Creating more realistic child dolls is an increasingly growing trend among collectors and hobbyists. The challenge involves making the dolls resemble real human children to the greatest degree possible. The term given to this practice is creating reborn dolls. This new market is exciting for long time crafters who have grown tired of the more typical and far less realistic dolls that have been on the market for years and years.
Within approximately the last five years the Reborn Doll Market has shown a significant increase in popularity. This can be attributed to a number of particular artistic concepts that have gained recognition. These techniques produce dolls which are more life-like. The Berenguer and Preemie Dolls have been around for a number of years. These dolls, with their true-to-life expressions, details and physical characteristics, have contributed greatly to this Reborn Doll Fad.
Typically, reborn dolls are formed through an intensive process which strips the doll of its artificial appearance, which creates a more realistic doll. It usually beings by disassembling the doll and removing the paint that is applied by the production company. After the paint is stripped, a plastic shell remains, which can then be changed as it is needed.
A lot of methods are used while making reborn dolls to make them look more realistic. To make the skin color of the doll look natural a purple color is added to the inside of the plastic parts. This process adds color tones beneath the plastic. After that the outside of the doll is painted with many different skin colored paints. To make the doll look even more lifelike they even go as far to use other techniques and styles to add skin lines and blemishes.
Reborn dolls will then have real human hair or soft human-like faux hair added for the hair and eyelashes, often by hand and strand by strand, to help create the human look. This can take dozens of hours. Once the hair is completed, the doll is put back together again. At this point softer fillings and other items, like sound boxes to create the illusion of breathing, or a heartbeat, may be added to make the completed doll seem even more life-like.
For those who want to make their own without as much work involved, there are reborn doll kits that allow the purchaser to make their own reborn without as much work. Most people who want one, however, shell out the money (often upwards of a few hundred dollars) to purchase one. These dolls have also become popular gifts for newborn mothers, often replicating the condition of their children after birth as a memento.
The Berenguer and Preemie Dolls are partly to credit for the new trend in creating more lifelike dolls. Dolls can be taken apart to create Reborn Dolls which takes dozens of hours of work including painting the interior purple and using many shades of paint to create the same coloring as a human baby. Each strand of hair is added by hand and the doll is reassembled with softer filling. People are willing to pay as high as a few hundred dollars to have one made instead of making one from Reborn Doll Kits. New mothers are the typical recipients as a keepsake imitating their newborn child.
- Tommy Thompson
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