Polymer Clay Man eating plant- Part 2

Once everything was baked, painted and dry i assembled all the pieces in the pot. For the roots i used tacky glue and for the stem i used hot glue....a lot of hot glue.

After assembling everything my hands were stained green, so i tried rubbing a bit of the paint off but it didn't work and green paint was still coming off

This was because i had mixed up my tubes of acrylic and watercolours!

I contemplated using pva to coat it but figured it would either make the paint bleed or eventually peal off.

So in the end i used a glossy craft varnish which fixed the paint problem and gave it a nice shine

I did buy matte mod podge a couple of days later which would have worked.

I added a small amount of moss just to cover up the hot glue and joins before adding leaves

The leaves are just felt that i painted with acrylic paint and more of the gloss varnish.

Before adding the gloss i really didn't like how they looked, probably because the contrasted so much with the body.

While the gloss was still tacky i put the leaves in round pots to give them some shape and once completely dried i hot glued them into place

Finally i added more moss and tacky glue the leaves to the pot to keep them in place.

And that's finished

Thanks for ready

Polymer Clay Man eating plant- Part 1

I started with a wire base and added two loops to the top to make the upper and lower jaw.This was made from one continuous piece of wire as I've not been successful with attaching separate pieces of wire together

Then wrapped tin foil to make a flat surface.

I've had success with this method but would love you have new ideas if anyone has done something like this already

I'd already got a pot that I wanted to use for this, which you can see in my previous post, and had been using it as a size reference.

I hadn't got enough green clay to make this piece so decided to use yellow and paint over it. Using a pale colour worked the best and meant I didn't need to add tons of paint. You'll see in a photo later what affect different coloured clay will have on the paint later.

For the stalk I rolled a long snake of clay out, not particularly worrying about thickness, and wrapped it around the wire. I originally wanted a very smooth stalk but liked the look of a more bumpy one. I used soft fimo so it was easy to manipulate.

I didn't photograph it because I didn't think it was necessary but instead of using a big lump of clay for the head it rolled up some foil and then added a thin sheet of clay over the top. This means I use less clay and it won't take as long to bake

It did actually stand by itself but didn't want to risk it falling whilst i was baking. I use the convection setting on my microwave so it turns as it bakes, this works just the same as using an oven.

You should not use a regular microwave setting to bake fimo clay.

I then moved onto making the roots, you'll see in the previous post i had cut out two holes in the pot. As i was making the pot with the intention of using it for this project I have an idea already of how big I wanted to roots.

You don't need to cut hole in your pot, it would look just as effective to paint a crack onto it.

This root is a long cone shape and then I twisted it to add a more natural look.

In total I made three roots, as i had run out of yellow clay i used some scrap purple clay instead.

The yellow was chunky enough that i wasn't worried about it falling over whilst baking but for the others i propped them up with jam jars and lids.

The tongue was also made of purple clay, i used a ball tool to add texture.  

As I was making the tongue i placed it inside the mouth to check how it look and where it needed more detail or reshaping. I smoothed down the back part so it would blend in with he mouth.

For the teeth i used glow in the dark clay, just because i had some left over and wanted to use it up. Not not the easiest colour to use.

I wasn't too picky with how they looked and wanted a selection of lengths and widths. So i didn't measure any of the sections.

I made them into cones and baked them

I sponged on a thin layer of green acrylic paint to the roots, as you may be able to see the colour difference between the yellow clay and purple is quite significant. This didn't matter a great deal as i would be adding a few layers but i'm not sure what the effect would have been if the clay was a more obscure colour like bright pink, which is one of the colours i always have left  over

I prefer sponging paint onto things like this as you can be quite sparse with the paint and it added a great texture.

Once everything was baked, painted and dried i added the tongue into the mouth with tacky glue. I did paint the tongue a baby pink colour with small splotched of red.

I had accidentally used watercolours for some of the green paint which meant it didn't dry properly and kept coming off on my hands when i held it. This was fixed later on

I used tacky glue to attach the roots

I did end up cutting thin layers off some of the roots just so they would fit more smugly into the cracks and a wedge off the big root so it would sit flat

Using a pair of pointy tweezers i dipped the flat end of each tooth into tacky glue and then positioned them into place. A few of the ends snapped off but I didn't mind as this added to the look i was going for.

I do wish i has made the tongue a big narrower as it was difficult to add teeth further back and I ended up cutting the teeth to fit which was difficult as they were so fragile.

I added the top row in the same way making sure the the teeth went in between the bottom row. I could have added loads more to really fill up the mouth but i liked the way it look with just a few in.

Although i did cut just the tips off and added them to the bottom as i felt it looked empty


Thanks for reading

Stay tuned for the next post where i will be assembling to pot and fixing the sticky paint problem