Adorable

by Karen Louise Hollis

Created on: August 07, 2010

Reborn baby dolls are a relatively new phenomenon and blur the line between toys and art. As a child, I enjoyed playing with dolls, especially Sindys but wasn't so keen on baby dolls. However, as an adult, I was browsing the Dolls and Bears section of Ebay and discovered something interesting - a phenomenon called reborn dolls. For those unaware of this, it is the art of taking a vinyl baby doll and adding to it to make it as realistic as possible. The finished product should look and feel like a real baby.

These can be extremely impressive and a real work of art. Some sell for hundreds of dollars and are really collectable. There are also smaller sized ones available. It is obvious from seeing these beautiful creations how much time, effort and skill has gone into them. Some even have heat pads to mimic the body temperature of real babies and beating hearts! 

I bought my first reborn for £120 and she was gorgeous. She arrived dressed with a little nappy on as well as a really cute outfit. She was the same weight as a small baby and felt so realistic, that I'd end up rocking her out of instinct! I was hooked and bought a further five or six, each costing from around £65 up to £120. There were more expensive reborns that I would have loved, but I couldn't justify spending that much.

My husband was already decidedly unimpressed at my growing collection, especially as he didn't like them at all! It's definitely more of a hobby that women can understand - maybe because of our maternal instincts. Most men seem to be on the side of the debate that sees reborn baby dolls as being eerie, weird or at best not their thing.

A television documentary that was shown on British TV followed some women who collect reborn baby dolls. Some of them seemed to be using the dolls as baby substitutes and in a few cases, it was rather sad to see grown-up women essentially playing with dolls, almost to the exclusion of anything else. A couple seemed to almost believe the dolls were real and in some ways they treated them like their own children.

Shortly after discovering reborn baby dolls, I decided I wanted to have a go at making one myself. However, I have very few talents in any kind of art or craft. I can't sew, knit or crochet. I can draw and write and that's about it. I have no knowledge or talent in DIY and can't even change a light bulb! So what chance did I have of making a DOLL of all things?

But I found other women who made them and I found a few good websites where the process of reborning was explained in words and pictures and soon, I was really enthusiastic and desperate to have a go. I bought a Berenguer doll which are one of the best type of dolls for reborning, because they are very good quality and the vinyl is easy to work with. I bought a 16" sleepy Berenguer doll for £30. (You can spend around £60 on bigger ones with different faces.)

I wanted to make a reborn for my Mum and also wanted to prove I could actually make something, as my lack of craft talents is a common butt of jokes in our family.

First, I had to buy all the equipment I needed. I soon discovered this is not a cheap hobby! You need to stock up on craft knives, special paints, paintbrushes, various types of stuffing, gel pen, blushes, sponges, drill bits, varnish, felt and three different types of glue. I would say you would need about £50 for these, but at least they last a while.

Then for each reborn, you need the doll itself, a wig or hair to root, eyelashes, a cloth body, cable ties, clothes, dummy and so on. This came to over £60. So you see, if I had sold this on Ebay for £120, I would have only made £10!

The whole process is quite long and complicated and different people choose to do different things, but a brief précis of what you do is - 

1) Take the head and limbs off the body. Cut the holes wider with a craft knife, then paint inside with a purple colour which reduces the artificial orange colour of the vinyl.
2) After the paint is dry, you stuff the limbs with a combination of things such as sand, fibre, steel shot pellets, etc. before sealing them with special glue.
3) After that's dry, you get the new cloth body you've bought and stuff it, before securing the limbs with cable ties.
4) You stuff the head, add a magnet for a dummy if you wish and tie the head on.
5) You blush all the limbs and head to get the right colours to make it look realistic.
6) You add eyelashes, a wig or rooted hair, then paint the nails to give it a manicured look then add any finishing touches you want.

This is a very basic idea, but you can add all sorts of extras and it can be much more complicated than that. If you buy a fully vinyl doll (instead of one with a cloth body), it's harder, as you have to cut into the vinyl to make a head and shoulders to fit inside the cloth body.

I finished the doll for my Mum in three weeks. I was really pleased with it. Everyone who saw it was impressed and amazed I could do something like that! More importantly, Mum loved it! I felt really pleased with myself, but had to give up the hobby after a while as it was too expensive. For the same reason, I stopped collecting the dolls too. They look beautiful and are a great talking point, but I couldn't justify spending that amount of money on something that was just going to sit on a shelf and look pretty.

Making reborn baby dolls is an expensive hobby and you really aren't going to make much of a profit, if any. It can also be dangerous as I have cut my hands with craft knives and drill bits several times already. It is also messy and smelly, as there are varnishes, paints and glues involved. You have to watch kids don't get too involved either. The finished products are collectable dolls and have to be treated almost as carefully as if they were real babies.

The finished products are a work of beauty and should be admired as such. They are adorable and the best ones are stunningly realistic. It is fun to dress them, do their hair and give them a cuddle. But it is important to keep them in perspective. They are only dolls and should not replace the love you can get from real people and animals.

While some people may find them eerie, that is a matter of taste. If you don't like them, don't buy them. Simple.

To end on a funny story... One day, I was out shopping in the Mall with my 8 year old daughter, who was borrowing one of my reborns. She was holding it and we'd had several double-takes and many people who had thought it was a real baby. We were waiting in a queue and two women opposite us were looking across, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at what they thought was a real live baby. Imagine their shock when my daughter bounced it around a bit and its head fell off, rolling across the floor! Oops...

Learn more about this author, Karen Louise Hollis.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.