How I came to discover reborning!!!!

Hello and welcome to my blog, Kymberlee's Cocoon, this blog is all about my journey into the art of reborning. I have loved dolls ever since I was a small girl, matter of fact I still have my very first doll given to me on the day I was born!!!! I played with dolls well beyond what was socially acceptable at the time. I used to take a "baby" everywhere with me. My babies had complete wardrobes, not just clothes, jammies and shoes but also rain coats, winter gear, you name it - my babies had it. I remember in my teen age years thinking back to how I imagined people thought I was carrying a real baby around. Of course at my age I realized there is no way anyone ever thought those dolls were real but as a small girl that is what I thought. In my teen age years I packed up my babies and began to collect porcelain dolls. In my early twenties I added a couple of Lee Middleton baby dolls to my collection because baby dolls is what I really loved. Several years ago upon learning I may not be able to have children my love of baby dolls was once again sparked. I am a researcher at heart and so began my journey into the world of reborn's. I would watch them on e bay and marvel at their realism and beauty. At the time I did not have the means to own one but I kept watching them as well as seeing the art transform and grow. I was drawn mainly to the ethnic babies as I used to live in Africa. I would watch many of them and a lot of them seemed to me to be a caucasian baby with chocolate frosting on them, they did not have the depth that the caucasian reborns did. After many years of watching, a few artists, in my opinion, rose up in the art of reborning ethnic babies. I kept thinking I can do that if I tried. Being someone who learns by doing I checked around for classes but at the time this was a bit of a secret. After many years I finally found a class being taught at a doll show by Kate Charles, she was one of the artists I had admired for quite some time. I sent her a message to find out if I could take her class as I had never reborned before. She told me "you have to start somewhere" and so that was the beginning of my new found love of reborning. I will use this blog to showcase my journey into becoming a reborn artist. There will be mistakes along the way but my goal it to create life like ethnic babies that have the depth and realism I have seen for many years on caucasian babies. I have taken what I learned in Kate's class and added my own techniques to create what I think are very realistic ethnic babies. My first two were what I call practice dolls but I think I have honed in on a direction I am very happy I am taking with these babies. So sit back and enjoy the journey with me!!! I will be starting off with my class baby who will at some point be stripped and done properly. I was very proud of her but see where I made several errors in an effort to have my first baby be perfect ( I am a perfectionist) I will more than likely keep her as she is my first baby but we shall see. I have given away my first baby to a family member and the second and third  have already found mommies :-) My fourth one is still a work in progress, I am going to try to learn hair rooting so I can give them full heads of hair. I have several kits in the waiting, so stay tuned. At this point I am not doing any custom orders as I am still learning and when a baby is finished he/she will be posted on ebay. Thank you very much for stopping by and seeing a piece of my heart.