100 Days of Progress: Iron Sides

That formerly too-small soup pot has been successfully transformed into Rana's PERFECTLY-scaled iron tea pot to hang in her hearth. When the little top knob decided it wanted to be a mushroom, the patch of grass decided to grow on the lid beside it. I know grass really couldn't survive the heat of the hearth's fire, but it was one of those Halfland magic things--just had to be this way without reasonable reasons.

I'm proud of the grass especially. I used a small piece of expensive German model train landscaping grass, that is too small for Halfland itself but perfect for the kettle, by pulling out small clumps at a time and hand-applying them into pools of matte medium. The arc of the former handle was bent to be like the Japanese kettles Paul has here. The kettle should now hang nicely on the hearth's iron crane (in progress).

I used air-dry polymer clay to form the spout, sanding down the join when dry to a smooth join. An iron handle was built with a slice off a pvc pipe, cut off with plastic pipe cutter. The snug angles trimmed to fit with scissors. A small bottom loop made from a part stolen from the working inside of a ballpoint pen. After these pieces were glued on with jewelry glue (vapor the only toxic material I allow; using only at window and/or with respirator, depending on how much gluing will be done) the whole pot was painted with iron surfacing paint.

Once dry, the newly iron pot gets a careful treatment of rusting solution to look oxidized where moisture might collect on a real pot. The red spots were made to look like inlay by using dimensional paint that was painted red when dry, with the iron paint applied around them.