Shopping Questions about practice heads !

I haven’t Heard of a company that makes practice heads before, but that sounds like a good idea

I also want to try doing my own makeup and eyes and bought two heads secondhand (a 33€ head for practicing on and a 100€ head) I am not brave enough to try on my expensive one before doing other heads first, I am scared I’ll somehow mess it up.

Now I am in the process of figuring out what materials I need and searching for online stores located in Europe that sells the materials for it

 

I was lucky in finding a second hand practice head from DF-A locally, but I already had a Dollmore head I got on a sale, which I see they still have. While it's nice and "feels" safer to practice on them, I don't think they're very necessary, as long as you use all the right materials you can wipe and redo a faceup as much as you want. But if you want to feel very safe, look to see if anyone has heads in stock. I haven't seen any heads labeled as practice heads for sale, only heard they might be on taobao..and I think the only difference is that practice heads are a more "simple" sculpt?

 

They're basically just normal heads sold at a lower price point. I think they were super cheap, like $20 USD or so. Maybe the sculpting wasn't quite up to snuff with what the company wanted to sell? If you can't find a "practice head", any old cheap used head will work just as well. There's plenty of doll heads not worth much, especially older models with yellowing.

 

Dollmore were selling "random head boxes" for $50 USD a while back – they may still have them. I got 2 to use as practice heads. The "random heads" were B-grade casts that had slight faults like yellowing, rough casts or bits of the resin had fallen out in delicate areas like the corners of the eye.
As someone in Oceania, it was more affordable to buy practice heads from Asia. If you live in the US or other countries with larger groups of hobbyists, it may be more affordable to buy low-value secondhand heads to practice on.

 

DF-A was selling $20 "practice heads" years ago, but I haven't really seen anyone label any as such for a long time, I think it was maybe only ACBJD that labeled them as such as a one-off? They're not really a regular thing. I think one of my dolls also has a head that was technically marketed as a "practice" head because it came for free with a purchase originally but it's been hard to find good records of how that was exactly - sometimes companies add free "event heads" to purchases above a certain amount but I bought it second hand for cheap so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In any case, any head will do - you can look second hand locally just to also save on shipping costs, but ACBJD has cheap shipping and a couple of discounted heads in stock right now, too. If you don't mind practicing on vinyl or anime style heads, imomo or obitsu/parabox blanks are very cheap from the get go and appear even cheaper second hand often enough as well. You can even use a plastic egg or a paper cup to practice painting in 3D, those cost near to nothing

 

Yep I also have a DF-A practice head I got from acbjd. Honestly the same as a regular head. Quite cute too haha. I’d just get a secondhand or cheap head. They’re the same.