BJD! Pro-artist hobbyist with no patience for recasts. // 🔞 // Please do not re-upload or modify my pictures for confessions, memes, or any other purpose. // Pillowfort // Flickr // not dolls: @snowgray
Please do not edit or re-upload my doll photographs for any reason, including memes or confessions.
I can definitely answer questions about...
---> Volks dolls
---> general/intro BJD stuff
---> sanding/restringing/bodyblushing BJDs
---> avoiding recasts/safe shopping for BJDs
---> why and how recasts are harmful
---> English-speaking BJD community history in the last ~14 years
I can somewhat answer questions about...
---> BJD faceups
---> oldschool Delfs and early Fairyland and Iplehouse dolls
---> Ruruko, Kikipop
---> identifying mystery sculpts
I can try to point you toward a more knowledgeable person about...
---> playline, Blythe, or antique dolls
---> resin matching (outside of Volks)
---> newer or more indie BJD companies
I also highly recommend that you join DoA (Den of Angels) and ask questions there. DoA is a forum dedicated to BJDs, not an AOL chatroom reskin or a social media hellscape being repurposed as a place to store information. My DoA username is snowgray and you can 100% PM me there any time.
Useful posts I’ve made:
About recast BJDs (2020)
About avoiding buying a recast (2020)
About ordering periods (2021)
About buying dolls economically (2014)
About doll photography (2014)
I am a pro-artist hobbyist! I generally block recast owners and recast promoters.
My main social media presence is Pillowfort. I also have a Flickr. I also have Instagram and Twitter, but please continue to abandon those cursed sites.
If you need my attention on Tumblr, please feel free to @ me or send a message. Replies may come from my non-BJD Tumblr, which is snowgray. Thanks!
Blythes are not BJDs, just FYI. Both varieties of doll are amazing and beautiful, but they're not the same.
For Blythe:
IIRC, the first Blythe with Chocolate skin was 20th Anniversary Neo Blythe “Twenty Years of Love.” She was ¥32,890 when she came out, which was close to $300 at the time, but the yen has tanked, so she's less expensive now. You can find her popping up on Mandarake or Dollyteria, which are generally reliable resellers for both Blythes and BJDs.
In 2024 there was Love Jaylah, and she was in stock until quite recently. At ¥18,500, she was about $120 plus shipping.
In the slightly lighter Latte skintone, recent releases were Suri Sustainable in 2022 and Zyanya Remembers in 2021.
IDK how difficult it is to get these outside of Japan, but in Japan, all of the dolls I've listed other than the 20th Anniversary gal went on sale for less than their retail price at various stockists, and I have the 20th Anniversary doll, bought from Mandarake at less than retail price.
If you like the Blythe aesthetic but want a more entry-priced doll, Pullip recently started making "Crafting Dolls" to be customized. There isn't a darker version yet, but there are instructions online for spray painting or dying. Harmonia Bloom, made by Good Smile (current makers of Blythe) is also Blythe-ish and has had a tan skin release of a blank doll for customizing, but at a higher price point.
For BJDs, a lot of progress has been made in the last ten years at convincing dollmakers to produce dolls in darker resin colors. Not all resin colors are available all the time, so you do have to keep an eye out for when order periods are available, but here are some companies that offer darker resin:
Impldoll
DreamingDoll (order periods only)
Luts
Iplehouse (make an account to see the Doll Choice options and order period, which iirc is monthly)
SartoriaJ
Fairyland (Deep Ebony is suspended at the moment but they've said it will return after some other special resin color order periods)
There are lots more darker resin options; these are literally the ones I could recall easily, but there are many other companies and indie brands that offer more! Joining Den of Angels might help you find more experts in the indie doll area. I don't know where the Blythe people hang out anymore... probably on Discord?
I think the other thing to remember is that Blythes are adult collector dolls, and come at an adult collector doll price. BJDs are customizable art collector dolls, again for adults. They are more expensive than playline dolls. It's okay if that's not in your budget at the moment! Lots of BJD collectors wait and save up, and there is a thriving secondhand BJD market. Buying a recast doll means taking away from the artist who sculpted the original, both in terms of their literal livelihood (they don't make enough money, and therefore can't continue making dolls as a business), and their motivation.
It really sucks to feel excluded from something you want to do. I hope this post can help you find the perfect doll for you!
Piper's new look is complete! Took a few more days than the other girls' dresses because this crocodile/mermaid/scale stitch is a bit more labor intensive than the more basic crochet style I usually default to for this sort of freehand project, but I got very inspired by her flower crown and wanted to make her into a little peachy petal princess 🧡 I am SO pleased with how it turned out. I ended up doing this outfit as a separate skirt and top rather than one piece, which just made more sense construction-wise, but I think aesthetically it worked out for the best, as the hem of the top adds a little extra dimension to the overall look. My aim with the skirt was VOLUME and I think I succeeded XD
This whole process has been so much fun, and my execution has improved so markedly over the course of it, that I think I might take another pass at the dresses I made for Rory & Greta, to see if I can do better. I'm much happier with what I achieved for Piper and Skyler, and I think the other girls deserve something just as good. Plus I still have a ton of that Ice Cream yarn left ;p
A bit of a departure for this one--NOT LB Ice Cream! This is an unnamed rainbow pastel colorway of an Ice Yarns line--Baby Magic, I think?--that has been languishing in my stash for ages. It's the leftovers from a blanket I made when my brother's first child was born...said child is now a tween XD I knew I'd find a use for the rest eventually!
With the news of Cohost’s closure and Tumblr’s continued mistreatment of its users, those looking for an alternative platform may want to consider Pillowfort. In this post I’ll go over some of Pillowfort’s policies, setup, and emphasis on community to help prospective users decide if it’s a good fit for them.
Pillowfort has an explicitly Anti-AI stance.
They’re strict about it, so the downside is you can’t post AI images to use as examples when discussing or making fun of the topic.
They allow NSFW.
NSFW content is very much welcomed there, but it is required to be marked as such.
This means you have the option to toggle NSFW content off so you can avoid it entirely if you want.
To read the specifics of what sfw and nsfw content is and is not allowed on Pillowfort, check out point 8 in their TOS.
There is no recommendation algorithm.
Your feed is self curated, which does take some getting used to if you haven’t been on a platform like that before.
You start out following no one and have to dive through tags and communities to find people posting about your interests.
They are user funded.
This does mean some users need to donate or subscribe to Pillowfort Premium in order to reach the site’s financial goals each month.
Unlike Tumblr, “Pillowfort does not now, nor will it in the future, sell (their) user information to third-parties.”
This means that unlike many social sites, you are NOT the product!
The benefit of this is they do not have to bow to shareholders! Site users and their experience is their priority.
There is a communities feature
Similar in concept to Reddit’s sub-reddits. It allows for individuals to create and reblog posts into topic specific groups.
It’s a good way to find people to follow and quickly fill up your feed, but it also means you don’t necessarily have to follow a user’s blog to see posts from them on topics you enjoy.
Staff is transparent about funding and finances.
They have a budget breakdown on their donations page so you know exactly where your money is going.
There’s also a donation counter updated daily so everyone can see how close we are to reaching our monthly goal.
Apart from January 2024, Pillowfort has reached or exceeded the donation goal every month, with excess from other months making up for the shortfall in January.
As of this post, Pillowfort is funded through January 2025.
It is accessed through your browser.
The mobile site has some bugs and isn’t as smooth as desktop, but it still works well. Currently I’m on mobile full time and my experience has been nearly the same as it was on desktop.
A progressive web app (PWA) is in the works and it’s very high on their priority list. It should be out sometime in late 2024 - early 2025.
Tags actually work!
Unlike Tumblr’s system, when you search a tag on Pillowfort the only posts that come up are ones containing that tag. It’s not looking at text in the body of the post to include in the search.
Tags are also easy to blacklist. When you don’t want to see a certain tag, blacklisting fully hides the content from you.
In addition to tagging, Pillowfort has post privacy settings. You can set posts to be viewable by logged-in users only, followers only, or mutuals only. As well as turn off reblogs and comments.
Blocking is effective.
When you block someone you will not see any of their posts, even if someone you follow reblogs their post. They can’t see anything from you either.
The most you see from them is the text “someone commented” in place of their comments on other people’s posts. It can be annoying to see, but the benefit is it allows you to see and interact with all the other comments in a thread even if someone you’ve blocked is involved.
The community is welcoming.
The community is small, but it is generally friendly. People are excited to see new users join and are very eager to answer questions and help out.
They often make guides for new users to answer FAQs and give helpful tips.
There’s also communities, like Pillowfort101, dedicated to answering questions about the site and helping people navigate.
It’s “quiet” in nice ways.
Instead of callout posts (which are explicitly prohibited), people tend to block, move on, and let Staff handle the rest. This kind of attitude amongst users makes for the most low stress social media experience I’ve ever had.
Because of its small size in comparison to Tumblr, not all tags are super active with endless scrolling.
HOWEVER-
This means that by joining and bringing your hobbies, passions, and fandoms along with you, you’re helping to build a community from the ground up!
Because of its small size, many people on Pillowfort are open to hearing about topics they otherwise wouldn’t have encountered, so don’t be shy about introducing your interests over there.
It lacks certain features.
Pillowfort does not have reblog replies. Instead, additions and conversations are done through threaded comments on a post. A benefit of this is it gives users more control over interactions with their post.
Side blogs aren’t a current feature, though it is a feature planned for the first half of 2025.
Pillowfort has DMs, but not asks. However, asks are also planned for the first half of 2025.
Arranging images in a post can be frustrating sometimes. The system is high on their priority list to update and improve though, especially before the PWA launch.
There’s not currently a good setup for alt-text. It is an option, but there’s a character limit and it’s difficult to find. The most effective form of alt-text is putting it directly into the body of a post.
There are not custom content warnings like on Cohost or Mastadon. That’s all done through relying on people to tag or to write a warning above a read-more.
Joining
There’s several options to join. There’s a waitlist, which is the easiest option and typically takes less than an hour to get through. There’s also invites, which is the quickest option. I have a couple dozen I can give out, but there’s also people in the Pillowfort tag on Tumblr giving them out from time to time. The last option is paying $5 to get an invite instantly.
In Conclusion
It’s a small site so it’s not nearly as active as big platforms like Tumblr or Twitter, but community is a major focus of the site. From my personal experience it feels more like a place to talk with people, and not just at people. You may have to be the one to initiate conversation, but if you go looking for conversation it’s not hard to find.
As more active users join and begin participating in the site, I believe it will flourish. Overall, there’s a lot of room for growth on Pillowfort, but I for one am happy to buckle up and come along for the ride and I hope to see more of ya’ll join too.
I'm helping a friend to sell some dolls! This document lists all of the dolls, and I'm working to edit and add the photos (they're all taken, I'm just slow at editing). The prices are very reasonable, and shipping in the U.S. is free!
Since I'm listing these for a friend, I can't post them on DoA, so I'm also listing them on my sales Instagram. If you happen to have an active Instagram and you don't mind sharing, I'd appreciate it. Thank you!
Instagram is a hellhole and I want to leave. But where to go? I have a Pillowfort but it sucks on mobile. I just want to post and view pretty doll photos with a easy to search tag function for sales and discovering new photos. Late stage capitalism always ruins everything.
Pillowfort has improved mobile interface on their to-do list, and it’s literally next (it got bumped down by improved filtering for known CSAM images, which does seem important). For me, browsing on mobile works great, and posting a single image is usually fine. Only multi-image posting is sometimes wonky. I use Safari on iPhone (though Firefox also works for me), so ymmv by interface. But please stay! And reblog your stuff to the BJD community so people can find it!!! Pillowfort uses communities for finding stuff more than tags, since there’s no algorithm doing promotion based on tags. But the upside is, since it’s still very quiet there, if you put things in the BJD community, people will find them!
I heard everyone is mad at Tumblr again? Pillowfort is still there! It’s always ad-free, and the Premium options are modular and inexpensive (I actually pay for all of them).
Everyone's images on Instagram/Facebook has been sent to their AI to use in training their image generation model. Everything. Before you say they give the option to opt out of it, they already did it without disclosing this information months ago.
As an artist and a hobbyist, where is there left to go? I don't use twitter, I don't use tiktok, I don't use my tumblr for much else than scrolling through for inspiration, and for personal reasons, I don't share my art/photos here.
Pillowfort! Fully user funded (but you don’t have to pay). They had a site-wide vote about AI, and AI-generated images and text aren’t allowed to be posted. Plus they’ve done what they can to limit the ability of the things you post to be scraped (yes it’s not impossible, etc etc, but they’re not selling what people are posting). I also like Flickr and Dreamwidth, but Pillowfort is my main home these days.
@aaronstjames’s little Catbird came to visit Tokyo! My photos are very overdue… this was in November. He and Sofie had a very City Mouse and Country Mouse vibe 😂
