Els Oostema

Els was born in The Netherlands in a small village close to the beach and sea, she lived with her husband and three children near to Rotterdam for 23 years. Lately the children lives on their own and Els en Evert moved to Belgium to live rustic. As child Els start making dolls en outfits for her barbies. Later she start making dolls for her fans and after she had given an exhibition 23 years ago, she was asked to pass her knowledge on to other enthusiastic people by means of courses. After much doubt and insecurity she has taken the big step to give courses in making children’s dolls and ladies dolls of self-hardening clay beside the sale of her dolls.

It all started on a garret in a small group of 3 ladies. These ladies were so enthusiastic, that Els decided to continue the teaching. After the birth of her daughter, Els started making ‘babies’, she had a living example. With these babies she had such a success that she was asked to write a instruction book. The book came out in 1989 and was presented for the first time during her every year returning open house. It seemed to be a hit and the second print followed quickly. 2 years later Els has written an instruction book about the making of flower fairies. During the writing of her third book “clothing for baby dolls”, Els got in touch with ‘Cernit’. This synthetic clay has several advantages. It is stronger and it works much smoother. After a lot of experimenting to get the right colour for white Asiatic and Negro ‘babies’. After she made the first baby with this she never wanted to work with something else; the babies became so realistic. The success of these dolls was, for example during the international exhibition in Ahoy, enormous. The reactions that Els got and still gets, vary from ‘magnificent’ to ‘lifelike’. Many happy mothers turned homewards, after a doubted “could I please hold him”.

Her babies are so lifelike that people use them for example as real babies in commercials for baby clothing. Also a lot of babies have already been emigrated in a foreign country.
After the success of her first book, and many ‘babies’ later, she has been asked many times to write a new book about the making of Cernit baby dolls. Els doubted a long time, because the technique is very difficult to translate into text and pictures. Also she wanted to do something totally different. This is how the idea was born to make a video. In November 1998 the video was launched successfully. In 2007 the first reborn-kit Iris came, thenhead and limbs are from vinyl and the reborner is aible to make a babaherself. Then in 2008 with Sacha and Lily, all three kits are very succesfull.

Els has been well known international for some time now. Many, including some well known doll makers, started during one of the courses that Els gives.

Els Oostema