The Boar's Head

This week, in addition to working on books, I made the boar's head for the fireplace valance wall.  At the suggestion of Brae, I tried air dry clay for this piece.  The pluses were that I did find it easier to shape, and I really liked not having to bake it.  The minuses were that it kept wanting to dry out as I worked with it because I was using such a tiny amount, and I waited 36 hours for it to dry before doing anything more with it.  That may have been overkill, but I wanted to be safe.  The fact that it dried out while I worked with it wasn't too big a problem—I just kept smoothing on a bit of water, and all was good again.  I did find a couple of cracks once it was fully dry (I filled those in with some wood filler), and, for some odd reason, the ears and tusks flattened in toward the head as they dried.

I forgot to take pictures in his unpainted state, but here he is painted:

You can see how flat his ears got, and you can also kind of see where I repaired a bit of cracking.  I wasn't too worried about that, because I knew he'd be covered in flock, which would hide any little blemishes.  I used regular craft paint for painting him (except for his tusks and teeth, which are ivory Testors), and that did not seem to have any detrimental effect on the air-dry clay.

After I flocked him, I added the little bit of mane that boars seem to have.  Based on other pictures and drawings of boars, there is a definite ridge of hair coming up along the back, so I added that with some longer clippings of embroidery floss.  Here he is temporarily on the wall and in comparison with the original.

I am down to my last two shelves on the larger bookcase (yay!).  I'll soon be working on the ceiling.  I may do a test run with foam core, as I'm a little concerned with how much the ceiling will cover up the room and whether it will make it difficult to look inside.

In other news, I was the lucky recipient of a hanging shelf unit that the original owner no longer wanted.  It looks like a dollhouse.  

It is approximately 15" x 15," and the majority of the "rooms" are 3" high and about 1¾" deep. That is obviously a bit too small for a real half-scale room, but I thought they might make good places to display pieces that don't currently have homes or for small vignettes.  I plan to paint it white, then use cardstock cut to fit each cubby for painting, wallpapering, flooring, etc., so that I can change things out at will.  Maybe they can even provide a good backdrop for displaying items for my someday (wishful thinking) Etsy store! 😉