Making a Mini Cooper – Flexy Fast Project

Project designed & written by Debbie from SoapyLove. Check out her blog here, her soaplab site here & her soapy ezine here.

To make this realistic toy car, first I bought a die cast metal toy car at Rite Aid. It had open windows so I had to make new plastic windows (cut from some packaging) and taped them in. I pushed a whole bunch of play-doh and packing peanuts inside the car to make sure the windows wouldn’t just push in when I made my mold.

I got some silicone molding clay to make the mold, pressing into the wheel wells and a little under the car. You can use something from a craft store or get the Flexy Fast Molding Putty from Bramble Berry (if you got a copy of any of my eZines, there’s a coupon in the back for BB! ).

Then I poured white soap to fill the roof. I unmolded it and cut it into stripes for the final roof.

I mixed my minty body color by combining 3/4 clear soap and 1/4 white, then green shimmery mica and BrambleBerry’s iridescent glitter, scented with 1/4 teaspoon of Apple fragrance. I poured a bit into the roof then placed in my white stripes. I let it harden.

Then I made clear soap mixed with BrambleBerry’s silver mica for the windows. I poured this in until the windows were filled up (spraying my roof layer with alcohol of course!).

After that was hard, I topped off my mold with minty soap and let harden.

I unmolded the whole car, then used a sharp knife to cut out the wheels. I put the car back in the mold and made some dark grey soap, and filled the wheel areas with that. Let cool, unmold, yadda yadda.

I used an exacto knife to trim up my soap car since it had some lumps and bumps.

Now it was time for painting the details. I mixed the silver mica with a touch of black oxide to make metallic silver. I stirred in a few drops of liquid glycerin to make a paint consistency. I painted on my details with a little brush. I used white colorant for the license plate. All painted areas dried in my window for 2 hours. I used a pen to etch in my license plate (SOPYLUV).

Oh – I misted my soap with rubbing alcohol right before taking the picture to get that shiny wet look.

Voila! It took me 3 cars to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

What didn’t work:

• Plain clear for the windows. Wasn’t clear enough and just looked like the body color. Not cute enough.
• Solid white roof. Looked too pasted on.
• Solid black wheels. Straight black oxide looked very harsh. I used silver mica plus black oxide for a dark grey instead.