Mini-me for my Man

Hello crafty friends! This week's craft was a real labor of love. My boyfriend and I both love Funko Pop Vinyls (which are little action figure-type things made of all different tv and movie characters) and I thought it would be a great idea to get one that looked like him for Christmas. He is a police officer so I wanted to get one that looked like him in his uniform! First, I was going to get one made for him on Etsy because several shops do custom work like this, but the cheapest one I could find was for $85 and I'm stubborn so I decided I could do it myself for cheaper and it would also be extra special because I made it. I was a little scared because this is a kind of craft that is out of my normal area, but I gave it a go! First off I needed to buy some air dry clay and a blank Funko Pop. You can buy both a blank male and female figure on Amazon for less than $10 so that was easy!

The first step was just washing off the Funko Pop with some soap and water and drying it off. We want to get him nice and clean before we give him a makeover! The next step was painting the skin that would be visible on the figure; I just bought an acrylic paint at the craft store that I thought matched my boyfriend's skin tone because I thought that would be easier and more effective than trying to mix together a color.

After this it was time for the hair. I used the air dry clay for this, laying on different sections and shaping and texturing them until I got the look that I wanted. I also added some clay to give the appearance of pants bunching around boots and the arms of a short-sleeve short. I just wanted to give the little guy some more dimension! The picture below shows the sleeves and the hair!

I let the clay dry overnight before I moved on to the next steps. I also made some smaller pieces that I wanted to attach to the figure later and let those dry as well. I made some eyebrows, badges, patches, a gun and other objects to put on the figure's belt.  I used orange, black, silver, green, red and gold acrylic paints for these. Here is what they looked like painted and dried!

So once the clay dried I was going to get started on more painting, but noticed that some cracks had appeared in the hair. I panicked for a moment, but no worries! I went over the cracks with some Superglue to fill them in and seal everything, let that dry, and then could get to painting! I painted the hair a brownish color and then added some highlights with red and orange since my boyfriend is a ginger! I painted the clothes blue to match the color of his uniform and painted the eyes and boots black. After that dried I added another piece of air dry clay around the figure's middle to make a belt. Police officer's wear a belt that holds their gun, handcuffs, etc. so I wanted to make the little figure as realistic as possible! Once that dried I painted it black. I also used oven bake clay to make a little stand for the figure to keep it more stable and painted that different shades of brown. Then it was time for assembly! I used some of my favorite substance ever, Superglue, to attach all the small pieces to the guy and used some stronger Gorilla glue to attach him to his stand.

After some final paint touches, I put on a few coats of varnish and he was done. The varnish just gave him a little bit of shine!

I was worried that this was going to be a project that was too hard for me, but I am so proud of this little guy! This was technically a Christmas present for the boyfriend but I already gave it to him because I couldn't wait! He loved it! Leave a note in the comments if you've ever tried a complicated craft project and totally nailed it :)

​ - Rebecca