I had such fun making my halloween themed noughts and crosses game (see my last post here) that I decided to create something else with my trial pot of Thermomorph. Thermomorph is a plastic moulding material that comes in a pot of white pellets that you heat up with hot water and mould with your hands or a suitable tool. You can also make shapes using moulds, as I did in my last post.
The idea for making this 'ready to make' snowman kit appealed to me because it solves two problems that happen when you come to make snowmen. One, you have to try and find all the bits needed to make the eyes, nose, mouth and buttons (which is quite tricky when the ground is so very white) and two, they don't stick to the snowman's face and body. Yes I know, we had this very same problem when we were little and survived the trauma (lol) but wouldn't it be so much better if we could make the process a little easier (and make our snowmen in double quick time so that we can scuttle back into the warm and start supping on some much needed hot chocolate?)....
So, what I did with the Thermomorph was to make the snowman's nose and eyes. I cheated with the form of the nose by moulding it on one of these:
A christmas decoration icicle (49p for the pack, a charity shop find) |
(For more of a description on the process of how to make the Thermomorph, see my last post). I took the top (the silver bit) of the plastic icicle and put the icicle onto a wooden skewer stick. When the Thermomorph had got to the correct temperature, I quickly took it out of the water and moulded it around the plastic icicle with my hand whilst keeping it on its stick. (The icicle decoration is not essential, incidently).
It was still transparent at this point, before hardening and going white. (No smutty comments please, lol!) |
Other crafters that have reviewed this product say that they managed to successfully colour their model by adding powdered food colouring to the water but mine turned out very pale when I tried that technique (with the previous skulls). I wanted a very bold orange colour for my snowman's nose so painted mine with acrylic paint.
As I said in my previous post, paint takes a long time to dry on Thermomorph so I stuck my model's skewers into an old apple whilst they dried (not shown).
(These were the eyes, roughly modelled to look like coal, before they were painted) |
While these were drying, I found my collection of buttons (and procrastinated by sorting into individual jars every last one into different colours - I will be doing a 'button craft' post soon!) and stuck them (using my miracle 'wonder glue,' shown last post) onto some more skewers.
I coloured over the skewer's tips black to match the colour of the buttons. |
(The sticks are, of course, to stick the snowman's features into the snow).
And there you have it, a ready to make snowman kit which will be put all together in one box, excitedly awaiting it's first outing. A snowman just waiting to happen!
To order some of your own Thermomorph, you can get it from Amazon UK here. It's not cheap at £19.95 (currently on offer at £17.95) but you get a large amount that you can use in numerous projects.
Disclosure: I was sent a free pot of Thermomorph to review but all opinions on it are my own.
Thank you for popping by today,
See you soon,
Nicky {Creative Flourishes}