Little Workshop of Horrors!

I‘m having a rest day so I‘m doing art that feels like play and gives me energy. I made a bunch of leaves using my fondant decoration orchid veiner and air drying DAS modelling clay, then painted them and glossed them with gel medium.

You can see me handling the teeny teeth with a wax rhinestone pick-up pencil in the video below. This is a craft/costumier tip I learned about from incredible head-dress maker @bubblesandfrown and damn it changed my decor game!!!

I‘m using a glue gun to apply this batch of teeth, stick in the tongues and clamshell the leaves together.

The gluegun glue is great because its fast setup lets me position the tongues and angle the openness of the mouths on the fly.

Fast-worker tip I learned: you can speed-dry air-dry clays and paperclays in the oven!

That is a GAME CHANGER if you are a fucking impatient person like me. However, that is not what I did here. Once I learned heat would speed up the drying without releasing any fumes, I just put ’em on the radiator. There are two modern radiators in our kitchen/my workroom, and they can be adjusted, so I put the leaves on there! Apparently these clays scorch easily so care is required when putting them in the oven, while the radiator top is visible from my worktable.

Air-drying clay is super-absorbent, so it sucks the paint right in.

I was able to coat and recoat these in a very short time. Then I coated everything with gel medium, for a creepy gloss. (I talk about sculpting materials and glossing substances here!) I’m not totally confident in the gel medium’s tack-free curing, so I may spray them all over with spray acrylic varnish later. But first the thick medium is getting another day to cure.

This is only the first iteration for what is gonna be Carnivorous Plant November around here!!!