Squishy Shopkins

About four years ago I found myself sculpting a whole set of Angry Birds for Wesley. He was so into Angry Birds and I really enjoyed making that set of toys for him. They live in a small zippered case and still get taken down and played with once a month or so. Greta often asks why I made those for him and never made her a set of clay toys. This has been asked repeatedly over the past year and I finally decided it was time to make her something.

She's had quite the obsession with Shopkins lately. These are little toys with faces on them that kids collect. She's got about 20 of them and plays with them constantly. She's even found a YouTube channel that just deals with Shopkins. They make arts and crafts among other things on that channel. She loves watching it and became interested in making a certain craft involving a car sponge and Puffy Paint. Yes, I know that sounds strange. I thought it was bizarre when I heard of it but after watching this woman make a Shopkin out of a sponge and decorate it with Puffy Paint I decided we can do that. And it would qualify as my crafty gift to her (like I did with the Angry Birds for Wesley). You know with kids everything has to be fair, fair, fair!

So I went to Wal-Mart and bought a sponge in the car section and a pack of Puffy Paint in the craft isle. It cost $12 for everything. Puffy Paint is needed so that it will be squishy and soft on the sponge. Regular acrylics would crack and peel off.

We first cut out the shapes of the Shopkins we were going to "sculpt". We picked D'Lish Donut, Kooky Cookie, Strawberry Kiss and Cookie Nut to start with. Something tells me I'll be doing more of these....it was actually pretty fun and a nice change from using clay.

Here is Kooky Cookie all cut out and ready for paint. I used the small scrap pieces to make his arms and feet. We used some Aleen's craft glue to glue the arms and feet on.

Then it was time to paint them. I didn't realize how long of a process this would be! It took many coats of Puffy Paint to cover the porous sponge. It's thick paint and I ended up just smoothing it on with a plastic spoon. This took about a week's worth of coats.

Here are the four finished sponge Shopkin creations. They were fun to make and Greta adores them.

They "squish" like a sponge.

Here are what we used for reference (so you know what they are supposed to look like). Fun crafting project!