FAKE BABY OR REBORN DOLL ?

Earlier this year, there was a programme on Channel 4 in UK called 'My Fake Baby' .

It gave an insight into the wonderful World of Reborn dolls, Some people were totally intrigued by it because they had never heard of these dolls before, some people were amazed by how 'lifelike' these dolls became when they are reborn into 'babies' and of course some people watched it and thought reborners and reborn collectors were 'bonkers'

I personally dont think this programme showed Reborns in a very good light. It featured a lady who spent thousands of pounds on her 'babies' and even pushed them around the town in a pram and another lady who had a reborn made to look like her grandson who had moved away.

These are very extreme cases and I would just like to say that most reborn collectors are not like this at all. I collect reborns because they are like a beautiful piece of Art. I display them with my extremely large collection of porcelain dolls and I just love to look at them.

The main reason I wanted to write this guide is because so many people search for reborns under 'FAKE BABY' and most of the established and extremely gifted reborn artists list their reborns under 'REBORN DOLL' so these beautiful listings are being missed so please start searching for 'REBORN DOLL' again and eventually the not so nice term 'FAKE BABY' will be a distant memory.

Here is a brief explanation of what exactly reborn dolls are;

Reborning was developed in the US a few years ago. A pale lilac acrylic paint was applied inside a berenguer vinyl doll , and the outside subtly transformed into a light 'realistic' flesh colour.

US reborn artists then took this further, by adding different tones, highlights etc until it became truly real.

This was just the start. Since then, reborning has come on and adapted so much. The dolls have their eyes removed and replaced with more realistic ones, eyelashes and eyebrows are added,nostrils are opened and the original body is replaced with a cotton or suede custom made body weighted with special stuffing and the limbs and head are also weighted so they feel like a real baby would.

One of the most amazing transformations into a 'real looking baby' is the hair which is beautiful soft mohair which is carefully rooted to look amazingly authentic.

New types of painting are being developed all the time and some reborns even come with breathing mechanisms or heat pads. They are getting closer and closer to the real thing and sometimes its very difficult to tell the difference.

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this reborn started like this.......................and was reborn to this by a talented reborner called ceri.s