Di's hand-crafted 'reborn babies' filling a sales niche

• Kate Matthews
• 7th Mar 2013 2:00 PM

http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/news/dolls-crafted-with-love/1782125/

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Di McGavigan with one of her realistic reborn dolls. Photo: Adam Hourigan

THEY may look exactly like real- life babies, but don't be fooled, these beautiful dolls have been crafted by the loving hands of South Grafton's Di McGavigan.
Known as reborns, each one takes about 50 hours to create - thankfully far less than the 6500 hours it takes to make a real one.
Ms McGavigan said the moment she first laid eyes on one seven years ago she was captivated.
"My sister turned up on my doorstep with a baby in a shawl - I asked her who's baby have you got?" said Ms McGavigan
"I saw this little thing and thought, oh my God this is beautiful - just like a real baby."
Occasionally Ms McGavigan enjoys taking one or two of her "babies" with her while she runs errands and says sometimes when people see them and realise they are dolls, they get startled, but everyone is curious.
"I know some people say it's freaky but I think they are beautiful," she said.
After spending months researching and talking to other doll makers through online forums, Di purchased a kit and began making her own.
Finally she decided to enter a competition and began sculpting them from clay and recently created three original babies of her own, from which she makes her own kits.
Although Di kept the first one, she prefers to sell them, with many of her babies having found new homes all around the world.
"I've got to a point now I'm established, I can make them and sell them as a source of income when I retire," she said.
"I know it can be very expensive for some people; they are an heirloom doll, but for many, once they have one they want another one.
"I know some people have a massive collection."
Like the lady in Western Australian who ordered a sleeping baby and returned soon after for a toddler, and another lady in Perth who now has 40 of Di's dolls in her collection.
A handful of babies have also found homes locally, with the South Grafton Newsagent now displaying a selection.
Di also sells them from her home, Cottage Lane, where she works part-time as a hairdresser.
She estimates she has made about 300 dolls over the years, mostly in her spare time.
Each one is individually crafted with incredible attention to detail.
"I like to imagine them opening the box," she said. "I try to make it a special experience."
She said sometimes the cost and time it took to make her reborns could leave her out of pocket, but she loved the art and couldn't imagine giving it up.
"It's an expensive hobby, but a very rewarding one," she said.
Fast facts

•  Each doll is carefully hand painted with real-life skin tones, blemishes, veins, even little scratches.
•  Each hair is micro rooted, one at a time, using mohair
•  Each reborn doll has its own tiny fingernails and toenails.
•  The dolls are then assembled and weighted, including a floppy head, fully poseable limbs, and a soft cuddly body.
•  Finally they are dressed and swaddled in a bunny rug, before being lovingly wrapped in tissue paper, packaged and shipped ready to meet their new owners, complete with a birth certificate and dummy.

ARTICLE - LOCALLY BORN BABY DOLLS ARE A 'REL' HANDFUL

Locally born baby dolls are a ‘real' handful

Posted:   07/16/2012

Tuesday July 17, 2012

MEGHAN FOLEY
North Adams Transcript
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Two sisters are fooling a lot of people with their artistic endeavor that involves making dolls that look like real babies.
Kathi George, of Williamstown, and Julie Crosier, of North Bennington, Vt., began dabbling in the hobby of making "reborn" dolls in January of this year, and now sell the realistic hand-crafted dolls locally.
"We do get the ‘Oh, that is creepy' response, but we just take it as a compliment," George said. The sisters named their business Until Forever Nursery, and have so far made about 35 dolls.
"It's an art form" George said. "It's like painting on a canvas. You start with a blank slate, and once you're done, you've created something beautiful."
Crosier said that studies have shown that the dolls can be very therapeutic for people, such as calming a person down, or bringing down a person's blood pressure. The dolls have also been found to be good for the elderly, and dementia and Alzheimer's patients, she said. "It's nice to be able to do something that can benefit people, and bring joy to them," Crosier said.
George said each doll starts out as a vinyl sculpt, which is the head and limbs, made by an artist. Each sculpt has a name, ranges in size from preemie to toddler, and can be purchased as a kit, she said. "It costs us about $100 to make a doll, not including the clothing and accessories," she
said. "Our prices for selling the dolls start at $200." Crosier said it takes 10 to 20 hours to make one doll, and the process involves putting eight layers of paint on the sculpt to replicate the skin of a newborn baby, baking the sculpt each time a layer of paint is applied, and using a felting needle to root mohair on the doll's head.
The dolls' bodies are make from doe-suede fabric, and are weighted from four to seven pounds to represent the weight of a baby, George said. The weighting is done using nylon stockings or rubber gloves filled with glass beads, she said.
She said because the dolls look like real newborns, they have learned to be careful when handling them in public. "You have to be careful because you never know who is watching, and it can really upset people if they think you're mishandling a baby," George said.
At Mayfest in Bennington, Vt., this year, someone reported them to the information booth because the person had felt they needed to be talked to about having their newborns out in the sun too long, George said.
"We had gone to do some advertising, and we were both carrying dolls around from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.," she said.
George and Crosier have been selling their "reborn" dolls at Summer Sundays in Williamstown, and plan to be at the Apple Squeeze in Lenox in the fall. They also have a Facebook page for the business.