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I just found this latex mould on ebay and emailed Melody and John. I think it’s the young dragon, but I’m not sure that that’s what they call it here.
Greater Basilisk wrote:$5 being a fair price? That’s a joke. Some people have no concept of how much work goes into real art.
I know. I once had an old lady (she was probably 70) tell me that these little stuffed dragons I make are worth at least $2.50. lol. These things take me about 20 hours of sewing/stuffing/finishing a piece! 🙄
John wrote:But is it right for someone to advertise their paint your own sculpture business on the windstone forum? These pieces are for sale on a comercial website with the intention of them being mass produced.
First of all, I only posted the snakes here because i wanted some feedback from fellow artists regarding the pricing and whatnot. I don’t have any one here or on my website like that who I can run things by. I mean, my family said $5 was a fair price for them. That doesn’t even cover the costs of the gypsum and eyeballs!
And as I’ve mentioned before, and I’m glad to see that it is being discussed and (assumingly) posted in the near future; NO WHERE has it said anything about this sort of posting being against policy or rules or anything.
Secondly, I’m making these in my kitchen, with one mold, at about the rate of one per day. Mass produced? Hardly. Produced, yes.
drag0nfeathers wrote::shrug: I missed what now? did you mean keepofftherocks?
LOL. It’s actually keeproftheflocks. Keeper of the flocks. I had “my” flock of geese before I moved home and I started out hand feeding about 15 residential geese there every week. When I moved home five years later, they’d all had generations of babies and I counted probably 90 geese when I left. 😮
Now my flock is just two cockatiels, plus the rest of my zoo. 🙂
purplecat wrote:Now….I do agree that a company has a right to be territorial…and to protect the integrity of their work…but not at the expense of being unfair…or not allowing someone to change wording of a thread when they’ve mistakenly tread on toes. So…yeah, I share the uncomfortable feelings over this.
yeah…sorry, after thinkin this over carefully….I’m leavin. no hard feelings, I’m just, not gonna be here anymore.
Sorry to hear you are leaving Purplecat. 🙁 I’ll have to try to favorite your web link once I’ve got internet back at my house again so I can come visit you again. I want to get one of your sculpts in the future, I’m just not sure which one I like most of all. The dragonsnails are cute though. 🙂 Kick butt girly, and pimp those sculpts. I’m considering putting up a links page on my site, I’d link you up if you wanted.
I’m going to mostly keep my mouth shut on this whole venture (at least on the boards), because I do not want to incur more wrath of opinion-based lawyer talk aimed my way, however I think things were handled badly regarding this. I would like to point out that NO WHERE on the boards (at least that I’ve yet to find- has any one else found some?) does it say that we aren’t supposed to post sculpts like I’ve done.
I think Melody does amazing work (I’m sure we all feel this way or we wouldn’t be here!), so for now I’m going to stick around, but if we (the artists here on the boards) keep getting trod on the way they’ve already done, I’ll be leaving also. :bye:
Again, I hadn’t meant to trod on toes, but I also wont stand for foundless accusations either.
Andrea
Nuke wrote:Where do you buy your blank eyes from if you don’t mind me asking? And what do you paint them with? Acrylics? I’m always confused how the paint on any glass eye is indestructable (not that I try to remove the paint, just from life’s wear and tear trying to take out and put back in the PYO ones).
There are several places you can buy them online; ebay (though i can normally only find round pupil ones meant for teddy bears and such), and there’s probably 4 different taxidermy sites online you can buy them from. I’m not sure who is the cheapest, I’ve just always stuck with Van Dykes (owned by Cabela’s I think) for mine. Paints made for glass would probably work better, but I use acrylics, and no they’re not indestructable- water or glue make them soft, and once you glue them in I wouldn’t pop them back out cause you’re likely to rip the paint off entirely.
The Windstone I think uses enamel-backed eyes, which is sort of fired on, and they’re a LOT more user friendly and lasting.
mmloda wrote:The bull python eyes sound interesting…can’t wait to see them… 😉
I posted pictures of the snake sculpts I’m doing in the Art Discussion thread. I had to photoshop the eyes in (waiting on my blank eyes to arrive), but the real eyes will look pretty close to them. There’ll be 10 different colors I’ll be offering- some of them are really neat; red pupil with dark blue iris for example. The plain old eyes are goldish across the top, and black across the bottom. Black cat-style slit pupil.
Quote:I have a queation.. does any one know how to glue sculpey to things? I haven’t had much luck!
I think that’s Melody asking a question that got lost in all the quotes? 🙂
Um, depending on what you’re trying to glue the sculpy to, I’ve had decent luck with:
*The thick, white glue sold in the plastic brown bottles: It’s better if both pieces of your work are roughed up a little bit before you glue them together.
*super glue (um, it’s called E6000 I think): this stuff bubbles up quite a bit so it’s definately for things that wont’ be seen on your work. It smells awful too, but it is pretty strong once dried.
*High-temp Hot glue: very limited uses where this works well. I pretty much only use it when I’ve got holes in sculpy that I’m putting wires in or something, and use the hot glue to fill in the gaps between the sculpy and the wire.What are you trying to glue it to? Maybe i can come up with something else.
drag0nfeathers wrote:Well I made the mold already as you described. I used some medi cloth and stuff too like you mentioned. As for attaching it directly to the broken piece I never thought of that…. I wonder if it would work? Hmmmm…..
Also, I got the sculpy you’re talking about already too, but my only concern was if it would shrink or otherwise “come out kind of deformed looking” during baking or anything along those lines.
Hmm, he is a little sad looking, but I think any sort of feet on him would help immensly! I’ve never tried pouring plaster in a mold and inserting something already finished like yours would need, so I might try it on something else first (I’d hate to somehow ruin your lovely guy!).
However, Sculpy is a bit more forgiving. I think it does shrink some during baking, but it’s never been anything noticeable to me. As far as attatching it, if it’s possible, I would drill two small holes into your statue (like into his hips, on the broken white area, as close to the middle of the broken area as you can), and then have either heavy metal wire or double-ended screws in the statue, and leave some sticking out. Mold your sculpy in the mold you made, insert the entire thing into your statue and try to line things up as well as you can, then make sure the screw holes are just a bit bigger in the sculpy side, and then bake the sculpy. If the screw holes in the sculpy are a bit too big after you bake it, you can fill the holes later with glue when you attatch it on to your statue. If your screw holes in the sculpy shrink a little bit too much, you can drill out the holes a bit and make them bigger.
Paint up your sculpy piece after it’s fired, do any gloss coats you want to do to make him match, then apply a craft-glue (the thick stuff in the brown plastic bottle works great) to where the broken edges match up on the two pieces, and use either the same glue or hot glue inside the thread holes. (work fast if you use hot glue). DONT use hot glue to glue the two broken pieces together- it won’t press together all the way and you’ll have a crack/gap where they meet. I’d recommend the craft glue for both.
Ugh. I know this is probably a little confusing but hopefully itll help you out some. 🙂
drag0nfeathers wrote:I’m glad someone brought this up because I’m also stuck in a similar/but different problem… I don’t mean to hijack, but can anyone help me with this one? It’s a bit unique…
Okay so I’m trying to cast an Emperor tail. Long story short, I paid I think like $25 bucks for an Emperor Dragon a few years ago. The reason I got it so cheap? It has no tail and no feet!
He still stands on his own but barely! I have been spending months trying to find a material I could use on an Emperor Dragon I have already to make a mold, but I didn’t want to damage the paint on mine of course. SO I finally got a nice amonia free latex and made a mold! ……..aaaaaaaaaand that’s all. I don’t know what to do next? I suppose I need to submerge it into sand or something so it retains the shape for the most part and pour plaster into it and let it harden? Is that what you do? I need to use something that will come out of the latex mold easily, but also be able to be modified and sculpted so I can try and attatch it to the break sites as seamlessly as possible, but of course be hard enough to last over time once it’s painted to match. The mold took like a WEEK to make to so I don’t want to use something that’s going to harm the mold incase my first few tries don’t work out.
Any advice from all those wonderful sculptors out there?
I might be able to help, at least offer suggestions. If you have an undamaged Emperor you can borrow for a while, make a mold of the entire area of your damaged dragon plus an extra 2″ or so on all sides beyond that, where it’s not damaged. Use plaster-cloth strips to build over the outside of your mold (this will give it strength instead of sand), and let that dry. Pour your plaster (or whatever you plan on using), in your mold, and insert the entire statue in there, so that (theoretically) it will fill in the damaged areas. I don’t know about how well it will bond with the statue itself, but it should line things up pretty well to glue it on later.
Another option would be to fill the mold you already have with the pink-peach colored Sculpy clay. (I think it’s called Super Sculpy). You can demold the piece, attatch it/sculpt it onto your original, then touch up scales where you have to. I love the stuff myself because it’s really easy to work with (once you knead it a bit), and doesn’t dry out. It has to be baked though.
Quote:Tiny little pin hole bubbles are from the plaster not acting right. Maybe it is just too old, but we’ve had whole truckload batches of it that does that because it was manufactured wrong. You can’t fix bad plaster unless you are a chemist! Vibrating it won’t help. Try switching plaster brands.
Are you whipping excessive air into your plaster when you mix it? Put the dry plaster into the water little by little so it all melts down and does not trap air, and then mix it under the water with your hand.
Small bubbles trapped on the upper surface of the piece (when it is right side up)might be from pouring the plaster in a way that traps bubbles against the mold.Try filling the mold carefully by pouring into the lowest point and filling it up from the very middle. Don’t let the plaster slop onto the sides.
Once you know where they form, big bubbles can be removed pretty easily by poking them out of the mold after it is poured, with a paint brush or with a little bit of shaking or vibration while the plaster is still liquid. Too much agitation of the plaster when it is setting causes water marks (vertical grooves) on a piece. Ten minutes is way too much! My art teachers just would thump the table the mold was on a few times with their fist.
We regularly patch bubbles, no getting around ’em completely !Yeah, I’ve tried the paintbrush trick, and stick, it didn’t help. The only way I’ve gotten one to turn out decent is by painting the plaster on thinly, letting it set up a bit, then painting more. Do that a few layers then pour the rest in. That turned out ok, but I don’t want to ahve to do that for every mold. :nea:
I’ve managed to get rid of most of the big bubbles (trial and error, and switching plaster brands), but it’s the little pinhole sized ones I cant seem to be rid of. I am currently getting my plaster from a craft store (so they probably don’t go through it very fast), but they’re ordering more (I used it all!) so maybe that batch will be better. 🙂
Sigh. I’ll give purplecat a holler too, and see if she maybe has some suggestions. Thanks.
These are probably my favorite or second favorite windstone ever. I’m wondering if any one has one they are trying to sell (I know a few of us here are having to sell some of our collections to help pay bills).
I don’t have a prefferred color offhand, but I am fond of (in no particular order) the peacock, the green/emerald, the white, and the ruby red color. Black is pretty too. I’ll look at any color though!
Anyways, if anyone is willing to part with one, let me know your color and asking price. I can’t afford a ton, but I’m finally getting my tax refund and I’m going to spend a little on me! 😀 I would prefer one with no damage to the statue itself, I’m not as picky about the tags and boxes and stuff.
Thanks.
Andrea
