Not Your Average Toy

In the print version of SchoolArts, we don't always have room to show all the student artworks the author has sent us. Since I want to share more images from "Not Your Average Toy," an article by Eric Gibbons in the March 2015 issue, I'm posting them with the article here.

This is a "Bear" of a project, based on the work of Ross Bonfanti and his concrete stuffed animals. It seems simple enough - fill a stuffed toy with concrete, rip off the skin, all done... um----no. If students do not fill their figures properly, the results can include voids, breaks, and crumbled parts, but these can be repaired and contribute to the weird look of the sculptures. We embraced the ugliness and thoroughly enjoyed it.

You need old stuffed toys for this project. We found ours at a local flea market but thrift stores are a good source, too. Also ask for donations from home; lots of kids have old ones they are happy to part with. Choose toys that are about eight inches in size that have limbs that connect to the body (fee the joints to be sure).

Procedures 

Have students carefully cut the toys apart between the ears or up the back of the head with scissors so that the stuffing can be removed. If hands cannot fit or reach inside, students can cut a bit more. Have them remove the stuffing (needle nose pliers are helpful for this) and label the toys with their names.

Filling

Prepare your area for mixing and using cement. It took three 60-pound bags of a sand mix for us to fill twenty small stuffed animals (at the cost of four dollars per bag). Mix only what is needed at a time. Definitely have everyone wear gloves as concrete is slightly caustic. We used four-ounce paint cups to measure the ingredients and bowls and wooden spoons to mix the cement and water. Four level scoops of cement and two not-quite full scoops of water seemed to do the trick. The resulting concrete should be the consistency of peanut butter, not soupy or crumbly. A little moisture is okay. (Some websites will suggest that you turn toys inside out, but that is bad advice; all that hair or fur will stick to the concrete.)

Have students (wearing gloves) stir and spoon the wet cement into the “skins” of their toys, packing it in with dollar store wooden spoons and gloved hands. Encourage them to start with the feet and pack them well, using the stick end of the spoon to ram in the mix. Squeeze the limbs to feel if the cement is all the way in.

Have students (wearing gloves) stir and spoon the wet cement into the “skins” of their toys, packing it in with dollar store wooden spoons and gloved hands. Encourage them to start with the feet and pack them well, using the stick end of the spoon to ram in the mix. Squeeze the limbs to feel if the cement is all the way in.

Next pack the "butt" and be sure the toy can sit up by itself. We added balls of foil to the belly to lighten the weight a bit and surrounded that with cement. Then we stuffed the arms, placed another ball of foil in the head and surrounded that with cement. (Test student work, limbs were OFTEN not totally filled.)

For any toys that slumped under the weight of the cement, we inserted a sharpened dowel to hold it up. (If I did this project again, I would have had students make stick-man armatures to put inside. This would have not have prevented cracking, but would have kept pieces together I think. A thin cheap wire would suffice.) When the toys were filled, we put them on a plastic covered table to sit overnight with a fan blowing on them. The filling can be done in two sessions, but put in a bunch of toothpicks or wires partially into the wet cement, so new cement will stick better to old the next day.

Skinning

Skinning the toys is the hardest part in some ways. Scoring the surface with a box cutter will help, as will a Dremel tool if you have one. We found gripping the fabric with needle nose pliers and twisting really helped. Razors helped cut around embedded eyes and noses but you might want to help with that part, depending on the age of your students. Keep all the skinning materials and the toys to air-dry a bit more.

Reconstruction

We had heavy (but interesting) damage with our younger student's projects. We embraced the ugliness, though, and re-constructed the now cement-stuffed animals and toys with craft embellishments, wood, foil, and whatever else we had on hand. Some motherboards scavenged from a discarded computer, added a cyborg quality to some. We used cement glue to glue the cement pieces together and hot glue for everything else. Not your average toy!

Materials

• ·       Small-ish stuffed animals, about 8 inches in size seems best. Chubby limbs are IMPORTANT.
• ·       Sand-mix Concrete or Quikrete Fiber-Reinforced Concrete, 60 lbs per every 6 to 8 animals (adding foil to body and head will reduce weight and extend concrete but adds difficulty)
• ·       Needle nose pliers, box cutters, scissors (a Dremel cutting tool will also be helpful)
• ·       Wood spoons, mixing bowls
• ·       Gloves, a pair each
• ·       Dust masks, one each
• ·       Assorted craft items for embellishment
• ·       Hot glue and glue guns
• ·       Aluminum foil

Eric Gibbons is an art teacher from Bordentown, New Jersey and the author of the blog ArtEdGuru.