Snail Feathers ~ The artwork of Jem de Salis

Happy Centaur, 2018

Ceramic horse, ceramic clown, human blood, polymer clay.

Mr Bean (2018)

My Leto Pony, 2018

If want to buy one, I’m not really making them to sell, though keep an eye out for an Etsy store next year. If you’re asking how to make one:

1. Get a dinosaur and a horse! Solid plastic is better than hollow. Depending where you live, you should be able to get hold of a generic t-rex and a generic horse that are compatible if you shop around, they are very common toys and I got mine from dollar stores. Do not lose your nerve when you find your victims - they will come back stronger.

2. Figure out the spot where you’ll need to cut them both in half. The important thing is to try to get it so that it’s about the same thickness on both animals. If the toys are solid plastic, you can eyeball it and file down your mistakes. if they’re hollow, you’re going to want to be more careful and measure with tape or calipers, and if there’s no spot where they’re exactly the same shape it’ll be a fiddly time, so again, gotta recommend solid toys.

3. Cut them both in half! Plastic is weak and your are strong. I used a coping saw, but depending on the size and rigidity of the toys you have selected for your experiment, you may be able to use a hack saw, hobby knife, or sharp teeth.

4. Put the halves against each other and see how well they match up. There will probably be parts you will want to trim, either by carving off with a blade or filing off, to ensure you have a relatively smooth silhouette. Don’t worry about smaller ridges or about gaps, we will fix those later.

5. Glue them together. I got away with using superglue for these because the toys are very rigid, but you may want to use a more flexible glue if yours is more flexible. If the toys were hollow you’re going to have a tougher time with this step, but it’s do-able. Either carefully squeeze the toys so the openings are the right shape and carefully glue it in small sections with something quick drying, or fill the hollows with some kind of spackle to create a more rigid toy with larger glue-able surface area. 

6. Once everything’s dry, fill in the gaps. I used a mixture of PVA glue and cornstarch to make a sort of clay that I pushed into the cracks and smoothed with water and my fingertips. Do not use anything meant to mimic actual clay/ceramic, it will flake off or crack, especially if the toys are flexible. Use something more like polymer clay. After this step your victims will look like this: 

  7. Then it’s just a matter of painting them! First use some kind of primer, because plastic doesn’t like being painted. I use a grey aerosol primer. I then just spray-painted mine silver, but that’s because I’m lazy. Once they’re primed you could instead use diluted acrylic paint to do more realistic, detailed painting - this is what I did after priming for the Thomas the Tank Engine thing, and the Ant Gorilla. If you use the acrylic-and-brush technique, I recommend varnishing it afterwards.