The Castor and Pollock

Step 1 - Acquire crystal base. I mostly started this project because I wanted to use some leftover borax crystals that grew on the bottom of the bowl during another project. I loved how much they looked like celestine/celestite. Had to put a sealing glaze over them since they’re kinda gritty and easily damaged by water. FYI Health Canada says to avoid or limit use of boric acid/borax in craft projects (like growing crystals or making slime) with children or while pregnant/breastfeeding due to risk of “developmental and reproductive health effects”.

Step 2-3 - Thumbnailed out what the sculpture should be shaped like on the piece of crystal I chose to work with. Then made the wire frame and started adding on the air dry paper clay. It works more like real/natural clay than polymer clay when sculpting, so I like to keep the bag of it in a zip bag while only taking out a little clay at a time to work with before it dries out. I have a small bowl of water handy when I need it to re-moisten the clay, smooth out areas, and make a slip (slurry mix of clay and water) to adhere pieces together or fill in cracks.

Basic body phase (body shape, wingbones, and clawed graspers added):

Naked plucked chicken stage (beak and crest added):

Majestic floof stage: (wing feathers and flowing beard added)

Basically done stage: added luscious tail feathers, using a tape dispenser to prop it up as it dries.

Crack filling stage: added some slip and extra clay to fill in any cracks in the dried clay and strengthen the tail which will be supporting all the weight.

Step 4 - Sanding. Once the sculpture is dry I sanded it down with 200-300 grit sandpaper. This is mostly to smooth out areas and make edges like those on the wings more defined and square-shaped. Also, wear a dust mask during this step. Silicosis caused by clay dust is seriously bad for your lungs.

Step 5 - Painting. Used acrylic paint to first paint a light blue, white, grey, and metallic blue base coat, then adding in the details and shading. You can kinda see the glittery effect on the wings here that doesn’t appear well in the other photos I took.

Step 6 - Glue it onto crystal base. I prefer using clear tacky glue. Hot glue would be faster, but dries kinda opaque. I propped it up against a paint bottle to keep it upright while drying.

Step 7 (final) - Making the “Ice Beam” effect. The main long icicle beam was made using clear plastic cling wrap with layers of hot clue built up around it. The smaller ones are just hot glue. I suggest taking a look at various “hot glue icicle” tutorials around the internet like this one for more info on how to do it. I used hot glue to stick it on the base followed by real iridescent metal-coated/“aura” quartz crystals (got them at Michael’s, leftover string beads from a necklace project) to represent large ice crystals and the smaller hot glue icicles for the blast effect.

Step one was doing some geometry to measure out two equilateral triangles on cardboard. The hole on the front piece was larger than the back one to leave space for the star symbol ring on the front. The bottom part of the triangles were cut where they will be fixed to the base. Since the blue LEDs I used came with a large rectangular battery pack, I based the sizing around the battery pack acting as the base/stand of the portal. I got the LEDs from the dollar store, but I’ve seem similar ones for sale on Amazon for around $3.

Pasted some white paper to the back cardboard piece to make it reflect the light better. Next I hot glued the LEDs around the edge of the back piece. It’s okay if they stick out a bit from the cardboard edge. 

Next was the star symbol ring. This I made out of polymer clay and baked it. I only made a general outline of each symbol as they will be filled with clear hot glue and have the details be painted in when doing the black base coat. Wet sanded it to make it flat/round.

Next step was adding about a cm or half inch of hot glue around the edge to help diffuse the LED light for the small lights around the edges. This is why it was okay if the lights stuck out around the edges a little. Oh, I forgot to mention that this project uses up a boatload of hot glue. Ended up going through like 2+ packs of hot mini glue sticks. 

Added a base “crumb coat” of Model Magic air dry clay to work out the general shape/size of the portal and the placement of the side lights.

You’ll notice in photos of the completed project that the clay’s final surface appears lumpy/uneven. That’s due to the spongy foam-like nature of Model Magic even after drying for days and the fact I ran out of if near the end. It’s not the ideal air dry clay for this project. Definitely don’t use an oven bake clay as I highly don’t recommend putting LEDs in a hot oven. I would suggest using air drying paper clay instead since it sands and keeps its shape better. In my case, the whole reason for starting this project was to use up the leftover Model Magic from the Interdimensional Rift water globe project, so I had to resist the temptation to buy new/better clay.

Hot glued on the star symbol ring, finalized the shape of the triangle and placement of the edge lights with more air dry clay, hot glued it on the base, built up the base edges with more clay, then filled in the star symbols with hot glue as well as the inner gap between the front and back boards. Tried to sand everything as evenly as possible given the spongy clay.

Black base coat time! Used black acrylic paint to cover all the clay except where I did the final details of the Behenian fixed star symbols using this image as a reference. Added another coat of black paint to hopefully reinforce the soft clay.

Next was the metallic coat. I used the water-based silver Inka Gold to paint it. I watered it down to paint over the symbols so that the light would shine better through the thinner paint.

The last step was filling in the center of the portal with hot glue. I worked in a circular motion, kinda like weaving a spiders web, layering the hot glue around the inner edge over the cooled glue until finally meeting in the center. That’s how I tried to achieve the “swirling” effect with the glue. I also gave it a convex shape where the glue was thicker near the edges and thin in the center.

It’s done! Aside from all the griping about the clay lumps, I’m rather satisfied with how it turned out and pleasantly surprised how great the blue LED/hot glue diffusion effect works. Definitely elevates the scupture’s visual impact.