A load of old cobble...stones.

(Stirring music begins playing softly beneath voice-over) After a blitzkrieg of tidying, the house is now unnervingly clean and clear of clutter, ready for viewing by potential buyers. (Music rises) Only a lone outpost of clutter remains, resisting the oncoming tide of cleanliness (Music rises toward a crescendo), its lone occupant fighting to keep the hordes of neatness at bay. And that isolated outpost, that solitary fortress of clutter is - my work table! (Music ends on a crashing, discordant note followed by a duck call).

Yes, with all the stresses and strains of selling a house I have to lapse into a bit of Pythonesque silliness sometimes or I'll go Doolally-tap.

Anyway...

Some modeling is still going on here in limbo. I decided to make as many master models for molding purposes as I could, since OOMOO30 has something of a limited shelf-life once opened. The next little project is a batch of cobblestone pieces for gaming and making bookends.

Someone on the Hirst Arts Facebook page suggested the use of a type of scrapbooking material for making cobblestone surfaces. The photos of the results impressed me so I sought it out for myself - and came up dry. My local branch of Hobby Lobby didn't have the thin pressed foam material (called Champagne Bubbles if anyone's interested). What they did have was a hinged plastic thingy by a company called The Paper Studio. It has a lot of dimples on one side with matching studs on the other. I gather this particular whatsit is used by scrapbookers to make embossed paper. A sheet of paper is placed between the two leaves and the whole thing fed into a device like a small old-fashioned mangle/clothes wringer.

I saw it would work equally well for making cobblestone-like impressions in Sculpey so I bought one. Once on the workbench, I rolled out a blob of Sculpey onto the dimpled plastic using two pencils to guide the roller and keep the thickness constant - in this case a smidge over a quarter-inch thick. Once rolled flat enough, the Sculpey picked up the impressions and I cut it to 2 inch and 1 1/2 inch squares. These were then baked as usual.

The results of the first pressing, baked and ready for painting.

These should take molding pretty well. The 2-inch squares will be used for roads and the display area of bookends (I have a Penny Dreadful/Ripper Street theme in mind for these. Just need to make a couple of old-fashioned gas lamps). The 1 1/2 inch square has a half-inch wide by quarter inch thick part which will take Hirst Arts blocks for walls and such. These will serve for dungeon set-ups as well as wargaming. There's a slight step which will make the join stronger once glued.

I'll dig the paints out again and experiment with a few colour schemes just to see how they turn out. Painted or not, it won't affect the silicone.