Monday, January 7, 2013

Tardis Snow Globe

Like all fevered dreams that come from the lonely hours of the morning, my vision of a Tardis trapped in a world of snow was both a sign of utter madness, something I needed to do, and a sign I should stop eating anything spicy after 8 pm.

I wanted a Tardis Snow globe. Then I made one.

But half the fun is the journey right? Well, you're getting it anyway.

It starts, as most tales do, by yanking out a piece of clay I carved, shaped pushed and cursed at a lot. Then December started, and into the back of the closet it went. My focus turned to trying to get things done for that most needy of winter holidays, but it always nibbled at the back of my mind.

With Firefly playing in the background, I finally bit off more than I could chew and dove head first into finishing this far too familiar blue box. (Not a productive technique for clay work as I later learned)

To make the snow base, I just molded clay over top a ball of tin foil.

For final touches I added a snowman and some wreathes on the side. I guess the Doctor's been parked for a while. Or really loves any excuse to decorate.

After baking her, it was the painting time. The scarf turned me mad. Completely, 100% batshit. But since I was already crazy I didn't really notice.
To protect the paint job I coated the whole thing in a thick clear acrylic coating, and then threw some white glitter on top to give it a snowy appearance.

With what was supposed to be the hard part out of the way, I turned to the snow part.

An old trick, I'd tried before with some success was to grid up eggshells. First you want to bleach them for a day or so, then wash with water, grind up, wash with water, wash with water, and oh yeah wash with water.

I added glitter to the "snow" as well because why the hell not.

The problems began when it was time to glue. First I tried an epoxy that was supposed to bind plastic. This ended in a spectacular failure. It was so thick it increased the height of the Tardis enough that it didn't fit inside the plastic dome anymore.

So while my globe filled with distilled water, glycerin, glitter and smashed eggshells sat open tipped upside down I tried glue idea after glue idea before finally settling on some E-6000, the "Fuck it" of craft glue.

As you can guess from the first picture, I am pleased to report it finally worked. So with the Tardis glued down, I began the very wet task of trying to shove it into its watery grave. More glue and tada, Tardis snow globe.

 Feel free to try it at home, if you want to go insane like me.

1 comment:

MEGAN ELVRUM said...

OMG i wanna try this but is deff a FAIL in the making for me! I made TARDIS gingerbread house for Christmas this year...that was hard enough, but so fun!
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