Spoopy gift

WIP stages for the tiny skull making an appearance in my recent raptor toy figure photoshoot.

 

Light grey and black polymer clay, and aluminum foil, later also joined by liquid polymer clay. I'm using a silicon "brush" tool, a sewing pin, a small craft blade, and a loop of wire, and sculpting on a glass photo frame and baking paper.

Rolled a small piece of foil into a ball and partially covered it with clay.

 

Added a vaguely triangle-shaped piece of clay over the exposed foil, and shaped it a bit and poked three holes in it. At this point I baked it. For the baking I moved the skull and the piece of baking paper it's on onto a ceramic plate, and put an aluminum baking pan on top of it upside down as a tent, to protect it from direct exposure to the heat source in the oven.

After baking, I carved it more to shape, and made additions using liquid polymer clay as glue. I also put tiny pieces of black clay into the eye and nose holes. Then I added black clay to the underside, to be the inside of the mouth without leaving it hollow, which would be more fragile, and attached a mandible over that. Then baked again.

I put a bit more black clay into the mouth with some liquid clay, then added the teeth on top of that.

Some of them are made individually by cutting a tiny piece from a thin snake of clay, some are a snake with lines drawn on it. The number may not be correct, though I tried to at least get it close with the upper teeth. With the lower I was more concerned with them filling the space they need to fill. With the teeth in place, I baked it.

After that I made some more adjustments to the shape of the mandible, cheekbones, the braincase, etc., both cutting away and adding clay, and then baked one last time. This thing is ridiculously tiny, but I think I did okay with the details.