Necessity. Invention. Cheap and lazy. Same coin. There’s no point in storing a bunch of clay rubble that’s just going to get progressively smaller until I finally throw it out. I did re-roll a few pieces, but the rest got improvised and sealed in red. He did say the place was millennia old. Expect wear-and-tear.
The lava buds were sculpted much the same as the last batch of polymer clay, except this time I could skip the armature, shape them around actual spent tea lights, and put the whole mess in the oven without Minion rolling her eye at my choice of forms.
Flickering tea lights came from Amazon. They have a standard toggle switch on the bottom, and fit into the foam pillars. Speed paint was about the only thing that would stick to them and it did the reactivation and clump when I tried to seal it with gloss medium. Always exciting.
Fortunately the cured polymer had enough give to pull the lights and clean out the whole mess with water – never a good trait for paint. The second time I was careful to keep it to one coat and not disturb the layer once it was down.
Based in Van Dyke brown, oil washed with the same mix as the zig, and three rounds of dry brushing later, I realized I forgot the doorways. They’re built and sealed, but I’m outta mojo for the weekend.
I decided not to crackle the outside of the lava buds, and now I kinda wish I hadn’t done the one on the zig, but live and learn. It sounded good in the theory, but it robs the clay of translucency and makes the color feel shallow. I could always redo it, but I probably won’t. Maybe it’s lazy, or maybe it’s just time to move on to the next build. I’m thinking cyber punk. Maybe some modular terrain for Five Parsecs From Home or something for Tokyo: Otherscape.
