Garden "Tootsies" Tutorial & Picture

One of my cyber friends and fellow gardeners, Ellisgardener, is a wonder.....here is how she made these precious "Tootsies" shown at the bottom of this screen, and you can too:

Ellis says, "it's way too easy!!!"....

I used aluminum foil, Super Sculpey clay (it's already PINK!), the nine dollar box, one pound......and a couple pieces of copper pipe that I had laying around, to use as sticks to hold them up in the ground......

I crumpled up a pretty large sheet of foil into the basic shape of a foot, with a big toe 'stump' stickin up so I'd know left from right! LOL!!.... if you don't squash it too tight at first, you can 'mold' it till you get the shape you want... gotta have that arch and the pad under the toes..... and the heel..*make both feet at the same time so they pretty much match**I left one foot's toes all in a line and have the other foots big toe sticking UP**.. never mind the top of the foot, you won't see that.....much...I kinda made mine look 'ok', but nothing fancy....

One sheet of the clay all squished and worked till it was pliable, and then worked by hand into a flat thing bigger than the foot... kinda like using your hands to make pie crust flat..needs to be thick enuff not to tear, but not so thick that you 'waste' clay.. mine was a little over 3/8 ths inch thick..... then wrapped it around the foil foot... squished and flattened another smaller piece of clay and put that on the other side of the foot and then worked the edges of both nice and tight together....

Roll up some clay into toes and just squish'em onto the foot... mold them up a little to have the little 'pads' on 'em....

Do the other one, same way....*oh, yeah... where you join pieces like the toes on the top of the foot and where the edges and the 'bridge' go together?.. just keep dragging your finger across the lump or the seam or the hole or whatever and it will start to disappear... you can smooth out any little lump that way.... *

The way I did the thing to hold the stick was to lay the pipe/stick on the wrong side of the foot and flatten another piece of clay and lay it up and over the pipe, like a little bridge... then sealed the edges where they met the clay on the foot.... like this...

____hump___

Then pulled the pipe back out...and baked the both of the feetsies in the oven... follow the directions on the sculpey, but mine was in for about twenty five minutes.... let them cool completely....

I used my E-6000 clear glue to make sure the pipe stayed in the little 'bridge' and held on.....

Then sprayed the whole foot with a sealer, let that dry and then sprayed it with a matte finish.... then walked around the garden looking for the perfect spot to put 'em!!...

gotta tell ya, it's not easy to sculpt a foot when you can't see the bottom of your OWN!! LOL!.... needed a model....

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