Stephanie Buscema's Blog

So I've made an attempt to venture into the world of custom toy painting. When asked to be in a custom toy show for December, I agreed...not knowing anything about painting these little guys. I picked up my toy (a teddy trooper) and just kinda stared at it for awhile, completely intimidated thinking "where do I start?". I have no experience with acrylics or enamels... but acrylics seem a little more forgiving. Medium chosen. Now what.

I started thinking about the toys that make me tick. I love old Suzy homemaker toys and easy bake oven type stuff. They always had this great toothpaste color to them. I also love the idea of taking a toy and transforming parts of it into another type of toy. So it turns out, the helmet of this bear will make a fine oven. Some little wooden pieces for oven dials. This bear obviously needs some fine baked goods too. So I started sculpting little cookies from sculpty, then baking and painting em up. Cookie tray? No problem. Back to the sculpty.

Everything seemed to be going alright...bear painted, oven sprayed up nice, cookies baked...oven mitts painted. Then...the mitts won't go back on?! Not cool. I wound up making a bit of a disaster out of the arms and had to re-do them. At this point I wanted to throw my little bear companion off the fire escape. Or worse...give her to the cat to decide her fate....


I felt bad and fixed her up. Her arms seem to be doing alright (a little bit of patchwork was needed with some brown paint) and hopefully she'll make some friends at the opening. I'll be sure to post some pictures of the finished product, completed oven and all.