Happy and Headless: just in time for Halloween!

The bodies are baked—heads, hands, and sweater and shoe details to go!

Here is the happy headless couple so far! I am really pleased with how they look—but there are dangerous hours ahead—I still have to make their heads and hands, and who knows how those will turn out!

I followed the process I laid out in my earlier blog: I created both bodies, minus the arms, and baked them. Then I added the arms to both bride and groom, and bent them into position around each other’s backs. I baked them together, stuck into a thick cardboard base (their wire armatures stick out through the soles of their feet), so that they could stand in the oven. After adding their heads and hands, I will add the collars to their sweaters, details to their boots, etc., and then create the snowy base for them to stand on. Still a lot of work ahead!

I have not worked with Super Sculpey before, and wasn’t prepared for all the ugly white plaguing spots, which appeared in the baked clay. Evidently this is caused by moisture, and that could be: my house is damp and chill and it’s been raining a lot lately. I don’t think the marks will show in the end because everything has to be painted anyway. Fingers crossed that I am right to think that!

One other complication is that the bride and groom’s arms are not quite long enough to hit the right spot on each other’s bum. I could lengthen their arms a smidge, but I am afraid to extend them too much for fear that I will turn the happy couple into a pair of orangutans. I

used string to measure the arms against my drawings, marking the string with a Sharpie where the elbows should fall. This worked out really well.

Checking the length of the groom’s arm

I can’t say that I am going to starting making tons of people after this project, but I have learned a LOT about body proportions that I’d never given any thought to before. (For example, elbows fall roughly in line with the belly button.) It’s been very interesting!

Ty checks my progress, and endeavors to nibble on the groom’s neck skewer