What Are Reborn Dolls?

    Reborn dolls are baby dolls that look and feel like real live babies that can come in

different races like Caucasians and even African Americans.  The hobby of creating reborn

babies began around the late 1980's.  Reborn dolls are life-size babies that are handmade high quality pieces of artwork and should be handled and treated with love and care as any other piece of art work.  Reborn dolls typically start out as a soft blank (unpainted) vinyl head, arms, and legs which is called a kit.  Next, the head and limbs (kit) are skill fully painted in multiple layers by a reborn artist who typically uses Genesis Heat Set Paints to achieve realistic newborn baby skin tones and fine details.  Once the doll has been painted, the artist then stitches hair on the head which is called the Rooting process.  The rooting process is done with a felting gauge needles and usually mohair to achieve a newborn baby's natural hair growth pattern.  Then, the hair is sealed with strong water-proof glue to keep the hair intact inside the doll's head.  Once the doll has been painted and rooted, the head and limbs are attached to a doe suede cloth body that represents the baby's torso or body.  Reborn dolls are stuffed and weighted with glass beads, silicone poly pellets, and polyfil to achieve a realistic newborn baby weight and feel.  Each individual reborn doll or the kit itself, comes in different sizes and given its own personality with unique facial expression for an artist to paint a realistic reborn baby doll.  Some people choose to use a vinyl belly plate to make the reborn doll look more realistic especially when photographing them, or in cases simply to make their reborn anatomically correct.  A belly plate can be attached to the doll's cloth body using strings.  Reborn dolls are not sold in retail stores like Walmart, Target, Toy R Us, etc, due to the art and individuality of each one.  If you are interested in buying, owning, or adopting a reborn doll, you will likely have to get them online.  Some artists set up different kinds of websites that you can also purchase from.