Cost of a reborn explained

Cost of Reborn Doll Explained

Many people have trouble understanding why reborn dolls are so expensive. Well, if they’ve never made one, that’s understandable, because they don’t know what the process is and what all is put into each baby. I am very choosy about my materials and take great care with that each baby look as realistic as possible and be as high of quality as possible. At the same time as keeping my quality as high as possible, I try to keep the cost down for my customers and so I don’t buy the $30 brushes (though I’ve heard wonderful things about them) or $45 thinner or high-line clothing from boutiques.So this is an example breakdown of the cost of one of my reborn dolls. For this example, I will use my current work in progress.

$106 – Ava Raine sculpt and shipping

$20 – body (if ordered with sculpt, no shipping)

$30 – glass eyes and shipping

$7 – paint. I buy big jars to save on cost, but they still run out over time and need replaced

$3 – paint thinner

$6 – brushes. They get worn out and need replaced fairly often to get the realistic effects. Most brushes are $5-$17 each and I use 12 main brushes on each baby, so these get worn out more quickly. Also, one brush each baby (a cheap one) gets thrown away after using it to spread glue for eyes/nose/mouth glue

$9 – sponges. My main sponges for applying tones and shading are cosmetic wedges, but I use sea sponges for mottling effects and other sponges for special effects. These other sponges can be reused and last for several babies, but it takes 1-2 packs of cosmetic wedges for each baby

$8 – glues and lacquers for gluing hair and glossing eyes, lips, nose, spit bubbles and/or tears

$35 – quality kid mohair and shipping

$10 – needles and shipping

$6 – tiny glass beads for weighing the head, body, and limbs

$4 – hose/fabric bags for holding the glass beads in the body and head and I also use a hose bag filled with poly pellets around the glass bead bag in the body

$5 – poly pellets for making the baby feel cuddly

$4 – stuffing to stuff the limbs, head, and around the poly pellet bag in the body

$0 – I use the card stock that the hose comes with for the limb/head caps, so no cost there except glue.

So the total cost from the list above is $253. This is just the cost to make the reborn, not any cost added for electricity for the stove (each of the paint washes have to be baked) or for my time. It takes about 15 minutes to put on a wash, 8 to bake it, 15 to cool while mixing up the next. Since I do 12-26 washes for each baby, it does take a bit of time for the painting (plus the research time, looking for reference pictures of real babies). Rooting take even more time (20-80 hours). Then there is the cost of what comes with the baby. Most babies come with the following.

$8 – washers and magnets for the magnetic pacifier, plus the actual pacifier

$4 – onesie

$10 – outfit

$3 – diapers

$5 – blanket

$5-$15 – some sort of toy or cuddly

So that’s $35 for the minimum for what comes with them (not counting birth certificates or other paperwork).

Which brings the minimum total cost to $288 for this reborn doll, just for the supplies, and nothing added for the many many hours I put into it.

My Blog

Just another WordPress site

Cost of a reborn explained

Cost of Reborn Doll Explained

One thought on “Cost of a reborn explained”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply