How to Create a Vinyl Custom Toy with Creative Paperclay

Hello everyone! Cinnamon here again and I am going to show you how I created this custom vinyl toy using Creative Paperclay®. These vinyl toys are sold blank and artists customize them with paints and clay. The popular ones are made by Kid Robot, but I found this one by Creatology in Michaels. Most people use apoxie and polymer clays with these vinyl toys but I decided to try using paperclay to see how it would turn out. It wasn’t easy to get the paperclay to stick to vinyl, but I’m always up for a challenge! 

Supplies

• Blank Vinyl toy
• Creative Paperclay®
• Exacto knife
• Sanding sticks and or paper
• Dremel (optional)
• Acrylic paint
• Sealer, Varnish
• E6000 Craft Glue

The inspiration behind this piece was from a robot named Alphie that my father brought me when I was around five years old. I played with it nonstop for about a week and out of the blue it stopped working. Out of all of the toys that I had as a child, this one stood out the most for me in my memories because it was so short lived. I decided to recreate him with a mix of the older model that I grew up with and the newer model that they have now.

 

First thing that you want to do with your vinyl is sand down the parts that you are planning to put clay on and get it really, really rough. I used a dremel but you can opt for a coarse sand paper at around 80-100 grit. Paper clay does not stick to smooth non porous surfaces, so this step is very crucial to making it a little easier for you to stick this type of clay onto vinyl. 

I like to map out where I plan on putting my clay, particularly in this piece where things needed to be symmetrical. I used a pencil to draw on the vinyl toy to mark the spots that I wanted to cover. I had my sketchbook as a reference to plan out what parts of both models of the robot that I wanted to incorporate into my vinyl.

I used a ruler to align the button placement and map out the construction of the face. I took off the head of the vinyl to make it easier to access different parts of the body while I figured out where to place things.

I flattened out the clay and moistened the back of it with a dab of water to attach it to the roughed up parts of the toy. I used my exacto knife to cut the pieces of clay that I attached to the toy to make sure that it fell within the guidelines that I drew before it dried since it is easier to manipulate at this stage.

Set the piece aside and allow the clay to dry, should take around 24-48 hours depending if there is humidity in the air or not. Since this is a vinyl toy, I DO NOT recommend trying to speed up the drying process by putting it in the oven. When the piece is dry, sand and carve the clay as you need to get things to where you would like them to be.

Once you have worked the clay by sanding it down to get it nice and smooth, you can begin to paint the piece. The rim that I built up around the edge of the face came off when it dried which worked to my advantage. It enabled me to get to the hard to reach areas on the face. I replaced it later by gluing it back on with the E6000 glue.

Cover your painted piece with varnish and you're all set!

Thank you all once again for stopping by, and I hope that you enjoyed today's tutorial! You can find Creative Paperclay® at the following retailers Creative Paperclay® Online Store, Michael's, Amazon, Joann's.

See more of my work at Melandolly.com and be sure to catch updates on my Instagram page!