Faux Tesla Coil-Part 16-The Lab Coat Experiment

The platform is giving me fits again today. I have spent the last twenty minutes trying to get these three pictures to post in the order in which I want them to appear.  Sorry for the strange configuration of the blog today.

 

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I was going back and forth about whether to add a lab coat to my anthropomorphic pumpkin figure.  My big worry was that I could not add a paper mache' lab coat to the character without potentially wrecking the figure by accidently getting paper mache' or paint on it.  The concerns were causing me to procrastinate and put off working on it, but I finally worked through the worries and decided to experiment.  Early in the experiment I learned that adding a lab coat was not going to add anything to the story. The lab coat covered up so much of the body of the pumpkin figure that it detracted from the piece. I preferred to allow more of the vegetable body to show.  I'm glad I did the experiment though, because I would have been wondering "what if" rather than knowing for sure.  However, it is worthwhile to blog about my experiment in case anyone should find themself in a similar situation of needing to add a piece of clothing or an item to an otherwise completed figure.

I started out by making a basic lab coat out of a scrap of muslin.  I used basic doll dressmaking techniques to create the garment.  My plan was to make sure that the garment was properly constructed and fit, then deconstruct portions of the garment in order to cover it with paper mache'.  By working on the garment without it being on the figure, it saved the figure from potentially being splattered by the craft materials.  I planned to use rolls of paper towels to act as a dressmakers "ham" to keep the curves of the shoulders in place while the sections were under construction.  The garment would have then been painted and varnished before it was reconstructed on the figure. 

Once the garment was complete, I would have wrapped the head and portions of the body in plastic wrap to protect it from paper mache', paint, or varnish that would have to be used to adhere the parts of the garment.  In areas where I would actually be working to attach the garment sections I was planning to use release paper that I had saved from fusible interfacing project.  Once the figure was protected, I could proceed to re-attach the sections of the lab coat with masking tape and then cover the seams with paper mache'.  Once the paper mache' was dry the seam areas would have been painted and varnished.  Then the release paper would be pulled out from underneath the garment and the plastic wrap removed from around the head.  By using this method only a minimal amount of the release paper might have been stuck to the underside of the area where the sections were joined together. At that point the lab coat would have been loose on the figure.  If it had been loose enough to slip around I planned to put some glue under the shoulder area to hold it in place.

Some people may wonder why I would go to all this trouble.  Why not just use the cloth lab coat.  In this situation, every other piece of the diorama is hard surfaced, painted, and varnished with a high gloss varnish.  The cloth just looked out of place.  If I had proceeded with the experiment, the lab coat would appear to have been made of the same materials as the rest of the diorama.  If this had been a piece that had multiple pieces of fabric, a lab coat made of material would have been fine.

So, now that I am past the lab coat experiment, I only need to make the transformer.  This is the last piece that needs to be constructed.  That will take a few days to get layers of paper mache' on and get it painted and sealed.  After that, I'm putting this whole diorama together.  While I am waiting for the paper mache' layers to dry, I will be doing some embellishment on the platform of the diorama.  You haven't seen the Tesla Coil part of this piece for a while.  You will be see several changes.  Look for that on the next blog post.