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What we do ...
We make silicone babies. These are dolls, made from start to finish by us, from a lump of clay, into a finished soft silicone doll that is so cuddly and squishy, and looks so realistic it could almost be mistaken for a real baby.
Stage One - Sculpting the baby using polymer clay ...
Stage Two - making a mould for the baby ...
Stage Three - Pouring, or 'casting' the baby in soft silicone ...
Stage Four - Pulling the silicone baby from the mould ...
Stage Five - Painting and matting the silicone baby ...
Stage Six - Rooting and finishing off the silicone baby ...
About us ...
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Carolyn Doughty
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I'm Carolyn and I live in the north west of England. I moved to Preston in Lancashire just over a year ago with my two labradors and two naughty kittens. I work part time in a GP surgery but the other half of the week I spend up to my elbows in either silicone or clay.
I've always been creative and 'arty', through the years I spent much of my spare time drawing, painting, or working on different craft projects including painting and drawing, glass and silk painting, cake decorating, salt dough, cross stitch and embroidery, knitting and sewing, in fact you name a craft and I've probably had a go! About ten years ago I discovered reborning and that was a particular joy to me as I had always loved painting and drawing children and babies. But after a while, it wasn't enough, I needed to learn how to make the baby from the beginning, and then I discovered silicone babies. It was around 2014 that I first bought some clay and had a go at sculpting my own baby head. Well, it looked like something that had been dug up from the garden. I put it in a drawer and refused to look at it for a few months. But then I tried again, and produced something much better ... and so it began. |
Over the next couple of years I taught myself how to turn my sculpts into silicone dolls and now I am passionate about not only improving my own skills but also in helping other beginner silicone artists learn the art through my YouTube videos and facebook group Making Silicone Babies.
I have never had much formal training in arts and crafts, but in recent years have attended a couple of wonderful courses at The Sculpture School in Devon on portrait and figurative sculpting, an amazing experience, and have done quite a few painting courses at the St Ives School of Painting in Cornwall doing live drawing and also expressive painting.
Most of my family and friends think I am crazy and I'm always coming out with classic phrases such as 'just popping a baby in the oven', in fact my greatest find for my new house (not to be outdone by Michelle I'm also moving house this year) was when I found a large range oven that would fit a whole baby inside. However, I thought it better not to mention this to the sales assistant in Currys. I'm sure I permanently traumatised the young DHL courier guy who insisted he had to inspect the parcel I was sending to the US, and on opening the box and uncovering the baby (I did try and warn him) he went white and had to sit down.
I have also always been fascinated with Faeries and fantasy creatures, and back in 2012 I wrote a novel set in the Fae world, and so my sculpting progressed to not only the exquisite faces, fingers and toes of tiny human babies, but also to the magical fae creatures, faeries, elves and other magical munchkins.
My most recent exciting addition to Our World of Chi, was welcoming Michelle into our Chi family - as she mentions below, she got in touch and we just hit it off from the beginning. Because of the distance between us it is difficult to get together often (especially with the covid lockdown) but when we do get together we spend more time laughing than working.
I have never had much formal training in arts and crafts, but in recent years have attended a couple of wonderful courses at The Sculpture School in Devon on portrait and figurative sculpting, an amazing experience, and have done quite a few painting courses at the St Ives School of Painting in Cornwall doing live drawing and also expressive painting.
Most of my family and friends think I am crazy and I'm always coming out with classic phrases such as 'just popping a baby in the oven', in fact my greatest find for my new house (not to be outdone by Michelle I'm also moving house this year) was when I found a large range oven that would fit a whole baby inside. However, I thought it better not to mention this to the sales assistant in Currys. I'm sure I permanently traumatised the young DHL courier guy who insisted he had to inspect the parcel I was sending to the US, and on opening the box and uncovering the baby (I did try and warn him) he went white and had to sit down.
I have also always been fascinated with Faeries and fantasy creatures, and back in 2012 I wrote a novel set in the Fae world, and so my sculpting progressed to not only the exquisite faces, fingers and toes of tiny human babies, but also to the magical fae creatures, faeries, elves and other magical munchkins.
My most recent exciting addition to Our World of Chi, was welcoming Michelle into our Chi family - as she mentions below, she got in touch and we just hit it off from the beginning. Because of the distance between us it is difficult to get together often (especially with the covid lockdown) but when we do get together we spend more time laughing than working.
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Michelle Andrew
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I’m Michelle and I’ve just moved to Oxfordshire this New Years Eve with my two sons, my old boy of a border collie and my even older cat. I am normally found doing my best to hide from my children in my workroom, dripping with silicone or on an ever-decreasing circle between the fix-up table, the oven and the degassing machine. I’m not happy unless I’m getting my hands dirty!
I have a particular fondness for animals and have a zoology degree from back in the day and worked for London zoo for a while. I also love mixed up fairy-tale creatures and love the work of Henson and Froud so they might make an appearance at some point in the future. I’ve been creative most of my life, my grandmother taught me to knit and crochet at age 5, I found a love of puppetry in 2007, and have a degree and post-grad diploma in stop motion animation fabrication after I went back to university as a ‘mature’ (using the term loosely) student. I love variety across lots of different skills and materials and will try anything. Having spent most of my working life as a data analyst and statistician I was longing to spend my time more creatively. I found Carolyn’s amazing tutorial videos on the Benam’s moulding supplies website and was transfixed by her skills, voice and fairly loopy monologues. I contacted Carolyn and we became great friends almost immediately and I’ve learnt so much already (when we can stop giggling!), even though she does have a tendency to film all my embarrassing moments. I love all kinds of crafts but I particularly like sculpting, moulding and casting, sewing and knitting and both hand and machine embroidery. I love learning new crafts and improving my skills, learning from experts online and in person and have had some amazing tuition in the past. I’m honoured I now get to learn from Carolyn and I’m continually amazed at her talents and the amazing babies she brings to life. I’d never held a reborn baby before but when Carolyn first passed Effie to me to hold I fell in love - she felt so real I couldn’t put her down! Effie will always be my favourite and I’m so glad she’s getting a second chance. |
We like to think that we are inspired by the magic that we see, hear and feel all around us, and most of our babies are produced with love and a dash of magic. All of our babies are made from start to finish by us, we have complete control over how the babies look and feel, but in 2021 for the first time we will be able to make and sell most of our silicone babies as 'blanks' so that other doll artists can interpret our sculpts in their own way, painting, rooting and finishing them and we can't wait to see what other talented artists bring out in our sculpts.
Carolyn does most of the sculpting at Our World of Chi, whilst Michelle moulds and pours the dolls, and Carolyn does the painting and rooting of the babies. As Michelle gets more experience she will be starting to bring her unique magic to the mix and she is keen to learn to sculpt and paint her own babies, exciting things ahead!
We work in both Super Sculpey which is polymer clay, and also occasionally use Monster Clay which is a wax based self hardening clay. We sculpt tiny mini babies and elves right up to full size newborn babies. Once the baby is created in clay, we make a glove mould in silicone with an outer shell of a lightweight epoxy putty. The sculpt is removed from the mould and then the mould prepped ready to pour the baby in silicone.
All our babies are poured in a super-soft 'mallow' silicone and left to cure. We only work in platinum, prosthetic grade silicone using a super-soft blend which we call 'mallow' softness. When the baby is taken out of the mould it is amazingly soft and very realistic to hold, sinks into your arms when you cuddle her, and the surface skin wrinkles with the movement of the baby.
We paint the baby using numerous layers of a specialist silicone paint, applied using different techniques to get the realistic depth you see on a baby's skin with subtle veining and mottling to bring the baby to life.
Finally the baby's head is rooted using either super soft fine mohair or suri alpaca, always the highest quality, using a fine needle to place just one or two strands of hair at a time. The rooting alone can take around 20 hours to complete on each baby's head.
I also make the wonderful imaginative magical fae creatures, faeries, elves, unicorns, star babies. These are all very different and each one ends up completely unique - some I use tinted silicone and paint with a beautiful rainbow of colours and some I leave with a human-style flesh finish with only their enchanted appearance and their beautiful fae ears giving them away.
All of the fae babies have the 'chi' (pronounced 'chee') line design running through their torso and sometimes a star on their forehead, which gently glows in the dark, depicting the chi energy line that runs through all of us, joining our chakras and reminding us that we all have the magic within.
When our babies are ready to go home they come with a Certificate of Authenticity, which identifies which of us has sculpted / moulded / poured / painted and rooted your baby. We don't number the babies as limited editions as we try and get as many babies out of a mould as we can and often re-mould babies, that way we can often keep an edition going for some years for orders.
Carolyn does most of the sculpting at Our World of Chi, whilst Michelle moulds and pours the dolls, and Carolyn does the painting and rooting of the babies. As Michelle gets more experience she will be starting to bring her unique magic to the mix and she is keen to learn to sculpt and paint her own babies, exciting things ahead!
We work in both Super Sculpey which is polymer clay, and also occasionally use Monster Clay which is a wax based self hardening clay. We sculpt tiny mini babies and elves right up to full size newborn babies. Once the baby is created in clay, we make a glove mould in silicone with an outer shell of a lightweight epoxy putty. The sculpt is removed from the mould and then the mould prepped ready to pour the baby in silicone.
All our babies are poured in a super-soft 'mallow' silicone and left to cure. We only work in platinum, prosthetic grade silicone using a super-soft blend which we call 'mallow' softness. When the baby is taken out of the mould it is amazingly soft and very realistic to hold, sinks into your arms when you cuddle her, and the surface skin wrinkles with the movement of the baby.
We paint the baby using numerous layers of a specialist silicone paint, applied using different techniques to get the realistic depth you see on a baby's skin with subtle veining and mottling to bring the baby to life.
Finally the baby's head is rooted using either super soft fine mohair or suri alpaca, always the highest quality, using a fine needle to place just one or two strands of hair at a time. The rooting alone can take around 20 hours to complete on each baby's head.
I also make the wonderful imaginative magical fae creatures, faeries, elves, unicorns, star babies. These are all very different and each one ends up completely unique - some I use tinted silicone and paint with a beautiful rainbow of colours and some I leave with a human-style flesh finish with only their enchanted appearance and their beautiful fae ears giving them away.
All of the fae babies have the 'chi' (pronounced 'chee') line design running through their torso and sometimes a star on their forehead, which gently glows in the dark, depicting the chi energy line that runs through all of us, joining our chakras and reminding us that we all have the magic within.
When our babies are ready to go home they come with a Certificate of Authenticity, which identifies which of us has sculpted / moulded / poured / painted and rooted your baby. We don't number the babies as limited editions as we try and get as many babies out of a mould as we can and often re-mould babies, that way we can often keep an edition going for some years for orders.
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I am sharing this video, posted by one of our customers and now friend, Carol. Carol adopted one of our Alfie babies and this video and her lovely words are just wonderful. My thoughts and feelings about silicone babies and collectors, mirror these so exactly ... and she says it so beautifully. Whether you are a collector, interested onlooker, a friend, or somebody who cannot understand why people enjoy collecting these beautiful pieces of art, please take a few moments to listen and think about what is being said. Simply beautiful. |
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