emuse: The Clangers in Clay: The Soup Dragon

Here's another post in my series on making characters and items from the children's TV show the Clangers! This time I'm showing you how to make the Soup Dragon who tends the soup wells.

Over the course of July I'm showing you all the techniques I used to make my Clangers scene. Please remember that this is an ornament for nostalgic adults or older children - it's not a toy as it has many small and breakable parts. If you did want to make it for a young child's room, I'd recommend gluing the pieces together and mounting the scene in a box frame which could hang on the wall.

Here's what you need to make a Soup Dragon:

Polymer clay (e.g. Fimo or Sculpey) in various greens, blue, black, red
Wooden kebab skewers or cocktail sticks
Green paint
Glue
Varnish

Here's what to do:

1. Mix various colours of green together until you get a colour you are happy with.

2. Shape pieces for the body, head, arms and tail as shown.

3. Make the feet, and make holes in them with a kebab skewer. Make holes in the bottom of the body too.

4. Join the arm and tail pieces to the body.

5. Cut a slit in the head as a mouth.

6. Using a piece of cocktail stick, attach the head.

7. Place a piece of red clay in the mouth as the tongue.

8. Make balls of green clay and add small balls of blue clay as the eyes, then smaller pieces of black clay. Place these on top of the head.

9. Cut small strips of black clay for the eyelashes, and cut slits along one side. Attach to the eyes.

10. Make snakes of various green clays. Cut pieces off these and roll into balls.

11. Press these balls all over the Soup Dragon's body, using your fingernail to flatten them. Place some vertically on top of the head too.

12. Bake.

13. Cut lengths of kebab skewer as legs and paint them green. Glue into the holes on the body and feet. If you didn't make holes in the body earlier, drill them now!