making a tentacle

Good morning all you lovely internet users.

A real quickie today I'm afraid as there is much brewing here in the honey pot, ooh brewing in a honey pot would that make mead??? So I haven't much time to blog this morning, but I have had a number of people asking about the octopus tentacles, so I thought I would quickly pop up some pictures of the making of a tentacle.

I will fill you all in soon as to what all the goings on are but for now all I can say is that I'm starting to think about a giveaway to mark reaching 100 likes on my facebook page, and I hope to announce that early next week.

But in the mean time a quick tour of tentacle making;

Polymer clay needs kneading a lot to make it work nicely and to make it easier to knead it really needs warming. So pop it in your jeans pocket or place it close to your heart and forget about it for awhile. (I do know a number of ladies that warm theirs in their bra, and it works.) Then once warm, knead really well, boring may be and possibly tough on your hands (although if very tough then it's not been warmed enough), possibly watch telly during this bit and breaking it up into smaller bits to be kneaded individually and then putting back together helps too. Ohh and another thing to be aware of is this stuff is nasty, don't be eating at the same time and put it in your mouth by mistake, washing hands before eating after handling polyclay is always advised.

Well for the tentacles I used a bright pink that I had mixed up for another project and was left over. Another nice thing about this stuff is that if you can't buy the colour you want you can usually mix something fairly close with the colours that are available. I knew I would be painting the hardened clay but thought that there would be a possibility to use the pink too.

I broke off a small amount and rolled in out thinning slightly at one end, and then flattening the tip of the thinner end more.

 Then I took a very small bit and rolled this out to into a very small thin sausage shape.

 Taking a sharp blade I sliced small discs off this smaller sausage shape.

These I rolled briefly to soften the edges and then placed in a row down one side of the tentacle.

Then taking a darning needle or similar shape point I pressed an indent into each disc, giving the shape of the suckers, and if you are planning to hold the tentacle in place with wire or the like it's a good idea to put a hole through where you want it now.

Arrange in a life like manner and bake carefully following the instructions on the packet, which can vary for different types, so I'm not putting them down here.

By using pink I was able to keep the inside of the suckers pink (a place that would have been very hard to paint) and hopefully added more depth to the model. Hard to see on the photos I'm afraid.

Well I covered the painting briefly last time and there is lots of this stuff on youtube so unless asked I'm not going to bore you going into that, so here's the finished effect.

Well that's all from me fr now, till next time keep well,
Hugs and Kisses

Ally