ARTICLE - 'A DEMON DOLL IN A BLACK CRIB WAS ALWAYS MY FANTASY' THE WOMAN WITH 500 LIFE-LIKE HORROR DOLLS THAT SHE TREATS LIKE REAL BABIES

'A demon toddler in a black crib was always my fantasy': The woman with 500 life-like horror dolls that she treats like real babies

By Olivia Fleming
PUBLISHED:17 July 2012

An eccentric doll collector with 500 life-like plastic babies, who she looks after as if they were living; changing their clothes, washing their hair and taking them to the park, has unveiled a sinister side to her collection.
Showing off the blood stained horror toys in her Staten Island apartment, 33-year-old Marilyn Mansfield says she is happiest among her collection of Krypt Kiddies and Living Dead Dolls.
The married mother of three never leaves the house without one of her dolls, which are so sought after by collectors they are valued up to $2,500 each -  an overall collection worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mrs Mansfield said she first fell in love with the idea of horror dolls by watching the infamous 1980's Hollywood slasher movie, Chucky, starring a homicidal doll of the same name.

'I have always loved Chucky dolls,' admited Marilyn. 'To have a demon baby in a black crib, that was always my fantasy.'
Mrs Mansfeild is so devoted to her dolls that she has turned her hobby into a business, and now creates her own horror dolls, selling them to customers for up to $300.

The doll collector is also obsessed with dolls designed to be as close to real babies as possibly - called 'reborners'.

She also creates 'portrait babies' which are crafted to look like her customer's children.
'I would say a lot more work goes into making a doll look life-like and real than goes into making a scary-looking doll,' she said.
'I find it more challenging to make them look realistic.'
Mrs Mansfield said she has mixed reactions when she takes the dolls out in public and often elicits shocks from strangers who come to coo at one of her 'babies'.

'I take them out with me and my family in a car seat and in a stroller. I don't do it for attention, it just makes me feel very content, and if someone thinks the doll is real or asks me questions, I'm always sure to tell them it's only a doll.
'One woman who saw one of the dolls in a store recently said: "Your baby looks a little pale. Is he OK?" She touched him and screamed when she found out it was a doll.'
Mrs Mansfield, who has featured on the TLC show My Collection Obsession, said that her children are not jealous of the playthings.
Her seven-year-old son has his own doll collection and her 12-year-old daughter helps her mother change and wash the dolls.

She said that her husband has no interest in the dolls, but has grown used to their large 'family'.

'Holding these dolls is so calming and relaxing - the experience is very absorbing,' she said.
'When your own kids are babies, it's a special time. Having a reborn doll is like having that all of the time.'

ARTICLE - MEET THE REBORNS : INCREDIBLE LIFE-LIKE DOLLS THAT COST HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS AND EVEN COME WITH REAL BIRTH CIRTIFICATES AND....

Meet the Reborns: Incredible life-like dolls that cost hundreds of dollars and even come with 'birth certificates and …

 By

Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED:

16 July 2012

UPDATED:

23:47 EST, 16 July 2012

A decade ago Liviana Sirmans flew across the world from her home in Georgia to Australia for her son’s wedding.

It was a trip that would change her life in a way she could not have possibly imagined.

While Down Under, Liviana spotted a doll so life-like it resembled a real baby. Blown away by the doll, known as a Reborn, she spent the next ten years dedicating her life to them.

Safely home, she trained to become a Reborner – defined as someone who transforms a manufactured vinyl doll to resemble a human baby with as much realism as possible.

Since then, Liviana, an Italian native, has made 428 dolls which cost her between $80 and $250 to make.

Dolls with special effects can come with birthmarks, blow bubbles or have tears on their faces.

Research into Reborns has found that a lot of people who buy the dolls, which can cost up to thousands of dollars, are women who cannot have children or those who have lost a child. The dolls can even come with fake birth certificates or adoption certificates.

In her interview with The Valdosta Daily Times, Liviana did not disclose whether any of her customers had brought the doll for these reasons.

However, she revealed one of her customers to be 8-year-old Brianna Burt, who she made a doll for using the girl’s own hair.

When Brianna got her hair cut, her mother saved the hair and gave it to Liviana to microroot into the doll’s head.

And, to make the doll a true mini me, she sourced doll’s eyes from Germany to match those of Brianna’s. 

Uncanny: Since 2002 Liviana has made 428 dolls which cost her between $80 and $250 to make

Often described as creepy and with most retailers refusing to stock them, people’s aversion to Reborns can be linked to the ‘Uncanny Valley’ hypothesis.

The hypothesis sets out that as human replica objects become more lifelike they attract an increasingly empathetic response. However, at the point when they become ‘too lifelike’ the response changes to repulsion.

Detailing the painstaking process of making Reborns, Liviana told The Valdosta Daily Times, that it takes between two weeks and two months. The most anyone has ever paid for one of Liviana’s dolls is 500 euros – $613.

After cleaning the vinyl bodies, Liviana paints on tiny veins. The arm and leg veins are painted on the outside layer while the head veins are painted on the inside.

‘Each layer must be baked in the oven at 265 for eight minutes. Then I paint the nails,’ she explained to the Times.

She then paints on lips and laboriously microroots the hair strand by strand before adding the eyes and eyelashes.

‘I make the body from skin-colored material stuffed with plastic pellets for weight and then the rest with polyfill,’ she said.

After attaching the arms, legs and head, which must be suitably weighted, Liviana dresses the baby either in clothes she has made herself or brought.

Any dolls that don’t turn out as ‘pretty’ as they meant to are given away to residents at a local nursing home.

As well as making dolls of all races, Liviana has also made two baby monkey dolls.

Unsurprisingly, the married mother also collects dolls from around the world with 40 currently residing at her home.

A car accident five years ago resulted in Liviana having neck and back surgery. Last year’s neck surgery forced Liviana to give up making the dolls.

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.

VIDEO : BABY & MONKEY MIMIC EACHOTHER AT ZOO

Baby and monkey mimic each other at zoo

Remember how fun it was to go to the zoo as a child? While this young tot probably won’t remember this visit, his family sure will. When the Little family took a trip to the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, six-month-old Preston Little caught the attention of two-year-old Chimpanzee Mabusu. Through the glass, the monkey began to mimic Preston. When Preston put his hands and feet to the glass, so did Mabusu. The interaction between the two is undeniably adorable. British tabloid The Sun reported Preston’s mother, Cindy, was concerned the monkey would frighten Preston for a short while. “The monkey was hitting the glass really hard, but it made it adorable because of the way they were interacting,” she said. “When we left, the monkey got depressed, so everyone told us to come back.” And come back the Little’s did, to everyone’s delight.

NEWS - REAL LIFE CHUCKY DOLL IN HOUSTON? MOM SWEARS ELECTRONIC PLAY-TIME DOLL IS CURSING AT HER

A real-life Chucky doll in Houston? Mom swears electronic play-time doll is cursing at her 

 

By Tyler Rudick

06.12.12 | 12:13 pm

 

As if talking dolls weren't creepy enough already . . . After buying her 2-year-old daughter a set of You and Me Interactive Triplet Dolls from Toys "R" Us, Houston area mom Rose Pickens soon discovered that one of the little plastic girls had a little more to say than the usual goo-goo-gaga.
"She is a potty mouth," Pickens told KHOU reporter Brad Woodward. "She actually says the ‘B’ word. I just never paid attention to what the dolls say. They say mama and dada, and this particular day she said, You crazy b****."

 According to the Toys "R: Us website, the You and Me babies are "play time dolls that reflect the personality of every young girl." The sturdy 12-inch dolls are apparently programmed to "laugh and play, just like real babies."
"The dolls are basically supposed to interact . . . They play and coo together," explained Pickens. Well, it turns out that some children start speaking earlier than others — you know, "just like real babies."
Toys "R" Us, which has exclusive distribution rights for the talking triplets, is brushing off the allegations and keeping the dolls in stores despite a stream of complaints that started last fall.
“Please be assured that we would not carry a doll that uttered profanity of any kind," Katie Reczek, a spokesperson for national retailer, told KHOU. "We are aware that some customers believe they are hearing something else spoken by one of the dolls in the set, when, in fact, the doll is uttering baby babble.”
In a report from KPRC Pickens said she was surprised by the retailer's lack of concern when she called the store.
"I actually expected them to be shocked. The manager acknowledged that he had heard that this doll does curse and that they had no plans of removing them from the shelves."

You & Me Interactive Play & Giggle Triplet Dolls are available at all Toys 'R' Us stores for $39.99. Stroller and batteries not included.

ARTICLE - REBORN DOLLS A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHANGING DOLLS

Reborn Dolls – A brief history Of Changing Dolls

June 10, 2012 | Author: TianoLou |

You may not understand what reborn dolls are. Well, they are converted dolls produced from vinyl. What makes it unique is that it has human-like features. These dolls are sometimes shockingly within their similarities to humans. People both young as well as old worldwide are infatuated with reborn dolls. A reborner is a term assigned to an artist of these dolls. Converted dolls have turned out to be appreciated and loved by many people around the globe.

Converted dolls appear to have originated in the usa. It is quite spectacular to determine a ‘reborner’ transform a doll that isn’t painted and unremarkable into practical wonder, with realistic features such as gorgeous skin and fairly fingernails. This is not only a highly skilled craft, but the craftsperson creates each doll to become unique..

You can also choose a custom-made doll. These days, ‘reborn dolls’ have be a rage among collectors as well as hobbyists throughout the world. There is growing need for converted dolls in countries such as the U. S. A., Australia and France. Even celebrities have developed a liking for transformed dolls.

Handmade dolls rank among the most desirable of all the actual collectibles. A recent newspaper post featured a gallery exhibition of some extraordinary ones crafted by world famous artists. It was a highly successful showing, and it showcased the job of extremely creative people. A number of my acquaintances who participate in collecting have become enamored of the loveliness of these so-called “reborn dolls”.
You should be able to create a converted doll if you’ve any artistic ability, but such creation will require time and effort. You can find several sets of instructions describing the creation of converted dolls on the internet, and “reborn dolls” are major moneymakers for doll producers all over the world today.

You have several options for creation of ‘reborn baby dolls. ‘ You can search for an artist (one that isn’t too popular so he/she has time for you to create your doll), that will make what you need for you. You could also start doll-manufacturing by yourself. ‘Reborn doll kits’ are available at a number of online retailers. Who know, you may uncover a hidden talent with which you can make a profit.

are dolls that resemble human beings in facial features. It doesn’t matter if you are a child, or an adult extractor, these dolls are immensely popular worldwide. Making these dolls is extremely complicated; they create realism all the way from their skin to their glossy fingernails. You can find a lot of sites dedicated to making these dolls. There are a lot of artists out there who specialize in making. If you want to make these dolls by yourself, it is a wise decision to get reborn doll kits to begin with.

ARTICLE -DOLLS SOOTHE DEMENTIA SUFFERERS

Dolls soothe dementia sufferers 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE 

By Sarah Doktor, Delhi News-Record
Tuesday, June 5, 2012


DELHI - A controversial therapy has met great success at the Delhi Long Term Care Centre.
Doll therapy refers to the use of life-like dolls in the lives of dementia and Alzheimer patients. The style of therapy has been around for decades but is sometimes criticized for demeaning or belittling elderly adults.
Two dolls were introduced into Delhi Long Term Care Centre three months ago on the advice of Kathie Savage, psychogeriatric Resource Consultant with the Alzheimer Society of Haldimand Norfolk.
Dementia patients often act on instinct instead of reason, which can sometimes lead to destructive behaviour. When dolls are introduced they can significantly improve the behaviour of the residents.
“It can be soothing,” said Savage. “It gives them something to nurture.”
Most patients in the later stages of dementia believe the doll is a real baby and become dedicated to taking care of the baby.
There are six residents, including one man, that share the dolls at the Delhi Long Term Care Centre. They take turns caring for the dolls and share responsibility for them.
“They’re like little mother hens,” said Denise Boutin, director of programs at the Delhi Long Term Care Centre.
The centre is currently looking into purchasing three or four additional dolls to be used as therapy.
Pam Elson, restorative care aid at the Delhi centre, noted it has increased eye contact and communication between residents who were struggling before the introduction of the dolls.
“It’s more of an in-the-moment therapy,” said Elson, explaining the dolls help with issues in the present such as behavior, instead of trying to repair the patient’s brains to a pre-dementia stage.
“It has decreased behaviour (that would put the patient at risk for an injury),” said Elson. “There is more social interaction.”
One resident was being monitored for depression before but since the doll therapy has been introduced her level of depression has greatly decreased.
“She’s now communicating. She’s more compliant,” said Sarah Cope, restorative coordinator at the centre. When the baby has to go to bed, so will the resident. The same can be said of other activities.
While the sight of an elderly adult nurturing a doll may be met with surprise at first, the dolls are bridging the gap between families and those suffering from dementia.
“Families are really on board,” said Elson. “They use the baby as a way to communicate.”
In one case, when a daughter would come to visit she would just sit in the room with the mother, but after the doll was introduced they would spend their time singing to the baby and caring for it.
While the therapy has worked so far in Delhi, Savage notes it will not work for all patients.
“You really don’t know until the doll is present,” said Savage.

Sarah Doktor