Painting reborn dolls – some things you need to know

Categorized | Painting

Painting reborn dolls – some things you need to know

Posted on22 November 2009. Tags: painting reborn dolls, paints, reborn dolls

Using genesis heat set paints

Genesis heat set paints are considered to be harder to use than other methods. This can be true if you are a beginner, but this guide sets out to inform you how to use them correctly, making it much easier. Genesis paints can be very forgiving, and you can remove it from the doll with some rubbing alcohol and a swab. As always, more is less, so work in thin layers, adding more as required.

If you bake the doll and find out it is wrong then you can restrip the color using the earlier steps and start again.

Please be aware that this will give you a good base color. Feel free to experiment with other tones as required. Skin tones vary a lot against different dolls so may need tweaking.

Using an oven

That’s right – you will need to bake the doll pieces in an oven once they are painted. If you do not want to use a conventional oven you might want to look into picking up a small convection oven instead – they can be purchased for around $20 second hand, if you shop around. You can also get heat guns from genesis that you can use to set the paint, although I do not like these as much.

Calibrating your oven

As silly as this may sound, you should calibrate your oven to get the correct temperature so you do not ruin the paint/vinyl. Most ovens need to be set on a higher temperature than what you are trying to achieve.

For example – the doll pieces need to be baked at 130C or 265F – however, in order to achieve this on my over I have to set it at 285F. Be sure to preheat the oven too!

You can calibrate the oven correctly by using an oven thermometer.

These are cheap to pick up, and I highly recommend you get one, you will need it in order to check the temperature during baking. Genesis paints must be cured, as above at 265F for 6-10 minutes. When you put the pieces, check that it stays at a consistent temperature or adjust accordingly. I have to bake mine for 9 minutes.

If you do not bake it correctly, the paint will come off.