Wooden Bluey Earrings

These are a pair of wooden earrings I made of Bluey and her little sister Bingo, who are heeler puppies from the Australian cartoon "Bluey."

If you're unfamiliar, this is an excellent show and very entertaining for all ages.

To make these there really wasn't much carving, but mainly some cutting, gluing, and a little bit of sanding with a Dremel to shape a couple of parts.

The tricky thing is working at such a small scale, especially when painting. But if you've got steady hands and a few basic tools, these should be very repeatable. Read on to see how these were made.

They're definitely not perfect, but at least most people know who they're supposed to be!

Step 1: A Tale of Two Blueys

Some backstory . .

A while back I was staring at a pile of scrap wooden dowel pieces, and thought it would be fun to see if I could make a tiny wooden Bluey figurine. I grabbed a plastic Bluey toy for reference, and started cutting and gluing and shaping some tiny wood pieces to see where it would go.

The Bluey on the left is the result of that experiment. (These are about 1 1/2" tall, or 38mm.)

She turned out okay, but I thought I could probably do better if I tried again.

So when I saw the Jewelry Contest I was inspired to take a shot at making another tiny Bluey (along with a tiny Bingo), as a pair of one-of-a-kind handmade earrings.

As you can see, the Bluey on the right is a little more refined and cleaner looking all around. That's a lesson right off: keep trying and improvement will come with practice!

Step 2: Research and Planning

My little Bluey and Bingo figures have an amateur fan-art kind of look, which is ok with me. It's important to keep realistic expectations with a project like this, since in the end it's really just for fun.

When trying to make a homemade figurine of an existing character, it helps to start with some research and to make a plan to help you at least get the proportions close.

If a 3D toy version exists that's a great place to start. I have some little plastic Bluey figurines which helped a lot in laying out proportions, placement and shaping of parts, coloring and so on. I also like to make layouts with scales for proportion.

Bluey is just a little bit more than 2x as tall as she is wide (black squares in 2nd image). So the diameter of the dowel used to make her body (1/2" is what I used) determines the height you need to cut it (so, about 1 1/8" in this case).

Making a proportion scale (the red lines above) that indicate total height, midpoint, and quarters can really help with the placement and size of her various parts. For example, the top of her muzzle/nose is just above the halfway line, eyebrows are right at the top quarter line, ears are just about 1/4 of her total body height, etc.

Step 3: What You Need

These are the notable things I used to make these:

• Pieces of wooden dowels with diameters 1/2", 3/8", 3/16" and 1/8" (about 13mm, 10mm, 5mm, 3mm)
• A Dremel rotary tool with a 3/8" 60 grit sanding drum
• An X-ACTO precision razor saw and a hobby knife

Other common items I used were a small vise to hold the little wood bits when sawing with the razor saw, wood glue, a little bit of 220 grit hand sand paper, drill and drill bits, craft paints and brushes, and toothpicks (for very fine painting).

Step 4: Bluey Body and Ears

I made Bluey's body out of a 1 1/8" long piece of 1/2" diameter dowel. I marked the height but didn't cut it out yet, so there was some extra wood to hold onto while I worked on her ears and muzzle.

The ears are sculped down using the razor saw first to remove a small chunk (see 3rd photo), and then sanded back a little with the drum sander (4th photo).

Additional shaping was done using the drum sander to do some outside shaping, then the razor saw to remove a tiny notch to separate the ears, and the hobby knife to clean up the inner notch a little. Everything was then sanded lightly with 220 grit sandpaper.

Step 5: Muzzle

Bluey's muzzle was made next. To do this I sanded a curve into the end of a 3/8" diameter dowel with the rotary tool drum sander so it would fit perfectly against the body dowel.

Note that the rotary tool's drum sander size (3/8") is the size of the rubber mandrel itself. The actual sanding band is bigger so it creates this rounded out area that matches the 1/2" body dowel very closely.

This rounded out end of dowel was cut off and glued in place onto the body and gently clamped in the jaws of a small vise until the glue was dry.

When the glue was dry the muzzle was sanded and shaped into a more muzzle-like shape using the drum sander.

After the ears and muzzle are completed, the body piece is cut off from the larger section of dowel.

Step 6: Feet

To make Bluey's feet, I carefully drilled a 1/8" hole off-center down into the end of the 3/8" dowel, and then cut off two little discs from the end of this dowel that were each about 3/16" tall. To do this I clamped the dowel in a vise and used the razor saw.

Then 1/2" long pieces of 1/8" dowel were cut and glued into the holes in these discs using a tiny bit of wood glue.

The disc shapes were sanded down with the drum sander to make little Bluey-style foot shapes.

Step 7: Leg and Tail Holes

The legs and tail will be glued into little holes drilled into the body piece.

The best way to do this is to start with the smallest bit you have and work your way up to the full hole sizes one step at a time. That way the holes will be precise, and you can drill nice and slow and carefully remove just a little material with each step. You only need to go deep enough for the hole to support the tail or leg dowels, which will be glued in place.

Before drilling I used a spring loaded center punch to put a dimple on each mark, which helps the bit stay exactly where you want it when you start drilling.

The leg holes are 1/8" and the tail hole is 3/16".

Step 8: Arms and Tail

The bottom of the body piece is rounded over a little with the drum sander at this point. Be sure to do this after the holes are drilled, and not before. It's a lot easier in this order.

The tail and leg pieces are 1/2" long pieces of 3/16" diameter dowel.

For the arm pieces, I carefully sanded an angle on them using the drum sander (3rd photo). These angled faces will be glued to the body piece.

The ends of the arms are rounded over a little at this point as well.

Step 9: Glue Tail

The tail piece is glued into the tail hole now with a little bit of wood glue.

Step 10: Glue Arms

The arms are glued in place on either side of the body, one at a time. Put a very thin layer of glue on the arm as well as the surface of the body, wait a minute or two, and then press the piece in place. Then repeat for the other arm.

When the arms are dry, they were sanded a little with the drum sander to make a more arm-like shape.

The tail was also shaped at this point, primarily with a hobby knife to very carefully remove slivers of wood until the dowel was in a more tail-like shape.

Step 11: A Look at the Paint

Here's a look at the finished paint on Bluey. The following step outlines the process.

Step 12: Painting Process

I used basic craft paints you can get at any craft store using a very fine detail brush. I kept track of what paint colors I used to try to make this as repeatable as possible.

Bluey's colors:

• main body: baby blue
• head/ears, tail tip and back spots: english navy
• muzzle: 1:1 mix of coral and yellow (ie, mix 1 drop of each)
• inner ears: watered down wash of the muzzle color
• eyes: white and black
• nose: black
• belly, hands, feet, eyebrows: 2:1 mix of white and baby blue

The order of painting is shown in the photos. Each step should be done after the paint is dry from the previous step.

For the whites of the eyes, I used a toothpick to dab and drag around dots of color until the eye-shape was how I wanted it. When the white paint was dry I used the end of the toothpick for the pupils, but turned almost flat against the face to dab on little black oval shapes. It's best to practice this a few times on a scrap piece to get a feel for how much paint to have on the toothpick and to get the angle just right.

The mouth was drawn on with a nice quality ball point pen (a Pilot G2 07 in this case), after all the paint was fully dry.

If you make mistakes (which I definitely did), just wait till the paint is dry and cover them up and keep adjusting till you're happy. A toothpick works great to dab-and-drag tiny drops of paint to clean up edges and make more defined lines.

Step 13: Add Hook

I'm using a basic beginner jewelry findings kit which has hooks, eye pins, jump rings and more.

I started with a 1/32" drill bit and drilled a hole into the top of Bluey's head. I snipped an eye pin down to the size needed, spread a thin layer of super glue along the pin, and pushed it into place so the eye of the pin sat just above Bluey's ears.

A ring was placed in this eye and attached to a hook, then bent closed.

That's it, one down!

Step 14: Make Bingo

The process to make Bingo was generally the same as for Bluey, but adjusted as needed because her proportions and shaping are slightly different than Bluey.

Step 15: Painting Bingo

Painting Bingo was more tricky and required a bit more mixing due to the limited colors I had on hand. I've tried to share what I did, but you will likely have to tweak as needed to get the colors just how you like them!

Bingo's colors:

• main body: 1:1:1 parts coral, orange, yellow, mixed with 4 or 5 parts white
• head/ears and back spot: burnt sienna
• muzzle, forehead stripe, eyebrows, hands, feet, belly, tail tip: 3:1 light moca and yellow, mixed with about 4 parts white
• inner ears: watered down wash of main body color
• eyes: white and black
• nose: 1:1 dark brown and black

Bingo's mouth was drawn on with a pen just like Bluey after the paint was dry.

If you look at the photos closely you can see some mess-ups, painted coverups, and re-draws of her mouth. The mouth especially gave me a some trouble, and overall Bingo didn't turn out as good as I'd like. If I made another Bingo, there are a lot of little things I would do differently.

But honestly, these super-zoomed in photos reveal more than what's obvious to the naked eye!

Jewelry parts were added just like Bluey, and these little pups were done.

Step 16: Bluey! and Bingo!

Here are some final shots of my Bluey and Bingo earrings. Thank you so much for taking a look.

Like I mentioned in the intro, I think these are very repeatable if you break the process down into basic steps as outlined here. You can make all kinds of figures and characters with just a few tools and supplies. The most important things to have in your creative arsenal are a "just try" attitude and a heavy dose of determination. Go for it!

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts in the comments - and if you use these instructions to make your own, be sure to leave some photos to show them off!