DIY Star Wars toys

The kids are wildly into Star Wars at the moment. Have you seen the price of Star Wars toys!?! Good grief! Even second hand they are still mighty pricey unless you get lucky. So, I've been painting peg dolls and we've all been making space ships out of recycling again.

First I'll show you the ones the kids helped to make, then I'll show you the birthday present me and Paul made for our older daughter, who turned six yesterday. Me and the kids made an x-wing and a tie fighter one evening a couple of weeks ago, when I should have been making dinner. Just hot glue and stuff from the recycling bin, plus a bit of paint on top.

The x-wing was made from a small cardboard box for the body, a cereal box cut out for the wings, four corks for the engines, with pen lids on the tips of the wings and on the back of the engines. The guns coming out of the ends of the wing tip pen lids are snipped off electrical ties like the ones I used to make the insect antennae. The nose of the x-wing was made from strategically cutting a mac and cheese box and then glueing a bit of an egg carton to the end. The cork engines had a plastic lid stuck on the front of each (from a quarter machine toy container). Lastly the cockpit cover was made from a clear plastic wood screw box.

The tie fighter was made from a toilet roll tube, two cut out bits of plastic from the bottom of a black plastic Trader Joes chana masala tray (mmmmm curry!) and the middle is just a left over plastic baseball from when we did the vuvuzela craft a while back. I love the wonky little cockpit window that my four year old drew on it.

These have been a huge hit with the kids. My older daughter was particularly excited about the x-wing because the pilot actually went inside it. They were so into them that I was on the verge of helping them to turn a couple of old frisbies into the Millenium Falcon, but Carys's birthday was a week away and so me and Paul decided to secretly make her a more robust Falcon dollhouse for her present. After I made Pixie Hollow for Ffion back in March, I wanted to do something equally home made for Carys and so we decided to spend a few evenings with me painting up peg dolls and Paul screwing various thrift store finds together to make the Falcon for them to go in.

I painted up all the peg dolls over the course of four evenings, after the kids had gone to bed. They are really freaking small! It would have been much easier to use larger peg dolls, but these were the ones we could get cheaply at Michaels (didn't have time to wait for anything by mail), also I needed them to be able to fit into the doll house we were making for them. I used two sizes. Darth Vader and Chewy are made from larger 2-3/8" blank peg dolls (they came in a packet of two) All the others were made from the little 1-5/8" peg dolls that came in packets of three. Some of them had bits chopped off and glued back together in weird ways to get the right sizes and shapes. Here's the only in progress photo I took (about half way through).

The cute little faces were based on a great flikr set by Ty Lettau that I found via laughing squid, at just the right moment!

Vader and the storm trooper's masks were made by covering the peg in clingfilm/clingwrap and then molding Fimo clay into the right shape, then carefully pulling it off and baking it hard. It was fiddly, but I couldn't think of another way to make the helmets be realistic and fit the pegs correctly. Vader's can be taken on and off to reveal his gnarly face when he decides to leave the dark side. I glued on the storm trooper's helmet though.

Leia's hair is a couple of wooden beads glued onto the sides of her head. Han Solo in carbonite is a Jenga block with half of one of the peg doll's heads glued on. C3P0 had his head chopped off and replaced with a random smaller wooden head shaped thing I had handy. R2D2 was the bottom bit that we chopped off to make Yoda with another half a head glued on the top. He's teeny (only 3/4" tall). They are all painted with acrylic craft paint and have a couple of coats of satin finish Mod Podge to varnish them (Darth and the storm trouper's helmet are varnished with gloss Mod Podge) I superglued felt to Chewy's head and little felt ears to Yoda, which went rock hard once I painted and varnished it.

I still want to make Boba Fett and Jabba, maybe even a couple of Ewoks, oooh and Admiral Ackbar! There are so many characters we could keep going with, so if the kids are still into it I might make more as stocking fillers for Christmas. Anyway, here are the pics...

Han Solo

Han in carbonite
Obi Wan Kenobi
C3PO

Luke Skywalker in his X-wing flight suit.

Princess Leia.

Lando Calrissian Yoda.

Storm Trooper. It was very late when I painted this little dude and I now realise that the way I painted his boby armour makes it look like he's wearing a thong. Nice.

Darth Vader


With his mask off.
Chewbacca. R2D2 Then you can arrange them into groups for sinister family portraits :)

Paul has written a post on his blog "Fangletronics" showing how we put together the Millenium Falcon dollhouse from random thrift store finds and recycling. So if you want to see all the bits that went into making the ship below then pop over to his post here.
It's been played with almost constantly since the kids got it yesterday. It's always a relief when something you have spent a lot of time on is well received! Phew! I think Paul did a good job making the falcon sturdy, so hopefully it'll last for a long time.