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Modifying your Munny with Sculpey Modeling Clay

From the Sculpey website

"Super Sculpey is the Ultimate Sculpting Compound! It is used by movie studios and professionals worldwide and a favorite with doll makers!"

I could add, a favorite of any sculptor or DIY toymaker.

Sculpey is a polymer clay that can be conditioned by hand and can be cured to a hard finish. Once cured it can be sanded and painted. This is exactly the kind of clay you will want to use with your Munny project. You can find Sculpey on-line or at virtually any local artist supply store or craft store. Even chains like Micheal's carry Sculpey.

In this project I needed to add the peak of the 'water drop', the frame of the 'helmet' and fill what would be the helmet ear covers.

There are several articles on line about working with Sculpey so I won't go into excruciating detail. I'll just share the basics of the process - Conditioning, Sculpting, Curing and Sanding.

I condition the clay by kneading it with my hands. When cool Sculpey is a bit stiff. A good rule of thumb when conditioning the Sculpey is that when its warm and soft you've conditioned it enough.

I then rolled out a sheet of Sculpey to a uniform thickness. I then cut that into strips that became the outline of the helmet. I applied those strips to the Munny head around the 'face'. I like to use an Xacto knife to trim Sculpey and true up square corners if their lose they shape when pressed down.

For the peak of the water drop I just starting with a lump of Sculpey at the top of the Munny head and, with my fingers, slowly and carefully sculpted it into a smooth peak that gradually tapered off to merge with the round shape of the Munny head. This will require a great deal of patience on your part to ensure the shape is smooth all the way around and that it merges seamlessly to the head.

For the ear covers, I once again sculpted lumps of sculpy to smoothly fill in the ears of the Munny.

The main thing to keep in mind is that if you see lumps or bumps or fingerprints before the clay has cured they will be there AFTER the clay has cured. It is often much easier to smooth out your figure with your hands or tools than to try and sand out imperfections after curing the Sculpey.

Safety first - be careful, boiling water and steam is very hot and can burn you. So are ovens for that matter. Don't burn yourself.

To cure the Sculpey you can bake it in the oven at 275 Fahrenheit (130 Celsius) for 15 minutes per inch of thickness. In the forums people say that you can safely put Munny into the oven at that temperature without getting a puddle of vinyl, but I'm not too keen on that idea. Instead I choose to boil the Sculpey. Now I know that boiling wont get us to 130 degrees, but it does a fine job of hardening up the Sculpey. Perhaps its not perfectly cured and in 15 years my project my vaporize, but I was willing to take the risk.

After you cure the Sculpey on your Munny you will want to let it cool before working with it further.

The last step is to sand out any minor lumps and bumps that you have and to smooth your Scupley all around. It is especially necessary to do so around smooth transitions between Sculpey and the Munny.

I used a fine grit wet-dry sand paper for my sanding. You might want to wear a dust mask when sanding.