Reborn Painting Tutorial - Sealing Your Kit

Well here we are to the final step in painting a reborn kit - Sealing The Kit. 

This sealing does a couple of things: Protects your painting and gives a nice final texture to the "skin".

You will notice in the pictures little Tanner here has eyebrows already. I didn't do a tutorial for eyebrows since I am very weak in doing eyebrows. Here is a wonderful tutorial that I follow when I am painting the eyebrows. All I can say is practice, practice and more practice. 
I started out drawing the eyebrows onto paper. Then went to a test piece to get the feel of painting the eyebrows on something that wasn't completely flat. I still need to work on this. So here is a wonderful tutorial:
http://tiptoeworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/eyebrows-easy.html

Now on to sealing our kit.

Supplies needed for this tutorial

For this tutorial I am using the Heat Set Satin Varnish. Instead of a Matte finish this one will put a nice sheen to the kit.

This medium is very thick. I use an old butter knife to pull some out of the jar.

I add my odorless thinner to the medium and mix until all lumps are gone.

Here it is completely mixed with odorless thinners and has a 

consistency of milk.

Here are the limbs completely sealed. I used my brush and painted the medium on to the limbs. I then took my cosmetic wedge and pounced until basically my arm felt like it was going to fall off. LOL!!! I then take my pouncing brush and pounce into all the creases really good. You don't want this thick anywhere. As you can see in the picture there is a white film this will disappear when you bake it. Very important to pounce with your cosmetic wedge and brush. You don't want this to be left pooling in the creases. You will have a white mess even after baking.

The Satin Varnish has been applied to the face only. I do the ears and the front of the face. I do not do the whole head since I will be hand rooting the hair. I have found in the past when you varnish the whole head and you begin rooting the hair, the needle will produce white marks from the varnish. So I do the forehead just to the top of the stork bite and down. Again pounce, pounce and pounce.

Here is the head after it has been baked. With this varnish, baking is a little different than when you were painting. I bake twice for 8 minutes at 265 degrees F. Allow the pieces to completely cool before baking again. Sometimes, depending on how thick you got the varnish a third baking may be needed. If you see any white on the pieces or in the creases you will need to bake again. That is an indication the varnish is not fully baked.  I find this final sealing layer really adds to the colors of the paint. They seem to pop with the varnish.

Here are the limbs after being baked twice. The pieces are not shiny but have a little sheen to them when light hits them a certain way.

I used to add an air dry gloss to the fingernails and toenails for added shine. After doing extensive research and seeing babies nails. I decided against using the gloss. If you look at a babies nails, they are not super shiny like they had just visited a nail salon. They have a sheen to them. I find the Satin Varnish adds that sheen to the nail. So this sculpt will not have the high gloss to the nails. I will add the gloss to the face when I am done rooting. I will provide a small tutorial for that when finished rooting.

I will not be doing a rooting tutorial since I am using a tutorial that belongs to someone else. I am going to post that tutorial link and I will provide pictures of my rooting with some tips instead.

Tutorial for Rooting

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorials on How To Paint A Reborn Kit. I will be providing other tutorials as I finish with the little Tanner Sculpt. I will do tutorials for final glossing of the face. Putting in the eyes for open eyed babies, sealing the inside of the head after rooting, and assembling and weighting your kit.

Happy Reborning and as always -- Questions and Comments are welcome! 

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