By Harriet Tatham.
Vynette Smith is not a midwife but feels she is close to being one, as she makes dolls that are so life-like they’re often mistaken for the real thing.
Ms Smith is a Gympie reborner, making dolls that feel, look and even smell like real babies.
“When my boys left home I was going to start a collection of porcelain dolls and I looked on eBay and saw a photo that I thought was a real baby, so I started to look into them,” she said.
While mistaking a doll for a newborn baby may seem like a stretch, the creative art form has resulted in some reborners getting into trouble with the law.
“A few years ago in Gympie, a customer of mine had made a reborn doll for her daughter and they had gone shopping and the daughter had placed her baby in a capsule in the car,” Ms Smith said.
“When they arrived back a policeman had broken a window to retrieve the baby on a hot day but it was actually the reborn doll!”
'Reborning' dolls is a lengthy process
While it might take just minutes to mistake a doll for a baby, the dolls can take weeks to make.
The lengthy process starts with painting a vinyl mould.
"You take blue, red and mauve paint and mark out all the little veins on their head, hands and feet," Ms Smith said.
"You put tears in their eyes with a clear product, and you can put spit bubbles in their mouth with this product too, so you go for as much realism in the artwork as you can."
The vinyl moulds are filled with weights to make the dolls' weight reflect their size.
Ms Smith said doll enthusiasts also bought special baby scent sachets to make them smell as real as possible.
"They look like real babies and it's very easy to convince somebody that they're real children," Ms Smith said.
The hair is made out of Angora goat hair and felted into the scalp strand-by-strand before it is secured with a waterproof glue gun.
"Once it's secured, the hair can then be washed, and you can use human products like frizz control and styling lotions and conditioners," she said.
Dolls helping the heart
A decade ago Ms Smith said her dolls would sell for up to $2,500, but with growing competition from China for cheaper mass-produced dolls, she has been forced to drop her prices into the hundreds.
Aside from finding joy in expressing her creative talents, Ms Smith said the real motivation to make reborn dolls was the comfort they gave to others.
"Some of the people who buy reborn dolls are the people who've lost a child and want to feel that closeness, so they'll have a doll made in their image," she said.
According to Ms Smith, some of the dolls were 'born' to replicate a stillborn baby, and offered a form of closure for parents who experienced a loss.
But she said the dolls were also used by dementia patients.
"There are a lot of reborn dolls in dementia homes where the patients enjoy that loving, comforting feeling of holding a child," she said.
Despite the benefit they offered to people in pain, Ms Smith said some people were really scared of the dolls.
"Some people look and think, 'That is so creepy; it's so awful' and I think Why? It's artistic, it's incredible! I made this bit of vinyl look like a real baby," she said.
"I think the biggest fear they have is that it looks deceased. Because they look so real, and they're still and not moving they think it looks like a dead baby, which really is a credit because they think it looks so real!"
Despite the mixed reaction, Ms Smith said she felt lucky to be able to help people express both emotion and creativity.
She sells all the supplies on her website, which includes selling the kits that come with a vinyl mould so that people can make their own.
"It gives me a lot of pleasure — and it's more of a passion than a business — to supply these products to people so they can get the joy of making the reborn dolls," she said.
"If you can make someone feel better or make someone smile, it's a good thing."
This post originally appeared on ABC News.
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