Creating more realistic child dolls is an increasingly growing trend among collectors and hobbyists. The challenge involves making the dolls resemble real human children to the greatest degree possible. The term given to this practice is creating reborn dolls. This new market is exciting for long time crafters who have grown tired of the more typical and far less realistic dolls that have been on the market for years and years.

The reborn dolls market has really boomed in the last five or so years thanks to the wider adoption of certain artistic techniques that allow the dolls to be enhanced and made to be more realistic. Much of the reborn doll craze can be attributed to the berenguer and preemie dolls that have been sold for years, which have lifelike attributes and other realistic expressions and shapes that resemble human babies.

Typically, reborn dolls are formed through an intensive process which strips the doll of its artificial appearance, which creates a more realistic doll. It usually beings by disassembling the doll and removing the paint that is applied by the production company. After the paint is stripped, a plastic shell remains, which can then be changed as it is needed.

When you are working to create a reborn doll, you will need to add a purple color to the inside of the head, arms, and legs, so that you can start to achieve a realistic baby skin color. You will then paint the outside of these pieces with several different skin tone paints and colors, adding real skin color, and then to bring the doll a lifelike look, you will use other tones and techniques, creating skin lines, blemishes, and other effects.

From here, hair and eyelashes are added to the doll using real human hair or soft, humanlike mohawk faux fair, allowing the reborn dolls to have human characteristics. This process often is done by hand and by strand, which can take dozens of hours. Once this is completed, the doll is reassembled with a softer filling and underbelly, and then may have other additions made to create an even more lifelike appearance, such as a breathing or heartbeat sound box to create a realistic appearance of living.

Reborn doll kits, which are ideal for those who wish to make their own reborn doll without a vast amount of work, are now available. However, the people who really want one have no problem spending upwards of a few hundred dollars to obtain one. The dolls are also popular gifts for mothers of new babies, as these dolls are reminiscent of their child's condition after birth.

The Berenguer and Preemie Dolls are partly to credit for the new trend in creating more lifelike dolls. Dolls can be taken apart to create Reborn Dolls which takes dozens of hours of work including painting the interior purple and using many shades of paint to create the same coloring as a human baby. Each strand of hair is added by hand and the doll is reassembled with softer filling. People are willing to pay as high as a few hundred dollars to have one made instead of making one from Reborn Doll Kits. New mothers are the typical recipients as a keepsake imitating their newborn child.