Is collecting BJD's your only hobby? Which hobby came first?

Ummm... Difficult question. I have many hobbies (BJD not included); drawing, writing novels, collecting manga, taking photo, sewing and doing science (chemical) experiments. So I can say. My No.1 hobby must be experiments because I very enjoy to do and also my study's subject anyway, No. 2 is writing novel because it used to be my ex-part time job but I still can't quit to do it, even though I don't write for publisher anymore. Then No. 3 is BJD HOBBY and sewing!! Other hobbies, I do only when I have a long vacation without practice or going for lecture in university.

 

I have a hobby farm, garden and pets in addition to my bjds. My pets came first, my farm animals second, my garden third and then my bjds. I find all of my hobbies to be very relaxing.

 

I've got several hobbies, though I don't really consider my bjd customizing to be one of them- largely because I don't do the customization myself, I commission people with actual talent. The hobbies that actually take up my time are crocheting, weaving, writing, and reading. My other collections include vintage kimono, Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh stuff, and impressionist-style art depicting Paris.

 

I do some gardening, sewing, various arts and crafts, a dollhouse and shooting sports.

 

Not really. I do collect Sailor Moon items, and Dragons, mostly. But the dolls are the biggest thing, but the Sailor Moon items are a close second! I'm waiting on a SM Pullip now. If they do all of them in Pullips....I'm doomed!

 

I'm a gamer, like to read, write, play music, sculpt, I'm building my own dollhouse, and I like tabletop roleplay and am currently writing my own home campaign. There's a lot that I like to do, but I also have a habit of turning my hobby into a job. I was a game writer for some years, until I had to give it up due to illness and now I'm a doll maker.

The downside of making a job out of a hobby is that you can no longer just enjoy it. It took me some years after game developing before I could pick up a pencil and just write what I liked, instead of that nagging voice in the back of my head saying "what will your editor think of this?". Or play a game without analyzing the life out of it (this I still do, though... nasty habit ).

Ah well, that just means I'll have to find a new hobby!

 

My first hobby was Anime/Manga but together with RPGs (for consoles) mostly from Squaresoft - Square/Enix, I also play Sims 2 a while but somehow I played it irregular since three years ago, I am more into Sims 3. I had interest in BJDs because their looked like on the Pictures of some Artist I loved and found also my favorite BJD I wanted but I found out it was a expensive hobby so I stayed a while away of it until March this year.

 

Besides dolls, I really enjoy reading. I think that a big part of why I love fantasy dolls is because I like to read fantasy and mythological based fiction the best. That's not to say that one lead to the other, though; I think I just have overlapping interests.

 

I was never into dolls much as a kid because of the gender stereotyping that I was constantly avoiding, but I did end up collecting ceramic clowns! Weird choice to collect, I know. I also have a bookcase full of manga.

Other then that, I'm an artist and I do a lot of gaming.

 

I love my dolls but I also have a lot of other hobbies. I love to draw, paint, sculpt, sew, write short stories, roleplay, read manga, watch anime, play video games, cosplay, and I even have a little collection of anime figures. I think I'm around my dolls the most. They tend to be near me when I'm doing anything as if they're watching. I'm usually home with the dog and he doesn't keep me company so the dolls do that for me.

 

I have always been a reader and a gamer. During the 90s I was one of the poor TY beanie baby suckers. I collected most of their old cats before the company went and wrecked themselves. They occupy a box in the closet for now. One day they'll have a shelf again.

 

I watch movies, play games, read manga. But I also collected a whole of things. Erasers, pencils, ticket stubs, sanrio stationary, cats, nightmare before christmas memorabilia, Alice in Wonderland stuff. I guess you could say collecting things WAS my hobby. And while I was in my Alice in Wonderland phase, I discovered Alice themed BJDs and now I'm collecting dolls and bjd-sized things. I've basically stopped doing all the other stuff because this new hobby of mine eats up all my money.

 

I've always been a person with somewhat obsessive interests. When I was younger, it was learning about plants and animals. I learned about practically every type of plant or animal in North America - their appearance, where they could be found, common names and scientific names... I memorized tons of data. I don't remember half of it now, but sometimes I surprise myself by seeing some wild plant or other and remembering what it's called. As a teenager and into my 20s I become crazy about music. I would collect all the import singles by my favourite bands, on both CD and vinyl. I kept up with new bands and all the latest releases. For a while I wrote music reviews for the local newspaper. I had over 500 CDs at one point before I decided to convert my collection to digital and sell most of them.

BJDs are the latest obsession, for the past four or five years. Sometimes I wonder if I'll lose interest, but I wouldn't say my interest in music ever really went away, and my childhood interests are still echoed in my overall interest in science. So I imagine I'll hold on to the hobby for a while yet. But who knows what I'll get into in the future. But for now, BJDs definitely are the area where all of my accumulation of useless knowledge is going on. I have a lot of information in my head about the different companies, sculpts, clothing providers, et cetera. My boyfriend's the same way with Transformers, so at least we understand each other.

 

I'm an artist. I love to draw males in particular and design clothes. This goes along with my other hobby, writing. I have been forum roleplaying for at least 10 years now. All my life I've collected music boxes. I don't have a lot, only 8, but they are super nice ones and I will be inheriting at least 10 others from my parents, one of those being an over $500 music box that looks like the Grand Hotel. It's about a 1.5 feet long. Very large and made of wood. I also collect perfume bottle, mostly the miniature sized bottles but I have like 110 of those, all different, no doubles. I have a few large bottles too. I only collect high quality perfumes, no cheap drugstore perfumes. In recent years I've gotten into collecting Egyptian glass made in Egypt. I have 15 of those, one of them being a very large decantor and another being a large egg . Its also a hobby of mine to travel abroad. I've been doing that since I was a child and counting my own country and regions such as Hong Kong which uses its own currency, I've been to 26 different countries. I also always collect unique souvenirs from wherever I go. BJDs came last as far as hobbies go and it's a quickly growing hobby for me although compared to other BJD owners, I don't have that many.

 

I have other hobbies, but most can connect with the dolls in some form: sewing, art, travel, making miniatures, writing, role play, painting/drawing.

I've always been a doll enthusiast, since childhood. There's never been a time in my life that dolls didn't interest me, only the type changed. Started with stuffed animals, then baby dolls, then Barbie, then Bratz, then Living Dead Dolls, then celebrity dolls and action figures and finally BJD! I guess my first real experience with anything close to BJD was in the 6th grade, I had 18" Baby-Sitters Club dolls, who had strung arms and legs and head and were about MSD proportions, other than a big head....and I ended up repainting them because I didn't think they looked like they should have from the books. And wishing and hoping EVERY day that they'd make the boy baby sitter, Logan....and secretly hoping he'd be anatomically correct. So I guess, in the long run, I DID end up getting my 1/4 scale anatomically correct customizable doll. :P

 

My dolls are one hobby among many.

I'm a gardener, an old-school tabletop RPG player and GM (Currently playing 13th Age and running Champions, though Exalted is the real love of my gaming life. Many of my dolls are resin avatars for favorite RPG characters-), a "gamer chick", a landscape and floral photographer, a long-time Tai Chi student and an aspiring baker. Along with the dolls, I also collect 19th century photographs, antique household guides and cookbooks, as well as ammonite fossils and nautilus shells. I've built up a fairly extensive comic book collection over the years, too. (I'm a Silver Surfer and Nightwing fan-girl. )

 

Yeah, I have plenty of hobbies... although they are a little pushed to the side because of my bjd obsession, these days. I think it's all a bit inter-related for everyone. There is something that makes the dolls appealing to certain people, after all, and that is true of other hobbies: it is the same person who likes these different things.

I've always liked dolls, but my like comes and goes. But I like creating characters and I like fashion and I like things I can accessorize and I like pretty things and so... bjds are great. I like non-bjd things for all kinds of reasons, many of them different from why I like bjds, but some of them the same.

 

I have a range of hobbies that include anime, video games, manga, sewing, design, pattern making in cad etc. Without playing visual novels I never would have paid bjd's any attention or know what they were. We also collect nendoroids and figmas as well as some 1/8 figures. I imagine without them I wouldn't have seen the possibilities bjd's might have. On the other hand I rarely get to see my partner because his dads health is ailing so I imagine my first doll will help occupy me while we can't see each other.

 

I have collected dolls and doll furniture for years, others before the BJD's. I have also been an avid reader -- especially sci fi, and a traveler. I've spent a lot of time camping and canoeing, and before dolls collected camels, dragonflies and astromomical themed jewelry.
Not enough?
I also sew -- a LOT!, and have fabulous grandchildren who like to play board games. Of course, the computer sucks up time. Recently I have taken knitting back up.

 

Collecting BJDs is just one of several hobbies I have, and one of the newest. I also play video games, collect Pokémon cards/merch, draw, write, and have also gotten more involved with photography after getting involved with BJDs. All of these hobbies I've been involved with since I was a kid, they've just evolved as I grew up. So BJDs is one of my newer hobbies, especially since I never collected dolls as a child. I was more of an action figure girl.

 

I have a number of different hobbies

Collections:
Magic: The Gathering: I collect M:tG cards, and quite rapidly too! I draft once or twice a week (which means buying around 45 cards/draft) and attend pre-release events for new sets (where I usually open 90-450 cards and then win 300-600 more). This hobby was around before BJDs, and is one of the ones that sometimes competes with dolls for my hobby funds (especially when I attend multiple prereleases at once, since that alone can cost what a small BJD does!)
Warhammer 40k: My boyfriend and I both have small WH40k armies (I play Tyranids, he plays Orks), and I collect units from other armies for terrain/NPC enemies. This hobby started around the same time as BJDs, and doesn't tend to compete with them too much, mainly because there's always a long break between buying new units (since I have to paint and base things before buying anything new!). I really love the painting side of this hobby, and it complements working with BJDs, since I have lots of practice painting tiny details!

Artistic hobbies:
Sculpting: I sculpt lots of things - my own BJDs, little toys for my cousins and friends, armour for my dolls, and the like. I work with DAS clay and am constantly trying new things so I can improve. This hobby isn't too expensive, because DAS clay is quite cheap (and reusable, to an extent), but sometimes the other costs (like primer and paint) stack up a bit. I would say this hobby complements my BJD hobby more than it competes with it, since I so often make things for my dolls
Drawing: I draw in a few different mediums - pencils and markers are my favourites. I'm not super talented, but I like playing around with multimedia projects (so I might draw something and then sculpt it into a stamp and then experiment with stamping in glitter glue on black cardboard and embellishing with pencils, or something like that). I love drawing sketches of my dolls, and think they're really helping me learn to draw from life better.

Other
Fish keeping: I have a 40L aquarium with 5 glass catfish and an uncountable swarm of cherry shrimp. The tank is full of live plants, and so I spend a lot of time maintaining it - pruning back plants and encouraging them to grow in certain ways, and making sure the water quality stays optimal for my fish and shrimps. It's incredibly satisfying to cultivate a balanced aquarium, and I'm hoping to one day move on to a larger project (like the currently-empty 160L aquarium my parents own )

 

hehe as an art supply addict other than anticipating the expenses of BJD as a hobby, my most expensive hobby is probably collecting copics

I also weave bracelets and study languages (mainly Japanese, but I've dabbled in a little Korean and Spanish)

 

Painting and photography were my two main hobbies before BJDs. Now, thanks to dolls, I can add sewing and room box making to that list.
I also enjoy gaming, especially JRPGs and adventure games.

 

My dolls are basically my only hobby now since fibromyalgia has severely limited my ability to participate in my other hobbies of reading, sewing historical costumes and participating in the SCA, photography, and scrapbooking. My dolls give me something beautiful to look at even when I don't have the energy to actively "play" with them- dressing, posing, and photographing them. A lot of the time I spend online is spent on doll forums or looking at doll photos. I had one hobby lead to another in that it was another scrapbooker who introduced me to the Blythe doll customizing hobby which then led to me discovering BJD's.

 

I have been sewing and knitting for practically my whole life. Those led to making Waldorf dolls, which led to making 18" doll clothes, which led to designing knitting patterns for 18" dolls, which pretty much immersed me in the world of dolls, where a few years ago I discovered BJDs, which led to the start of my collection about a year ago. Which now consists of 3 Fairyland dolls.

 

Oh my, no. I also carve wooden dolls, Hittys mostly. I collect other dolls, sew for French Fashion dolls, collect vintage evening bags, crochet and make doll hats. I go from thing to thing.

 

I have had many hobbies in my life, most of them was collecting something or another. Then there was/is drawing and painting, reading, manga and anime, cosplaying, sewing (mostly my cosplays and my own Lolita clothes), decorating, cooking, photography, medieval fairs and archery, crafting (whatever new there is to craft), making jewlery, etc. I've tried out caligraphy and oregami. there was a time I actively plaed tabletop rpgs and when I wrote fanfics, I still read them in enourmos ammounts. I may be leaving something out.....

 

Well I've mentioned it in other threads but fiction writing is my biggest hobby :P I also play a lot of video games and collect/play the yugioh trading card game. Each of these hobbies are at least ten years old :P while BJDs have been a thing for me for probably 4-5 months now. One way or another my hobbies generally have to do with a creative process I've found

 

I have lots of hobbies. I'm a very artistic person. I draw, I paint. I love rp games like Sims and Howrse.

 

I'm a writer, actor, singer, and artist in addition to my bjds, although dolls technically were my first. I had Barbies as a kid, and I sang and imagined stories from the time I was very young. The older I got, the more I started writing down my stories. Then I started drawing the characters to give them a physical representation, which progressed back into doll representations to add to the art. I'm a part of my school's choir and theater department as well as part of an AP arts course and I'm in the middle of writing a novel! The bjds have only been a progression of all my other hobbies coming together.

 

i have always been a collector, it was American Girl things and stuffed animals as a child.

Now it's dolls (only one bjd at present), and stuff animals from various genre (Pharaoh Hello Kitty, Final Fantasy characters)

I also play video games.... and i knit, sew, bead and dye.

i have too many hobbies actually.

 

It's definitely not my only hobby, but right now it certainly is my most obsessive!
I go through periods of intense fixation on one hobby, then very suddenly another one takes over, but seems to incorporate aspects of the things that came before. They never go away, they just become things that distract me from my current #1 obsession for various amounts of time.

Doodling, coloring, painting
Personal webmastering (in the very early 2000s)
Learning to play musical instruments, marching band
Self-study of foreign languages (eventually took classes when I got far along enough in school)
Crochet, sewing for myself and fashion dolls, brief dabbling in quilting
Birdwatching, nature studies
Tropical biology studies, which became interest in disease ecology
Flyff (online MMORPG game which I can no longer play)
TinierMe (a now-defunct anime/avatar community)
Irish /Celtic music
Video Games (mainly Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing and Pokémon: things you can play for hours on end with the brain on "low" setting)
Fashion dolls, tiny figures(like Sylvanian Family) and finally I've got into BJD! Several of the previous hobbies have been useful in BJD-world so far.
I look forward to it all coming together and making sense someday.

Edit: omigosh I feel so A.D.D. compared with everyone elses' responses. D:

 

Collecting BJDs is not my only hobby. It's probably the one that's starting to consume my life the most, but I have a number of hobbies. I enjoy video games, sewing (I want to make clothing for BJDs), reading, writing sometimes, and playing with my cat. I think it is probably one of my most expensive hobbies, even though I'm just getting started. I'm not sure if I've spent more on books or trying to get going with my BJD I do have. Good question! I do know that my life would be very different if I didn't have my Lu-Wen.

 

I mainly write fiction, and read more fiction. I'd consider doll-collecting my 3rd/4th hobby after that, since I started dabbling in photography thanks to BJDs.

 

Not at all,before BJDs i was in Groove dolls hobby.
I'm also into drawing,writing,reading,sewing,knitting,crochet,some japanese fashion,play second life and study random things

 

I used to assemble Zoids before...I also draw traditionally using chinese ink... and cosplay.... aside from playing video games, surfing the internet and sleeping

 

bjd is only my newest hobby. I love to draw and play mmo games i also collect other dolls like pullips and the Disney animator dolls. so i guess dolls is my big hobby right now... well see how that goes when i have no money for games.

 

I have lots of hobbies. Nordic LARP, table top games and roleplaying are the ones that take up most of my time. But I enjoy all creative hobbies; drawing, sewing, scrapbooking and of course the Bjd hobby

 

Nope!! I'm also into drawing, doodling, reading mangas, watching animes and playing video games. I feel that this is my most expensive hobby but it's so exciting to be able to stuff (sew, make accessories, and etc.) for my dolls!!

 

Nope it isn't.
My first real collecting hobby was and still is collection music cds, dvds and goodsy from the band i like. I have over 500 music cd/dvds in my collection, which price is much higher than the one of my dollies.
My other hobbies are non exotic and costy ones

 

i'm a reader, gamer and artist. Love to write, sew and draw. I'm into manga and anime and photography. and of course bid. i love to combine the hobbies ^^....for the longest time drawing is my hobby, i draw since i can hold a pencil .....over a period of time i'm into a hobby like excessive and then it changes and my interests went in another hobby part of mine

 

I enjoy quilting a lot - my favorite is appliqué. Cooking and trying out new overly complicated recipes is so much fun. Hmm... For collections I'd say owls and beckoning cats besides my bjds. They are all three very small collections though.

 

Oh my goodness..dolls my first hobby? Not by a long shot. But then I am 60 years old so 6 decades gives one a lot of time try stuff. It is an obsession to learn . Here is a partial list starting with my young years....

Drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil, learning to crochet and hook rugs, and sew courtesy of my grandma before I was 8, making costumes from movies and books by age 13 for competitions in my little home town, water colors, acrylics and wild hippy embroidery and playing women's rugby (prop position) through age 30, (then the knees could not take the rugby anymore!), more costuming, learning to make porcelain dolls then sculpting my own one of a kind dolls through age 50 (and some even now) and ikebana flower arranging, then anime found me and through it I found bjds which is consuming me at this time. Intermediate hobbies along the way like learning to speak na'vi (from Avatar), making dream catchers, sculpting little cats, and of course my animal rescue activities in my "spare" time. Who knows what comes next?

Through it all collecting has been my touchstone, mostly weird one of a kind things like vampire mermaids, all sorts of action figures, movie props, and tons of books on natural history (Ice Age Europe is a passion), and rocks from places I have visited (unless confiscated by customs lol) Someone is going to have quite a job to do when I pass on.

 

Ah... I'm quite ashamed to say I have had many a hobby before settling on BJDs (Have I even settled?)... I draw, I make jewelry, I sing, paint (sometimes), make collages... To cut short, I'm a very crafty/DIY person. I think I love dolls so much atm because it embodies whole of those aspects, in one place

 

nope as well. BJD is just one of them.

 

Nope, collecting BJD's is not my only hobby though it does breed a lot of creativity in me. (: My first ever hobby was most likely drawing. I liked to doodle a lot when I was a kid and started to just draw my way up and improving along the way. My drawing skill has kind of diminished now since I barely draw anymore since I do other things that distract me from it (like the computer, boyfriend, and work). But I still enjoy doing it here and there. I don't really have any other hobbies except for collecting Pokemon cards here and there and collecting fortune cookie paper fortunes~ (: But nah, BJD collecting isn't my only hobby and I really don't think I collect BJDs. After having so many I WILL stop. I cannot afford to have so many and will never have that much room to keep them in anyway. :P So technically, I don't collect anyway, I just have them. x3

 

Nope not at all.

I'm a professional pirate, I dress up as a pirate for charity and sing sea shanties along with the rest of the group and cause general mayhem and destruction

Also I'm semi in the SCA, the only reason I don't go to many event is that I'm so far away.
I'm a reenactor, I'm in a medieval reenactment group as well as getting into WW2 and perhaps Viking. I'm a larper that likes to do various systems, small the better. I also mostly crew for them, hardly play the games anymore. Into gaming, things like TOR and WOW. I'm acquiring bits for a Jawa and Jedi costume for the 501st Legion and Rebel Legion. I'm also getting a mermaid tail.

I enjoy writing stories, drawing and hoping to start sculpting dolls and those posable art fur dolls. I'm also hoping to start sewing properly and make fursuits and cosplay, including historical clothing.

I'm getting into sfx makeups and prosthetic.

Last but not least I enjoy reading.

I think that's all.

 

The BJD hobby is the main one at the moment. Though in honesty I collect dolls in general, always have(The Monster High dolls are slowly growing in numbers as we speak).
Otherwise ... most of my other hobbies do involve dolls in some way. I also enjoy collecting miniatures(Which I think might have something to do with my love of dollies since they're basically miniature people), sewing, though I'm not that great at it yet, and drawing from time to time.

 

I'm also crazy about doll houses and I love to paint them and do them up. My little girls are into them as well, so they keep me busy! We also have a Highland pony and we are moving to the country side soon as we would like another. I love being outside with my children, my dogs and the pony but I love the dolls in all their forms in the winter, curled up in front of the fire, working away on them.

 

I was into gothic lolita fashion before I joined the bjd community. I still collect the clothing and participate in the community but it has been placed on the back burner.

 

The general hobbies that most people usually tend to have in this hobby. (From what I've seen.) I started with anime and manga then drawing/cartooning. I started getting into conventions at 15 or 16 then cosplaying followed that. And one marvelous day I discovered bjd! It's been nothing but fun since everything kinda blends we'll together. ❤️

 

No, dolls aren't my only hobby. I just got into collecting as an adult a few years ago, so of course I still have other hobbies. My favorites are reading, graphic design, foreign languages, music, video games, political activism, and learning about space, science, history, and anthropology. I'm not into manga, anime, cosplay, or lolita like a lot of people in the doll community tend to be, although they all seem fun.

 

Like many of you, dolls aren't my only hobby : I love drawing, sculpting, sewing, reading, playing video games

And that not my only or biggest collection neither : My most important collection is about Re-Ment stuff, and vintage Polly Pocket And I'm starting a Nendoroids collection too!

It's fun and interesting to see what each of you like to do or collect, not only the doll part

 

Hobbies....oh yeah I got them.
I like to read, draw, and write. (I have 3 stories I am working on right now.) I play video games, watch anime, and movies. (I have made a couple of anime reviews on youtube.) I am teaching myself Japanese. (日本語を楽しいですね。） I am a D.J. for my college's radio and for some reason spend tons of time reading about astrology.
Oh yeah and I collect anime figures! Here is my favorite figure http://www.denofangels.com/forums/s...-Murder-and-other-Nitro-Chiral-visual-novels!

 

No, I have many hobbys. I like sweing, cosplaying, cooking, sugarcraft, reading, playing videogames... I feel I don't have enought time to do all I want I also collct other dolls like Barbies

 

I've had a few hobbies, given growing up I had little to no interests in dolls lol.

Other than bjd, I use to buy quite a lot of manga and plushies. Though those have slowed down dramatically due to the dolls which makes my mum happy xD though I'm still quite the video gamer so that would be the only other active hobby for me.

 

Not my only hobby either. I have been into heavy metal since I was young and I imagine I will be for the rest of my life. I read a lot of manga and watch anime & I collect action figures. I have a collection of MH dolls as well. Also anyone who knows me would know I have an obsession with Loki & Thor (& Tom Hiddleston ) & I collect movies, comics etc... I find my hobbies cross over a bit as two of my bjds are in a metal band & two are Loki and Thor One of my fav hobbies has had to go on hold for a few years due to illness but one day I would love to return to downhill snow skiing.

 

Hmmm I've always loved dolls from when I was little and when I was slightly older I would look at all the beautiful porcelain dolls on the internet in all these fancy Victorian clothes (sigh). I then learnt to knit and crochet... and fast forward a few years I started watching anime and reading manga (and attempting to draw manga which utterly failed )... a lovely friend of mine introduced me to these beautiful dolls and I was totally hooked !!!!!