I decided to write this blog to capture the things I’m learning about the world of urban vinyl designer toys and how to create vinyl toys.  I’ve already learned a bunch.  One of the great resources is the forum over at http://www.vinylabuse.com/forum/

Once you see what a vinyl toy is, one of the questions you may ask is “how can I make a vinyl toy myself?”. 

To start with, you need to create a sculpture of your concept.  Some people may make a sketch of the concept and have a sculptor create the 3D version, but that seems like missing part of the fun of the process!  It seems pretty common to make your sculpture out of Sculpey (same as Fimo).  It is a material which is easy to find (craft store), easy to mold (never dries out) and easy to harden (in the oven).  After you make your sculpture, you will make a mold of it.  It seems that silicon mold material is a good choice.  After that, you can make a resin version of your toy.  You can make a few copies with the same mold and paint them a variety of ways until you settle on what you like (or keep them all).

If you truly want to get into making vinyl toys, you would then send your painted model to China to get your toys made (more info).  Vinyl toys are created using a metal mold and a spin process that results in the vinyl on the surface of the mold, but hollow inside (think rubber ducky).

Here is a list of sites where you can get resin and silicon rubber (for mold making):-
Alumilite
Smooth-on
Bentley Chemicals
4D Model Shop

Heres a list of tutorials for making molds and using casting resin:-
Creating a Mould
Resin Casting
Quite an Interesting Mould tutorial.
Tesselate Toys have this really nice tutorial on there site as well as some really nice toys.
http://www.hobbycast.net
http://www.johnburn.co.uk
This is a reference list for materials and other things:-
List of things.

I found several of the mold making materials (silicone) and the casting resin on Ebay.