Wenchkin'sTips for Toy Modification

Union Riveter Wenchkin is moving to Thursdays!  That means you get Part 2 of her 3-part series on toy modification a day early (see here for Part 1).  Lucky you! 

Thank you for joining the second installment on my tips for breathing life into old toys. If you were looking for painting and prepping tips, please go back to last Friday's post for that information.

First, I am adding this as a post since people often ask how I go about cutting up toys and smashing them together. Here I am going to tell you what I did to achieve my results but that does not mean there might be another way to do things. I am not afraid to experiment and possibly end up tossing a toy. If you really want to get into difficult sculpting projects or heavy duty mods, this is a bit beyond my skill level. However, when I first started I found all the info I could want and more here in the Kid Robot Munny Customizing Forums.

You will not find me there any longer as I chose to move on with ponies as they are a less expensive base unit then a munny so I can offer them to my clients at a lower price. No real reason other then that. The forums are filled with all the info you could ever want about anything having to do with toy mods.

So for this I thought it would be easier to post a picture and tell you how I got the results.

Sometimes the simple addition of an accessory makes the piece:

In this case, the person I made the pony for is a chain smoker. I took an ice pick, rammed a hole in the pony and cut up a tooth pick, painted it like a smoke and stuck it in there. 

Easy.

Pony Warhol!  His glasses and television are made from shrink plastic I purchased at Hobby Lobby.

(I may do a future blog of just diy shrink plastic stuff since there are so many things you can do with it.)

King Diamond's mic stand is polymer clay which was baked, painted and assembled with a tooth pick in the middle and shrink plastic "bones" on top.

And sometimes I actually modify the body of the pony before I paint it.

And my first real mod, Pony Kun. I cut the front of the pony's face off with an X-acto knife then glued cardboard over the hole, cut it down with my craft knife then gave it a few coats of gesso to smooth out the edges before I started painting. 

I cut Zombie pony's leg completely off, cut a stick the size I needed then used hot glue to fill the space around the edges and glued the leg back on. I also made cuts into the pony to ake it look torn and cut the eye out, I used hot glue to fill and give it somewhat of a socket then painted that area black so it would look sunken. I had originally taken out my dremmel for this then put it back as hot glue and pony plastic just gum up my bits.

This was two ponies cut in half and glued together. They did not just fit right, so I had to shave down the centers of both, one on the inside, one on the outside. I like to use hot glue to fill areas but it will not be enough to hold this kind of an edge (the toy would fall apart). When I glue two dolls together I ALWAYS rough the edges first with some sandpaper, then I use a light layer of super glue on both sides, set it, walk away, when I come back in ten that is when I fill the crack with hot glue or a few layers of gesso then move on.

Now, it is really really difficult for me to get nice clean lines from glue along seams, I would venture to say if you are going to try to pull something like this off, for you first one you might try *faking* it or rather covering up the seam with something else.

For example, my seam on this piece was terrible, not that anyone would ever know though, since the shirt is covering it up.

Next week I will be discussing how I came up with my pricing since many people who are starting out often ask. I hope you join me then and as always,

Happy creating!  Wenchkin