We are in the midst of our next round of themes over at @pureartcollab, and we decided to offer a nonfandom theme since we had 2 in a row. We’re creating pieces inspired by a winter wonderland!
Our wonderful followers on Instagram helped us pick the weekly themes too! We put up a poll in our stories, and you guys sent in answers to what you thought of when you heard “winter wonderland.”
I decided to remake my ice dragon from a year and a half ago. My favorite part of that dragon was the ice crystal spikes going down his back, so that is my focus of this week’s tutorial.
While I was making the first sculpt, I thought it would add to the look of the ice spikes if they looked shiny, like they were just starting to melt, and I wanted to experiment with UV resin. It was my first time using UV resin on something outside of an open bezel, and I ended up going overboard on its use.
By using it as a glaze, I lost the emphasis I wanted to place on the spikes, but it still worked out since it added to the illusion of the whole dragon being made of ice.
Supplies:
- Fimo white translucent polymer clay
- Exacto knife
- White polymer clay
- TLS
- UV resin (remaining supplies are optional)
- UV torch or lamp
- A sunny window (UV resin will still cure on a cloudy day, it just takes much longer)
If you don’t have Fimo white translucent, you could try this with regular translucent clay with a little bit of white mixed in. I usually don’t work with Fimo clay (too hard on my hands), but I make an exception for their translucent clay because they are nice, and the white translucent clay helps account for the off-white color that normal translucent clay bakes up to be. I’m not the best at mixing a color of clay into translucent without mixing in too much and losing transparency, so it’s easier for me to buy the white translucent as is.
Step 1: Prepare your crystals
To start out, you’ll want to roll out your white translucent clay into logs. The method we’ll use to create the ice crystals involves carving at the clay, so you’ll want these to be a little longer and thicker than your final crystals.
Step 2: Freeze
To help your clay stay more rigid while you’re carving away at it, freeze the clay logs for 10 to 15 minutes.
Step 3: Carve the sides
Please be VERY CAREFUL with this step. This step can be very dangerous if not done properly, and this should not be done by a child.
I first cut off one end of the log to give me a flat surface. Turn the log so it’s sitting on this base. Then, start slicing down the sides of the log to create a long rectangle.
If you have a better feel for geometric shapes, feel free to add more facets here. Sometimes I carve down the corners too to make a more irregular shape, but otherwise I keep these ice crystals pretty simple.
If your crystal is starting to warm and soften up, place it back in the freezer as needed.
Step 4: Carve the top
Turning the ice crystal so that the uncut top is down toward your work surface, you’ll want to shave off clay into a point toward the center. Rotate the crystal so you can repeat all the way around the top.
Again, if the clay feels like it’s warming up and starting to squish as you cut, place it in the freezer. At this stage, it’s very easy to smush the whole thing as you’re carving the top.
Tip: If you’re going to create a cluster of ice crystals, trim some so you have several lengths as options. I think they look best as a cluster when there are taller and shorter crystals.
Step 5: Prebake
If you just want ice crystals by themselves, feel free to stop after this step.
To help these crystals keep their shape when you embed them into your project, however, you’ll want to prebake these babies.
Follow your package’s instructions. Fimo recommends 230 degrees Fahrenheit, so I baked mine for 20 minutes. Depending on how thick yours are, you may want to bake them longer if you are not going to bake them again. This is primarily to set the clay since we’ll be baking everything again.
Let them cool completely once they’re baked.
Step 6: Prepare your base
If you’d like to get more detailed with your base, feel free! For my final ice project, I will be embedding these into the back of my dragon, but for the purpose of this tutorial, I’m going to embed them into a pile of “snow,” which I think makes for a fun and whimsical winter scene (maybe hinting at what you can expect from my “landscape” piece in couple of weeks 😉 ).
There’s not much involved for this kind of base—simply take a ball of white clay and slightly flatten it so that it’s more like a mound of snow. I ended up using a custom blend of clay to make it look more like snow. I’ll be sharing a tutorial for that next week!
Tip: Since the base is mimicking a snowy ground, you may also choose to add some light texture with a toothbrush. I did this before I added my crystals, and then I touched it up after they were all placed in the base.
Step 7: Embed your crystals
Spread a thin layer of TLS on the bottom of your crystal (the side that will be in the base) and push it into the unbaked clay base. I like to insert them at an angle so they are next to each other in the base and angle outward a little toward the top.
Add as many as you want! You may also make smaller ones that stand on their own around the base as well.
Step 8: Fully bake
Now you’ll want to do a final bake of your entire sculpture so everything properly cures. Since Fimo bakes at 230 degrees Fahrenheit and TLS bakes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, I went in the middle at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes.
Step 9: Glaze (optional)
Since we didn’t add a surface treatment to the polymer clay, you don’t need to glaze to protect it, but if you prefer the way it looks, feel free to do so! I chose not to for this particular project.
Step 10: Add UV resin to ice crystals (optional)
Now for the fun melting part! Hold your base so that the top of the ice crystal you’re going to coat is pointing straight up. This way gravity will help us!
Using your UV resin applicator, start squeezing UV resin out at the top and let it start moving down the sides of the crystal. You can also run the applicator over the sides too in order to spread everything out. Do this slowly as you don’t want so much coming out that it starts flooding your base. There should be just enough resin to make the crystal look melty and barely start to pool at the base.
Tip: Make sure you have your UV torch or lamp ready so you can set the resin before it flows where you don’t want it.
Cover and cure 1 crystal at a time. I even switched to covering 1 side at a time (especially in the hard to reach places) so that gravity wouldn’t start affecting the other uncured sides while I was holding the piece at different angles.
I think the final look creates such a fun effect!
Here’s what it looked like on my ice dragon. I covered all of the white translucent bits with UV resin so they would all look the same.
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