Split the difference

I've been back on the acro gymnastics line again. I do like making these. They're quite challenging from an armature perspective since you have to join limbs together, or rather, to join small hands to small hands or feet in most cases.

This one took a couple of tries before the join was solid enough. Wire alone didn't work. I tried wrapping embroidery threads around it, which was better but not ideal. In the end, having started to pack in paper pulp, i ended up taking that off and digging out some metal epoxy putty I found in Halfords. Okay, it's meant for patching up cars but it works for other things too!

The working time is short and it can get a bit crumbly but with a tiny blunt ended tool I was able to pack it into every crevice I could manage and meld hands and foot together. It was...good but not good enough. Still a bit of wobble so there must have been some gapping.

Out comes the old faithful super glue which was dripped around all the edges then tipped around to make sure it ran into all possible spaces. When it set, the whole thing was pretty solid and I was finally happy.

The hands and feet of the base were secured with a wire pushed into a hole in the base and staples over the wire on top of the wood. That took a few attempts as the staples kept bouncing off for some reason but eventually they stuck in enough. A clamp squished any sticky-out bits down flat.

Time to get to work with the pulp. These are very small armatures so applying it to arms and necks is especially finnicky but the rest goes on fairly quickly, keeping an eye on proportions as I go. I realise they never got their hair added. Now I can't unsee it so will have to add a bun on each of them. The base needs a quick touch up of white where I managed to blob some gold, then it's ready to be signed and sealed.

Now it's past time to think about how to price these and get them in front of the target audience. I'm rubbish at the whole marketing thing so that's got to be the thing for this year.