Failed Attempts at Face-ups and How They Make You Feel

I've been doing faceups for over a year now, since I very first got my first doll (Days after even). I wasn't frustrated at first when I did the first faceup. It was bad and he looked he was a really bad cross dresser, but I was happy that I'd tried it. Then I tried to tune it down for the second, and it was still bad. Then the third I wiped before I'd even finished. Then the forth and the fifth... I actually cried at one point cause I felt like I had ruined him. He looked like he hadn't slept in days for on the 4th try and before I knew it I had spend a whole week of afternoons trying to get it right.
Since then I've been really surprised by my improvement lately. It was just those first 20 or so failed attempts that almost made me give up haha

 

Sometimes...I end up like this --> after finishing a few layers and then finding out that I did something wrong with the acrylic or a tiny little piece of dust had got caught somewhere a layer or two under.
Then I go relax elsewhere, wipe it all off, and try again.
I almost gave up once...I had about four do overs where the faceup required several colors blending together. The point of failure was always during the acrylic stage way after the blushing is done. But I had no choice and worked my hardest to finish him.

I'm also finding myself to be making less and less mistakes the more I do where in the process I gain a better eye at scanning the head as a whole.

 

Well lets see I have 5 dolls and I have done my two girls' faceups. I did them multiple times each, Maitea my first girl has full body burns, I washed her off and tried again about 1/2 a dozen times on various parts of her body till I was happy. My "new" girl is still unfinished. She spent a year in socks in the back of my closet because my attempts at faceups frustrated me so. I finally did one yesterday, not the best job and will probably be wiped sooner than later, but I want her back together and it is not that bad. But I understand frustration, you get it good and then screw it up somehow, I have issue with eyebrows I am horrible at them. But I feel so frustrated when I screw up and then I have to spend all that time washing off the doll. Hence why I am just leaving the one she has on now .

 

I'm still trying to get the hang of faceup techniques. My first one was just... yeah lol.

And what really sucks about mine, is that my doll has a really yellow body. (from dolkot)
I don't know if I should attempt to use some kind of blushing on the rest of her too, or if it'll come out as bad as her face. OTL

 

Hrm, well, as I have been an artist for a good while before I started doing face-ups, the problem I've run into so far is that I'll be perfectly pleased with the face-up for a day before looking at it and repressing the urge to bang my head into a wall because I dislike what I did. XD
Thankfully, this has only happened once or twice, and the current case is going to be fixed.

Still, it's frustrating. XD

However, I am pretty happy with what I've managed to produce so far.

Here's my very first face-up attempt:


I never finished it because I hated it and had to redo it. XD

Here's my latest face-up for comparison:


Okay, they're very different, but to me I see improvement! >_>
(Sorry for the large pictures)

 

I find that every time I try to change/improve a faceup, I mess up. I honestly have gotten to the point where I have a rule that I am not allowed to touch faces lol. I have a friend of mine help. I am waiting to get a free head to use as a practice head. I definitely need to be able to fool around more so I can figure it all out.

 

What's frustrating about failing a face-up for me is undoing all the work and having to do it over. Sadly, you can't properly remove only part of a face-up (I've tried with ill results...) so even if you like one part, it has to go too.

So you spend what feels like forever on a face just to have it be unbearable and you wipe it anyway. >___<

 

I have a practice head I've been working on as I wait for my new Soom Shale, and as irritating as it is when I mess up, it just makes me want to try again. Maybe not that day/night/week, but always try again!

 

I COMPLETELY understand where you're coming from! I'm currently in the process of removing the 3rd face-up I've done on my MNF Dark Elf Soo, and it's soooo frustrating! It's like everything will be going wonderfully, then BAM! A HUGE mistake that ruins the whole thing, and I have to start over. But like at least one very wise person already said, you just have to keep moving forward. I love doing face-ups for my dolls, and I fully intend to continue doing so in the future.

 

just found this thread.
I've been painting resin heads for 6 yrs now and painted vinyl before that.
The biggest challenge for me was the difference in the materials.
I've had some major trials and tribulations along the way.

I learned ...
>black pastels inside the mouth line...not a good idea...*shudder*
>if you don't matte seal lips first, the gloss will take them off....(this was a hard hard lesson...15 hours ruined by the final step)
> that no matter what they say...MSC is still the best sealer and worth the money
> if you leave your work uncovered...the cat WILL find it.
>eye wells...omg...they will chip with too much inside pressure from the eye..(6 hours to repair)
>you cannot take off only the lips if you use mulitple layers of sealer....*sigh* ...that was a start over too.
>shake MSC until your arms feel like they will fall off and never use it when the humidity is over 50%.

Every single one of these things I learned because of a mistake. Most of which lead to a wipe and a restart.
Fortunately, the years of making mistakes has made me faster at repairing them.

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein

Egads that is so true.

 

When I fail at a faceup... it makes me dislike the sculpt. It's a terrible disease. I've had to sell dolls because of it! I will never again be able to look at an AngelHeim Zion and feel my stomach drop, because I remember how horribly that faceup came out... Ugh! Just thinking back on that head makes me feel terrible!

Fortunately, that disease hasn't affected me since the days I started doing faceups. Now if I don't like something I stop before the train completely leaves the track, clean the piece, and start again. And I think I've made great progress in developing my skills. The only thing that practice can't help me with is mastering the quirks of each kind of sealant... gotta do more research on MSC, ZM, and purity seal...

Since other people posted pictures, here's a really old faceup I did, and here's my most recent. It's hard to compare the two since they are very different in terms of style, but... there's a big difference, imo.

 

O my, I did some pastelwork late last evening and it looked great...but now in a better, natural light...

 

cyberspacegirl, that has happened to me too! One warm day, I was so pleased with how a faceup was turning out, I was so into it, I didn't want to stop. So I kept working even though the sun went down... and when I woke up the next morning ready to restring my boy's head on to his body, I was all what have I done?! The blushing was so unnaturally dark! Now, when the sun goes down, I no longer do pastel work, only paint. And I no longer spray at night either, after a little gnat landed on a hand after I blushed it and got stuck in the sealant... getting it off wasn't fun, especially because I wanted to save the blushing I did on that hand...

 

Well I've finally done my first one, and for the most part I'm happy with it. Except I can't stand the eyebrows and I put way too much color on the cheeks and as eye shadow, also its all rather messy and very uneven its actually kind of funny looking I think. I plan to try again soon as finals are over. This actually made me really proud, I figured it would be a lot worse!

Well here it is I'm very happy with how the ears and lips look, the eyeliner is actually kinda nice in my mind too, but I really need to practice!

Also sorry about the shiny pic and wonky eyes as I was putting them in I realized the sealant was still kinda wet so she also has smears around her ears.

 

my first was horrible. so was my second, third, fourth,.... i have this block in my head to either get the personality to come out in the face up or it just does not work no matter how hard i try. i also study certain aspects of face ups that i like. how can i get that effect? its all a learning and building experience. runs in sealer? yep. overworking pastels is a bad one for me. now i have to erase a face up i just did because a naked spot just appeared. sealer issues. *sigh* but i am getting better every time and i am proud that i have even gotten this far when it took me almost a year to actually try on my first head

 

I haven't taken pictures of my practice face-ups, ever. I have a spare Luts event head I bought only for the purpose of practicing when I first picked up this hobby. Mostly because I came from sculpting clay and using glaze to these 'new' materials that definitely don't respond the same way. XD But my first attempts were.... *facepalm*

Of course, it's gotten better with practice, and two of my dolls have faces I've done (even though I really want to re-do one of them now that I re-did the other)

But eyebrows.... Yeesh.... I don't use a stencil like I have read so many other people do. I free-hand it, but I first work up the shape on the sealed head with a very light grey water-colour pencil, so that I can adjust the shape, the length, etc... Before I start worrying about anything else. And then I blush along and over the pencil line and work from there. I find the pencil line really helps me because I don't want the straight 'no expression' brows that I see on a lot of dolls, even two of mine. I don't particularly like them because it doesn't really give a sense of emotion. I have currently got a guy with what I like to call Angry!brows, because that's the way he is around almost everyone. He is growly and unsociable and annoyed with other beings in general. Giving him the straight brows I see on a lot of other dolls just wouldn't convey at a glance that "This is not a happy chappy..."



See? You can tell, just looking, that he is Not Amused. And that's as he should be. My other doll that I just re-did doesn't have eyebrows at all. Its sort of become a thing. It would distract from his face, which is already busy enough with swirling patterns. So he's never had eyebrows even though originally I had planned on them. But yeah, I still practice, there's still DEFINITELY room for improvement. *nod*

 

Ahh. When I get my first doll, I believe that I will be too frightened to ever try a face up.
I can barely draw. First attempt at a drawing tablet, with about five minutes of drawing, ended up with a girl who reminded everyone shown of Sadako from The Ring. Nice to know that I have a talent in drawing things from nightmares. It tends to happen quite a bit, and I'm scared that if I ever attempted a face up, it will be a more frightening doll than Chuckie.

My art student best friend just offered to try...

 

Doing face ups for me is a little tricky, considering I don't really have characters in mind for my dolls. But the ones I did do, they look pretty bad, but since both of them have hair that covers quite a bit of their face, you can't really tell how bad it looks lol. I'm just happy that I tried it, and even if they don't look great, It's a part of me ^^

 

I was 99% done with a faceup today.
Decided to put a biiiiit more gloss on her bottom lip.

Nope, there's color on the brush from where I glossed the eyebrows. At this point I'm tired of doing faceups so I fix it half-heartedly and it looks kind of terrible. Yo's are really hard to do.

 

Awwww, seeing all of these humble beginnings is making me feel less awful about my own .

I have no art background, unlike a lot of people here, and I have hands that tend to tremble all the time, so this tends to be a bit of a challenge, lol. I DO however do custom work on another OT doll, Blythe, and my faceups for them are pretty snazzy (if I don't say so myself!) so when I got my first BJD (about a year into customizing Blythes) I thought, "hey, I can handle this, it's basically the same thing, right? I don't even have to carve anything!"

Haha, oh how wrong you were, Past Sloane. Surprisingly, doing BJD faceups is 110% not the same thing as doing a Blythe's, and not just because they're different materials. I won't go in-depth about it (this isn't the place) but I found out quickly that the two take entirely different skill sets. I'm slowly improving, but here's 'ole Firsty:


First BJD Faceup! by winksandgiggles, on Flickr

And then my third attempt (second was on a Hujoo, which are OT here):


ADAD 71/366 by winksandgiggles, on Flickr


On a side note, does anyone have any tips for steadying one's hands? I've seen one for bracing your pinky finger on the side of the face but that only works for me like 30% of the time

 

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post, but I think this is about right.I feel like my face-ups have been improving, I even liked some of them! But today I went to my big computer folder of other artists Face-ups, and while I normally find them very inspiring, I look at these wonderful pictures and I simply can not fathom how my skills could possibly ever reach that sort of talent. I thought I was getting better, but when I look at the sort of image I was trying to achieve, it looks wrong and just bad >

 

A couple of years ago I had a freak accident with some super glue on my first faceup attempt (that I worked really hard on). The super strong magnet in this doll's head fell off so I attempted to glue it back. But the glue got stuck so I pointed it away from the doll's head unto a safe piece of paper away from the head. And, somehow, that frikken thing squirted out in such awkward angle which happened to land right all over the doll's face, my desk and some on my windowsill. Any person watching would have thought that I just did it on purpose seeing the remarkable way it hit that target like it did. Heck, it even took me some time to register what just happened. I can tell you that I honestly shed a bit of tears over that.

Here's a picture I kept to always remind me of what happened (hey it keeps me humble XD) :




Thankfully, I laugh about it now. But man, that totally took the wind out of my sails when it happened.

 

O my, ahyu, Murphy's law at work.

I did a face-up in just pastels and pencils and had someone else spray it, because of my pregnancy.
Finally a face-up im completely satisfied with.
Alas there are some black dust particles on the MSC right in the middle of her face. And freckles do not fit the characther. (nor the skin color, never seen freckles on such a dark skin).

 

My first two BJD faceups were on Hujoo babies, one of which was an epic fail. I ended up wiping it clean before I'd even finished it. Then I moved on to my resin TongTong. I was going for an Egyptian style eye..
WIP - Mikah by JinxKloe, on Flickr

Again, fail! The brows were wrong, the black liner was already chipping and the blue eye shadow attempt had to go. Clean the face and try again. I was much happier with the second try.

Mikah by JinxKloe, on Flickr

Next up was Quintus, she took two tries too but I'm pleased enough how she came out.

Tallulah says hi by JinxKloe, on Flickr

It can be very frustrating. Sometimes you just need to take a deep breath, put the head away and come back to it later.

 

I did my first one a couple weeks ago, and it actually wasn't too bad except for the eyebrows being too thick, but I figured I could fix that later on. Then as a final step I went to gloss the eyeliner, lips, etc. and didn't notice it was a flat base white coat D: so everything had this weird white layer. Ended up removing the entire thing and will redo it soon

 

The first time I did a faceup for a guy doll. xD GAWD. His eyebrows were hideously thick (because, hey, thicker brows = REAL GUY, right? -facepalm-), not to mention I gave him awkward brownish lips, and...ugh. It was all compounded by the fact that he went for a while without a wig to cover ANYTHING up. xD Hoboy. Happy to say I've improved quite a bit in my first year of dolly faceups.

 

Welp, having read up like crazy before even attempting my first faceup, I anticipated it would be HOLY CRAP SO DIFFICULT and I'm going to suck at it!
Happy mistake, I actually found doing them enjoyable! I'm not that great but they're fun to do anyway so no complaints.
First one turned out fairly alright, though gloss darkens colors more than I expected and what is smooth shading...? Second was a bit of a disaster, looked better when I was working on it than when I was looking at it the next day. I'd actually done full body blushing with the second faceup since it was on a tiny, but I was so unhappy with the entire thing that I just didn't even want to bother taking a fullbody photo haha.
OH WELL, that's what practice is for, I guess!

 

Oh, man. Humble beginnings don't even cover it. I used to put eyebrows half way up the forehead, I would use too heavy a hand at eyeliner [it looked more like a thick black squiggle], my eyelashes looked like crayon marks, the eyeshadow looked like it came straight from the 80's, and my blushing was splotchy at best.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c25/superdollfies/pimp-diva.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c25/superdollfies/_kiba1.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c25/superdollfies/Lox2.jpg

I can tell you that even now, 6+ years after my first faceup, I still have some suck-tastic days. There are times when I will attempt up to 3 faceups on the same doll, spend hours on each, and something inevitably goes wrong. And there are other days when one try is enough and it's just right.

My biggest frustrations are always eyebrows and airbrushing. I've learned that a light hand, and propping your pinky to counter balance your hand's shaking, work wonders. Also, choose your direction for when you blush eyebrows. When you want a softer look, start laying on pastel from the outer tips of the eyebrows and work your way in. And for a stronger brow, begin laying pastel from the inside and work your way out towards the tips. Always use a clean eraser and never press too hard.

soft brow
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c25/superdollfies/IMG_4827.jpg

strong brow
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c25/superdollfies/9b5a5d18-1.jpg

 

I'm rather terrified to try faceups, myself. I bought a Monster High doll specifically to practice on, but despite getting her face clean and prepping her as much as I could prep her, she's just sat on a stack of CDs for the past week as I put off trying it out....

I'm usually a strictly 2D artist and have only managed to make one sculpture piece I have been happy with in my entire life, so it's a daunting thing to tackle. Especially considering my visions for her future are so bright and there is no way I can accurately capture what's in my head.

 

I'm pretty comfortable with my ability to paint now, but it's driving me crazy that I can't make anything even! My face-ups make me very happy as long as I don't compare the two halves of the face. The eyebrows are always crooked and the eyelashes never seem even to me. The eyebrows drive me crazy because even when I use a template they come out uneven. It's really disheartening to have done something beautiful and been unable to match it.

Incidentally, if anyone has tips to get symmetry, please link me the thread.

I suppose that just means more practice.

 

Honestly? Failed face ups make me feel good! They show that I have learned something from whatever mistake I've made, and they show that I have enough sense to fix what I know looks bad

 

Oddly enough, I seem to have less problems with doing a face-up on a small head (like, Lumedoll Lucas or Blaze) than a larger one. And as for the small heads, it works really well. One thing I can't seem to get right are the eyebrows, though. I just redid Lucas' entire face-up (not only for the eyebrows) and at some point, also gonna redo Blaze's. Failed attempts at face-ups (well, what I perceive as failed) usually make me kinda exasperated, like "d'uh, now I gotta do it all over again - that sucks" - cos I don't like having to wait for the MSC to dry properly when I've finished a layer and spray MSC on it so as not to ruin it later.

Gonna try acrylics for the first time in a couple of days (or weeks), so let's hope that turns out alright cos if not, I'll probably have to do Lucas' face-up all over again and this time, I really like the shape of his eyebrows.

 

I am attempting a robot-like steam punk look, but I did it at night, and when I woke up I hated it. So I'm gonna do it again. And again, and again until I get it right. If it were my other two dolls I'd be pissed, but Constantine was a gift doll and really is my "play around with shit" boy.
Here's my failed attempt.

 

I watched all the tutorials, and read everything I could before I started, thinking it would be easy.
I failed so hard! I had no idea how awful I would be.
Even my second attempt/re-do's for these heads are horrible, but I feel like I got a baby step better!

Here is my first attempt:

My second/better(?) I need to re-re-do Chen/Ron's eyebrows again someday!

I may re-do them a third time some time in the future!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~
11/24/2013

I did completely re-do Ron's face up, so he's not so "surprised" looking; but still needs re-done again someday:

 

this is my first failed faceup, to be honest the fact that a former friend mocked it and any faceup i did on the doll after really hurt. i see it as a start and i take a completely different approach to them now.


my new work, i still wanna get better but i will defend it if anyone tried to mock it now.

 

^This was my first attempt at eyelashes. I used watercolor pencil, and took hours getting the eyelashes even and I was so proud... and then I took a picture, and saw she looked drunk, among other things. I still cringe thinking back on the fact that I shared this while I was still on my high.


This is my most recent attempt, on the same doll, a couple of months later. It's nowhere near professional, and I'm still frustrated with my eyebrow ability but I can hide that under her wig. But just getting the eyelashes how I want them is such a huge thing for me. Also I make the excuse for myself that I'm working on a pukifee-sized doll, surely an msd or something must be easier (maybe...). Basically, though, comparing anything with that first one makes me feel loads better!

 

Failed faceups don't really bother me that much. I show improvement with every faceup I do,so faceups are one thing I'm positive I can master if I can just get enough practice. I did the faceup for the doll in my avatar,and it's far from perfect. But it's also far from the disaster my first faceup was.

 

I'm depressed about my last attempt. My first faceup I did last year, but due to circumstances it got left unfinished and I wanted to redo it this year. It wasn't a bad faceup but it had issues and I thought I could do better with what I learned.

Nothing went right. The pastels just keep acting weird for me. One cheek would blush and the other would blush apart from one spot where the pastel just wouldn't go. I'm just hoping it's the sealant and that I'm not just going to have this problem with this head. Also there's an airbubble in the inner part of her eye which just picks up pastel dust and leaves a nice dark pink mark in her eye. I have no idea how to fix it.

And then attempting to do the eyeliner failed. The paint didn't want to thin properly and the watercoloured pencil came out all pale and grainy. Tried drawing an eye crease and the same thing happened. Ergh. I just decided to consider it practise at this point and thought I'd put some eyeshadow on and it just looked ridiculous, even though last time I was able to do it really well. Of course it could have looked stupid because of the messy eyeliner making it look worse.

Wiped it now and kinda feel down about trying again. I just hope the sealant was the problem with the blush and it's not just my doll head having some weird issue, cause I seem to remember it having a problem like this last time but I'm not sure. Also the airbubble in the eye I don't know how to fix. I don't want her to have a dark pink dot in her inner eye.

 

I just started my first face up a couple of days ago and it came out so bad! I'm so completely discouraged! I don't think there's anyway to save it and I'm ready to just wipe it and send it out for a face up ):

Rinoa: I totally get how you're feeling. Maybe put it away for a bit. /: I totally want mine to be done already, but I just can't bring myself to keep going on it. I'm having the same problem with grainy watercolor pencils. They just won't go on in a smooth line ):

 

Something motivational, perhaps:

I always say you shouldn't expect too much of yourself from the first faceup. We all do our share of research but, in the end, it's nothing like we ever imagined. You only gain experience through practice and there's no way around it. It is similar to developing artistic skills, you have to stay at it and work on your mistakes. No use doing a million faceups when you make the same mistakes with every one, right? Recognize your errors, analyze what you're doing wrong, capitalize on it by finding ways to improve.

One of the best ways of tackling the daunting path of improving is a confident and optimistic mind-set. Frustration never brings you forward, neither will discouragement. So stay at it and stay positive, and if everything seems to go wrong and you don't know what else to do, then distancing one's self from a project is the best way to getting a fresh perspective. Focus on other things for awhile, you'll come back refreshed and armed with new motivation!

Hope this was helpful or interesting for some of you, we all have trouble in the beginning but we also need the will to carry on!
So grab that doll who has had a faceup you've never really been proud of but were too scared/preoccupied/lazy to re-do and get cracking!
You CAN improve, and you will!
It just takes time....

 

I personally have found that face-ups like anything... take practice. I know that practicing face-ups on blythes, hujoos, and even repainting monster high dolls aren't exactly the same thing but in the end all the practice I had from doing a ton of those ended up helping me with my bjd face-ups. Even redoing your doll's face up several times helps. I've re-done the doll I first face-uped probably 20 times by now and I'm still practicing things.

 

It irritates the heck out of me but seeing the improvements add a lot of plus points! It's annoying when it gets splotchy and you have to clean and recoat, clean and recoat. Otherwise, to slowly gain a steady hand is awesome, truly.

 

I have been doing faceups for almost five years now, and I'm just getting to a point were I don't end up curled on the floor weeping with frustration during the process (well, maybe not that dramatic all the time). It does take practice, a lot of it. At this point, I have found the paints, brushes and technique that suit me, and so things are much easier than they once were. With every strength I gain though, I find another weakness that needs to be focused on.

Right now, I'm working on getting better with eyebrow placement. It is the bane of my existence, especially since I'm terrible at seeing symmetry. I'll get done with a faceup and realize that I did the eyebrows totally wrong. So frustrating!

 

Going to be doing my first faceup soon. I HAVE A FEELING A PICTURE WILL END UP HERE LOL

 

Today I tried acrylics for the first time (my previous pastel-based faceups didn't get to that stage, they were so awful I just wiped and started over).

Instead of mixing the acrylics with the extender, I mixed it with the gloss. Because apparently I have reading comprehension fail and all labels look the same.

No wonder the acrylic looked...shiny.

The faceup is probably a bust anyway but no wonder the acrylic was drying out faster than I thought it should.

Has anyone else done stuff like this?

 

Whoops. I think I may have beaten you in the "terrible at reading" department. I once mistook my brush cleaner for extender...on a good faceup too!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Not mixing acrylics but I bought a whole bunch of MSC gloss instead of matte and lost the receipt for it.

So now I've got a whole bunch of cans sitting around that I can't do anything with-- I waited three hours thinking the MSC was just taking a long time to dry too, haha.

 

Why not sell the MSC on eBay? Surely, someone needs gloss, right?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

First can of Liquitex sealer I bought was supposed to be matte but turned out to be gloss. Amazon goofed royally and sent me the wrong can. I didn't notice that on the can. I didn't look that closely at it, big mistake, so the first time I sprayed 3 heads they sprayed very glossy. Unfortunately it dried very hard. Of course 2 of the heads I was sealing were my Miro green and blue ones, and of course when I went to take it off the dye on my Miro dolls stripped some right along with the Liquitex. For the record all I used to strip it off was W&N Brush cleaner and yet somehow I probably lost 1/3 of the color on their faces as a result. I was none too pleased. I don't know if it was the gloss sealer or the W&N but something didn't play nicely with the dark Miro dye. I thought Miro resin was colored all the way through? Apparently not. Both dolls are definitely NS skin under their dye and it now shows right through the deep blue and green. I thought about re-dying them but then wondered if they might not end up matching the bodies at all given I am not that experienced at dying, so I decided not. I have plans to face up both dolls in an art style anyway. I want to do some pretty intensive body art on them so likely when I am done it won't show anyway but that's the last pair of really dark BJD's that I intend upon getting anytime soon. I love my Miro big girls but if I had known that they might strip that much just from taking off some sealer I don't think I'd have gotten them. I've used the Liquitex matte sealer since sans issues, but that gloss sealer, it's truly horrible stuff, nearly impossible to remove once it's on, and I will never, ever touch it again.

 

The first time I used MSC to seal a face-up I didn't shake it enough, and covered the entire face-up with white flakes -_- I had to completely redo it, and then I always sprayed a bit of MSC on a sheet of paper before using it on a doll.

 

I once forgot to seal my final layer of (dark) pastels on the eyes and lips, so when I glossed them it was like water, spreading the color around unevenly! It was my first faceup EVER though, but I still felt pretty dumb. I also have touched MSC to see if it was all the way dry yet when it wasn't and then I had to redo everything! Now I know to just WAIT until there's no way it could possibly still be wet!

 

I can't really use ebay and shipping aerosols is such a hassle ; ~;
I might just donate it to my neighbourhood game workshop, actually!

 

You could try putting a layer of matte sealant over the shiny acrylic paint. That usually will mattify anything under it. XD

 

One time in the middle of a face up, I went to blend some pastels with a q-tip
However, one of the q-tips I had used to clean the faceup with and was covered in brush cleaner got mixed up in the pile and not thrown away. So I smeared brush cleaner all over the face up instead and I had to redo it from scratch.

 

My first two faceups were horribly orange and my third one was way over blushed though I liked everything else about it except that my WS doll looked like she had an ns head -.- I've also touched wet msc several times in the beginning to so I too just wait a little extra just to be sure it's dry


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Once I used blue nail polish remover to take a faceup off.... It dyed the resin a pale blue.. Thankfully I was able to clean it all of eventually. I've also touched wet MSC, sprayed my arm with it, and dramatically over blushed a face up until it was hot pink.

 

My very first doll, a 60cm Obitsu, I used nail polish for her lips! Thankfully, the stuff came right off and she now has a proper face up but that was a pretty dumb move.

 

It could have been worse, you could have accidentally drawn a penis on your doll's face

 

On my very first doll, I loved the company faceup and didn't want to remove it. However, she was missing something. Freckles! I figured, heck, I can manage that much. Yes, doing the freckles was easy and it looked great! But then, being the silly n00b I was then, before I knew pretty much anything about customizing BJDs, thought I could use ANY kind of sealant. So I used some terrible stuff I don't even remember the name of, that I had gotten from my art teacher. When I sprayed it, it was practically like glue! It was chunky and ridiculously thick. You can only imagine shock and horror that spread through me when I went to clean it off. Bye bye to the perfect faceup. The doll herself was fine in the end, but I still cringe at myself for doing something so stupid. Know what you're doing before you do it, kids!

 

The first time I made a Faceup... I used the MSC so close to the doll's face that it ended up a really, really, REALLY thick and hard coverage with stains and marks everywhere. It seems I can't read structions at all...