This Guy Repurposes Precious Moments and We Can’t Look Away

Remember Precious Moments dolls? The delicate figurines are usually given to commemorate a special memory, birthday, or religious holiday. They have huge, innocent-looking eyes and cute titles like “It’s Ruff to Always Be Cheery” for a figurine of a cheerleader with a dog and “I Love You S’more Everyday” for—you guessed it—a young couple roasting marshmallows over a fire.

Now Canadian artist Keith Busher is turning them on their heads—or, rather, transforming their heads. The creator of Precious Mutations takes the well-known figurines and changes them into “something a little odd, a little scary, but definitely more desirable.”

Honestly, we can’t stop staring at them.

So how did Busher go from Precious Moments to Precious Mutations? “It began about seven years ago now as the father of two kids who watched entirely too many TV reruns,” he says. “I wanted to find something to spark their childish imagination.”

With David Irvine’s upcycled thrift store paintings in his head and plans for an arts and crafts activity, Busher took his kids on a trip to the local thrift store. “Sadly, it didn’t quite grab the girls the way I wanted it to, but I couldn’t help but imagine what I could do with a bit of clay and paint that could turn these poor pieces on their ear,” Busher says of the figurines he found.

Though he initially shied away from toying with Precious Moments because he didn’t want to upset anyone (and, practically speaking, because people aren’t in the habit of discarding those particular figurines very often), Busher says he hit the jackpot when he found out a local antique shop had an entire box of Precious Moments it was looking to offload. “The Precious Moments pieces tend to get the biggest audiences as they are so recognizable,” he says. “Everyone knows somebody who had this piece or that one.”

Busher uses a self-hardening clay and mostly recycled materials to transform each figurine. And he takes his time. “I’ve learned that I can make pieces quickly, but I won’t be happy when it’s done,” he says. “I often add things that don’t get seen, several layers of paint to get that right feeling of depth.” He talks more about his process on his newly created YouTube channel.

Busher also creates his own innocent-sounding titles, often a nod to the inspiration behind the transformation. For instance, “A Boy’s Best Friend Is His Mother” is a Psycho reference, and “Lil’ Jack’s Frozen Pies” is for “The Shining”. Other titles are just based in wordplay, such as “Two-Four-Six-Eight, Who Do We Decapitate?”

Busher acknowledges that some people will love his work and some people will hate it, and that’s fine by him. He even sees it as a good thing. “My friend David explained it to me early on that to elicit any kind of extreme reaction is a success, because that person noticed your work, stopped, scrutinized it, and felt it necessary to vocalize their emotions,” he says. “And that’s what art is! Stirring emotion in people.”

You can check out more of Busher’s work on his Facebook page and Etsy shop.