After seeing this article on Hackaday describing an easy to make silicone casting  material I knew I had to give it a quick go.  The photos here show the results of making a mold of a polymer clay heart and then making a heart shaped ice cube from it.

Oogoo is basically equal parts corn flour and sealant, mixed into a white goo.  This Instructable has all the details for making Oogoo and fully documents its many uses.

Mixing Oogoo takes a bit of effort, I used a cardboard tub as a container and an old paintbrush handle to mix with, this probably made it more difficult than it needed to be  but that’s what I had to hand.

Once mixed, i found it quite difficult to spread over my heart form, next time i plan to wear latex gloves and shape it by hand.

Even with my shoddy mixing, crappy tools and less than ideal spreading technique, I ended up with a usable mold in around 2- 3 hours. To test it out, I simply filled it with water and froze it for an hour or two.

As you can see, the Ice heart isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close.  A definite success!

In future, if I need to make a mold for any reason,  Oogoo is going to be my first port of call, its quick, cheap and absolutely stinks of vinegar. What more could you want?

Back to the project, as before, the base is an 80mm saucer that cost 25p from a DIY shop, the landscape is polymer clay,  work in progress shots available here and here. Finally it was painted in acrylics and finished with model railway scatter material.

To hide the gap between the base of the Tardis and the ground  I glued a layer of grass around its base, allowing it to be positioned anywhere on the display

Like this? Check out the other dino gardens and our Dalek garlic bread

Mk 2 of the dino garden.  Clay dish (25p @ B& Q) approx 75mm diameter. Polymer clay, scatter material and acrylic paints.

Dinosaur from the Early Learning Centre as before.

]]> http://www.accomplished.org/2010/07/08/mini-dino-garden-2/feed/ 0 http://www.accomplished.org/2010/05/30/dino-zen-garden-playset/ http://www.accomplished.org/2010/05/30/dino-zen-garden-playset/#comments Sun, 30 May 2010 14:39:49 +0000 Greg http://www.accomplished.org/?p=184

The base is from a mini Zen garden set, the sort they sell in bookshops.

The base is fimo (soft), prodded with a 3.5mm stereo jack and painted in acrylics. The bushes are standard model railway stuff.

This started out as 3 separate projects (use the base, dinosaurs and alien terrain) but pretty quickly merged into one. the Dino zen garden now sits on my desk.

More pics after the jump

As it’s Valentines day next week, it seems like a good time to post this project from 2008.

Partly inspired by Meredith Scheff’s travel journal this formed the casing for my ‘and finally’ present for my fiancée for Xmas 08.  Inside the book is a hollowed section, inside that a purple felt purse, inside that, a sparkly bracelet (the actual present).

The heart on the front is Fimo, formed with a cookie cutter with salt pushed in to the surface. When the salt dissolves, it leaves a pitted metal effect.

The compartment was cut about 10 days before Xmas day. I had to lock myself in the bedroom for a few hours to do it.

The book is one of two i’d bought from a charity shop, 50p each. I didn’t realise until later but both books are dedicated to people with the same surname as my fiancée, a nice bonus (but strange looks when she opened it).

The pouch was a last minute addition made from left over felt from a  Halloween project that never happened, the sewing is pretty rough, but did the job.

The final assembly of the book, inside covers and ribbons was completed the morning we left for Wales, requiring me to borrow her hair drier to speed things up a bit.

I made this after becoming  fascinated with the dry brushing technique used by modellers. Made using fimo, cling film (to mold the base of the original dock), a rock and knife  for texturing and some old coins for a bit of weight.

My original idea was to have tiny N or HO scale people worshipping it, sort of like the 2001: A Space Odyssey Monolith. That never happened, as i was pretty happy with just the rock effect.