The early stages

Once all the glue and green stuff cured, it was time to start painting.

I wasn't really sure what color marble I wanted, so I just grabbed a few colors and started mixing them together.

I ended up with more of a greenish gray, which will eventually be tinted other shades as well.

You can see the marble veins emerging already.  It is important, of course, to make one edge be 'lost', or soft, and the other very sharp.

You can even work the other way, and add some darker color to that edge to enhance the sharpness.

I may or may not do the same color on the other bases... but let's see.

Most of the other marble pillars will likely be a darker color.  I'm thinking a darker, warm green perhaps.

Marble slowly begins to emerge...

A bit more as lighter colors are added, all the while enhancing the vein effect.

Now the lightest colors have been added.

So I went back in with a few darks, as I mentioned before.

This shows the "before and after" of the marble effect I have been painting.  Much more to come!

Green and Happy

OK!  Time to add some rocks and gravel!

As you have heard many times, the rocks and gravel are not simply cosmetic... they offer strength and stability to the edges of the sculpey pieces on the cork.

Here's a very good example of this idea.  The sculpey overhang is now supported by glue and rocks.

I also wanted to try out a few of the Happy Seppuku moulds which arrived just before I left for GenCon!  These were very fun!

Hopefully this offers a better look at the individual moulds.  I am really looking forward to trying the Treasure theme on the bottom!

I made some green stuff pieces that had more yellow than blue mixed in, in order to make the mix softer.  This would be easier to press into the moulds and capture more detail.

Green stuff pressed!

But how does one get green stuff out of the moulds without waiting for it to cure?  Pop it in the freezer!  This makes it far easier to remove it from the moulds a lot faster.

A quick placement of the skeleton.  Sadly, my regular sculpting tools are not with me, so I had to make do with what I could find.

I tried out this small area of the treasure mould.  It definitely beats trying to cut hundreds of pieces of polystyrene tubing!!

While I had the green stuff out, I put some vines on my bases...

I may even try to add some mica flakes to these to create leaves...

Vines everywhere!

Not kidding at all.  Vines all over the place.  So, go check out these moulds from Happy Seppuku!