Okay, guys, this one has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and I'm excited to try to pull it off! I'm going to attempt to make a "mermaid grotto" themed book nook. Inspired by, you guessed it:
But not hers, of course. Everyone knows Disney's very rigid about copyright infringement ;) So this is going to be *a* mermaid's grotto. Another random, completely unrelated mermaid, who happens to have a similar horde of human treasures, all of them just as misnamed and misunderstood as ole red head's up there.
I figured lighting and texture would be very important, so I also looked up some pictures of actual underwater caves. I'm not using apoxy resin in this nook, so the lighting and color would need to be spot on to give it the illusion of being underwater. Here's a couple of those inspiration photos:
This is probably well beyond my current abilities, but what the hey, I'm gonna still try it. As for the grotto, it turns out I really only needed one main material: foam clay.
I've used air dry clay before, and I hated it. I'm not a sculptor. And everything I've ever made out of air dry clay inevitably is too brittle and breaks apart. I should probably take a pottery class. But foam clay? Foam clay is GREAT. In fact, it is perfect for this particular nook. Foam clay is stretchy, moldable, and slightly expands while drying. Which creates the perfect look and texture of an underwater cavern. Here's what happened:
It couldn't have turned out better. Also, I cut up cardboard to use as the base for the shelves. I used some recycled containers (I fell down a scratch building YouTube rabbit hole a few weeks ago) for the side structures. I was very pleased with how it turned out.
I also sanded it all down to give it more of a gritty, sandy texture. I also added some actual sand, mixed with Tacky Glue, and small pebbles to create more contrasting textures. It will all be painted, but before that it looked like this:
Now, I don't know if you can tell this from the picture above, but once all the foam clay dried the nook was looking a little...warped. And not in a good way. You can see the outside edges were curving, and eventually the two top corners totally collapsed into the nook. Try as I might, I couldn't get it shaped back the way it should be. *Cue heartbroken wailing*
I used an artist's board for this, the same I used for the Haunted Hallway and worked so well. I'm not sure the technical name for it, but it is thicker than chipboard and holds its structure well. But not well enough to be covered in foam clay, apparently. I ended up cutting out the parts I could, and hopefully I can salvage them. Those coral reef shelves took a long time to make.
So here we are, almost back to square one. I have to reevaluate the material I'll be using for the outside of this nook, and seeing if I can salvage the parts I've already made. Have any suggestions? Let me know! Now if you don't mind, I've got to go see a seagull about a dinglehopper...
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