Iron Man Custom Mini Helmet

Custom Iron Man mini helmet – just for the fun of it!

Taking a different approach to my custom art toys, I wanted to do something that I normally don’t do, which is take an ordinary ‘cheap’ item and turn it into something awesome.  While time was not on my side in this case, I thought it came out pretty good!

While shopping at Target one day, I came across a pack of 3 cheaply made miniature Iron Man helmets that can be opened and placed with candy.   It was about $3 a pack, and 2″ x 3″, so it was worth buying to customize – wanted to make it more like Iron Man and have a unique display piece on my desk.

The toy came with the eyes sealed with a sky blue color, which was really weird.  I took out my trusty Dremel and shaved the eyes out; the first time I tried doing it, it came out like this:

Basically messed this one up – on my second try, it came out fine but some over zealous sanding made the eyes too wide! Third time’s the charm and finally got the plastic around the eyes removed.

From this point on, I sanded the eye sockets smooth, fixed any surface issues with putty, re-sand and smooth everything out.  Primer and then masked out the red and gold areas; sprayed metallic red and gold.  Used clear styrene to mask out the eyes and built a stand in the interior to house a lighting unit (this part I’m not going to explain too much since again, time was against me and I had to mock something up real quick so it’s not ‘clean’).  Tested and working, moved on to inking panel lines – yes I could have made much better lines, but happy with what I have.  Finished it all up with a semi-gloss clear coat.

Piece looks awesome, looks great on my desk! This goes to show you that you can take any ‘cheap’ item and turn it into something unique!