customization Customization etiquette

  I recently bought a custom DD head on Mercari. According to the listing, the customizer was Raimuneca. I love it, and it's almost perfect for a character I'm creating. There are just a couple of things I'd like to modify. I'd mostly like to try and widen the eye sockets a bit. But I've never bought a customized doll before, and I was wondering if it would be considered disrepectful to buy a doll that someone took the time to customize and then change it. It feels a bit like buying a piece of art and then drawing over it, thinking I could do it better. (To be clear, I am in awe of Raimuneca's talent and do not in any way think my extremely limited skills are better!)  Is this kind of thing generally frowned upon, or am I overthinking this?

 Thanks in advance for any advice!

This is purely anecdotal, but I wouldn't. There is weird, weird drama to be had in the doll community.

You also may run into paint or sealant chipping if you try to modify the vinyl of an already painted head. Vinyl reshaping and shaving is always done before painting for this reason. 

I would avoid doing this. 😅

Yeah, as mentioned above, it’s taboo to do this, but more importantly, you will probably end up damaging the faceup.

3rding -- I can't imagine any way to widen the eyes without destroying the face-up, cracking the sealant, chipping the paint, rubbing the blushing, etc. A damaged face-up is really hard to fix and sometimes it simply can't be done. What would you do / how would you feel if you accidentally damaged the face-up beyond repair?

Customizing a face-up that's already done can lead to heartbreak really quickly, I have been down that road, you don't want go go down that road.  If I were in your shoes, I would commission my own from an artist instead, working with them to get exactly what I wanted. (Don't send them photos of the doll you're currently considering, it's a hard line amongst face-up artists not to use other people's dolls as references)

Thanks so much for all of your advice! Having only done customizing on plastic Pullip faces before, I didn't think about the potential difficulty of working with a pre-customized vinyl face. And it sounds like it's generally frowned upon to "re-customize" a doll, which my gut was telling me initially. I'll leave the face be and work with it.

  Thanks again, everyone! You probably saved me from tragedy 😅