Hocus Pocus book

This was by far my most ambitious project so far! A while ago, my wife asked me if I could make a replica of the spellbook from the movie "Hocus Pocus". If you haven't seen this movie, I definitely recommend it. Even though it's a family-friendly Halloween movie, it's not childish.
Anyway, I knew this would be a bit more challenging than the books I made so far (especially the ornaments), but nothing that couldn't be done. So let's get started!

I also documented the entire build process on video. Many hours of footage, many hours of editing, and I managed to process it into a 20-minute video! In case you're wondering, I recorded it using a Canon Legria HFR506 camcorder, edited the video in Lightworks and recorded the voice-over with a USB microphone and Audacity.

Materials

• Sewn kraft paper sketchbook
• 3 mm thick MDF
• Cardboard
• Air drying clay
• Apoxie sculpt
• 25 mm glass dome
• Kraft paper
• Unbleached hemp string
• PVC foam plate
• Super glue
• Book binding glue
• Epoxie glue
• Hot glue gun
• Thick needle
• Molding silicone
• Polyurethane resin
• Foamcore board (for the mold)
• Spray primer
• Acrylic paints
• Acrylic varnish
• 8 mm neodymium magnets
• Red felt
• Gauze

The ornaments
Like I said, the ornaments would be quite a challenge. There are the four coiled-up snakes at the corners, the two snakes near the spine, the clasp on the front and a hand on the back. The hand isn't shown in detail anywhere in the movie, so I would have to improvise a bit.
I decided to make one of each ornament, and then mold them in silicone so I could cast multiple copies of them. I used a combination of PVC foam sheet and Apoxie clay, and took my time until I was satisfied with the sculpts.

Then, disaster almost struck. I made a silicone mold, and expected the silicone to be cured the next day. However, when I checked, the silicone was still a semi-liquid, sticky mess! I waited a few more days, but it simply didn't cure any further. What had happened? I suspect the catalyst for the silicone had expired. When I checked the bottle, I noticed some crystals on the bottom. I decided to wait a bit longer, but to no result.
So I ordered some new silicone and catalyst and started over. I removed the semi-cured silicone, and to get rid of any remaining liquid stuff, I brushed some catalyst over it and let it cure, so I could remove it easily. I made a new mold, and this time it worked fine. The next day, the silicone had cured as expected and I could start casting.

I used polyurethane resin for the ornaments. Four coiled-up snakes for the corners, two snakes for the spine, one clasp and one hand. When the resin had cured, I first cleaned the casts thoroughly and then sprayed them with a primer, followed by a dark gray acrylic basecoat. After the basecoat had dried, I applied a black wash, silver drybrushing and finally a satin clearcoat.

One ornament that required a special treatment was the clasp. To make it lock, I installed some neodymium magnets in it. Before painting, I carefully drilled some holes in the back, and glued the magnets in place with super glue. Magnets will be embedded in the book cover as well.

The book
My wife wanted a book with brown pages. This wasn't easy to find! There's plenty of sketchbooks made from brown kraft paper, but they are always either spiral bound or very thin. It took me some searching, but finally I found one on Ebay!
When the book arrived, I noticed the spine wasn't glued. The pages were stitched together, but no glue. To make sure the book would be strong enough, I applied a coat of book binding glue to the spine, followed by a strip of gauze, followed by another coat of glue.
One last thing needed to be done, and that was some sort of headband. I have tried making them myself in the past, but it didn't look too good. A great alternative was a strip of red felt, glued to the spine.
I didn't take any pictures of this, but it is shown in the Youtube video.

The cover
The book cover is made from 3mm thick MDF, and cardboard for the spine. The spine needed to be rounded a bit. I did this by glueing a few layers of thin cardboard together on a piece of PVC pipe, and letting it dry for a few days.
Another prominent feature of the book are the stitches, and the eye. The eye is a stock photo of an eye, printed on photo paper, and glued to a glass dome. The eyelids and stitches were sculpted directly on the cover.

I sculpted the stitches out of air drying clay. For the eyelids, I used Apoxie sculpt. After the clay had dried, I carefully drilled out the holes in the stitches with a 2 mm drill bit, and cleaned them up from the back of the cover.
I didn't take pictures of it (again), but there are six small magnets around the eye. I drilled 8 mm holes in the cover, and put the magnets in them, sandwiched between two sheet of paper on the front and back. These line up with the magnets I put in the clasp, so they keep it in place.
After glueing both cover boards and spine together, I used my wrinkled kraft paper technique for creating a faux leather effect. Usually, I try to use one single sheet of paper for the entire cover, but in this case it was easier to cut it into several pieces. The reason I try to use a single sheet is so you don't see the seams between the sheets. If this case, however, I could hide the seams in the stitches so they wouldn't be visible anyway.
And then it was time for the paint job! As usual, I started with a black basecoat, followed by a layer of brown. I used a mixture of burnt umber with a bit of pyrrole red to get a chocolate-like brown. After it had dried, I rubbed a very thin coat of yellow ochre over it, followed by a bronze drybrushing.
The final metallic drybrushing makes a huge difference! I have tried several colors (copper, bronze, gold, silver, ...) but bronze and copper look the best. I have also experimented with different color combinations the last few months, but that's something for a future post.

Before the final clearcoat, I sewed the stitches. First, I opened up all the holes with a thick needle, and then I sewed them using unbleached hemp string. It wasn't easy, sewing relatively thick, rough thread through small holes, but the result looks pretty nice. I glued the stitches in place from the back with a hot glue gun, and then trimmed everything with a sharp knife.
Next, I sprayed the cover with matte acrylic varnish. In the past, I have used satin varnish, but I think matte looks a lot better.

Putting it all together
And now it's time for the final assembly! I first glued the cover to the book. I needed to take special care to make sure everything was lined up properly, because otherwise the book wouldn't open afterwards. I glued on one side at a time, and pressed everything in place firmly, making sure there weren't any air bubbles. I put the book between clamps to keep everything together as the glue dried.

Next, I put the ornaments in place with epoxy glue, one side at a time and waiting until the glue was fully cured before switching to the other side (about 1 hour).

And then finally, the clasp! I glued a strip of leather between the clasp and hand, glued some felt to the inside of the strap and the clasp (not the hand), and finally glued the hand to the back cover.

And here's the final result! It took me a lot of work, but I think it turned out very nice. My wife is very happy with the result.

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Face casting

In a few months, it's time for Elf Fantasy Fair again! The costume I have in mind requires a mask. More specifically, a rigid, skull-shaped mask. To make sure it fits comfortably on my head, I made a cast of my face, wich I will use for sculpting the mask on.
Making a face cast isn't that easy. You can't do it by yourself, so I called in some help. My wife, her mom and stepdad and one of our friends were glad to help me. And we got the entire process on video!

Materials
To make a cast of a body part, you can use either silicone or alginate. Alginate is much cheaper than silicone, but an alginate mold dries out quickly and isn't permanent. Immediately after molding, you have to make a plaster cast, before the mold dries out, and after that, it's thrown away. So, here's the stuff you need:

• Alginate (I used Smooth On Alja Safe Acrobat, a fibre reinforced alginate)
• Plaster bandages
• Vaseline
• Gloves
• Plaster
• Clay

Alginate is a powder derived from seaweed. It's mixed with water to make a slurry that sets into a rubbery consistency. Pure alginate is quite runny and not easy to use for making a cast of a face, the fibre reinforced type I used is designed especially for use on vertical surfaces.

Preparations
The first thing I did was drawing an outline for the alginate on my face using a sharpie, and then I greased up my entire face using vaseline. Alginate releases from skin quite easily, but eyebrows or other facial hair need to be protected or you risk getting the alginate stuck to your face. I have a short beard, wich wasn't really a problem. A swimming cap is very useful to protect your hair, but since I'm bald that wasn't needed!
Before we mixed a batch of alginate, we cut a roll of plaster bandage into 30 cm strips so everything was ready. Keep in mind to wear clothes that you don't mind getting dirty (they will no matter how careful you are)! I used a large trash bag with some holes cut in it to protect my clothes.
And one very important thing: make sure you have a comfortable chair! I sat on a regular chair, and I had to tilt my head back the entire time. Towards the end, my neck started to hurt quite a bit! Some sort of beach chair would have been a lot better.

The procedure
First, your entire face except your nostrils is covered in alginate. The powder is mixed at a one to one ratio by volume with water. As soon as it's mixed, the clock starts ticking! The Alja Safe Acrobat sets very fast, it starts thickening after five minutes. I had mixed way too much, and we had to throw some away. It's better to mix up small batches.
The most challenging part is the nose, because the nostrils have to be kept open so you can breathe. Don't put straws up your nose, that's way too uncomfortable. I used the back of a sharpie to block one nostril at a time while my crew was putting cold goo on my face.
After the alginate has set, it needs to be reinforced. Alginate by itself is very flexible and tears easily, so it needs a support shell. This is easily done using plaster bandages. Simply dip them in water, and build up a plaster shell over the alginate. It takes about fifteen minutes for these to fully harden, after wich the mold can be removed.


Finishing
After the plaster has hardened, it's time to remove the mold from your face. Some tutorials tell you to remove the plaster and alginate separately, other recommend removing them together. I removed them together so the alginate was supported all the time.
We carefully peeled the edges off my face first, while I used my facial muscles to slowly loosen it from the inside. Take your time for this, you don't want to damage the mold! It works best if you tilt your head forward, support the plaster shell with one hand and use the other to get the mold off your face.
After removing the mold, you first have to plug the nostrils with some clay, and then immediately pour plaster in it. An alginate mold isn't permanent and dries out quite fast. I used Ultracal 30, a mixture of plaster and cement that's very strong and durable. This stuff sets slowly, so you don't have to rush things. At first, I was afraid I didn't mix it right because it took so long to set. It took an hour before it started to thicken, and the next morning, it had set.
After the plaster has set, you remove the alginate and plaster bandage; they can be thrown away now. The plaster casting probably needs some cleaning up around the nose. In my case, there were some minor flaws around my mouth. Because we underestimated how fast the alginate set, we had to tear off a piece and start over again, but it's not really a problem.

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Book cover ornaments

I've this isn't the first time you stumbled upon my blog, you know I have made a few customized sketchbooks. I've got this cool technique to make imitation leather, that's both a lot cheaper and easier than using real leather. If you want to learn about it, check out this post (this was my first book project, wich kinda failed, but it explains the technique nicely and I don't want to explain it again every time, so I just refer to this post).

Another thing I add to almost all of my books is some sort of cover ornament. Corners, symbols, all sorts of stuff. Until now, I always made them out of cardboard or MDF, but these thingies take a lot of time to make, much more than you'd think. Since I sell these books in my Etsy store, I should charge an insane price if I want to take into account the amount of time that goes into making one.
To speed up the process a little bit I decided to make molds of my cover ornaments, so I can just cast them in resin. Also, it makes it easier to make multiple copies of one book and keep my store stocked. Until now, after a book was sold, I had to remove it from the store.
So let's get started! I made some ornaments like I did for my other books, and then made silicone molds from them.

Materials

• MDF scraps (I never throw leftover away, they come in handy for stuff like this)
• Coping saw, files, sandpaper
• PVA and cyano acrylate glue
• Acrylic gesso and paint
• Sand (more on that later)
• Foamcore board
• Hot glue gun and sticks
• Release spray
• Molding silicone

Shaping the ornaments
I made four corner ornaments, four clasps for wrapping straps around the back of a book, and an Elder Sign sigil. This involves a lot of cutting, filing and sanding.
MDF doesn't really hold a sharply defined edge very well, especially thin MDF. There's a trick I learned from Bill Doran at Punished Props, though. If you apply cyano acrylate glue to the edge, it becomes very hard and keeps a good edge much better. Use thin glue for this, not the gel type, so it soaks into the fibres. After it has dried, you can sand and file it much better. Oh, and it never hurts to keep a bottle of acetone near when working with super glue. I managed to glue my fingers together on more than one occasion...

I wanted to give the Elder Sign sigil a textured background. I sprinkled coarse sand over it, smoothed it out as much as possible, and then dripped watered down PVA glue over it, soaking the sand with it and glueing it in place.
Before making a mold, I painted all pieces, first in gesso primer and then gray paint, and sanded it between each coat. Painting it makes it easier to spot any flaws.

Molding
When my ornaments were ready, I made molds using silicone. There are two kinds of mold making silicone: tin cured and platinum cured. Tin cured is cheaper, but it shrinks a little bit (not much, and usually not really an issue) and has a shorter life span; after a few years, it will start to deteriorate. Platinum cured silicone hardly shrinks, but it is quite sensitive to cure inhibition. Certain kinds of clay, glue and paint prevent it from properly curing. Most of the time, tin cured will do just fine.
The type of mold I made is the simplest type, a flat-backed box one part box mold. To construct the box, I used foamcore board and a hot glue gun. Foamcore is strong enough to build a molding box, but easy to rip apart after the silicone has cured. To make sure no silicone creeps under the ornaments, I glued them to the bottom of the box using PVA glue. And even though it's not strictly necessary for silicone, I applied some mold release spray.

Next, I mixed up some silicone and poured it into the mold boxes. To prevent bubbles (and if you don't have a vacuum degasser chamber), pour it from high enough, so the stream gets stretched out and most of the bubbles pop. It's best to pour it in the corner of the box and let if flow over the items, instead of pouring directly on them.
The next day, the silicone had cured and I liberated the items from the molds. They turned out quite ok, without any visible flaws. I already made a few casts using polyurethane resin, and it works perfectly!

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