Tom Kitten and the Mistress of Disaster

So I am messing around with sculpey and apoxie, making a kitten bjd. It is not easy--but I am learning the sculpey is fun to sculpt with-- and apoxie is good for fixing the myriad problems that happen when you actually cook sculpey. While the manufacturer of sculpey claims that you can add more sculpey and rebake the stuff, I do not recommend it. The older layer scorches and the new layer can't decide if it's actually cooked or not. With apoxie, the main thing is Thou Shalt Mix Exactly Equal Portions of the white and the gray, or it will not set. And you have to mix for a long time, squishing in your blue nitrile gloves, making balloon noises. But you can sand it--it feels pretty much like resin, and it is really hard. Sculpey you can carve a bit like hard rubber, it's fun too--but also easy to make a mistake, and then out comes the Apoxie. Hopefully I will find a gesso that will stick to both surfaces when I am ready to paint. I also in a mad moment decided I wanted to try a full sized 60 cm bjd--or maybe one with heel legs so I don't have to fuss with ankle balls. The smart thing I did was start with the torso, because I have extra arms and legs in a box, and I think the head will be the fun part. I hope so, the torso was..hard. I know less anatomy than I think I do and I can't do the "build up from the bones" trick that helps this since the center had to be hollow. I also found out that you should not use masking tape to smooth the inner foil. Scotch tape seems to have a higher ignition point, as  I discovered while I was cooking the torso and it sort of caught on fire and then fell over with a bang.

That will buff right out. Well, it actually was filled with Apoxie once it cooled, and the scorch marks did sand out. More tomorrow.

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