Tiger Balm to the rescue...perhaps!

Well the proof is in the pudding they say. Or, maybe it was tiger balm. We'll see. Here we have the fella on stilts so he is elevated for the pouring of the plaster of paris into a mold. It will be a two part mold so I pour the bottom layer in first up to about the middle of the head part. I think he is quite handsome at this angle.

I've placed him into a plastic tub and poured the first part of the mold. DISASTER. It was late. I used poor judgement. I knew better. When you pour a mold like this using plaster of paris, the plaster should be like runny yoghurt. Really runny yoghurt. My mixture was like icecream. I knew this was not right. I poured anyway. So instead of a nice runny steam of liquidy yoghurt, I got chunks of ice cream plopping in and drying into chunks of hardening plaster in mid air. DISASTER. So our fella looks a bit frightened and frankly he should be. This may be the last we see of him. For I may not be able to save him.

I let him rest over night as I'd already made one bonehead move and didn't want to make another whopper. So today I am fresh and ready to proceed calmly. Usually at this point I coat the poured bottom part of the mold with a nice thin layer of vaseline (I have a dedicated jar for this) and I couldn't find any vaseline in the house at all. But I found a jar of WILD TIGER balm. Stinks to high heaven but it is vaseline basically so I'm going with that. Now, under normal circumstances the surface of the poured mold is a smooth as glass and you just paint on a very thin film of vaseline on to the plaster and also on to the plasticine. Sometimes I gently coat the plasticine with my finger tips. But as you can see, this plaster is like dried volcano rock. I'm going to slither on the vaseline with a brush as best I can.

Once I've coated the mold I will mix up another batch of plaster of paris and pour that on top and let it dry over night so it is really hard. And tomorrow we will have the reveal. Until then, thanks for dropping by. Notice that I've cleaned off the remaining fuzzy chunk of plasticine and sliced it into pieces so it is ready to begin sculpting another head right away if this mold is a throwaway. See you soon I hope, *smiles* Norma