Ask your ooak related questions here and Ros J
the Lullabydolls Carol and Janet will be happy to answer them

Hi Rosj, just want to thankyou for allowing us the time to 'pick' your brains here

I would like to know how long it takes to make a lifesized baby start to finish?????????
Thankyou

Hi jo, thanks for taking our problems on,
My question is can you use acrylic paints on clay ooak dolls, this may sound thick to you, but I don't have any ideas about ooak dolls, as I reborn vinyl ones only.

My question is about room temperature for a dollroom of ooaks....My dollroom is up in the roof a proper loft conversion but it still gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter so naturally I have a heater up there in the winter and a fan in the summer but do you need a certain temperature for ooaks??? I am collecting LMS babies so I have an awful lot of money and love in my roof and I dont want any harm coming to my babies through ignorance please advise...

Hi ladies, I will try to answer your questions
Cindy it depends on whether things go right first time, it can take me about 10 days from start to finish, but if the inspiration is lacking it can be longer, sometimes the face just comes without too much trouble and other times its almost right but it may take a couple of days to spot what needs changing. The limbs are usually not too bad, an arm is an arm when all is said and done, but occasionally when I want a specific angle it can take a while to get it to look natural.
Delightfulangels
You can use acrylics on the ooaks, however it may be as well to -*test*-('") them on spot that wont be seen, we bake the colour on our babies in and we use ordinary glitter free blush cosmetics. We have used acrylics in the past but had some trouble with certain makes, the reds got redder and redder over time and we had to destroy some lovely babies because they ended up looking like red indians!!
Camcamkay
It is best to have a constant even temperature, extreme changes from hot to cold and vice versa could cause problems with the clay, also we have noticed that if the dolls get very cold when they warm up the clay 'sweats' making the doll damp.

I hope this helps, Carol

Hi Girls,
Just wondered..what sort of clay you use. There are sooo many around. It seems to differ from one artist to another and yet the babies all look stunning.
Is there one you recommend for beginners and why?
Thanks guys...i know your busy.
Caron

I think you will get a lot of different answers here as we all different clays, Carol and I use modelene, we just work well with it, to start sculpting I would say to use the cheapest you can find to start off with, as your first sculpts are never very good, use this just to get a feel for the clay, and once you think your getting somewhere experiment with the clays to find one that suits you,

Thats great ...Thank you!
Is there a place you can buy from in the uk?

Yes there are a few places, the Polymer clay pit sells it

http://www.polymerclaypit.co.uk/

what glue is the best to use to put a thumb back on? please.

Veronica superglue is perfect

Ohh no we haven't got any, lol lol I will have to buy some tomorrow, Thanks Janet.
His mum used super glue to stick on a finger and she ended up being taken to hospital, Rowena stuck two of her fingers together and couldn't get them apart.

I read on dollfan that some people have experienced their ooak cracking. Can you explain why this is and is it preventable. I've been thinking of saving up to buying a large ooak but am being put off by the stories of them cracking after a period of time. Thanks

The main reason an OOAK cracks, it is because the clay didn't cure enough when baking, you have to bake the whole thickness of the clay, this is based on time and temperature, this you learn as you go along, but if you change your oven then you have to trial it again, if the clay isn't cooked throughout the undercooked part underneath eats through the baked clay causing cracking, There are other reasons too, a knock if hard enough would weaken the clay, it would not always break at the time but could do later on, sometimes if you have an air bubble trapped in the clay this can cause moon shaped cracks, but they mostly apear at the time of baking, other people have said drastic changes of temperature can do this too, I hope this is of help to you,

Thank you Janet