Have you heard of Shopkins? They are cute, collectable characters from your favourite shops and my 5 year old is obsessed with them. Every Friday he loves to go to our local toy shop and buy a Shopkins basket with his pocket money and add a couple more Shopkins to his collection.
They are quite sweet little toys, all different products you would expect to find at the supermarket, and you can collect the different categories and buy playsets for them. They are very kawaii with their happy little faces and remind me of the cute characters I have stitched from Wild Olive sewing patterns.
Anyway, my son has been buying the Shopkins magazine too and really wanted to do some Shopkins crafting but we just couldn’t find much to inspire us. So far we’ve made some little Shopkins shelves for him to display them on and we found some spares and thought we would upcycle them.
How to upcycle Shopkins
I’m sure there are lots of ways to upcycle your unwanted Shopkins but here are 3 ideas we had.
1. The first was with Fifi Fruit Tart which we made into a necklace.
Fifi Fruit Tart is a blue fruit tart from the Bakery with piled on the top. I took a screw eye and screwed it into the top of the Shopkins. Then it was easy to thread a cord through the eye to make into a necklace.
2. We turned Saucy Pan into a bag charm.
Saucy Pan, from Homewares, is a little blue pot with water boiling inside, causing the lid to pop up. I drilled a tiny hole through his handle with my Dremel and added a small strap with split ring to make it into a bag charm.
3. Slick Breadstick badge
Slick Breadstick is also from the Bakery, he is a French baguette with a curly moustache and a black beret. He was perfect for a badge so I glued a badge back on with some strong glue, leaving overnight to dry.
These were simple little upcycling projects but are a great way to give unwanted Shopkins new life. I’m really hoping someone will spot the bag charm so my son can swap his spares at school. Otherwise I’ll need to come up with some more ways to upcycle his Shopkins.
These remind me of the cute little rubbers I collected as a kid.
What lovely ideas! My daughter only has a few Shopkins so we don’t have any duplicates yet but I might see if she’d like me to make one into a keyring, would be lovely to have them out and about rather than stuck in a box!