BishonenHouse Steve and Friends
(Archived from DenofAngels.)
Post Date: Jun 7, 2016 - Updated: 6-20-2025
BishonenHouse Steve and photo © @donnkinney
Perhaps you saw them at the 2016 PNW BJD convention? Anyone else have one of these cool dolls? =D
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Ordering page and other useful links:
Patreon: Exclusive updates, tutorials and dolls.
Video on changing expressions
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The current line up of characters are:
BishonenHouse is a one artist company run by a cool guy named Donn Kinney who sculpts, casts and paints his cool dolls! His dolls can be bought as kits, finished dolls, or limited fullsets depending on when he makes them. The characters are his own and are part of his comic/world titled Break Step Velocity that's drawn by the cool Denys who also shares the patreon.
Doll kits: Doll kits come with all the parts of the doll, one or two face plates, some eyes, 2.5mm elastic and S-hooks. They require sanding, painting, stringing and all that fun stuff! Teeth parts can also be purchased for open mouth faceplates.
Finished dolls: Finished dolls are dolls that were sanded and strung and had face-ups and body blushing. The limited fullsets were all finished up with clothes or costumes. (Steve is the only one with a limited costumed fullset that was sold in a limited number that I know of.)
Costumed/Bounty hunter dolls: You could acquire a costumed "Bounty Hunter" doll through the patreon reward system along with other BishonenHouse and doll related stuffs.
This was one of the only ways to get a Bounty Hunter version of his dolls. (Through an annual Patreon pledge) Spade, Vince or Nails were the 3 dolls who were made with bounty hunter sets in very limited numbers.
How to order/obtain a BishonenHouse doll:
Donn used to open pre-orders for a sculpt about once or twice a year, they could be purchased on a layaway through the Bishonenhouse store. Kits were also randomly available there or on the patreon, usually after pre-orders were completed. But the best way to find out about pre-orders/sales is to watch Donn's social media pages (Patreon/Instagram/tumblr/facebook) or subscribe to Donn and Denys' patreon. ($4 gives you access to early updates.) You can also contact the artist too through E-mail. (It's not listed here to prevent spamming, you can find their E-Mail on their tumblr blog, or the Patreon. Remember this is an individual artist with a busy life like you and me, not a company. Just one artist, so don't be pushy. :) )
The stringing technique Donn recommends uses five strands of elastic versus the normal two for other dolls. Two loops for each leg, one loop for the arms. (A tutorial can be seen/downloaded on the patreon page!) The boxes the kits and dolls come in are sometimes screen printed by Donn and feature Denys' cool art! First release pre-orders usually came with an exclusive face plate that wasn't available through other means other than scrap sales on patreon. (Like Mira's sleeping expression. Steve and Vince share the same body type. The only difference is Vince has thicker more muscular arms.
Steve, Vince, Spade, and Nails come with underwear hip joints, You could buy anatomical hip joints in the BishonenHouse Steve store when they were in-stock.
There were four Patreon exclusive faceplates for Steve:
Two "Burtonesque Steve" plates. Closed mouth and Open mouth
And Two "No-shave November" Bearded Steve plates. Closed mouth and Open mouth giving him a total of 18 expressions.
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Neck circumference: 8.5cm
Total Shoulder width: 11cm
Upper shoulder joint circumference: 8cm
Upper arm circumference: 6cm
((Vince upper arm circumference: 7.2-7.5cm))
Wrist circumference: 4.5cm
Leg height from in-seam: 22cm
Leg height from in-seam: 21.5cm
Upper arm circumference: 6.5
Height: 46.3; w/mohawk: 49.5
Back (excluding arms): 8.5
Arm length (to wrist): 16.5
That's about the basics of these cool dolls, better to check out the artists blogs and stuff to learn more like how they're made and how cool they are. =D