Last Chirstmas I received a gift from my nephew. It was wrap and pack layer after layer in a hard carton box. Unwrapping it to the last layer, I was chilled by the outcome. It was a personalized golfing bobblehead(customized bobblehead) and the resemblance was terrific. It looked just like me playing my favorite sport. I was curious that, I never see any custom bobblehead shop in the states. Where is it from? I asked my nephew, and was told that it was bought online. Getting on the website, I found it was from China where the labor cost is still low. But I still wondering how do they make the bobblehead. The material feel like ceramic but a little bit softer. So I started to track the bobblehead history and find out how it worked.
Bobblehead was make by paster at the very beginning when it originated in Germany 60 years ago. After two decades it was introduce to America and made in America. The major league baseball bring the bobbleheads into pubic in the 1960's and make it accepted by most of the fans. Many baseball player bobbleheads are made as give-aways before the game. What makes it become incredibly popular is that many fans collect the bobbleheads as collection. Many bobbleheads are very valuable and cherished by many fans. The Beatles bobblehead(custom wedding bobbleheads) reached 10,000 dollar in a auction in 2011. It reach the record of the most expensive bobblehead in the history. As this phenomenon appear, custom baseball bobblehead become popular among the sport fans. In the pre-Christmas sales trends every year, more than 1 million custom bobble heads are sold in the US. As the labor cost in US rise rapidly during recent 10 years, most of the bobble head workshops moved to China and make this oriental country become the main resource of personalized bobbleheads. Over the last few months, I visited about 5 bobblehead work shop in China. The staff sizes are from 5-200 person. All of then make the bobbleheads in the same process but divided into different teams. Following I will describe how the artist make the bobbleheads.
In the work shop, I found most of the bobbleheads are custom groomsmen bobblehead and sport bobbleheads.(who makes the best custom bobbleheads) Basically, there are 5 steps to make a bobblehead.
1) Mixture of the clay and make the right color
2) Face sculpture
3) Hair sculpture
4)Body sculpture
5)Baking
6)Assembly
The fist step is the foundation and the key of all the following processes. If the color is mixed and lead to too much tolerance it will cause skin and hair color difference which is un-adjustable in the following steps. So the artist usually mix the color carefully till it match perfectly with the colors in the photo. Then the artist make the face, hair and body which is modifiable. If the customers does not like the outcome, they will revise it till it meet their expectation. When the approval from the custom is given, they will have it baked and assembled with a spring. This is the full process of making a bobblehead.
What gift should be sent in the wedding