My old-new addiction: BJDs. ♥

Hey everyone,

Finally my Japanese exam is over!  ￣Д￣　＝３
I finished it with a good feeling to it and I hope I will succeed and the result won't be too bad...!
Keep your fingers crossed for me, please, haha.

That also means - besides my first term paper - I'm having more freetime now! Yay!
Which also means - more blogposts.
My first one will be about something I re-discovered some time ago...

I hope you won't unfollow me now, because this so not at all gyaru-related or anything, haha..

First of all, I discovered BJDs (ball-jointed dolls) back in 2009 when my girlfriend got kind of addicted to them.
She spamed me with a lot of pictures of different dolls - and back then I just thought about them one thing: scary. (And I bet some of you do think that too.)

Even when she got her first own BJD two years later I was still sceptical.
He was expensive and I didn't see a meaning in it.
But slowly I came to be used to him.. and before I would realize it myself I carried him and well... talked to him. (That's sooner or later a natural thing to do, believe me..)

I came to like the DIM-doll boy called Masa very much.
I started to be interested in all the specific terms and things related to BJDs.
But back then I only wanted to have an Aiji-Minimee which DIM could produce if you had enough money...

Some pics made by Aiji of him!

At the end of last year DIM (dimdoll.com) stopped to produce Minimees. (ＴεＴ；）
So I didn't think I'd buy one anyways...
Buuuut everything came differently! Of course.

Originally I wanted to have a pair of Jeffrey Campbell's Spike Lita for my birthday from my mum.
So she gave me nothing but they money for them.
Due to several circum stances I couldn't buy the pair I liked anywhere in time.. and now they're like sold out everywhere, especially in my tiny size...

One evening, when I was still looking for some, already re-thinking where to spend the money on, my girlfriend sent me pics of a Doll Family-A BJD... and he could be an Aiji-lookalike with the right face up (the make up on the face of a doll)! I totally and immediately fell in love with him!
He wouldn't leave my head anymore... so my darling encouraged me to buy him instead of some shoes also because he was on sale due to an new years-event.
And I did. Aaaaah..! 〜(￣▽￣〜)

Here are some stock photos of him!
But of course he will come without the wig, clothes and face up.

Do you know what?
I couldn't be be happier now! I have to wait between 35 and 45 days for him to be ready to be send to my place, because every BJD is handmade.
And it's really nerv-wracking I can tell!
But I'm waiting for Alice's Collections (alicescollections.com, the place I orderd him through) e-mail that he will be shipped soon everyday already..
But it's only 13 days until now.

Well, anyways, here are some FAQs for those of you who don't have a clue!

What exactly is a BJD?
"A ball-jointed doll is any doll that is articulated with ball and socket joints. In contemporary usage when referring to modern dolls, and particularly when using the acronyms BJD orABJD, it usually refers to modern Asian ball-jointed dolls. These are cast in polyurethane synthetic resin, a hard, dense plastic, and the parts strung together with a thick elastic. They are predominantly produced in Japan, South Korea and China."

What do they look like? Do all look the same?

Well, of course not!

Their range of looks is really broad, from anime-looking painted on eyes to very, very realistic tiny humans.

Everyone could find their favourite I believe. 

Boys, girls, men and women and even anthros or furry-ones. Soom also makes many creative fantasy-dolls.

Where to buy one? Are they expensive?

There are many doll companies out there recently. Most of them are chinese or korean.

Just google them and check their homepages. My favourites are DIM, Soom, Ringdoll and Doll Family-A.

There are also many resellers out there, alicescollections for example.

And hell yes, they are damn expensive for my taste.
Starting at 150$ up to 1500$ depending on which company you choose.

Aren't adults with such dolls weird?

Well, everyone to their own likings I believe?

Some people are over exaggerting I think but most people who own BJDs are completly perfectly normal creatures, haha.

I know also some Lolitas and even Gyarus! 

Well, something which has been bothering me since I started to get deeper into the fandom itself...

Big forums like denofangels.com seem to be really nice and full of friendly people at first.

Buuut there seems to be the same damn drama as in Gyaru or Lolita or whatever! I couldn't believe that!

People do make some kind of secrets on "confession" pages about other doll owners or even - other people's dolls! Isn't that kind of ridiculous?!

I was kind of shocked and I really want to keep away from that. 

Some great artists in the fandom I can recommend to you: 

Luna Lovin's Shane.

She's the awesome and nice girl who did Masa's face up. ♥
You can find her works here: 

http://loonyaesthetics.blogspot.de/

SoftPoison's Candy.

She's a great face up and mod artist from the Netherlands! ♥
Find her awesome work here: 

http://softpoison.deviantart.com/

Anyways..
What are you thoughts and feelings about this topic? Did you know about BJDs before?
Are you maybe scared of dolls? Or do you own one yourself? (?´・ω・｀)

Maya.