Okay, I don’t know if you have ever heard of these, but they are taking my kid by storm. She has been constantly trolling on YouTube, and all I have heard for the past few months are the insanely high-pitched voices that some people of the internet have adopted for these characters in order to create videos of them.

Personally, it is driving me crazy, but I love my kid and she loves Shopkins.

Here are some pics of the little guys:

 

 

You can buy them at Target or Amazon and they come in little surprise baskets that look like this:

 

 

Now I was just going to put the dang things on the Christmas list and forget about it because usually I don’t mind buying toys for my kid as long as the price is reasonable. These things are made out of less than a millimetre of plastic, so they don’t actually cost a lot of money.

Nowadays, I have been noticing more and more that toys keep getting smaller and smaller. I actually don’t mind this. They take up less space and it’s just obvious to me that things in miniature are way cuter. Besides the point.

So I put Shopkins on the Christmas gift list, and began my hunt for them. Like many of the toys that my kid finds on YouTube, the Shopkins are not available in my hometown. Apparently they will be coming to Walmart soon, but until then, I had to hunt online. I often buy online so that wasn’t a problem. But since it was a Christmas gift, I had to be sure to buy much further in advance in case I had to return something or something got lost in the mail.

I searched and I searched, but nothing that I found was worth the ridiculous amount of money that it costs to ship them. I mean these things are merely a millimetre of plastic, but the packaging is much bigger so it ends up costing just as much to ship the dang things as it does to purchase them.

Now, I am stubborn. I can’t stand spending more money than I have to. I am one of those people who will wait until things go on sale. I am not an instant gratification kind of gal. So even though these were a Christmas present, I was just too stubborn to pay the shipping.

Then I got down to thinking. This is what my trouble is. You see, most people don’t do this. Normal people would just pay the shipping and bite the bullet, or they would take a drive somewhere to pick it up themselves. Not me. I get down to thinking instead.

Here is how my brain works. The first thought that raced through my head was: A millimetre of plastic? How hard would that be to replicate?

Good god. But that is how my brain works. There’s something wrong with me.

Anyway, if you take a look at my one inch dollhouse post here, you would know that I like to create things with polymer clay. So when I got to thinking, I eventually came to the conclusion that the best medium to work in would be clay. It is easy to paint after all.

Take a look at the finished product. The ones on the left can be bought online. The ones on the right are made by me.

Here is one that I just made up:

And here is one that my six year old made. I think she did a pretty good job! 🙂

So I guess Christmas is out. I just can’t do clay crafting without my nosy little girl poking around in what I’m doing, but at least these little guys seemed to hold her attention, and now I don’t have to order them online. Plus, whenever we want, we can just make more. There are 148 to collect after all. 🙂

I love toys that are practically free to make. And she could care less that they are home made. She has been loving these little guys up just as though they are the sure, real thing. Enjoy!!