Making The Mold

I braved the pre-Christmas shopping rush to go out and gather the supplies I needed for making the mold that will (hopefully) be used to keep the roots in shape later in the summer.

Here's the process:

1) Tear old newspaper into strips and place them in a large container.  Add hot water and let soak for about an hour, going in and stirring/tearing/overall agitating the mixture until it turns into an oatmeal like mush.  Thats our basic paper mache pulp.  If you're impatient you can boil the water to make the paper dissolve faster, but its not really necessary.  Hot water out of the tap works just fine.

2) Outside, get the skull ready.  You'll want to make sure and cover your working surface with newspaper as well, because the insulation foam we'll be using later on sticks to *EVERYTHING* and does not come off.  The newspaper cover means it can stick to it all it wants, no harm done.

3) Encase the skull in paper pulp.  This is going to be like the clay when making a mask, if you've ever done that, only instead of being poured up in latex, this will be the cavity that will be filled by the soil and roots.  You want to make it thick enough that there's room for your soil/sand/whatever once you're ready to get started, but not so thick that the roots really have anywhere to go except for around the skull.  I think I heard a crack when I was pushing the pulp on, which means I might have broken the glue on the lower jaw.  The rest of the skull didn't clamp shut, so I don't think it was anything too bad, but I'll have to make sure and check it out and do any repairs needed once this is over.  So be gentle here!

4) Then, use your insulation foam to build up a shell all the way around the paper pulp.  This stuff cures to be very firm, and to extend the comparison to mask making, this is our plaster of paris layer.

5) After about 2 hours the foam has set up enough to start the cleaning process, but it isn't firm enough to carve yet.  That will take overnight, but its good enough that we can pull the paper pulp and skull back out of it.

I did pop the jaw back off again, but it snapped right at the glue and didn't break the resin skull itself, so thats easily fixed.

At this point, its time to sit back and wait.  Tomorrow this foam should be very stiff and ready to carve down into a more usable shape.