PAGE TWO

LITTLE  GHOSTIES

While I was waiting for the tissue paper on the big prop to dry, I decided to make some little
ghosts.  I was going to make a clay model and cover it with tissue paper/glue just as I did
for the large model, but didn't want to take the time to sculpt a face and hands at the
smaller scale.  I remembered that I had a push-mold, so decided to try the tissue paper in that.
It worked out fine, except that I didn't get enough little bits of paper into the face mold.

Purely accidental, but I kind of liked it like that...
Here is how the face & hands looked as they came out of
the mold.  I trimmed around them with scissors, and decided
to leave the eye-hole and make one for the other eye as well.



Of course I had to wait for those to dry before removing them from
the mold, and there that mold was, with another empty face & hands
portion in 1:12 scale, and the idea struck me to fill them with
hot glue.  Here is what came from that -





I started to clean up the hand in the upper left corner before I
remembered to take a picture.  It looked a lot like the other one
when I popped it out of the mold, and I clipped off the excess
glue with scissors.

Now I've got two sets of faces & hands from the mold, and I
figure I'll make another one and use that in combination with
a tissue paper body and see how that works out.

I made some rough "ghostie shapes" with modeling clay and
covered them with plastic wrap.





The one on the closest edge in the photo is one I intend to make as
a floating ghost, so most of the clay is just to weigh down the form.




Just as for the large prop, I covered the wax forms with plastic wrap.
I used hot glue to attach the cleaned up tissue paper and glue hands
and faces on top of the plastic wrap, and they are now ready for adding
the tissue paper.  But then...
I thought I'd see how one came out if I just used hot glue.


   


so I just covered the entire form, letting the glue drip as it may.  (yes, it does melt the plastic wrap somewhat, but doesn't stick to the
greasy clay - if I were making it over again I'd use a couple layers of plastic wrap over the clay though, just to avoid having to clean
off any greasy spots in the glue).

 
 


When it cooled, I cut the back open and slit along the arms to
pull the clay out.  I then held it in shape and repaired the cuts with more hot glue.


















I trimmed the bottom a bit, and I'm done.
I couldn't resist putting an LED in it just to
see what it looked like.
One light was pretty cool, so I thought I'd try two.
I've made no effort to hide the wires here, just playing around.








As for the other two, I finished covering the forms with tissue paper and glue, just as for the large prop.


 


After a couple of layers (letting them dry in between) I cut them open and removed the clay, then repaired the
cuts with tissue paper.


 
Here are the two finished
little ghosties.

The one on the left is the one with the
hot glue face and hands and is meant
to be freestanding.

The other one is all tissue paper, and now all
I have to do is make it float.









I used a light colored wire and the flash
so you could see it for the photo, but
obviously this effect would be better with
a black wire against the black background.

The wire is put through the board, then bent
up and away from it.  The three bends in the
top are just big enough to hold the head and
shoulders in position without being visible
from the edges or bottom of the ghost figure.






 
and here it is,
floating through the air!





I couldn't resist a little bit of invisible paint on this one either.  The photos below are of the
UV in two different positions.  Note that the tissue paper, without any invisible paint applied,
gives off an eerie glow under the UV as well.


 



The push mold faces aren't really very scary...if I were making REALLY scary ones and I had more time
to play with this stuff, I would sculpt some scary faces.  Maybe another time.

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