If you’ve been reading my blog from Day One (thank you, first of all!), you may remember my plan to create little mouse dolls, and all of the ups and downs that ensued as I tried to figure out the best way to make them.
I experimented with making them entirely of polymer clay, air dry clay, and felted wool. Then, my awesome dad sent me little wooden and wire armatures, and now I’m working on sculpting heads, hands, and feet for the armatures. The bodies will be covered with tiny outfits, so I’m not going to worry about altering them at this stage.
Yesterday, I tried using flocking powder to make the mice furry. This is my second attempt, and it was only marginally more successful than the first. I first used Mod Podge to coat the polymer clay mouse head, but the flocking powder didn’t adhere well to that, so I switched to a spray adhesive. This seemed to work much better, and I was able to apply the flocking powder in a fairly even coat.
If you’ve never flocked before, a low-tech method involves using a two-part canister. You dump the flocking powder into one part of the canister and gently slide the other half of the canister on top, trying not to poof too much powder out of the little holes as you do so. Then, just aim the canister at whatever it is you’re flocking and use a pumping motion to force air and flocking powder out of the canister’s holes.
The first head turned out pretty well, flocking-wise, but I don’t think I’m loving the shape I sculpted. I made a second one with different ears and a more rounded head profile, but this time the flocking didn’t work quite as well. The mouse has a little un-flocked stripe on his face that almost looks like a scar (run-in with a house cat, perhaps? ;)).
I feel like I’m getting close to creating what I have in mind, so I’ll sculpt a few more heads until I’m happy with the shape and the fuzziness! More pics to come…
April 18, 2013 at 6:22 am
This was really fun and interesting to read. 🙂 Actually, once you mentioned the “scar” on the back of the mouse’s head, I remembered that one of my Sylvanian animals had just such a scar! I used to run my fingertips over it and wonder what happened. I was young enough that it didn’t occur to me that factories could make mistakes. 😉
April 18, 2013 at 1:33 pm
Awww, that strikes me as so adorable, thinking of a little Lisa pondering what happened to her Sylvanian, as though it had this long and colorful life before you met it. tee hee 🙂
April 18, 2013 at 9:20 pm
Hehe. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what I thought. 🙂 I was definitely the kind of kid who liked to think her toys ran around while she was out/sleeping, etc. 🙂
April 19, 2013 at 12:20 am
Yet another reason why we would have been best friends had we met as kids. 😉
April 19, 2013 at 12:21 am
😀