A Frog Obsession?

 

Here I am, working on another frog.  I have to admit that the last one was very inspiring.  But this one has a special purpose - it's for my new little granddaughter, Sophie.  Hopefully her mom and dad will hang it by her crib.  Some day she may be interested in the process it took to come into being, so here goes.

 

This doll is going to have a beautiful fairy costume and wings and is intended to hang.  I'm making her head, hands, and feet from paper clay.  The finished sculpted head is in the upper left corner of the photo.  I carved the core of the head from styrofoam then wrapped it in gauze and coated the gauze with Mod Podge.  The Mod Podge gives the paper clay something to stick to.

 

Now I'm starting the hands.  As you can see from the one on the right, the core is cardboard from a cereal box.  The lower arm is a roll of cardboard held in place with glue.  I really like Alene's Fast Grab tacky glue for this.  It really does grab fast, and dries pretty fast as well.  I then cut little slits in either side of one end of the tube.  I cut the basic hand shape from more cardboard then set it in place in the slit with more glue.  From there, I can work the paper clay directly over the cardboard.  I dampen both the clay and the cardboard before I press the clay on, and it sticks quite well.  I've put a layer of clay over the hand on the left, adding it in small snake shapes that I then smoothed into each other.

 

Sculpting the clay can be a somewhat slow process because it needs to dry between the layers.  Not only does working in relatively thin (about 1/4" or so)  make for better sculpting, but it seems to crack less.  In fact, I seldom have cracks, but if I do, I can easily fill them with paper clay.