{"id":3314,"date":"2017-12-10T23:36:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-10T23:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/?p=3314"},"modified":"2017-12-10T23:38:17","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T23:38:17","slug":"craft-foam-sea-serpent-relief-shapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/craft-foam-sea-serpent-relief-shapes\/","title":{"rendered":"Craft foam sea serpent and other relief shapes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I made these layered craft foam reliefs to use as decorations on the <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/paper-mache-globe-decorations\/\">paper mach\u00e9 globes<\/a> I made recently. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-05.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-05.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - Isabella the sea serpent\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I designed three different relief elements for the globes: Isabella the three-headed sea serpent, a ship based on the Crewe of Columbus logo, and a simple compass shape. I decided to make two copies of each, so each of the two globes could have all three elements.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-01.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-01.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - pasting printouts to foam\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <div class=\"ad-300x250 ad-float-right\">\r\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- MMS 300x250 -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5009313124668288\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3616150394\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/div>\n<p>I started by designing and laying out all the various shapes for each relief; I did this partly in Photoshop and partly by hand on paper. I printed and drew two copies of everything, and then I cut out the areas around all these shapes and pasted them onto a couple sheets of craft foam, aka wonderfoam. I used the same kind of wallpaper adhesive for this as I use for <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/my-paper-mache-method\/\">my paper mach\u00e9  process<\/a> &mdash; Roman Pro-543 Universal Wallpaper Adhesive. I simply smoothed the paste onto the sheet of foam with my hands, then laid the bits of paper in place, and smoothed more paste over them with my hands. <\/p>\n<p>This might sound silly, but I actually dug through about thirty sheets of craft foam to find the thinnest sheets, and used those for this project. The thickness of these craft foam sheets can vary a lot, even in the same packet (I order them in packs of ten sheets). With just one layer of foam, the difference in thickness isn&#8217;t very noticeable, but when lots of little shapes are stacked up you can really see and feel the difference. <\/p>\n<p>The craft foam and paper curl up quite a bit as the wallpaper paste dries; this is nothing to worry about. When everything was completely dry, I carefully cut out all the shapes with a very sharp pair of scissors. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-02.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-02.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - a few of the shapes before painting\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To remove the paper and paste, I threw all the shapes into a big bowl of water and left them there, paper side down, for about 20 minutes. It&#8217;s then easy to remove all the paper; it just slides right off! I then ran all the foam pieces under the tap to clean all the paste off of them; be careful not to let go or they&#8217;ll go down the drain! I began drying the pieces of foam by pressing them between a paper towel for a second, and I then left them out to dry completely for an hour or so.<\/p>\n<p>I then got ready to spray paint all these foam pieces. I took a few scraps of foam board I had lying around and wrapped wax paper around them, and then I taped all the little craft foam pieces onto them in groups by color. <\/p>\n<p>I still had all my spray paint left over from the <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/three-headed-paper-mache-dragon-sculpture\/\">Isabella the sea serpent paper mach\u00e9 sculpture<\/a> I made a few months ago, so I used the same colors on these pieces, along with other leftover colors I had lying around. It was easy to spray paint the pieces while they were mounted on the foam board. I was careful to get all the outer edges as well. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-03.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-03.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - spray painting the shapes\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You may ask, at this point, Manning, why didn&#8217;t you just buy craft foam in different colors, rather than have to paint everything? To which I say&#8230;.. uh&#8230;. shut up. <\/p>\n<p>I let the pieces dry outside for a day. To keep them from blowing away I set them in a cardboard box with a piece of screen over it; I have a big roll of this screen door stuff to use in the eye\/nose\/mouth holes of all my big <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/tag\/skull-mask\/\">paper mach\u00e9 skull masks<\/a>. I weighted the box lid down with some heavy tools and left it out on my terrace. The pic below is after I brought them inside; I brought them in a little too early and they still smelled like paint, so I left them in my foyer for another day.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-04.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sea-serpent-relief-04.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - the painted shapes\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When the paint was dry and the chemical smell had faded away, I painted all the details on all the pieces with a couple tiny paintbrushes and various colors of acrylic paint &mdash; the eyes on the sea serpents, the cross on the sails, etc etc etc. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-05.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-05.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - Isabella the sea serpent\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With the painting done, it was time to assemble all the pieces. I glued all the pieces onto the globes in layers with a hot glue gun &mdash; the trick here is to use lots of very small drops of hot glue, as opposed to a few big blobs of glue that&#8217;ll ooze all over the place. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-06.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-06.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - Crewe of Columbus ship logo\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>(Incidentally, I first did a test to see what would work better on the craft foam, hot glue or crazy glue &mdash; it turns out crazy glue doesn&#8217;t work very well on craft foam at all. The hot glue does just fine.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-07.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sea-serpent-relief-07.jpg\" alt=\"Craft foam relief - compass\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ah, I should note here, for each compass I included two little circles of poster board; I thought that many layers of craft foam would end up becoming too thick. <\/p>\n<p>I love how these came out! I look forward to using this same technique for other pieces in the future. Anyway, go check out how I made the <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/paper-mache-globe-decorations\/\">paper mach\u00e9 globes<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I made these layered craft foam reliefs to use as decorations on the paper mach\u00e9 globes I made recently. I designed three different relief elements for the globes: Isabella the three-headed sea serpent, a ship based on the Crewe of Columbus logo, and a simple compass shape. I decided to make two copies of each, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[237,295,294,169,229],"class_list":["post-3314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crewe-of-columbus","tag-isabella","tag-relief","tag-sculpture","tag-sea-serpent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3314"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3414,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions\/3414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}