Liquid Sculpey Safari Elephant Wall Sculpture

Getting started:
Please make sure your work area is covered and you are not working on an unprotected surface. We recommend working on the Sculpey® Work ‘n Bake Clay Mat, wax paper, metal baking sheet, or disposable foil. Uncured Liquid Bakable Medium may damage unprotected furniture or finished surfaces. Be sure to cover your crafting area appropriately.
-Gently stir the bottle of liquid bakeable medium.-Wash hands after use (we have found that baby wipes work best) Baking
-It is important to use oven thermometer when you bake the liquids so that you can ensure your oven is at the correct temperature. -Do not microwave the liquids. They must be baked in a Preheated oven at 300 ºF (149 ºC) for liquid colors and 325 ºF (163 ºC) for Clear – Do not exceed baking temperatures. -If you are using the liquids as a glaze or in thin pieces less than ¼ inch bake for 15 minutes. For thicker pieces that are ¼ or above bake for 30 minutes. -If you are baking on a ceramic tile then you will also need to bake at 30 minutes since it will take longer for the tile to heat up. This will ensure the proper fusing of the liquid material. -When baking these liquids you may experience some vapors or a slight odor. This is not harmful and will not affect your creation. -If your liquid project has become yellowed or discolored in the oven, when you remake it, tent it by placing either – folding an index card in half and placing your project under it or by using aluminum foil over your project.

Remove your animal head from the packaging and assemble it following the instructions included with it. I ended up taking mine apart and putting it together several times throughout this project so it was helpful to me to understand how it went together. Once it’s assembled, scribe some lines along the sliding joints with a pencil. If you get the LS inside the sliding joints, the joint space will be too narrow to put the animal back together properly. So marking the joints will help you keep the LS out of these spaces. After the joints are marked on each piece, remove the piece, then mark the next one, and repeat until all the joints are marked.

After a while, the pieces started to get a little confusing with where I wanted the LS and where I didn’t. I simplified things by putting a small dot in the areas where I wanted the LS to go.

Prior to deciding which pattern I wanted to use, I practiced a variety of patterns with LS on parchment paper. I started covering the largest piece first which happened to be the ears of my elephant. I removed the ears and placed them on a couple of parchment sheets on my work surface because I knew I would probably get a little messy with the liquids. Drizzle Silver LS on one of the ears avoiding crossing the line that marks the sliding joint.

Smooth the Silver LS with a craft spatula or your finger all over the ear avoiding crossing the line that marks the sliding joint. Add dots of White and Black LS in rows. I kept my dots at least an inch apart

Add a loop of the opposite color LS around each of the dots.

Add another loop of the opposite color LS around each of the previous loops.

Add a tiny dot of opposite color LS to the center of each large dot.

Drag an Etch ’n Pearl tool (pointed end) through the centers of the dots from one to the next. For the dots at the top, drag from the center toward the top first, then drag from the center down through the other dots. The LS will naturally make a cool tie dye pattern as the colors drag through each other.

Drag through the centers of the dots to the left and right next

Drag through the centers of the dots diagonally in both directions.

Repeat the whole process on the opposite ear. Bake the finished piece following the baking directions above. Monitor your piece closely after you remove it from the oven. If it seems like it might curl while it’s cooling, you’ll need to put a book or other heavy flat item on it while it cools. My pieces did not curl at all during cooling but it is always possible to cause curling when only one side of paper or cardboard is coated with materials like paint or LS.

After the large ear piece, I worked from the largest pieces to the smallest. For the next section, I did a different marbling pattern because I felt these pieces were too small to put the big tie dye pattern on them. Coat the sides with a thin layer of Silver LS avoiding the area in the center and the sliding joint area

Add vertical lines of Black LS keeping them about 1” apart.

Dip the tips of the Design Block Comb into the Black LS and drag it outward through all the LS all the way to the tip. This will make a cool marbled pattern.[

coat the next piece with Silver LS avoiding the center and the sliding joint area. For the next piece, I placed my Black LS lines right down the middle instead of starting at the inner line. That way the Black LS lines won’t all line up exactly when the piece is reassembled. Repeat this process with all the intermediate sized pieces. Bake them as they are finished following the instructions in Step 12

Next, I addressed the large side pieces that provide the structure for all the sliding pieces. I used my straight edge to clean up the lines that I had drawn to mark the sliding joints.

I used a little disposable paintbrush to apply Silver LS to all the little sections avoiding putting LS in the sliding joints as shown.

Repeat this process on the other structural piece as well. Baked as directed in Step 12

For the smaller pieces, I painted the areas between the sliding joints with Silver LS and baked each of them according the baking instructions in Step 12.

For the tusks, I put a squirt of Pearl LS on the small areas between the sliding joints.

Carefully spread the Pearl between the sliding joints with the disposable paintbrush. Cover the tusk areas with Pearl LS and spread in a thin layer. The bottom tusk shows two lines of Silver LS squirted on top of the Pearl LS.

Drag through the Pearl and the Silver LS with an Etch ’n Pearl to make a marble striped pattern. Angle the lines so that they radiate along the tusk. Repeat this pattern on the other tusk. Bake the tusks following the baking directions in Step 12.

When my pieces were all baked and completely cooled, I painted anymore visible areas with silver acrylic paint. I thinned my paint with water so that it would be more like a stain and would not be thick. I even painted the sliding joints with the thin paint mixture so that the joint areas would still fit together nicely. I painted the back board with black acrylic paint. Assemble your elephant completely when the paint is dry.