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Genesis Instructions How to use Genesis paints! Introduction Our Bountiful Baby Baby BabySkin vinyl reborn kits are ready to go! There is no need to remove any factory paint, factory body, or factory hair. So let's begin! Our preferred paint for our BabySkin vinyl is our Bountiful Baby Heat-Set Genesis paints. We have our own private label Bountiful Baby Heat-Set Genesis paints in custom colors that match our vinyl perfectly. Bountiful Baby Heat-Set Genesis paints allow you to achieve permanent and amazingly realistic results. Genesis Ethnic set (our item #2425) You can use the Genesis Thinning Medium (our item #1829), but we prefer to use Odorless Mineral Spirits (available at any craft store) to achieve the flowing characteristics that we like. We have organized the painting into numbered steps. We tell you the pre-mixed paint color and brushes/applicators to use for each step. This simplified process is what we call Reborn Paint by Number. Key points to success with Genesis paints: Less is best. Use only a tiny amount of very thin paint. Too much paint can cause the doll to have a chalky over done look. Use an oven thermometer and a timer when baking the doll. Never leave unattended. Do not overload your brush Use the right brush for each step. Supplies 2
Supplies needed: 1. Bountiful Baby Premixed Genesis Paints (our item #2425) 2. Four Brush Set (our item #1667): Maxine's mop, size 1 round, size 2 shader, and size 18/0 liner. 3. Cosmetic Wedges (our item #3737). 4. Cosmetic Rounds (our item #264). 5. Pointed Cotton Swabs (our item #263). 6. Toothpicks (our item #425). 7. Latex Disposable Gloves. 8. Odorless Mineral Spirits. 3
Color #1: Vein Blue First, thin this color to a water color consistency with odorless thinner or Mineral Spirits. 4
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Using your mop brush put a small amount of paint on the brush. Lightly paint the inside of the head around the eye and nose area only (to add a little depth). Next using your #1 liner brush paint veins on the outside of the head, wrists and ankles, by lightly loading the brush with paint and then painting onto a cosmetic round to remove a little of the excess paint. This color has a tendency to stain the vinyl, so be careful not to overload your brush. 6
With a loose and free hand paint veins one at a time as illustrated below, or a similar pattern of your own design. These above pictures show the veining painted more heavily than recommended. It is for illustration purposes only, so that 7
you can see the veining (otherwise the photography wasn't showing the veining as well). Use a cosmetic wedge, as needed, to lightly pounce on the veins to soften the look. You can see subtle veining in this picture around the temple area. 8
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Flesh colors These colors are an all over color that brings depth to the skin tone. Thin this color to the consistency of watercolor. Use a mop brush to dab this color onto a cosmetic wedge lightly. Now take the wedge and lightly pounce the color all over the doll. Keep pouncing the paint until you achieve an even tiny pin-dot look to the skin. If your baby looks chalky you have added to much paint and will want to dab a cosmetic wedge into straight Mineral Spirits and pounce over the paint to remove the excess. You can also use Mineral Spirits to remove any areas of paint that you are not happy with to redo them. 13
You can use one of the flesh tones, two of them, or all three, depending on the look you want (and how dark you want it). 14
Bake: At this point, we recommend baking so that you do not ruin the tiny pin dot skin tone you have created. Bake at 260-265 F for 8-10 minutes. Use an oven thermometer to make sure it does not get too hot. Place the vinyl parts on a baking dish in a bed of poly-fil. I would have a couple inches of thickness between the parts and the bottom or sides of the pan to prevent melting. Never leave your doll unattended while baking. 15
Flesh 03 This color adds even more depth and warmth to the skin tone and can help achieve the blotchy look of a newborn. This color is added in the same manner as Color #1, but I like to dab this color here and there leaving small spaces without painting them to help achieve a newborn complexion. If you are trying to make an older baby, you may want to add this color evenly. Thin the paint to a water color consistency with odorless thinner or Mineral Spirits. The following charts illustrate where this color is used. 16
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Ethnic Lip/Blush/Nail Use this color for blushing areas such as the cheeks, nose, hands, feet, knees, elbows etc. This color is also great for stork bites. Thin to a watercolor consistency and add this color using your very lightly loaded Maxine's Mop brush. Remove excess paint onto a paper towel or cosmetic round before you begin. 19
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Ethnic Brow Thin this color and apply to the brow line using your 18/0 liner brush. Start with a very, very thin paint and move to sightly thicker paint layers as you go, to give dimension. Note: Even the thicker paint will still be very thin. 21
Color #7: Nail Tip Thin this color and add to the nail tips using a toothpick or your liner brush. After this step look your doll over carefully. If there are any areas that you have too much paint, dab them with a cosmetic wedge dipped in Odorless thinner. If there is any touch up work you would like to do, now is the best time. Bake: Bake at 260-265 F for 8-10 minutes. Use an oven thermometer to make sure it does not get too hot. Place the vinyl parts on a baking dish in a bed of poly-fil. I would have a couple inches of thickness between the parts and the bottom or sides of the pan to prevent melting. Never leave your doll unattended while baking. This time test the cure of the paint (to make sure it is dry) when the doll is cool by wiping the doll lightly with a damp cotton swab. If no color comes back off then the paint is cured, if color comes off bake again for 5 more minutes and test again when cool. If still not cured bake again, until cured, but never longer than 10 minutes at a time. #8: Matte Varnish Varnish #8 (Matte Varnish) This optional medium removes shine from the doll and gives a slight texture to the baby's skin. Use this medium straight or slightly thinned if you prefer. Apply with a cosmetic wedge with a pouncing motion until it cover the piece lightly and evenly. Do not cover the nails and lips with this medium. Bake: Bake again in the same manner as mentioned before. #9: Air Dry Gloss Paint the nails and lips using your size 2 shader brush. Allow this medium to air dry. Your vinyl parts are now painted and you are ready to add hair to your baby! 22
Hair Rooting Instructions with Bountiful Baby Micro-Root Rooting Tool (our item #225) Our Needles We stock five types of needles: (1) Regular, (2) Crown, (3) Twin-Crown, (4) Forked (5) Single Barb. In Regular, we stock 36, 38, 40, and 42 gauge. In Crown, we stock 36, 38, 40, 42, and 46 gauge (the bigger the number, the smaller the needle). In Twin-Crown, we stock 40 gauge. In Forked, we stock 40, 42, 43 gauge. In Single Barb, we stock 43 gauge. All the needles are triangular, therefore they have three edges. The Crown needles have one single small barb per edge (three barbs total), with the barb approximately 1/8" from the tip of the needle. The Regular needles have two barbs per edge (six barbs total), and they are at staggered depths from the tip. For hair rooting, the "fine-ness" of the rooting depends on three factors: (1) the size of the rooting hole, (2) the number of hairs pulled into each rooting folicle, and (3) the elasticity of the medium being rooted into. The elasticity effects the degree that the rooting medium closes back in on the rooting hole-- the greater the elasticity, then the greater the rooting medium will "squeeze", or close back in, on the rooting folicle. For example, rooting into vinyl or silicone will appear finer than identical rooting into polymer clay (before the clay is baked), because both silicone and vinyl are more elastic than unbaked polymer clay. So, the best needle also depends upon the rooting medium. For rooting into vinyl (or a silicone/vinyl mix), a 38 gauge Crown needle roots about as finely as a 42 gauge regular needle (remember, the bigger the gauge number, the smaller the needle). This is because our Crown needles pull fewer hairs per folicle. That is what they are designed to do. So, even though our Crown needles (like are shipped with our rooting tool) root more sparsely than any other needle, they still work well, and are our most popular needle (by about 3 to 1). However, some people do not like them, because they root too sparsely for their tastes. For those people, they may be happier with 36 gauge regular needles. Our Mohair 23
NuBorn Mohair Our NuBorn Mohair (tm) is 100% PURE Mohair, its ULTRA-Soft Texture makes it perfect to reborn NewBorn Baby! Our Rooting Tool The Original Micro-Root tool from the company that coined the term "Micro-Root"! Many years ago, we first tried all the rooting tools we could find, and then we came up with this rooting tool. Our first Micro- Root baby was Zachary, whose auction was placed on ebay on 11/26/02. We later created Destiny, our Micro-Root baby whose auction was placed on ebay on 1/20/03, and it is with Destiny that Denise Pratt, of Bountiful Baby, coined the term "Micro-Root" to describe this new rooting technique. Since then, each and every rooted baby from Bountiful Baby has been a Micro-Root baby, and Micro-Rooting has become the latest cutting-edge rave in Reborning. Hair Rooting Instructions, by Denise Pratt For hair rooting you will need mohair or human hair, a rooting tool (our item #5598), felting needles and Gem-Tac glue (our item #348). I only use 38 gauge felting needles, but some folks prefer the larger 36 gauge needles because they don't break as easily (I typically break between five to ten needles per rooted head when using regular needles, and one or two needles per rooted head for our Crown needles). I also always use natural hair on my babies; such has mohair or human hair. I feel that natural hair adds to the realism of the baby. For mohair I prefer the premium mohair sold on our website. It is the closest thing to newborn baby hair that I have ever seen. If you are a beginner, you may want to practice with our regular mohair to save on cost. Human hair can also be used. Human hair is more difficult to root, so it is not recommended for your first experience with rooting. Human hair is a slicker texture than mohair and doesn t grab on to the needle as well, but with practice can be successfully rooted using the same method that is described here for rooting mohair. I use hair from my own children for wonderful keepsake dolls made to look like them. For rooting into vinyl, or silicone/vinyl mix, you will need to remove the head from the doll before rooting. With the rooting tool, make sure that the collet with the smallest opening has been inserted into the tool. Screw the vise part way back on the tool and then place a needle into the collet, pushing it in until almost all of the thicker part of the needle is inside the tool. Tighten the vise and you are ready to root. If you have difficulty getting the needle in at first a pair a needle nose pliers will help. Hold the rooting tool like a pencil, or else hold it by placing the wooden handle in the palm of your hand while pinching on 24
the metal vise part of the tool. In either case, make sure your fingers are placed on and "pinching" the metal vise part of the tool, like you were holding a pencil, because supporting the tool down lower like this will help reduce needle breakage. Before we begin rooting, let me explain something about mohair. As with human hair mohair has an up and a down side. It has a one way barb-like surface to it. If the hair is rooted from the center, the hair will be messy, frizzy and hard to manage. It is important that you root from the cut ends of the hair and let the tip ends be the ends of the babies hair. If you root from the center of the hair, you will be rooting some of the hair upside down and have a frizzy head of hair. Rooting from the center works for the cheaper roving type mohair because it is already tossed around and is not sorted with the tip ends and cut ends together. If you are not sure which end is the cut end and which way is the tip. Run your hand down the lock. The hair will feel smoother going from the cut ends to the tip than it will going from the tip to the cut ends. As with your own hair, this is much easier to feel if the hair is wet. Cut hair into approximately 3 lengths. The first step is to create the border or hairline. Follow the pattern of the molded hair on the head or use you own hairline as a guide. Lay a small lock of hair on the vinyl and push the needle of the rooting tool through the vinyl about 1/8 to 1/3 inch from the cut ends of the mohair. You can either go straight into the vinyl or root at an angle towards the crown. Work your way across the width of the lock of hair in one or more staggered rows. Pull away excess hair and move the remaining hair over and repeat. If you get any short hairs that stick out or any excess hairs pull those back out with tweezers. When your lock of hair gets too small to work well, add more hair to your lock. Trim the cut ends of the hair where you are rooting often to keep them nice and even. Continue working your way around the head until you have formed a complete hairline. Next fill in the rest of the scalp working your way towards the crown. Hair should be rooted on a downward angle and laying outwards from the crown in all directions. Root the crown of the head last. 25
When hair is completely rooted, secure hair from inside by squeezing Gem-Tack glue around on the hair from the inside of the head. Next clip a piece of a cosmetic wedge onto hemostats and smooth the glue, covering all the hairs on the inside of the head. If you do not have cosmetic wedges or hemostats, you can use a paint brush. When the glue has dried, you can brush and style the babies hair. Mohair gets very messy during the rooting process and may need to be carefully combed or picked to remove the snarls. Since Gem-Tac is waterproof when dry, you can even wash the babies hair without rewetting the glue inside the babies head. Styling Baby's Hair Using a styling razor (such as our item #461), shape the baby's hairline. For a newborn look, leave the babies hair longer in the front and shorter on the side front of the head. Cut away excess hair on the back and sides of the head. Layer the hair a little making the hairs shorter on the top of the head to allow the hair to be fluffed up. Remember to take this step slowly and carefully, you can always cut away more hair, but it is not as easy to add hair if you remove too much. After styling the baby's hair, you may want to wet the hair using a wet baby soft brush and put a nylon sock over the baby s head being careful not to cover the lashes, then allow hair to dry and remove the sock. The cut off foot of a pair of nylons works great for this. This will take away the frizzy look that mohair tends to get after rooting. With premium wavy or curly mohair, you can wet the hair and add a little styling mouse, then pick and shape the hair and let dry to bring out the curls. Caring for Mohair Brush baby s hair as needed, with a baby soft brush. Your baby s mohair may require a little extra grooming, but the beauty and soft feel of this hair makes it worth a little effort. Mohair is a natural fiber and it is natural for there to be some shedding. Brush baby's hair as you would a real newborn's hair to keep the hair smooth and separate. 26