AWOL

Wow its ages since ive posted here!

Since my last post i have finished memorial baby Angel, custom baby Alice, Zoey, almost finished a custom baby boy (just waiting on his glass eyes) and am ready to root portrait baby Hannah.

Hannah reminds me of Harry in that she has tons of lovely dark hair too.

Unlike Harry though, Hannah's hair has been my worst nightmare!!!

With Harry, the lady who dye'd the hair for me got his hair colour pretty much spot on.

Sadly not with Hannah though.

Hair lot number 1: Ordered from A in USA, came, too light.
Hair lot number 2: I got some excellent quality moahir so decided to dye my own. It took two days solid! Ended up being not dark enough either!
Hair lot number 3: I decided to dye more even though it was a right faff doing it, ended up being jet black so too dark
Hair lot number 4: Ordered from a different lady in the USA, she dyes to the colour you want, but oh my gosh its about the most expensive mohair there is! (sometimes up to £50 per 1/2 ounce, yes 14 grams worth)
Sadly this lot of mohair has been severely delayed being sent as the poor lady lost her relative and had to fly out of state to the funeral. My thoughts are with her family at this sad time xx

So its turning into a nightmare. I needed to be about half rooted at this point and as it is i havent a clue when the mohair will arrive.
I seriously could cry! I thought reborning was supposed to be fun hobby.

So i  now have yet another 3 lots of different very dark brown hair dye from superdrug and tescos to try. It takes me forever to do though, as you have to wash all the mud and yuk out of the Angora goat hair.
Then shampoo it. Its very light and easily washes down the plug hole, and you can only wash a tiny bundle at a time.
Then comb it which is hard work to get all the tangles out.
Dry it naturally
Dye it
Rise it
condition it for 30 minutes
Rise it, rinse it, oh yeah and rinse it again
Dry it naturally again,
Comb it,
Wet it to return it to its fine locks rather than beinf fluffed up looking, then let it dry again!

So im hoping the other mohair arrives on Monday if not i guess its going to be days and days sat on a stool by the bathroom sink again, processing more mohair!

.Betime ive done that i might get to do another post here sometime in Ausust 2013 lol.

I have got twin portrait babies to start soon as well, eek.

Memorial baby M is finished

Memorial baby 'M' is now finished and will be going to his mummy next week.
His mummy likes him so thats a relief.
Im hoping his mummy  will allow me permission to share a side by side photo of him and the real baby.

Here he is a few pictures:

Max on ebay

Well little Maxwell, Max is now on ebay. It took me hours to do his photoshoot, uploading pics, labling them with  my nursery name to help discourage the scammers and editing the  template.

Yes  you get scammers out there, quite a few actually!! They  steal other artists photos then say they made the reborns in the  photos to scam people into parting with  thier money.
Now if you are 'lucky'  with these scammers you get a very dodgy looking  doll   sent that is very poorly made and looks no where near as good  as the reborn in the photo. If you are less lucky they completely run off with your money and you get nothing at all!

Luckily there are quite a few genuine honest sellers out there though!
Its one of the things i will be applying for soon, an award where the judges look at close ups of my reborns, and ask a selected few of my customers at random if they found me to be ok or not.

Anyways Max is now on ebay. Ebay is rubbish at the moment, even prototypes arent selling, so Max will be lucky if he finds a mummy. I have had some loely feedback from other artists about him though, some have even valued him at £700-£800!!!
Luckily my reserve is no where near  that amount.

Here he is here:
Maxwell on ebay (Paige by Sandra White Sculpt)

So far within a few hours of being on there he has 21 watchers yay!

Updates

Happy Easter everyone xx

So a general update on how the babies are going:

Memorial baby M- He was assembled yesterday  but cloth body #2 still wasn't  right so he has had to have yet another body being made for him. He will look right eventually lol! The last body had him only coming up at 20" despite being a larger body, he needs to be around 22".
So im at stale point with him until  body #3 arrives.

Grace- Little custom baby Grace,  is just having her outfit being made for her. Her rooting is almost done. I  got a gorgeous gift box for £5 from TK Maxx to send her in as my usual boxes would be way too big for her.

Memorial Baby A- She is almost finished being painted and i am waiting on the two lots of mohair ihad dyed for her  from my mohair lady in USA to arrive. Hopefully the colours will be ok!


and my competition baby- I have now named him  Maxwell or Max for short. In between other things im gradually doing his template to put him on ebay. Its all using HTML programming and drives me demented each time! It  literally makes my eyes boggle!

Elise

The lady who booked my September slot decided to send me  the deposit sooner as the kit she had chosen was only left available in 2 suppliers.

Well if we got the Elise kit from one supplier she came with just the limbs, but from another supplier we were able to get a gender specific belly plate to  go with it for the same price.

So  the  kit arrived yesterday. As  i now already have the kit i will work on him in between other reborns, so  come September time he will have been 'fast tracked' as he will be a lot closer to being finished by then. I operate a timeslot list but i always try to 'fast track' them if the mummy wants to send the deposit sooner :) I hate keeping mummies waiting.

He is going to be a newborn looking boy. It  feels a bit rude having to paint his boy bits as all the belly plates ive done before now for boys have been belly plates without the 'bits' on them.

So, so far i have neutralised his  vinyl colour and laid down the starting layers of newborn mottling.

He is an open eye baby.
Here is  the blank kit before starting him

Baby M update & clothes shopping

Well baby M is almost finished.
I have a different body on order for him as i wasnt happy with the fit of the first one.
His rooting is 99.9% done, just a hair or two here and there to be added.
Then i will  glue it in place.

Next will be his eyebrows, and root eyelashes too.
Then fit felt in his head for his magnet to be stuck to.
Weight him and assemble  him.

I send his mummy a sneek preview pic of him and she thinks hes gorgeous :)

Im also doing the fun bit of clothes shopping for him. I always try my best to match the style of clothes  the real baby had in photos. Sometimes we have even been able to buy identical  dummies/soothers, outfits, cuddly toys etc. Im a bit of  a perfectionist and if i  can match something or get it as similar as possible i will do :)

Some mummies like brighter, darker, stripey, demin style outfits on their real babies
Some prefer softer baby blues, soft pinks, more traditional outfits, delicate sleepsuits and hand knitted  outfits etc.

I drive myself demented at times as i try not to do the  'oh that will do' outfit, nope it has to be as close as possible.
I once ordered a dummy/soother from Germany just to get it in the same colour as the baby had which i couldnt get in the UK, and I have been known to spend hours online and trawling thorough every shop i can find just to find an identical blanket. Sometimes it pays off and i positely squeal with delight, sometimes im less lucky and have to make do with a similar one.

Anyways here he is so far.  outfit is just  for a test, he wore paler outfit in his photos but i didnt have one to hand. Ive currently nackered my hip, over a week of excuciating pain so i wasnt able to go hunt for my paler ones, but you'll get  the idea from the pics anyhow.

Racking my brains

Ok so i said id never do it but im considering doing an unusual reborn baby.

In the past by other artists there has been reborns made to look like, goths,  scary freaky horror blood dripping things (really dont like those!), aliens, Harry Potter Characters, etc even seen a clown reborn. Considering i dont like clowns much i actually like the clown reborn i  saw.

You can already  get fairy kits  and monkey/gorilla/orangutan kits.

So im trying to think 'outside' of the box and maybe, just maybe do something a bit different,  but my brain is fuzzled and i cant think what to do?

Do i do a clown baby? one to look like a film or tv character  and if so what?!

I guess im going to have to put the idea  on the back  burner until a 'brilliant' idea pops into my head!
Any suggestions anyone?

And hello to my  new lurkers from my facebook list, feel free to say hello lol ;) xx