Sculpey Buildings
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I've been working recently with a LOT of sculpey, a quite wondrous clay available for ~$10 per two pound block. My main projects so far have been a series of grass huts used for a goblin village, a series of stone buildings for use in a temple or small town setting, and a large set of stone pools and fountains used for a temple. I have a lot of other plans for the material, and may sell some plastercast products from these efforts.
For now though lets start with a simple stone building. I've made 5 smaller versions of this, and 2 much larger ones. You will want to make some stone working tools from your sculpey in the process, and that will be explained at the bottom of this page.
A few more pictures need to be added, but the camera I was using failed miserably for some shots.
You will need sculpey, wax paper, some stone printing tools, a book or board to flatten the sculpey, and a knife. You will also want a glass to mold the sculpey around - a normal straight walled drinking glass can work fine for small round building, and a trip to a candle or hobby store will usually turn up interesting glasses, candle holders or serving dishes with shapes you may want to use. Metal containers should also work, but not plastics - the sculpey will be baked while still on the container, and will metal at the 275 F baking temperature.
The basic process is:
1) to wrap the sculpey around a glass or ceramic container of the desired shape
2) trim the excess
3) etch out the windows and doors
4) imprint the stone pattern
5) then bake and remove from the container. A bit of additional trimming from the doors and windows may also be required after baking.
1) Roll out a long roll of sculpey onto a piece of wax paper. Place a second piece of wax paper on top of it, and use a book or board to flatten the roll into a strip of mostly uniform thickness. Wrap the sculpey strip around the outside of the container. Smooth it lightly around, making sure you don't put any big dents into the sculpey facing and that the sculpey is in firm contact with the glass.
2) If you are just making the walls, you do not have to enclose the roof, so trim off the excess where the sculpey extends out beyond the glass. The easiest method is to use an exacto knife and trim by pushing the blade inwards through the sculpey repeatedly, with the blade resting on the top of the glass. Pulling the knife the other way often removes the sculpey from the glass in an undesirable way. Then trim the bottom of the building by lightly drawing the knife through the sculpey along the glass, leaving a the sculpey at a constant height stuck to the glass.
3) Using an exacto knife, cut the door and window shapes into the sculpey. You don't have to remove the clay windows and doors now - after baking the etched out pieces will be easy to remove.
4) Using the stone imprinting tools, press the stone pattern into the clay. You may need to do a little etching with the knife to connect the pattern, especially near the corners. You may also want to cut the windows and doors a bit more if it looks like the imprinting may have sealed them. You should be able to hold the container from the inside while doing this - you don't want to lay the sculpey part on the table where it will mess up previously imprinted areas.
5) Place the container on a baking sheet, and cook it about 45 minutes to an hour at 275 F. You may want to run the fan over the stove when cooking or letting the sculpey cool, as it does put off a mild fume which is supposedly non toxic, but then they used to say that about benzene, too.
When the sculpey has cooled down to easy handling temperature, gently pry the sculpey off of the glass on all sides to loosen it, then remove it from the glass.
Don't panic if you break it - just finish removing it from the glass, then use normal glue to fix any cracks or breaks.
This method was also used to make the goblin huts, but a smaller round glass was used (I think it was a spice bottle), and a large excess of sculpey was put on the roof. To smooth the sides and roof, the glass and sculpey were inverted and gently rolled on a plate to give it the tapered round top, then the sides were smoothed by the same technique. The straw pattern was made with a straight edged exacto knife, repeatedly pressed gently into the sculpey, starting at the top ring and working down.
Making the stone print tools.
This is a multistep process, but very much simplifies your future sculpey experiences, so go for it.
First you want to make a flat stone pattern. This can be done by either flattening a large sheet of sculpey and gently carving the pattern into it, or (my way):
1) placing a lot of little sculpey balls on a sheet of waxpaper so they form 1 layer of closely touching balls
2) placing a piece of wax paper on top of them, then gently flattening them with a book. If you flatten them too much you will start to lose detail and have to start over, so not too hard!
Once you have this pattern, bake it flat at 275 F for 45 minutes or so. Vent the baking fumes. When the pattern is room temperature again, spray a mold release agent or teflon on it (a baking spray may work as well). Now, press fresh sculpey onto the pattern - this will make a template. On the back of the template, make a handle from sculpey. Bake the two pieces together, and remove the template from the pattern. If you break the pattern, don't get too uptight - it's the template that will be useful.
Now, once the template is cool, you can use it to press an image identical to the pattern piece into any fresh piece of sculpey. I suggest making the template larger than anything you will want to imprint, as often you will be able to see the lines between where templates were pressed.