Custom Dog Car Toy (Willow Car)

Ever wanted more trinkets of your dog? I sure have! So, I made a car toy of my dog, Willow!

Why, you may ask, would I make this? Well, the story is a bit complicated. One day, I saw a yellow car while driving--if you know the game "yellow car," you know that that means I had to (lightly) hit whoever was in the car with me. I was in the backseat, next to my dog. So, I gave her a pat, and said the signature: "yellow car!"

This got me thinking. My dog is blond--not a far cry from yellow. I have clay at home. I look at my dog--and remember that cars have some sort of a face (you know, headlights for eyes, the grill as the mouth, etc), and was struck by the idea of: what if I made a car that was my dog? This idea may seem a bit strange, but I just couldn't get it out of my head. So, I decided to make it!

Keep in mind; you don't need to make this design as a dog! If you have a cat or another four-legged animal, this project is easily adaptable to have the aspects of your pet instead of a dog. Many aspects of this project are made to be adaptable for whatever your dog or animal looks like, which is one of my favorite benefits of doing custom crafts; they can be whatever you want them to be!

1. Clay or any other sculpt-able material (wood, 3D printing, etc) (I used air dry clay)
2. 8 bottle caps
3. Sand paper
4. Paint (being the colors of your dog--I used black, white, brown, and yellow)
5. Paint brushes
6. Wire
7. Hot glue
8. Skewers
9. Metal poker tool
10. Sharpie
11. Ruler
12. Paint sealer
13. Semi-hard packaging plastic (such as from packaged scissors)

For the wheels, I had the idea to make them into paws to incorporate the dog aspect more into this design. The idea is: the dog design has the typical four arms and legs, but these limbs lead into and act sort of as fenders for the wheels, which themselves are paws. This gives the image that it is more dog than car, and thus helps make the design more life-accurate.

In this project, I'm looking to make my dog, not a block-y car-shaped sculpture that could be seen as just any blond dog. So, this part of the design helps me get one step closer to that.

Now, some dogs have pink paw pads or pink parts of their pads (or other colors), which are easy to switch out for or add onto the brown pads in my design. This will give even more personalization to your dog sculpture! Just be sure to keep in mind which toes have which color on which feet of your dog; it's all important for the final sculpture! Or, maybe your dog has different colored feet, which would also be an easy switch. My dog, however, has all brown/black paw pads, and all blond fur, so every paw I made matched that.

For specific materials for these next steps, you will need:

1. 8 bottle caps (I used metal caps)
2. A poking tool that can be used to poke a hole through your bottle caps
3. A marker or pen
4. A ruler
5. Hot glue
6. Paint (color of your dog's paws' fur, and of their paw pads)
7. A paint sealer
8. Sand paper

Note: I ended up with a slightly darker brown for the paw pads than in the pictures above--you can see it in the final photos!

With whatever type of bottle cap you have,

1. first, draw two perpendicular straight lines using a ruler and marker on the underside of the cap. These lines should start and end at points opposite each other on the perimeter of the cap. Where these two lines intersect should be the center of your cap.
2. Jab a tiny hole from that center point to the other side with your poking tool. This hole is only a marker, so don't poke too far through to avoid too much metal exiting the outside.
3. Flip the cap over so the top is facing up, and, with the hole as a guide, poke in and drive the poker all the way through. Make sure to leave a hole that is large enough to fit whatever size dowel you have for the axles.

After doing this, you should have a hole through the center of your bottle cap, with any excess metal or plastic facing inside the cap instead of outside.

Now that you have a hole to fit a dowel through, do so, and lay hot glue around the edge of the cap. Then, slide another cap onto the dowel and press its edges into the hot glue to stick the two together. Using the dowel as a guide, the two caps should be straight and make an even wheel.

To prep for painting, simply sand the caps on each side. Then, prime the wheels white. Doing this, the paint won't chip off, and you'll have a blank canvas.

After priming, I mixed up a light beige that matched my dog's fur using white, brown, and yellow. With this, I coated each wheel.

After this, I mixed up a brown that matched my dog's paw pads.

I used the brown to paint a paw pad design, which is essentially just one big oval shape, and four smaller ones above it. I did a pretty simple design, without any shading or realism, but its very easy to alter my design to either look more like your own dog's paws or add more detail.

Make sure to clean up your design if your edges aren't as sharp or if your design isn't as clean as you want--be patient! Painting can take a decent effort, so don't lose hope!

Once you're satisfied with your wheels, spray or brush a protective coat so the paint doesn't get damaged. And with that, your wheels are done!

For the structure of the dog, I first rolled up some aluminum foil so my sculpture wouldn't be extremely heavy and solidly clay.

I made an oval shaped body, and attached a bulbous head with a smaller, longer nose. Into this head, I indented two areas for eyes with my thumbs.

If your dog is thinner or thicker, you can add some weight to the body. If your dog has a squarer or longer head, change the shape of the head accordingly. If you have a dog with a shorter face, make the nose shorter.

For dogs with wrinkles on their faces, such as pugs, I'd recommend rolling out worms of clay and blending them into various parts of the face where wrinkles would be to achieve that look.

If you have a dog that looks like mine, just copy my head shape!

Some clay types stick together better if you attach pieces by scoring (scratching up the surface of contact) and adding water--it's generally good practice to ensure your pieces won't be at risk of breaking too easily.

This is one of the most important steps of this project: the features! Here's where the project starts to come together. Every dog looks different, so change and attune certain features accordingly from my design so that your sculpture ends up looking more like your own dog and less like mine.

For the nose:

1. Shape out a sort of triangle which will be the area your nose lays. Below this, build up some of the cheek area to make a gently-sloped cone shape.
2. On both sides of the nose, draw simple crescent shapes and thicken the upper, more central part to make what looks almost like a comma (,). This should be a mirrored design.
3. Finally, draw a line down the center, and your nose is complete.

For the eyes:

1. In the hollowed out area for the eyes, place two clay balls
2. Add eyelids by adding an arched piece of clay slightly above and over the eyes, and blend it above the eyes. This will give more dimension and depth to your dog eyes.

For the ears:

1. Most dogs have a roughly triangle-shaped ear, so shape a triangle akin to your dog's ear. For me, this looked like a triangle with one side slightly shorter than the others, which I placed at an angle on the head.
2. To add some dimension and realism, I'd recommend folding and shaping the ear into a slightly curved form.

Lastly, for the tail:

1. I rolled out a curved slab, which I stuck a piece of wire into. My dog has quite the fluffy tail, so I made mine wider to account for that--but a simple rolled out piece of clay may work just fine for your own animal!
2. With the excess wire out the end, I stuck it into the back end of my dog sculpture and secured it there with more clay. If your dog has a very short tail, you can skip this step and just sculpt directly onto the dog, as there likely won't be as many possible structural issues.
3. You can add some texture at this point to the tail, but I add some texture in the painting stage, so it's not super necessary.

Now, all your dog's features should be in place (besides the legs, of course--those come in the next step)!

As I mentioned before, the idea of this sculpture is for the wheels to act as the paws of the dog, so we need to make it look like the legs are somewhat connected or affiliated with the wheels in order to properly achieve that look.

For each of the front legs, I made an odd bean-like shape, with the thinner end facing the front of the dog. For the back legs, I made an arched shape leaning slightly toward the back end of the dog. Dog's thighs are typically beefier than their shoulders (at least surface area wise), which is the reason for this difference.

Then, I plotted out where the wheels would be, placed them in their spots, and tore away at the legs so the wheels would be able to turn despite the legs being there. Like this, they sort of act as fenders.

To attach the axles (dowels), I carved a small divot to place them in the body, then covered it up with more clay. I smoothed this out, and it left the dowels stuck in place inside the clay.

To keep the wheels on the axles and preserve their design, I cut out some circles from semi-hard packaging plastic and poked a hole through large enough to fit the dowel through.

After this, I situated the wheel and stopper in appropriate distance from each other (not too much or too little contact), and used a small amount of hot glue around the edges of the plastic that touched the dowel to secure the stopper in place. After this, I cut the dowel down to size.

That's it for the wheels! Now, you've got a fully functioning dog car! But, it's not very realistic, being all clay-colored, is it?

For painting, first make sure you have a general idea of what colors go where! If you have a difficult time visualizing what different colors go where, you can make a color-coded diagram like I did above. Or if you have a dog like mine, use mine as an example to go off of.

For dogs with longer hair like mine, you can go over your base color with lighter and darker variants and add some squiggles or straight lines to show the hair length. I did this on various parts of my dog, namely the ears and tail, where her hair length is most noticeable.

Make sure your clay is completely solidified before painting! If the clay isn't fully solid, the paint may crack. Be sure to prime your clay if it's a darker color and your dog is on the lighter side--the paint will have more even coverage that way.

Before anything else, I painted the entire body a base beige (as that is the most prominent color of my dog). Like this, it's easier to add details.

My dog's ears have a gradient from a deeper yellow to a lighter yellow, which I recreated on my sculpture. With both colors, I painted without any blending, making sure the colors touched. Then, while they both were still wet, I went along their border and blended the two colors into each other. This should give a relatively seamless transition effect. On top of this (not in the photo) I added some squiggles with a lighter yellow to show the length of the hair.

For my dog's eyes, I first painted them black, then added a dark border (as shown in my graphic in the last step) around them. Doing this not only adds realism to what my dog actually looks like, but also allows me to more specifically shape the eyes without being super restricted by my prior sculpting. You can see the clear difference that even a little bit of color difference can make in my second and third pictures.

The nose is relatively simple, despite the number of aspects it has. I painted a brown triangle above it, added some black below, and blended each out with lighter colors. Around my dog's mouth, there is some whiter hairs, so I blended the black out with an off-white, and blended with slightly darker yellows on the top of her nose.

These subtle differences in color add a lot of realism and depth to the sculpture, so make sure to take them seriously!

All over the body, I drew waves and squiggles with a lighter beige to achieve a wavy, long haired look. I added some areas (such as on her thighs) that had a deeper yellow to add some dimension and variety.

For the tail, I made another gradient from a deep yellow to a lighter yellow, and did the same waves as on the body. Again, this is to make it look like she has a luscious, long tail!

Above you can also see a side view of the head and some of the detail I added!

As an additional step, you can also paint the dowels that you have for axles--I didn't need to as they were the same color as my dog.

Lastly, make sure to apply some sort of protective coat over your piece so the paint doesn't get damaged or chip!

Make sure to go show your dog! I'd like to say my dog was ecstatic, but you can be the judge of that (see above picture). Love at first sight, one might say!

An additional idea is to make this into a pull toy! You can drill in a small hook into the front of the dog and attach a string, or give it a little collar with a leash!

Maybe also go cuddle it in bed--at least it won't leave you like your real dog may (😞). Anyway, you both deserve a nap after such hard work!

If you want another dog related project, go check out the Cerberus dog costume on my page that I made!

And, finally, thank you Willow for letting me use your beautiful, furry face for my project!