Custom painting my two new Manny Ramirez Oakland Athletics bobbleheads

When the Oakland A’s were rumored to sign Manny Ramirez, I was wondering if Manny would be my next bobblehead project. I decided to get two bobbleheads the Dodgers gave away in 2009 in hopes that he would sign. This was the first time I had ever bought a bobblehead of a player that had yet to sign.

But when Ramirez finally signed, I started to think about how I wanted to approach the two bobbleheads. I finally got around to painting it this weekend and this is how it turned out.

Here’s a slideshow of my two-day project.

Custom painting my new Coco Crisp Oakland Athletics bobblehead (with afro!)

When Coco Crisp busted out the afro back in 2011, I knew that this was an opportunity to work on this crazy project. I had hoped the A’s would have done it for a giveaway but I just felt that this opportunity was too good to pass up.

[I ended up meeting him on Sunday and link to my story at bottom of post]

I paid $25 for this 2005 Cleveland Indians Crisp bobblehead and got to working on it. This surprisingly only took me two days to complete. The painting was relatively easy. Deciding what to use for his afro was a different story. I wish I could have found a base bobblehead of him playing defense, but him running the bases works out fine too.

After the jump, I’ve included a slideshow with each slide detailing every step of this project. (To see my other bobblehead works, click here)

Custom painting my new Bob Melvin Oakland Athletics bobblehead

With Bob Melvin as the new manager of the Oakland A’s after firing the confused Bob Geren, I wanted a Melvin bobblehead. I bought this old D-Backs one for $20 and in a couple hours, made the full conversion.

I gave him the look he had during his second game with the team (which was also his first win with the team). With the road pants and the green jersey, it looked perfect. It was a little rushed, but I am happy with how it turned out.

I won’t detail this like I have with the ones I’ve done in the past. Just photos after the jump. (To see my other bobblehead works, click here)

I just sold my custom painted Hideki Matsui bobblehead for some good money

Sold for $100.

When I first bought this bobblehead, I had the notion to custom paint it and sell it. I bought two of them so I could sell one and keep one for myself. I had always been curious as to how much it would go for if I sold a custom painted bobblehead that I knew was the only one out there in the open market.

Plus, with encouragement from friends, I had a good feeling about how my painting skills have come around recently. Looking at past custom jobs from other sellers, I set the bid at $99.99 and it sold!

But with that, I will stop selling bobbleheads. One of the things that I had always worried about is that once I started making money off a hobby I love, it not longer becomes a hobby. It becomes a job and I don’t want to make it a job. Besides, there are legalities in selling anything with the likeness and image of a player or a company logo without their consent.

Good times, bad times, you know I had my share

This will be a simple update since there’s a couple things that I wanted to share from Friday.

1. I shared my last bobblehead project with Uni Watch and the referrals helped my blog reach its highest one-day site view total ever. My previous high was shattered (kind of) as the blog referred 2,201 clicks to my page, giving my blog a total of 2,652 views for the day. Plus my other posts from that day helped too. My site also reached past the 10,000-view mark today as well.
2. I went to the A’s game today and I got a free fleece blanket. But the A’s lost by scoring only one run through the first nine innings and the bullpen being forced to hold a small lead. In the 10th inning, the A’s surrendered seven runs. It was ugly.

Just wanted to share. I’ll be back at the Coliseum tonight.

My five-day project on painting a Hideki Matsui bobblehead into the new Oakland Athletics uniforms

It is done. I have finally finished the biggest bobblehead project I’ve ever attempted. My conversion of a New York Yankees Hideki Matsui to Oakland A’s colors took me five days, but I am very proud of what I accomplished.

To see my other bobblehead conversions, including the Peanuts gang and Woody from Toy Story, check them out here.

As a huge A’s fan, the signing of Matsui was a big deal and I wanted a bobblehead of his in Oakland A’s colors. Since the team isn’t doing a promotion of it and as of this moment, no official bobblehead companies have made one, I decided to make one myself.

I looked through eBay to find the best model of Matsui and I found the perfect one. This was the most detailed one out there and after looking through the details, I figured that I would be able to work on it.

The most difficult custom bobblehead I’ve ever done: Hideki Matsui in Oakland A’s gear

I won’t go into too much detail in this bobblehead since it’s pretty much the same and you can see by the pictures what I went through. The body was really small so I had a lot of trouble trying to paint the jersey on. However, I got a few tools and it turned out OK.

This one took me the longest out of all the bobbleheads I have done and it’s probably my proudest one. I wonder how much I’d get if I sell it…

Custom painting the black uniform onto my Andrew Bailey bobblehead

I realized that none of my A’s bobbleheads feature them in the black uniforms. Since the A’s are no longer going to wear them and I wanted to change it up a little, I decided to paint my Andrew Bailey bobblehead into the black tops.

I won’t detail this like I have with the ones I’ve done in the past. Just photos after the jump.

My 1986 Oakland A’s custom painted Woody (Toy Story) bobblehead

The final result. I'm very proud of this one.

This is my latest bobblehead project. I figured that since my other three Oakland A’s bobbleheads feature jerseys in white, gold and gray, I had to make one in green. I decided to take the 1986 jersey as my choice for green.

This took me six hours because the legs were held up by a magnet. And since the magnets fell off, I had to hold onto the legs the whole time instead of using its base.

I wanted to be as accurate as possible, so I decided to put the OAKLAND script on the jersey. In order to do that, I had to break off the arms. Luckily this bobblehead was made in 2004, so the glue was old and the arms came off easily. I used a clear adhesive to apply “KLA” to the chest. Then I proceeded to paint.

Custom painting a Charlie Brown bobblehead to the SF Giants/Gigantes jersey (and I’ll never do it again)

This is the first (and probably only time) that I will ever paint a bobblehead into San Francisco Giants colors. As you can see from my previous work, I’m all about the A’s. But since my friend’s birthday had passed and he really likes the Giants, I decided to give him a surprise bobblehead as a gift.

I won another eBay auction for a Kings Island version of the Charlie Brown bobblehead. Other teams that have had stadium giveaways of Charlie Brown that are too expensive. Getting a Kings Island version was actually easier since there weren’t any raised logos on the bobblehead. That would save me a lot of time in terms of painting.

My friend’s favorite Giants jersey is the Gigantes one, so I decided to paint the bobblehead into the road gray uniforms they for the past two seasons on the road against the Cerveceros (Brewers). Fortunately, I had worked on this specific bobblehead in the past, so I knew exactly what I needed to do.