Glossy Eyes Are So Cute! Love The Lifelike Look!

So I waited patiently for the crystal clear resin from little-windows.com to come.  It finally came.  I glossed two of my babies eyes and honestly they look so pretty when they were finished drying.  It took about 2 full days for them not to be tacky.  But the shine in them is so cute.  They almost look teary.  I followed Kim's tutorial from Custom Doll Baby.

I am not unhappy that I did use the Little Windows resin as per a tutorial from a very talented artist Kim from Custom Doll Baby.  I also used it to polish up the lips, the inner nares and the nails.  Each came out perfectly beautiful.  I was more happy with this Gracie Rose's feet than I was with Celeste's feet. Her nails looked darling after I used the resin on them.  I also had used varnish on Celeste's toenails which looks great but did not cure after two days.  I did have to baby sit the resin in her eyes and I had to make sure eyelashes were already glued in and that the eyes were cleaned up before starting.  I used wedges to help stabilize the head while I carefully brushed the resin into her eyes and onto other areas.

Granted I learned a lot and that my eyebrows are a little too dark because I had to make them match her hair better which meant a second coat of paint (sadly).  But the gloss in the acrylic Pabol eyes and on the lips just looks so lifelike.  I was thrilled when a facebook friend told me that she thought Gracie Rose was sooo beautiful..yay!

Thanks for visiting.  Much love to you!

Kimberly

Snuggle Babies Nursery

Waiting For Supplies Is Paintful

I hate waiting for supplies to arrive, don't you.  I am such an instant gratification person in a way, however, I know that good things come to those who wait so I exercise my patience a lot.  I so want to get them and wish the tools to make reborns were something you could get locally but they are not.  The dollar store actually had more things than any other place.  There was almost nothing at the craft store for me.  My next interesting purchase will be a kit for ethnic skin colors kit from Bountiful Baby.  Yay.  I am so excited.

I ordered these cool Heavenly Illusions rooting needles from a company in Canada.  It took about 7 days for the rooting needles to come.  Shipping wasn't much but the lack of productivity probably cost me a lot.  I ordered cool rooting needles that only insert one hair at a time for a more natural look.  They have rubberized outsides so I look forward to trying them out.  I will let you know what I think of them as soon as I try them out.  I am so glad they are here and I know that Sunday may be my only day for Reborning since I am back in school.
You can get them here https://www.macphersoncrafts.com/en/online-store/hair-rooting/heavenly-illusions-rooting-needles

Other things I want to order...this cool eyeball tool.  I thought of using a nerf bullet but not sure where any are in this house though a year or two ago, I could not stop stepping on them.  I found it at Nonie's Angel's Nursery.  Hope it comes fast.  Going to order it and some extra zip ties too.  here http://www.noniesangelsnursery.com/Reborning_Supplies/Other_Supplies/other_supplies.html

Have fun reborning.

Kimberly
Snuggle Babies Nursery

Gracie Rose Is 100% Cute and Almost Ready To Go

I captured this photo of Gracie Rose while she snuggled in my arms.

~ GRACIE ROSE ~

Messing around and put a bow on a pink knit hat.  Hat does not come with reborn doll. I will be making some as time frees up in different colors.

Gracie is so cute, and so spoiled.  She comes with a huge lot of clothing, binkies, bows and more.  I am so thrilled to finally finish my first doll.  I am not asking a lot because she has a couple small issues.  One is a tiny oblong grey spot on her torso.  The second is a tiny issue in her eye but I am going to put a clear coat of crystal clear resin in her eye to gloss her eyes and hopefully she won't be a problem for any new mommy who wants to spoil her.

I decided to give her a beautiful wardrobe complete with a pretty layette and a gorgeous Easter ensemble.  I think every reborn mommy and collector needs a lot of goodies to dress their reborn baby up.  I think Gracie Rose looks a lot like a 3 month old baby.  She wears newborn to 3 months old clothing.  She fits newborn shoes pretty well and guess what I am sending 2 pairs to color coordinate with all her clothing.  You will find more on my page for Gracie Rose as soon as I can get it up.  But homework comes first and it's my first day back to Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA.

Later today I will have her listing up on my website with better photos.  I just have to get started on my first day back to college at Regent University.  I have to get my stuff together for first day of class.

She also has this cute mix and match Sleeper which I forgot to put in the picture.

I see a lot of people dissapointed with their purchases and dissapointed that clothing and goodies did not come in their box.  Well, honey, with this girl, the wardrobe is to die for, she is fully outfitted.   She is spoiled beyond belief.  She will have plenty of goodies to go with her so the new mommy should be having a great time with her.

Pretty finger nails and toe nails

Gracie has a small grey oblong flaw in her doll body right about where the appendix is on her left side.  The diaper covers it.  Her hands and feet have a realistic look to them.  Her skin is mottled and pale with a light blushing.

Gracie Rose has a huge very expensive layette and lots of bonus items.

Gracie Rose has two bows, a couple of pacifiers in case you lose one, a pacifier holder (still waiting for it to arrive), 2 pairs of socks and 2 pairs of shoes.  She even comes with a receiving blanket and a nice snugly plush fleece blanket in the prettiest colors.

She also has this cute sleeper but I forgot to put it in the larger picture.

She is not perfect though, as I stated above she has a couple of tiny flaws and it's because I am a brand new reborn artist.  I worked very hard to make her as beautiful as I could for my second doll. I did my best to make her feel snugly and she is all that newborn floppy baby you want to cuddle.  She will need to be dressed and held like a newborn.  Her arms, legs, and head do turn and move so you can pose her.  She would make an excellent therapy doll.

I am excited though because she does have a certain flair to her.  Her big brown eyes warm the heart.  She feels nice like a newborn baby and smells yummy.  She has a scented wafer in her that smells like baby powder.

Her hair is not the best painting I could do but I need to get finer new brushes and work on my rooting so it is less thick.  I want to get lifelike hair on the babies and also do some painted hair.  I baked her hair in the NuWave oven so it should hold up, but be careful because it can scratch off with careless activities.  She should be very carefully moved and held just like a newborn.

 

Here are some pictures with her in her pretty Easter outfit.  As you can see it also has a cute bolero jacket with lace and ruffles and a pretty sparkly button.

 

I hope you enjoyed seeing my first available reborn!  I will be doing better pictures of her later today.  If you are interested please email me at kimberly.stevens@hauteswan.com or hauteswanfashionboutique@gmail.com.

I accept Paypal and Credit Cards via Braintree Financial.  If you have any questions feel free to post or email me.  As soon as her resin is done on her eyes and her binky clip arrives she is ready to go.

Shipping is not included in that price.  I would estimate shipping to be somewhere between $20 and 50 dollars.  Shipping can be paid separate or you can email me your zipcode so I can get a quote from USPS.

Have a blessed day!

Kimberly
Snuggle Babies Nursery

Gracie Rose Was Born Today at 7:06 PM

 Happy Birthday Gracie Rose!!!

Celebrating the birth of Gracie Rose.  Well almost.  I still am going to order some of that Crystal Resin to gloss her eyes up with instead of the Aileen's Paper Glaze.  I hear when Aileen's expires, it leaves the eyes unclear.

For the most part she is good to go.  I did find a small error on her doeskin body which makes me mad.  I wish I had caught it earlier.  It looks like a tiny grey oblong blob.  I also have to put crystal clear resin her eyes and hope it makes her eyes glossy like tears.  I am thrilled that she came out as pretty as she did.

She does have painted hair.  I have rooted another doll but I wanted to try my hand at painting.  It's not perfect but it's not bad either.

Why does the brown come out so reddish yellow even with the blue paint in the brown.  Ugh.  I need more colors to experiment with.  Over all it looks fine for my first doll.  I am sorry the lighting in this picture is so bad.  It's usually under this work light that is bright and does not show the shading very well. 

I will do a photo shoot with her tomorrow maybe.  And get her resin for her eyes on order.  I start school again tomorrow so I hope to have enough time to get the other reborn finished up too before my classes get hard and heavy.  I go to Regent University and I am working on my Information Systems Technology with a minor in Cyber-security.  So I will be knee deep in homework soon!  One of my classes this semester will be hard and the other will be easy.  I don't want to learn intermediate programming Java and Information Security Systems.  I just wanna reborn!  Hahah!

 

I can't complain.  Her magnets aren't real strong but they are working holding her binky and bow on.  I am ordering stronger ones.  Of course they are coming from china so it will take a while.  Until then I am forced to deal with the weak ones I can get.

She feels good like a real baby.  I will have to weigh her and fill out her birth certificate now.  I will start getting her ready to go.

My grandson absolutely was infatuated with her.  He thought she was a real baby and wanted to feed her the bottle and give her the pacifier and try to hold her.  It was hilarious as she looked like a real baby in his arms.

I think I am going to list her for $600.  I think she is worth that much since I used all top notch materials. Due to a two small issues one with her body and one with her eye that is why I will list her cheap.  Also she has a very expensive wardrobe.  Her clothing is almost all from Kohls, Carters, etc.  I am going to decide what she gets and get her listing up to date.  I may be putting her up on ebay shortly AS IS.  She is my first completed baby and she is so cute, I want to keep her...

Happy Birthday Gracie Rose...

With Love,

Kimberly
Snuggle Babies Nursery

Beautiful Eyebrows and Murphy's Law

Almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong with my learning.  I just have to take it with a grain of salt.

Finally, Gracie Rose and Raine Eden got a better set of eyebrows.  I removed the eyebrows and repainted them until I was finally happy with them.  What a pain but I was delighted to thin the eyebrows out and paint the tiniest of strokes, but I realize I do need to go even thinner most of the time.   I had to be careful because removing the eyebrows, though I did not remove all layers of paint, it did make the vinyl a bit shiny.  So afterward I had to take care to apply a couple layers of Genesis heat set matte varnish mixed with baby skin and a touch of blushing rebaked in my NuWave oven.

I cut one of my paint brushes down to where there is only a small amount of bristles. I might cut it down even more but at least I got a desirable effect as it was.  I found that thinning my genesis heat set paints down and using Eyebrow Brown with Vein Blue.  I think I mixed about 3 Eyebrow Brown  / 1 paintbrush dabs of Vein Blue paint into a small amount of paint thinner and it did not take much to get a tiny amount of what appeared to be black.  I later used more of my brownish hair color with a touch of blue to give the eyebrows a more brown appearance.

I had painted them before without the blue and though the paint was brown, the eyebrows on Celeste came out yellowish.  Putting the blue in was an important part of making the eyebrows look less yellowy.  I painted a wisp of a very fine line from the middle of the brow to the end of the eye. Then I proceeded to make v shaped arrows towards the end of the eye leaving only a tiny line at the end.

Then I made lines from the bottom up to the top of the brow in the side of the brow that was the thickest and I curved the ends of the line towards the bottom of the brow.  I also put in a few of the tiniest wispy lines at the front end of the brow to make it look as if a few got away, giving it a natural wispy look.

It was not easy and I removed them again and again until I got them right.  After like 20 times I finally started to get them right.  I noted the angle is important or else they do not look right.

So I made the mistake of putting Gracie Rose's eyelashes on too early.  Now I almost feel it should be the last thing I do.  While redoing her eyebrows with my heat gun (small heat gun) because I did not want to mess up her eyes or eyelashes in the oven, I made the mistake of melting her eyelashes down to nothing.  I ended up having to pull the remainder off and clean the eyeballs off.  I may have either cracked her eye slightly or got an eyelash stuck in it.  You almost can't see it.

I will list the doll as is since it's my first  release.  I can't replace the eyes at this point as they are glued in.  They still look pretty darn good and I am going to put crystal clear resin in them as I planned originally.  She will be ready for auction after that.  I will notify the new owner that she has a slight defect in the eye and a tiny defect on her doeskin body which I found on the body after it arrived.  I was kind of upset about it.

Raine Eden with new eyebrows.  Painted them differently this time and they look good.   Raine Eden was painted with Baby Skin x2 dabs and Brow Brown x 1 dab mixed in to the Baby Skin.  It gave her a slight olive look.  It was worth a try to change the color of the original baby skin a bit.  I put in her Pabeo eyes, the blue ones.  They are so cute!

 

  

 Gracie Rose with new eyebrows shown below.  I don't know if you can see the problem in her eye.  But it is barely noticeable.  At this point I pulled her eyelashes back off and cleaned the eyes out.  I also toned down the lips using the Baby Skin color from Genesis Heat Set Paints.

One other problem I had is when putting on the head, the strings did not hold the head on so I had to go find a kit that had the zip tie parts and borrow one zip tie for the head.