From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success.
Looking back, Janice Croft believes with all her heart that she found a new purpose in life and her unexplored creative side was reborn during her darkest time.
The young mother was five months pregnant with her second baby when she was unceremoniously retrenched from her law firm. With no money coming in and a baby on the way, her prospects were bleak, to say the least. Overwhelmed and anxious, Janice did what she has always done when the going gets tough – she prayed – and waited for the right opportunity to come along.
Around that time, the internet was abuzz with Camille Allen’s lifelike miniature babies and the mom-to-be was astounded by the artist’s skill and talent. When Shanna was born prematurely in February 2008, Janice was fascinated by her tiny perfection and her thoughts once again drifted back to the tiny sculptures. She just knew she had to make one of these babies. Janice says it was that one Google search that got her started on her reborn journey.
The well-known attorney and debt counsellor says reborning fulfils her creatively, in a way that her chosen career could never do. After completing a basic online course on making vinyl dolls, Janice eagerly ordered her starter kit from the USA. Initially, she intended to make only one baby, for four-year-old Kyla. When the finishing touches had been added, Kyla proudly paraded her own baby around town while he mother pushed her little sister in the pram.
“The people were horrified. They assumed that Kyla was carrying Shanna around on the streets. I then realised how lifelike my creation was and the value of my new-found pastime,” she says. Since then, Shanna has been another baby in the nursery. Her life comprises new companions coming in and going away. Unlike Kyla, she has a strong emotional connection with each one and sheds a tear every time she has to say goodbye.
Before departure, every little celebrity gets their own photo shoot. There are only around 450 facial moulds worldwide, but each doll is unique – one of a kind. For the most part, Janice is self-taught, mentored by her father, Trevor, an accomplished artist. Not everyone who makes reborn dolls sees the hobby as an art form, though. Doll artists, in the true sense of the word, say mass-production and sub-standard components have tainted the integrity and standard of the craft. In her determination to get it right, Janice spends hours studying the anatomy of premature babies at Potch Hospital to get each micro-vein, every eyelash, eyebrow and blotch just right. She uses only top quality components and it’s worth it. With meticulous attention to detail, she brings each creation to life with the utmost precision and skill. It is time-consuming. Each translucent layer of paint is heat set and the baby’s hairline is carefully mapped out on the vinyl with a white marker. Then she takes a tiny, flanged needle and micro-roots each strand of mohair. It takes around three weeks before the finished product is finally baked in an oven to set, which, as Janice says, is a lot less than nine months!
The pre-sculpted, blank body parts and the mouth-blown glass eyes are imported from the USA and Germany, so unexpected postal strikes can be a nightmare,” she says. Because the components are not manufactured locally, the reborning community does bulk imports to keep costs down. Even so, this is an exclusive market and price tags vary from around R2 800 to over R4 000 for a limited edition.
Janice has made hundreds of dolls in the seven years she has been reborning. Her babies have been on display at Aardklop on three occasions and she exports across the globe. Orders from collectors keep rolling in and she can rely on one of her faithful customers for an order every month.
To be transported into this reborn world, visit Janice’s Just Angels website.
