Lifelike infant dolls startle onlookers, attract buyers
Woman in the Goulds creates ‘reborn babies’
St. John’s craft enthusiast Colleen Feaver fell into an unlikely niche market this spring: the young mother creates truer-than-life baby dolls, officially called “reborn babies.”
Feaver, the mother of one and a full-time employee in the national operations department of Johnson Insurance, hardly seems like a “crazy baby lady,” as she jokingly refers to herself. She has happened upon an industry with many fanatical enthusiasts, though.
“It’s called the art of reborning, which to me in itself sounds really creepy,” Feaver said. “It’s the process of bringing a doll to looking lifelike. That’s what the hobbyists call it, I don’t like to refer to it as that, though.”
The specific craft of painting, hair-rooting and assembling the lifelike dolls has been taken up by crafters across North America. The basic vinyl doll heads and limbs are supplied by a company in Utah called Bountiful Baby.
Feaver started working on her first doll in March.
“I was watching this TV show, and it showed a woman who made these dolls. And I thought the dolls were really cool, really interesting, and my daughter Calla — she’ll be 10 at the end of July — she’s very big into dolls. So I thought, my God, she’d love those.”
First, she looked into buying a doll on the Internet. But the least expensive reborn dolls on eBay were $500 or $600, and the prices went up into the thousands.
Instead, Feaver decided to try her hand at making a doll herself, purchasing a $300 starter kit and following step-by-step tutorial instructions.
“(My daughter) didn’t think it would turn out as well. So I said, ‘Well, let me try it and we’ll see.’ I said, ‘Mommy will surprise you.’”
“And when I made it, (Calla) was delighted. She thought he was wonderful, and she said, ‘I don’t want to buy one now.’”
Since then Feaver hasn’t stopped, and has even sold six custom dolls.
“My husband said, ‘Sure, why don’t you make them? You enjoy it, and you could make a little bit of extra money,’” Feaver said.
“I thought, well, maybe if people are asking, I’ll do it — Christmas is coming up, you know, (it would mean) extra money for Christmas, or a family trip down the road, or something like that.”
Since she also works full time, Feaver can afford to sell her dolls for less than the usual asking price, so they’re more affordable.
“I charge, right now, $200 per doll, $250 if they want a body plate,” Feaver said, referring to an anatomically correct vinyl torso attached to the doll’s front.
“The whole point was for me to make a little bit, so I figured $100 for the material, $100 for my time. I’m not making very much, but I enjoy the process.”
Drumming up customers hasn’t been difficult. Whenever Calla leaves the house carrying her doll, people mistake it for a real child, offering publicity for Feaver.
“One woman (mistook my doll for a real baby, and) heard us say, ‘He’s a doll,’ and she said, ‘ Oh, yes, what a doll!’ She still didn’t realize he wasn’t real,” Calla said.
The realism goes beyond the dolls’ appearance. Reborn dolls are filled with glass beading and poly- ester stuffing, weighted in different body parts so they seem real.
“When you hold her in your arms and close your eyes, you feel like you’re holding a real baby,” Feaver said.
“It’s funny, the reaction you get with it. Either people love them, or they think they’re entirely creepy. And I understand both reactions. My husband actually thinks they’re a bit creepy.”
The couple jokes frequently about the baby-building process.
“I’d be in my craft room painting it, and I’d come out carrying it to the kitchen, and I’d say, ‘It’s time to bake the baby!’ And my husband would say, ‘There goes Chucky!’” Feaver said, referring to the horror movie character.
Despite accusations of creating a creepy craft, Feaver feels there are many benefits to dolls that are truly lifelike in appearance and feel.
“I think that little girls, or little boys or whoever want to play with them, they want something that looks realistic,” Feaver said.
“There’s a lot of benefits to it as well. There is a retirement home that has expressed interest in me making some dolls for them, for help with their Alzheimer’s patients. They apparently go back in time and think they have babies, and (some of them) go around with dolls. (The home) thought it would be really nice to have a doll that feels so real, so it would be more therapeutic.”
She sees other potential benefits to the realistic toys, such as educational programs in high schools, and the flexibility to make dolls of any race, gender and complexion so children might identify with them better.
Although Feaver is not likely to turn dollmaking into a career, for now the process of “reborning” satisfies her love of crafting.