How To Make Your Own Clown Doll ! (A Guide)
Hello good people !!
I have made a few clown dolls before, and someone submitted a question asking if I followed any guide for them or had a guide myself. I sorta made it up as I went for the first doll, but I have learned better methods of doing things since then!
Here is my guide on how to make some dudes for yourself!
You will need:
Fabric for the body - I used an off-white fleece for the torso and limbs for this one, but have previously used a thin off-white sorta cotton fabric, which works better if you want floppier/thinner limbs!
Fabric for the clothes - Use whatever you want, honestly! I used some cool stretchy silver-metallic fabric for mine but have previously used cotton and polyester patterned fabrics !
Polymer clay - I used Sculpey III for this one, but for my previous two I used some other kind of Sculpey that was very very light and airy, which made it hard to sculpt properly without squishing it! If you want to add any detail to the face shape, use some firm polymer clay !
Posca pens (optional) and acrylic paints - Acrylics are used for the base coat on the head. I used the paints for the details too previously, but used posca pens on this one which was much easier to do the face details with! Either works just fine, though : )
Faux fur - for hair! If you want a bald clown or one with just a hat without hair, you don't need this!
Decorative trims and such - I used some pink frilly elastic trim, blue dotted non-elastic trim, white elastic frilly mesh, buttons, a silver bell and some blue velvet ribbon for this guy! You can literally use whatever you want (ribbons, bows, pom-poms, lace, etc) to make your clown look cute!!
Varnish - Use spray varnish if you can! It'll help prevent the face paint from smudging (all 3 of mine have had this happen using varnish with a brush). It is possible to use varnish with a brush on them but be careful with it! I used sculpey gloss varnish.
Tin/aluminium foil
Basic sewing supplies (needles, thread, pins, scissors)
Steps
1. Make a ball out of the foil, a little smaller than the size you want the finished head.
2. Cover it in a layer of Sculpey and sculpt the face shape you want. Include a pretty thick neck with the base at the bottom WIDER than the rest of the neck. This will be how the head is anchored to the body!
3. Bake the clay, let it cool, and sand it down so that it is nice and even without any finger-prints!
4. Paint a base coat on it with acrylic paints!
5. Paint/draw on whatever face details you want using acrylics or posca pens! Let your creativity flow!!
6. Varnish it!
7. Draw out the body pieces (torso and limbs) on your body fabric. You'll need two torso pieces, four leg pieces and four arm pieces. Honestly there's no method to what shape to draw, just draw what shapes you want them to be! (Remember to reverse each second piece though so that they match up when sewing them together). I used a rounded rectangle for the torso, and chose to make the legs on mine very long!
8. Cut out all the pieces and sew them together with the CORRECT sides facing INWARDS and the WRONG sides facing outwards. Once sewn, flip them inside out. MAKE SURE TO LEAVE THE TOP SIDE OF THE TORSO UN-SEWN TO INSERT THE HEAD!
9. Almost fully fill the body with plastic pellets, and only partially fill the limbs (I filled them about 1/4 full)! If you don't have those, use dry rice like I did (or dry lentils) or sand! If you use sand, ensure sure you make your stitches REALLY close together so sand doesn't come out of any gaps! If you want the limbs to be chunkier, fill them with more pellets OR stuff the rest of them with poly-fill or cotton wool!
10. Insert the neck into the torso and sew the opening tight around it, like this! The wide base of the neck stops the head from coming out : )
11. Sew on the limbs! The stitching doesn't have to be perfect here since the clothes will hide it!
12. Make the clothes! You can make whatever kind of clothing you like; I just made a baggy little jumpsuit sorta thing for my guy! To do this, I laid the clown out on the fabric and roughly drew the shape for clothes around him based on what I wanted! Flip it, lay it down in the fabric again and then trace this to get the second jumpsuit piece!
13. Use the same method of sewing the pieces together with the CORRECT sides facing each other so the WRONG sides are facing outwards. Then turn the clothes inside-out so that the right sides are now facing outwards! MAKE SURE TO LEAVE OPENINGS FOR THE HEAD AND LIMBS TO COME OUT THROUGH!
14. Put the clothes on the clown!!
15. (Optional) Glue fake fur on the top of the head in the style you want it! I used hot glue because I didn't have anything else, but fabric glues and all-purpose glues would be good too! If you don't want hair, just skip this step!
16. (Optional) Hat!! Cut out a wide triangle shape, sew the opposite sides together and then sew a circle to the base if you want a pointy hat like my dude's one (I don't have photos of this sadly but I'm sure there's a tutorial out there of how to sew a cone)! Then glue the base to the top of the head.
16. And finally, add all the trims and extra bits you want to make them look super cute !!! I just sewed on some ribbon to the base of the hat and around the ankles, sewed some frilly elastic trims around the neck, added a little silver bell to the hat, sewed frilly trim around the wrists and ankles and then sewed two buttons onto the front of his clothes!
And then, your little clown is done !!!
I hope this comes in handy to anyone wanting to make their own clown dude!
I would appreciate any reblogs and such of this to help spread the clown joy !!
Have fun !!!
(Small note! I would appreciate if you didn't copy any of my clowns directly! Please use this as more of a guide than an exact tutorial to make this specific clown! Being creative with yours is much more fun!! :•D)
