The Joy of 5 a day ;)

Righty then!

So at this point I knew I loved modding but I also knew that I was fed up of modding Archibald’s. I spotted a post in the forums sale section for 20 slightly damaged bears and they were at a price I couldn’t resist so I snapped them up. Here is the great part, I am a confident painter so when I received the bears I was able to repair half of them and confidently put them in my collection as perfect looking bears. I had already saved myself a bundle of cash! (Yet another reason to start modding). I have been able to do this a lot, as the most common damaged bear I receive will simply have a chip to the nose. This is easily repaired with the right colour paint, but I’ll save that for another day! Sometimes I look at a bear I have received and think to myself ‘What is wrong with that?’ You hardcore collectors must be a fussy bunch, hehe.

When looking at the remaining bears I did something I tend not to do very often and that is to think, ‘What can I do with that particular bear’ rather than have an initial idea and then find the bear to match. Generally mods do not tend to be as good when you don’t already have an idea prior to looking at a bear. At this point I just wanted more experience and as I was still learning I went ahead and picked up Joy. The handle was missing on her vacuum so I thought to myself, why not remove the whole vacuum, and so I did. Sometimes bears with additional ‘add-ons’ like this are cast as separate pieces and are then glued together. As a modder pieces that are glued into place are much easier to remove, with enough strength they will come away cleanly and in one piece.

I filled the void in the same way I did with Mario, and that was with clay. Once dry I cut the texture back in using a craft knife, this is really easy to do but I recommend doing it when the clay is dry rather than wet. Without the vacuum Joy did not stand by herself so I had to mod her feet. I did this by filling in the heel and then flatting the bottom of the shoes with a file.

Now it was time to add the ‘bad taste’. Joy’s hands were in the perfect location for an ‘insertion’ and what better than a cucumber?

Finally the bear was ready for paint, this time I used a mixture of paints and introduced some tubed watercolours. This type of paint will spoil should it get wet but as my bears are safely in a cabinet I decided I would be ok to use them. Obviously watercolour can be used as a wash, (with lots of water) or neat, (great for detail). The fur requires a ‘wash’ of paint. Games Workshop paints can be used in the same way.

The bear looked ok but I decided it would be funny to suggest Joy was attempting to get one of her ‘5 a day’. Originally I was going to add text to her freshly painted apron but this would have been tricky. Instead I printed a small information leaflet and laminated each side with a strip of thick sellotape.

There we have it, my first female mod, but not my last. For my next mod I would try creating a few zombies!!

Thanks for reading, and please let me know if you would like to know anything in particular. :)