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Reborning Your First Doll
Weighting and Assembly
Now that our limbs and head are fully painted, rooted, and dry, it's
time to bring our baby to life! For weighting and assembly,
you'll need:
- Body slip of your choice (I'm using a doe suede body slip from Bountiful Baby)
- Plastic polypellets or glass beads for weighting
- High quality Polyfil
- Flesh colored felt
- Knee high nylon stockings (one pair)
- A measuring cup
- E6000 glue
- Fabric scissors
- nippers
- metal file
Just a note:
Reborn artists use a variety of weighting materials -- poly
pellets, glass beads or elastomer "baby fat" pellets (both available
from CR Crafts), polyfil,
and occasionally sterilized sand (not recommended here.) Glass
beads are my personal favorite, since they are
significantly heavier than plastic pellets, making it easier to achieve
realistic weight with smaller dolls. I'm using poly pellets here
because they are inexpensive and accessible for first time reborners.
You may wish to try glass beads on later reborning projects.
Okay, on we go!
Fill the limbs to the weight you desire (I usually fill about 3/4 full)
and top of with a big dose of polyfil -- enough to keep your pellets
from jingling around when you move your baby.
Repeat the weighting process for the rest of the limbs. Now cut
squares of felt large enough to cover your limb openings. Apply
E6000 glue to the rim of each limb and press felt firmly over the top.
I always set the limbs felt side down to dry so that the weight
of the limb will help hold the felt in place.
While our limb caps are drying, we can prepare our body slip. I
like to weight the body slip before I weight the head to make sure they
feel proportional. Place a nice sized piece of polyfil in the
baby's bottom and begin filling one of your nylon stockings with
pellets.
I
usually put the weight bag into the body slip after I have some pellets
in to continue filling. I don't own a scale, so I just weight the
body until it feels right to me. Tie off the stocking and add
polyfil all around the weight bag to help distribute the pellets and to
make your baby feel right. I don't like feeling
little pellets inside my babies when I hold them.
The
resulting look should be chubby and round, with just enough space left
at the top of the neck to allow the baby's head to wobble a little when
it's attached. Since our baby is asleep, we want him to be rather
loose and cuddly. I usually use more stuffing in older, awake
babies that need to sit up and look alert and try to keep the head
lighter.
Now we can check our limbs. If they are completely dry (you can
tell E6000 is dry when all odor is gone) we can trim around our felt
squares. I put enough stuffing in the arm and leg attachments to
fill them out. (I don't weight the arms and legs in my body slip
unless I'm using short vinyl limbs.) Place the arms and legs into
the slip opening and tighten the cable ties. Remember to check
that the slip is facing forward and that thumbs and big toes are on the
right sides! Babies are slightly pigeon-toed, and I like my
babies to be able to touch their faces.
When all the limbs are attached, trim the cable ties off with your
nippers and file the end down until it's smooth. We don't want
any pokies on our baby! Don't forget to sign and date your baby's
bottom! After all this work, you deserve it. You're almost
there! Now the last step -- attaching the head.
We'll create another stocking weight bag for our baby's head. I
fill the head until I feel like the weight is proportional with the
rest of the body. Babys' heads are large, so they are
substantially weighted. I like to place the stocking into my
baby's head and fill that way.
Cap the head opening with felt just like the limbs and allow to dry
completely. Then trim around the head opening. Our baby is
about to be reborn!
One step away! Put on the head and tighten the cable tie so that
it's tight enough to keep the head from pulling off and loose enough to
allow the head to swivel left and right. Then trim off the cable
tie with your nippers and file down.
You're done! Congratulations!
Thanks so much for going on this journey with me! I would love to
see pictures of reborns you've created with the help of this tutorial.
Please email jpg images to: pianohearder@msn.com. I'll be featuring your photos on the next page!!
Click "next" to see some pictures of Rosebud, now little Ryan, as well as a gallery of your reborns!
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