My Crafty Things: February 2015

Guinea Pig Home (2014)

My niece got 2 Guinea Pigs, she asked me to make a little house for them.
She'd like to have something that resembles some sort of farm house with little shutters. The house had to be grey with a red roof. The shutters needed to be red, green and white with the pattern found at old farm houses. And she wanted a name sign.

Finished house

Before I started I made a 3D drawing of something I thought looked farm like, compared to online pictures. I also tried different shapes of the roof and colors.

3 types of farm houses. I choose the front one to make. I wasn't fond of the chimney, therefor I skipped to make it.

From the drawing I took the measurements necessary to make the house. When I was drawing the doorway on the wood, it seemed too small. I looked online and it had to be at least 10 cm wide; the arc on the 3D drawing had to go.
I used the sawn out door to glue it on the side. I could have made that one a bit smaller thought. But it's alright.

For this project I used Plywood (6 mm for the walls, but 9-12 mm might be better). This is a safe kind of wood as far as I know and it will not absorb liquids like pee as MDF would (And break down because of it)

It's size is: 30 cm width, 20 cm deep. The rood overlays in the front which is about 1,5 cm. From the ground to the highest point is about 21 cm.

Starting with a pile of wooden parts.

With a pair of scissors I carved some lines in the roofing, so it would look like tiles.
When the paint job was done I covered it with 2 layers of acrylic varnish. If you do not varnish it there's a chance your Guinea Pig has a red or grey tongue later on because the acrylic paint will eventually stain if you soak it.

House without the name sign.

Perspective view

Left Side

Right Side

Because Guinea Pigs are rodents, one of them decided to use his house as a teeth sharpener.
When it becomes to bad, I will fix it up again.

IMPORTANT: You're working for animals, make sure you sand all the edges, use paint that holds no lead or any other nasty chemicals and no nails, screws or any other sharp bits!

Hoggle Statuette part 1 (2014)

Something I like to do it make statuettes from clay. The only problem is that I only have 1 finished product and I'd like to have more. Therefor I'm learning about making molds and concrete statues.
For this project I needed an idea; some sort of garden gnome. A friend of mine came up with the idea to make a Hoggle from the movie Labyrinth. I thought that was great so I started to make one out of Plasticine; a clay that doesn't harden and can be reused after casting.

End result of the clay sculpture

Before I started I searched for pictures of him. I used screencaps I made from the movie + some pictures I found only of the figurine version.

What I liked about Hoggle was that he uses a toxic sprayer to spray down biting fairies. I needed a posture where he didn't have a lot of pointing out arms/ fingers, because that is a level harder to make a mold of. Instead I made him carry the sprayer against his body as if it is a gun.

To make a clay sculpture you start of with a frame and cover it with paper/aluminum to get some volume. This you cover with clay and start sculpting. I forgot to make pictures of this process, but you can find examples on Youtube.

With the clay you make a basic shape and then you add detail. I like to start with the face, because if the head fails it has no point to finish the rest.

Details done in the face.

Side view of the face.

Some more detail in his hands, torso.

This sculpture didn't happen over night. It took a lot of hours. The benefits of Plasticine is that it doesn't harden like air drying clay will. This means that you can put it aside for the next day, month or even leave it on a shelf to finish it a few months later (Be sure it stands dust free). The clay reacts to warmth. It gets softer when it gets warmer. I had to quit the project in the summer, because my room was to warm and the clay became to soft to continue.
Also small parts seem to be a difficulty, due to body heat. Your fingers are warm, which quickly warms up the clay with small parts. Maybe it's an idea to make little details (f.e. the bags on his belt) of polymer clay. But I haven't worked with that yet, so I don't know.

Finished Hoggle front side

Finished Hoggle right side.

Finished Hoggle left side

Finished Hoggle back side

Detailed view of his belt.

Because the dark color of the clay It might not be 100% Hoggle, but I thought it was pretty close. I like how he looks. Next thing is to make a mold. I wanted to make an easier sculpture to do a 1st attempt, but Hoggle had some trouble staying up right, due to the soft clay/ bad framing, which meant I had to quickly make some sort of mold of him before he fell over and all the work had been for nothing.

That's where I am at the moment. He is covered with several layers of latex, but I will show those steps when I'm completely done. Thanks to this latex shell he keeps his position and I can do a polyester shell when temperatures go up a bit more. (This has to be done outside, due to the awful stench)

FruitCorso: Haantjes Gedrag (Rooster Behaviour; 2014)

As every year I've been part of the FruitCorso builders team.
Fruitcorso is a yearly event where we go around town in a parade with floats decorated with seeds, vegetables and, obviously, fruits.

The design for this year was: Haantjes gedrag (Translated: Rooster Behavior. Open interpretation: Cock Fight)

Final result, 2nd place

This year has been slightly different than other years. Some massive changes occurred in the club I was part of for my whole FruitCorso career. The club were 2 clubs combined. Back in the days my club didn't have enough members and the club from our neighbor village didn't have a space to build anymore. So we fused together. This year that contract was shredded and the club was divided.

The Designer that had designed for 3 years had been asked else where. After much debate and this strange debacle she decided to go to her home town to design and build the float. Together with her we went with a team of the old club.

That aside the basics hadn't changed. You start with an iron frame, add syrofoam, paper, paint, glue and end with products.

Iron frame with Styrofoam head and comb; Rooster 1.

Iron frame partly covered with phone guide paper; Rooster 2

As for other years I was put responsible to make the heads with the Styrofoam team. They helped with the basic shapes and I could do the ending details. Also the designer assigned me with the head of Rooster nr. 1 to design, choose products and finish it.

Plastered face, with clay on the right side
Rooster 1

Plaster on Styrofoam,
covered with a layer of white paper
Rooster 2

Painted face

Finished face with dentures

The only directions I got was that he had to become angry. And that is what he became.

Because it's really difficult to do teeth, I made dentures from clay which I could decorate outside the mouth and later on glue them in.

To give him a bit more of a fighter look I gave him some scars using upstanding pumpkin seeds.

Most of my decorating time went into the face but here are some pictures of parts made by others:

Beginning with the vegetables; Rooster 1

More progress on Rooster 1

Detailed shot of the inside of the wing from Rooster 2

We build in a shed/ hangar which means we're limited to the height of the door. Due to that we had to behead our rooster and use a crane to lift it and place it on the torso.