Bongo's Bumbles

 Scissors? No.   Casper is undergoing dolly surgery.        Recently, I accidentally damaged Casper's right arm when I tried to spot clean it with distilled water, so I'm going to have to make an update to one of the Reborn doll pages on this blog. Now, I am not yet a Reborn doll artist, so I do not have the experience to repair someone else's artwork in this hobby myself. Fortunately, I was able to get in contact with Casper's artist, Joanne Donovan over at Lullaby Lake Nursery , and she was kind enough to allow me the chance to mail his arm to her for repairs. Today, I finally got up the guts to approach removing his arm to be packed and sent off and despite having watched a lot of tutorials on how to remove Reborn doll limbs in the past, I still almost made a terrible mistake. I am writing this post to let other collectors know not to do what I almost did and that I feel very lucky that what I did, did not actually get to do any harm.     ...

 What About Misinterpretation? An  Astro Boy  fan sits at the PonyTown docks, eating a slice of cheesecake.      A new law set to go into effect on September 1st, 2025, SB-20 , is intended to help protect minors online by banning fictional content, whether AI or created by artists (i.e. animation, comics, art) within the state of Texas. On the surface, this is a good idea that has good intentions- after all, encountering explicit imagery online involving underage characters can be a bit mentally damaging for internet users who are minors. So the effort is understandable. However, the impact seems as if it may be much wider than simply protecting people who are under eighteen years of age online. This law also holds possible negative impact for content creators who have created works that feature underage characters in a myriad of other, non-sexual ways because the language in the law's document does not strongly define what constitutes an offense within thi...

 When people encounter Vincent Gray, do they respond more to his sculpt's realism or to the sense of quiet vulnerability you've built into his character?   Sometimes, Vinnie goes shopping with me.       You know, I would have to jokingly say his sculpt is overpowering. That cute little nose, those pouty lips and those chubby little cheeks always seem to make everyone fall in love with him almost immediately instead of finding him creepy or scary like I had originally expected. Which is all well and good, I think. Because even though I personally enjoy horror themed Reborns, I find I am not such a big fan of randomly scaring people when I go out with my dolls. When I go out with one of my dolls, I generally prefer to be left to chill. Not that I will be unfriendly if someone asks about my dolls! I actually really like that. I just do not enjoy scared people when I am not expecting or looking for it. So the soft, adorable, sleeping appearance of Vinnie's sculpt so...

Upper left to right, Princess Ariel from "The Little Mermaid" and my own character, William Duckson, made for "Howard The Duck". Lower left to right, my own Texas Chainsaw character, Cain Sawyer and Casper McFadden from 1995 Universal Pictures' "Casper".  My Nursery Is A Space Where My Fandoms Become Tangible        The Reborn Doll Collecting Hobby is a hobby that, traditionally, focuses on doll collectors who curate collections of baby dolls which are made to seem as realistically close to actual babies as possible. Since it began, doll artists and collectors in the hobby have strived to achieve and maintain a visual and physical quality in their dolls that strongly calls to mind the expressions, the details and the tactile presence of real infants. Now, every artist and collector has their personal reasons for wanting this in the hobby. For some, it is simply that they think real babies are adorable, for others, maybe they just enjoy baby fashion. F...

 What My Dolls Mean To Me   A few of the dolls in my collection.          I collect dolls both as an art form and as a therapeutic coping mechanism. I am not ashamed to own up to that and in fact, my dolls are something I am quite proud of. Reborn dolls are an artistic endeavor, from the sculptors who create the blank doll kits, to the artists who paint and root the dolls and the curated collections of dolls displayed by collectors as artwork. In my opinion, Reborn dolls deserve recognition akin to works displayed in museums. We are not ashamed of Michelangelo or Magritte , why be ashamed then of artists who create dolls? The only difference is the "canvas". For that matter, we usually are not ashamed of people who choose to display sculptures or framed prints or paintings in their homes, so why then should we feel that way about people who choose to display artfully painted and rooted dolls? To me, it is the same no matter how you look at it- the dol...