluefairy was holding a 'lottery' you could enter where if you won, you could buy any sculpt in any size, regardless of the time of year. I had always wanted a pocket fairy, for the last ten years I'd been fantasizing about all the things I could sew for her and all the nifty little roomboxes I could make for her. So I entered, figuring 'if you don't ask, you don't get.' Well, I won. And I had 3 days to decide what doll I wanted or they would go to the next person. In such shock that I'd won, I picked the first head sculpt I could remember the name of, placed the order, and paid for it in full. It wasn't until the order had been confirmed and it was too late to cancel that I realized - letting it go to the next person would have been the smarter choice, as I basically forced myself to commit.

Luckily, I'd picked the exact right head (Fei is my favourite, followed by Rascal Jimmy and Daram), and the moment she arrived I was in awe of how perfect she is. I haven't made her clothing yet, and a room box is a long way away, but there are moments I look at her and just think 'You are so lucky this turned out perfectly.'

 

I have silly wig mistakes.

When I ordered my MoYu (Ringdoll) 72cm I also went and bought him a wig. I went by SD-wig instead of checking the guys head measurements. The wig was way to big, and I had to reorder a wig in a smaller size.

But, I did not learn my lesson, nope.

When I ordered my Lucifer (Ringdoll) 72cm I went by the head measurements on MoYu instead of checking the website. Why? I don't know. So when he got here I had to stretch the wig to make it fit. I finally used an older larger wig on him, that fits great.

What did I learn? Don't shop for wigs according to doll size, measure their heads!

Also sometimes dolls that take a size 8-9 wig, might fit a size 9-10 or a size 7-8 wig better. It might be better to wait for the doll to get home and measure them for the wigs, because even dolls from the same companies can be vastly different in head size.

 

Had an embarrassing resin slip-up last year. Dollits re-released DKD heads and bodies for a period, and I had always liked Eunsu. So of course I added that head to the shopping cart, then went to add a body. Before adding the body to cart, I decided to change the resin colour. Hit checkout, happily waited many weeks... and realized I did not update the resin colour for the head to match the body . Entirely my fault (don't shop uncaffeinated, kids). She arrived even faster than expected, in all her mismatched glory. Still love her though!

 

I have made this mistake, and probably will many times over. Every time I do it, I end up really annoyed with myself.

My dolls are old, some of them really old at this point because they were sculpts that I wanted when I first started collecting. I'll often buy an old doll head, paint it and buy it a body in that order.
I cannot for the life of me, understand why I see a yellowed WS doll and will immediately think "Oh, it must be NS!' and buy the wrong colored body. I wish that I could say that it's only happened once, but nope! I currently have a floating WS head, and a NS body that I bought for it.
Thankfully, I've made this mistake enough that I eventually will get the right colored doll head and the bodies will be used. Maybe...just not for the doll I originally bought it for.

 

I started on modding one of my boys to give him elf ears. I thought I'd just whack off some resin to make his ears a bit smaller first/I might be able to shape them well enough without any additions. The first ear went great. The second ear I was made to realize that I forgot to close the door of the room I was working in, and my cat came in and grabbed my bare leg with claws and teeth. For fun. I fumbled the Dremel and gouged a big furrow behind his ear.

You can't see it unless you're looking for it since it hides under the wig somewhat, but I'm still distraught. He needs more mods and I'm still anxious about continuing.

My cat is a demon, a lovable one, and my mistake was not considering his perfectly bad timing.

 

Recently had maybe my biggest dolly mistake so far, though luckily it didn't cause any damage. My shelf is a tiny bit wobbly when you stomp on the floor, and it makes my dolls on stands noticeably wiggle. One of my dolls is also barely able to be forced to stand upright when he naturally wants to lean forwards at the waist. Well, my mom was in my room, tripped over something, and nearly fell. She saved herself, but the door catapulted forward from practically the top shelf and landed face-first. I almost had a heart attack! It knocked off his wigcap and wig, but luckily there were no chips. He's now off the stand and sat in the shame corner.

 

My usual and frequently repeated lapse of judgement is based around the ‘they can share a body’ school of thought. I do it time and time again, never learn.
Either it’s heads that I think ‘meh, the resin colour is close enough’ or it’s ‘I’ll not use the head that comes with the body and instead I will use this other head’ ……. is it?…….do I?…… nope!

 

I bought a beautiful Volks outfit set and I got water on the suede skirt. I bought suede cleaner but it just made it worse.

 

Got a bunch of nice fancy shirts for my 1/3rd doll thinking that because they were advertised as that scale that it would fit only to realize when they came in that none of them could even be put on because his shoulders are too broad! Poor guy's just got a coat and pants at the moment. I hope that if I end up getting another at such a big scale that maybe it'll fit that body instead...

 

when i first got into bjd i spent so much time reading this forum and literally anything i could find anywhere on the internet while i was saving up for my first doll. i felt super prepared and not even a little intimidated, so much so that i made my first doll ever a hybrid. and it came out really well, too! i also restrung her body as soon as i got it, despite it being the first time i had ever handled a bjd-- also a success!

so, looking back, with all that research and prepping and confidence, i am STILL not sure how i had the idea in my head that eye sizes were specific to doll sizes, as in: SD take 16mm eyes, MSD take 14mm eyes, and tinies take 12mm eyes. based on that (WRONG) idea, i had picked out a really pretty pair of 16mm ice-blue eyes and had them waiting when my first doll's head arrived. boy was i disappointed and confused when i put them in my brand-new Elfdoll Rita and she looked like an alien creature that was staring into my soul. (she's a very realistic sculpt, so she does not have large eyewells and looks best with a 12mm eye.)

and that was how i learned that you have to choose an eye size based on the individual doll's features, NOT which size category the doll is in.

 

This is seriously the easiest mistake. Want a NS doll? Just buy a WS doll and wait 15 years! You'll never know he wasn't that color starting off!

 

I tried to clean stains off a new doll body. I used a magic eraser. It left some scratches on my girl’s chest. I dress her to hide it now

 

I made that same mistake on my second doll! I got her head third+ hand and no one was sure what resin color she was. She was pretty pale, so I assumed she was in white resin and ordered an AOD body to hybrid her on in WS. It's not a match at all, so I tried to blush her to match but I couldn't get the pastel to take well enough. I probably should have just powdered her face whiter now that I think about it lol. I just dress her in high necked stuff so you can't see it as bad.

My latest mistake though is I accidentally stained my favorite doll (my MYOU Dietrich) with a pair of black fishnet tights and a black mesh shirt. Most of it was just the sealant so I was able to scrub off the worst of it (sacrificing her very nice body blushing) but I scrubbed too hard and now her arms and legs look weirdly pale and almost green? (She is originally coffee resin). On top of that the top of her thighs have patchily dyed lace patterns in them that I cannot remove despite all my best efforts. Lesson learned everyone is getting anti stain clothes now.

Tbh, I think a lot of this hobby is just making mistakes of varying caliber

 

Most expensive stupid mistake I made was buying not one, but two dolls in the wrong color. I wanted twins, and they needed to be tan or brown. The dealer didn't list the resin color sample photos, and I assumed "light tan" was a typical tan color....spent over $1000 on the order, then a couple of months later, saw owner pics of the light tan....and it was basically normal skin with the slightest brown tone. I panicked. I asked the dealer if I could cancel the order. No. I asked if I could change to a darker color my dealer hadn't listed but another dealer did. No. The dolls arrived and just did not work at all for the characters I had planned with that light color. I tried to use them for other characters, but that felt wrong too, so I listed them for sale. One sold, at a loss. The other didn't budge. Bumped him for months, no luck. I ended up taking him down and turning him into a character I had years ago. It works, but I still feel that whole mess's negativity and mistake every time I look at him. Then on top of all of this, I had also spent about $300 on clothing for the planned characters, and most of it was so uniquely specific to these characters that I couldn't even use it for any of my other dolls and ended up just gifting most of it to my friend. It all just left me with so much regret. I'm not ever buying another doll without clear pictures of the color I think I want!

 

Yikes, the first time I bought shoes for my slim mini doll, I did *not* think there could be *that* much difference and ended up with huge shoes on tiny feet I'm so glad I could sell the shoes after but that was a shocker that made me delve into measurements a lot more. But if course it happened again I now just have both slim and regulars minis so no shoe goes unused hahaha.

I also didn't research enough and didn't know Dollmore had changed their NS at some point so one of my dolls now has super pink hands and feet that don't match the rest of the body. Sure, the body is also massively yellowed but the starting point was not... the same Do your digging kids!

 

I feel your pain on this one. Sometimes there are stitches in the back of the shirt making a pleat. I let the stitches out on a shirts that came like this, and they actually fit my guys now. Tightly, but it works, the backs just don't look as tailored as they originally did.

 

Luckily, I've never messed up as big as whenever I buy clothing for my MSD dolls.
For starters, I've got a Souldoll Vito, which is a pain to find a good fit of anything for, so it's always a lottery when I shop for him, but also for my MSD girl. I've spend good chunks of money in clothing for her and when it arrives, the fit is... less than desirable. It's my fault, mostly, because I keep convincing myself that, as she is on the bigger side of the scale, MSD boy clothes will fit her nicely, but I'm wrong every time and I don't seem to learn my lesson.

 

Wig sizes.

In 2005, 2006, when I first started collecting, I assumed wigs labeled "SD" fit all SD-size dolls. Took me years to understand not all SD size dolls wear SD/8-9 wigs, and now I'm stuck with a lot of too-big wigs. If I was interested in making my own wigs, I'd have plenty of fiber to experiment with, lol.

 

I guess it's not so much a mistake as a pay what you get thing, but I ordered some shoes off amazon for about $16 for a doll i have coming, and they just arrived and the pleather is already cracking
Although i guess I don't have good luck ordering shoes in general, because one of the pairs I bought for a different doll is too long because i also went "well he's an SD and this says SD sized" XD They'll work, especially since they're boots and they fit pretty snug on his calf, but that was a bit of a frustration for me lol.

 

Sadly pleather is so popular and some really don't last long.

My biggest mistake is that, when a friend of friend decided to part with her Iplehouse Reese, probably the only one with fantasy parts (the are discontinued), though she offered a price close to what she had paid two years ago and it's not at all a popular size or skin colour or doll, under the pressure that my friend (yes the person between me and her) was also interested, I bought her and had her paint by that very friend. It turns out that this friend, she loves her more than me lol

 

I'm both embarrassed and frustrated by the fact I didn't adequately protect my first doll, a tan Soom Uyoo from the sun. I actually had her sitting facing a window for a while. My poor girl now has a faded, green tinted face. I can probably hide it with a face-up but my skills are still quite novice.

 

I was doing a faceup and used acetone and a colored plastic bag to line the table. The colors ended up staining the doll's face - I was about to move the doll on to another home so wasn't that upset but had to discount for the mild staining. Never use colored bags!

 

The doll civil war produced some of the strangest pictures and ideas I ever came up with, and I wonder why I ever thought it was a good idea.
It brought some laughs at least.

 

Let me list the ways in which I've screwed up over the years...

• Convinced myself (on more than one occasion mind you) I could style a dolls wig using scissors with absolutely no hair cutting experience OR even making myself watch a YouTube video.
• Tried to force a dress over my doll's bum and watched the zipper self destruct. Dolls can't suck it in...
• My first doll (who I still have)... literally first day I had him I dropped him. He was fine, but I was so ashamed of myself. Couldn't make it 24 hrs. without nearly destroying the first doll I owned.

There's lots more, but I think that's enough for now...

 

I accidentally slammed a part I’d just dyed and modded in a door—I did not shatter the mod, but I did shatter the resin on the back. That was a fun repair mod to do, and I didn’t find one small piece. Oh well—he’s modded, so I’d never sell him anyways, what’s a little damage? The fix is hidden underneath another mod, so only I know it’s there, but it annoys me.

A bigger mistake that I made was shelling moth of my exes’ characters that were linked to mine—that made for a ton of dolls I had to repurpose or sell, both times, and there are sculpts I irrationally dislike because they were my exes’ main characters. Fortunately, I have managed to sell all the involved dolls—unfortunately, a lot of those sales were at a loss of some kind.

There have been other big mistakes I’ve made with trusting people in this hobby, and commissioning friends who were not real friends, that have caused me to redo a ton of faceups, and learn to make my dolls into what I want them to be, so I wouldn’t even call that a mistake, because the outcome was a win—I had to learn a fun new skill.

 

I damaged my tan Foveo debussy and gella trying to remove a patch of msc from their faces.
The tan disappeared from gella then somehow came back. They both have "splash" marks on their faces now. They weren't cheap so I felt bad about ruining them. Im glad I still like the dolls and their characters but the damage is embarrassing.

 

When I got my first Realpuki (really tiny, like 4 inches), I got carried away putting clothes on them and accidentally left them on my bed. Completely didn’t see them getting into bed that same night and ended up cracking one of the feet when I sat on them first and last time leaving a bjd out

 

When I was first in the hobby I made my first attempt at body blushing, I had the grand idea to rest the parts on a cutting board whilst I worked. Something on the cutting board must have reacted with the sealant because unfortunately the doll in ended up with a stained green butt Not my proudest hobby moment!

 

I keep forgetting to put black clothes on my dolls. And then I get really angry when I find out they've gotten paint on them again.

 

Update: latest and greatest mistake: I tried to take the head off my impldoll hybrid with just my finger, because my head puller was on the other side of the room. What I failed to consider in doing that was how tight impl strings. Got my finger stuck inside the head, for probably a couple minutes, couldn’t pull it out, couldn’t pull the head up to free it. Cut off blood flow, so the tip of my finger got all bulgy. Ended up shambling across the room with my finger in my girl’s head, using the head puller to yank the hook up, and then extricating my crushed finger.

it’s been like 3 weeks, maybe more, and I’m just getting feeling back in parts of that finger. Took it to a walk-in and they basically said I damaged the nerve and it’s slowly regrowing, but I should regain full feeling.

I’m never taking heads off without the proper equipment (or at least a ribbon instead of my finger) again.

 

Paying way more for a secondhand doll than I should have. Didn’t do market research/know how back then. If I had, I would’ve seen that I could’ve gotten the doll brand new for less

 

I balanced my grail doll on the pillow in her box because I only needed to turn around and grab a comb. In that split second, obviously she fell and hit her beautiful, beautiful nose. This was just a few days after I got her, and I was handling her with gloves and being extra careful... I don't know what my brain did in that moment.
She got fixed up and I love her just the same as ever but I'll never not sulk whenever I'll think about it.

 

I had a super rare modded puki, who I had done fine dye-work on and I SOLD HIM. And he vanished into the ether never to be seen in any online photos again. I wish I knew by now who had him and could see if they wanna sell him back.

 

@Lyrajean SD16 girls seem to have the narrowest feet of all the Volks resin girls for some reason. I do wish the feet were a bit bigger for proportion reasons, but I guess it's so all their 1/3 flat foot girls can wear the same shoes

Speaking of SD16 girls, my Diamond decided to take a dive without warning at her first meetup and scrape the blushing off the end of her nose.
Thankfully the resin itself wasn't damaged, and my dolly friends have very kindly offered to help patch her up next meet. We had someone acting as a spotter for every photo after that, and no other dolls fell over!

 

Thanks. I'm still kicking myself. The person who bought him hasn't been on the forum for a decade... Sigh.

 

Within 10 minutes of unboxing my 1k Volks special order order, she tipped over and chipped her special face-up

I then put here away for like 3 months because I felt slightly sick every time I looked at her.

 

For quite some time I refused to take off the heads of my dolls to insert the eyes. Managing to get the eyes in while the head is still attached (and the s-hook is in the way) was unpleasant, to say the least. Then one day I had to remove the head of one of my dolls and noticed how easy it actually was. I felt so silly because all this time I imagined that it would be super hard to get it off, when in reality it was such an easy thing to do.

 

I was messing with my guys eyelashes because I thought something had gotten caught in them and I scratched his face up right above his eye. Thankfully I was able to fix it with a little black acrylic ink but

 

Today’s silly mistake: was on the fifth layer of a faceup and accidentally sealed in a splotch of black powder around the eye and bridge of the nose because I didn’t check closely enough before spraying Ugh. I suppose it’s not the worst thing to start over as the eyebrows weren’t my favorite, but still, what a frustrating mistake.