I was making a Companion Cube ornament for a geeky Secret Santa exchange, and I had enough clay left over to make one for myself too, so… new ornament!
(I used Sculpey III, and the Portal 2 cookie cutter set from ThinkGeek to cut out the pieces)
Category: crafts
Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors, and so when I saw this little guy at Joann’s, I just had to get it and turn it into the Death of Rats. Here’s how I did it:
He’s made of some sort of plastic, so first I used a heat gun on his arm, to get it into a better position for holding the scythe. First I twisted the lower arm to get the hand in to the right orientation, then I did the shoulder and upper arm to lower the arm a bit, and finally I heated the hand and wrapped it around my dowel rod to get a nice grip. Since he’s going to be wearing a robe, it doesn’t matter that his bones are now a bit deformed.
For the scythe blade I took an empty tea light, cut out the bottom and then straightened out the remaining strip. I free-handed a blade shape on a little piece of card, traced it out on the metal strip and then cut it out. I used a couple of dabs of low-temp hot glue to attach it to the dowel rod, which I had already cut to size and painted a darker brown.
Uh-oh, he’s lost his head! I discovered that he was made in pieces and screwed together at various points. This was super convenient, because I wanted the blue pinprick in the eyes effect and this made life a lot easier. I took the head apart, drilled a hole in each eye and then dabbed a bit of black paint around the holes, and inside the skull (the theatre tech in me insisted).
For the lighting, I got a 3v blue LED, a battery case for a 2032 battery and a small slider switch. I cut a hole in the back of the head for the switch. Once I get the hooded robe on it, it won’t be noticeable. After testing my connections, I soldered everything together and added a couple of daubs of hot glue as insulation (couldn’t find the electrical tape), and I glued the battery case to the inside of the skull.
Here he is with his head back on.
I still have to make his robe, and I’ll post a finished picture of him once I’m done.
I’m a big fan of the show Tabletop on Geek and Sundry. I was already familiar with Settlers of Catan before I started watching, but have since been introduced to a whole lot more European style board games, and I love them!
One of my favourite little features on most of these games is the score track along the outside of the game board. Keeping score with paper and pencil isn’t my favourite activity, and these games have spoiled me. So I decided to make myself a score track that I could use on games that don’t have one built in, like Qwirkle. It’s just foam board, and the game markers are painted wooden spools, but it does the job and it was cheap. The supplies cost me less than $10.
