I’m a hobbyist with big dreams! I’ve been learning the ways of the resin cast and trying my hand at toy design, hoping to release my first official toy in the near future.
This project was part of the “New Years Gnome” toy making challenge. A bunch of makers would create a Gnome toy using a simple cup mold. I bent the rules slightly by making a 2nd mold for the arms because I couldn’t get everything to fit with a single cup mold. It was a fun project and also my first attempt at magnetic limb articulation. I’m hoping to make some more of these guys soon!
I had bought a sampler pack of Monster Clay a while ago, and decided this would be the perfect experiment for it. Monster Clay is a versatile medium that can melt down into liquid, it’s really maleable when warmed up, and gets hard as a rock (or maybe hard as a Now & Later) when it’s cold. It was great to work with this stuff in my hands without the worry of indenting finger prints into it.
Another curveball I didn’t account for was this guy’s height! This sculpt barely fit inside the dimensions of a regular solo cup, so I had to make a trip to 7-11 to snag a tall coffee cup. The cup worked perfectly and actually used less material than the wider solo cup!
I’ve always had difficulty with air bubbles getting trapped on small objects that I cast. When I was at DesignerCon last summer, I got an amazing tip for making tiny molds from Fett Up Toys where you create a funnel that goes below the object and then fills in the mold upwards. This concept was perfect for the molds I made for my Tiny Spirit Kits so I decided to try it again on the Gnomaste. I’m super anxious when I make my molds and probably went a little overboard with the sprues, but this setup worked great and resulted in perfect arms without any bubbles!
I’m the artsy sibling of the family, so every year I’m the one making something crafty as a gift and this one was my most ambitious yet! I wanted to learn the process of toy making, and in OCTOBER, just two months away from christmas, I decided to make my first ever toys as the crafty Sam gifts for that year!
The base design for these guys came from just playing with the clay. I made a body base that I could use for both characters, which made the mold making process a little less overwhelming.