Altered Vessels Studio

Felted dreadlocks

On to the dreadlock creation! I had a brainwave last time we spoke that I can make some pretty realistic looking mini dreads using felted wool. I’ve got a bunch of black and grey wool (couldn’t find the tan I thought I had) and the felting needles so I’m going to give it a go.

Felting for those who don’t know involves stabbing wool fibre with a bloody sharp needle on a piece of foam eleven billionty times to mold the wool into your desired form. Basically sculpting with wool and getting those stabby stabby feelings out of your system is just a lil side bonus.

The first dread turned out OK, a bit thick for my liking but I may be able to make it more compact with more stabbing and rolling it between my hands. With the second dread I took a bit less wool and the thinner dread looks muuuuch better! Matches the vision in my head. I grabbed a bit of the grey and mixed it in with the black for a little visual contrast. I also had an idea for iii’s hair that I thought was pretty funny but I’ll get into it in a separate post here.

Next is to attach them all together into a little bundle so that I can easily squeeze and glue them into the nub at the top of the head.

Looks good when I do a lil test fit! Will put small beads the dreads later too. Maybe puffy paint or something easy like that.

There’s a crossover in ii and iii’s build timelines as I’m baking iii’s head in the background as I figured it was OK to proceed after testing with ii’s head bake. I also thought to make some little drumsticks for ii while the iii’s head was baking. They turned out… OK. I put them on a few paper cupcake cases and on top of a silicon nub to bake. I only put them in for 12 mins instead of the 30 as they’re tiny and I think 30 mins would just blitz them. Don’t forget to put them somewhere safe like a zip lock bag so you don’t lose them! I refuse to comment on whether that’s the second set in the bag….

This clay is just not the best for what I want to do so I think I’m going to look into getting some Sculpey. That seems to be the most frequently used clay by the YouTubers I’ve been watching trying to learn this polymer clay stuff. A lot of them have put out custom Pop tutorials and gone over some basic techniques. Anyway I’ll use this Sully stuff up first and see what else I can find.

Just realised that ii always wears that crossed scythe necklace (will need to look into any meaning with that or just something badass to wear. No doubt the latter. Maybe I can make a big version for me out of clay as a tester!) There’s no way I’m going to be able to make it out of that sticky clay so that will be the first test for the new Sculpey clay to see if I can make something that tiny without going blind.

Up next I’m crossing over to the start of iii’s spacebuns build.

Worship!🖤