My Funniest Fail: Making A Mimbulus Mimbletonia

Our Hufflepuff Common Room needs a lot of plants, so John and I've been scouring local thrift stores for every $3 bunch of greenery we can find:

It's a jungle in here.

That's filler, though, since of course we also need more magical plants.

On that front I have one "bad" project and one good to show you, so let's start with the bad, since it's funnier. Making one of these:

Oh yes, it's that blasted Mimbulus Mimbletonia. This "quick" project has taken forever and failed on so many levels, but you guys claim you LIKE seeing my fails (a collective masochistic streak, I presume), so here, let me walk you through our many and varied screw-ups.

Screw Up The First:

This started as a great base of Styrofoam balls, but John should have started with it already in a pot, since it's nearly impossible to cram it in one after the fact. Didn't realize this 'til the very end. Oops.

The Problem #2: 

A crappy expanding foam job that I had to mostly carve off again. I'm kicking myself for not taking a before picture - it was quite funny - but here's the after:

 

 I later learned there IS a way to build spray foam up in little sections, which is what we should have done instead of letting loose all in one go. Again, oops.

Third Time's The Harm: 

Thinking, "how bad CAN it crack, really?" I covered the whole thing in air-dry clay. I wrapped it in a wet towel, since Internet People claim that helps prevent cracking.

THIS WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.

Four Score & Many Tears Ago: 

Trying to salvage the clay layer, I carefully smeared on a coat of Crack Shot spackle paste, which doesn't shrink and remains somewhat flexible. (Why didn't I start with this instead of the clay to begin with? Your guess is as good as mine. ::siiiigh::) 

Fortunately Crack Shot smooths out beautifully with just a little water and a rough washcloth after it dries, so I was able to get an OK finish on it:

Suki approves... of the mess I'm making.

FIVE GOLDEN DINGS:  

Thanks to the cracking clay underneath, though, the plaster coat was super fragile and would knock off at the slightest ding. I hastily painted it green and coated it with a spray lacquer to try to hold it all together.

Sweet Six-Green:  

After the clear coat I dry-brushed the whole thing a lighter shade of green to give it some dimension. I LOVE dry-brushing. It's up there with aging for the best "bang-for-your-buck," technique to amp up a paint job:

This was my favorite part of the whole thing.

If you've never done it before, dry-brushing is pretty much what it sounds like: blot off most of the paint from your brush & then lightly swipe over your project, so the paint only hits the peaks. This was a wetter dry brush than most, so the lighter green has a heavier coverage.

 At this point I was starting to feel hopeful again. Foolish, foolish Jen.

Unlucky Seven: 

To make the thorns I piped on plain brown caulking. Because I was impatient I used a cut-off ziploc bag to pipe with instead of a bag & tip, plus I think the caulk was cold from the garage, because it came out malformed and lumpy. I waited 'til they were mostly dry and tried to shape them better with my fingers, but that made them look a lot - no really, A LOT - like chocolate chips:

I never thought I could be so annoyed by the sight of chocolate.

 I went back and dry-brushed all the thorns with a darker brown, but that just made them look like dark chocolate. ARRRRG.

Then one of the thorns stuck to the wall where we set it to dry, and ripped off all the paint in that section, and after I set it outside to dry, the heat from the sun made 3 more giant cracks appear, which I had to go spackle and touch up again.

Around this point my struggle started getting funny. I'd passed the point of no return. THERE'S NO GOING BACK SO LET'S ENJOY THE RIDE.

The Hateful Eight:

Seeing my manic giggles and becoming concerned, John stepped in and helped me cram the base into a bent open plastic pot. He filled the pot with rocks first so it wouldn't be top-heavy, then hot glued the Mimbulus in place:

 

 Now we had giant gaps all around the base between the plant and the pot, though.

THIS IS THE PROJECT THAT WOULDN'T END. Yes it goes on and on MY FRIEEEEND.

Ahem.

NEIN! NEIN! NEIN!

We carefully filled the gaps with little balls of more spray foam, which actually turned out kind of nice looking.

 I got the idea from Ranee over on FOE, who made her Mimbulus with built-up balls of spray foam:

Isn't it incredible? I love her spines, and I have serious ball envy. :D I can't tell you how much I want to start all over with mine, but I've sunk too much time in already and I've got to FINISH HIIIM, already, so moving on...

I painted and dry-brushed the spray foam to match:

 Then I added more piped-on thorns, which of course THIS time looked great:

 Why couldn't my thorns come out this nice the first time? Harrumph.

Then, as my final, last ditch effort to cancel out the chocolate chip look, I tipped all the thorns with a bright lime green paint.

Now they kind of look like chocolate-lime candy corns, but you know what, I'll take it.

(Also I'd totally eat chocolate lime candy corn. Mmmm.)

There And Back To Ten:

I'm still waiting for the bottom thorns to dry so I can paint them, but here's my mostly finished Mimbulus Mimbletonia:

It looks... fine. 

There are still lots of little cracks and the whole thing could fall apart with a sudden jostle, not to mention I spent about a billion hours on a thing I can't wait to throw away, but it's (mostly) done and will probably look cute in the dim light of the party. SO THERE.

Oh, and I'm planning to wrap some little colored lights around it, for a festive and extra distracting touch. :D

This has mostly been a tutorial in what NOT to do, but if I were to try again - which someday I hope to - here's what I would do:

- Start with the pot and work your way up

- Make the Styrofoam ball structure again, but this time build up around it with smaller sections of spray foam, letting it dry in stages

- If necessary, smooth out the whole thing with Crack Shot spackle. NO CLAY.

- Paint & dry brush the same way

- Use an actual piping tip and bag when piping on the caulking thorns

- Also mix in a darker brown paint with the caulking first

- Add "spines" like Ranee did, probably using clear fishing line. (I didn't add any on ours because I'm afraid the cats would chew on it - but it really adds to the final look!)

I hope this made you laugh, gang - so I have a little something extra to show for all this pain and frustration, hah. Also, for you Fail Fans: please note I have craft fails like this all the dang time. I just usually give up and throw them away before I get so far in. If John and I make something look easy, please know it's because we have at least one trashed experiment for every successful tutorial or project, and we're forever trying and failing at new things. 

Next time I'll show you a much more successful project that I had a blast making, though, so stay tuned!