thelangley
New Member
At some point a housemate and I were at a garden/home place and she mentioned how cool it would be to have a life size weeping angel statue in the yard, and of course, I started thinking about how to do it. Initially I thought I'd just find a statue of an angel praying, cut the arms off and reposition them, but that wasn't going to be very cheap or easy to find. So I started looking around online and found some other ppl who had done some angels and similar statue type things. The key to a lot of this is "monster mud." For those of you who don't know, it's great. It's 4 or 5 parts drywall compound (Home Depot has a 5 gal bucket for about $15) mixed with 1 part house paint. (Any color but for a 'statue color' black is recommended). It's sloppy but easy to work with.
First thing I did was dig around craigslist for a mannequin to start with. I found a guy who was selling a whole pile of them, and parts of them.
My thought was I'd find a mannequin with arms that were close to being the position I was looking for (covering the face) and I could just tweak them as necessary. This proved to be a lot harder than you'd think. He had some arms but not many hands and they were all in weird positions. I finally decided I'd have to do this the hard way and build the whole body from parts/scratch. I ended up buying a dress form torso from him.It had no arms/legs or head.
Next I stopped by Home Depot, got a long metal rod, that would be able to be clamped to the inside, and I also went back to the mannequin guy to get a base flange that I bolted to a round piece of plywood for the base. Now the thing could be adjusted and legs didn't matter bc I was going to cover the whole bottom with cloth for the dress anyway.
Next was the head. I used a regular old styrofoam wig head, but it seemed small, so I bought a plain white mask from Michaels, along with some paper mache stuff (Plaster mache?) to build up around the head to give it some volume. I wrapped it all in plaster bandages and attached it to the neck.
Next was a trip to Goodwill to look through women's dresses. I'm secure enough that I didn't mind the stares. haha.. I was looking for a sleeveless dress or something with a yoke of some sort, but again.. the whole dress wasn't going to work. I ended up cutting the top part off the dress for the yoke, and using a sheet (very cheap at Goodwill) for the rest of the shirt and the dress. I pinned it on and made the dress and shirt look pleated.
Now comes the fun part! MONSTER MUD! I'd never made or worked with monster mud before but there are plenty of videos out there. You really can't mess this up too much. You'll need a drill and paint mixer bit to mix this stuff up bc it'll kill your arm to do it manually. Once you do, just start slathering it on your statue. I used my (gloved) hands so I could work it into the fabric real good. You'll want to be pretty liberal and soak the fabric, otherwise it could crack and flake off when it dries. It took a good day to dry, then did a 2nd coat. You can do your forming and adjusting of the fabric during this stage too. Now it's starting to really look like a statue! It actually dries relatively solid, but be careful around the bottom. It cracked a lot and was evident I should have put the whole thing on a big square base which I did end up adding later. I used a mop head for the hair, as I saw in another video or how to somewhere. It works out well. Not perfect but pretty close.
Now she was going to need hands and arms. I looked online for some hands but finally decided to just make some molds of a friend's hands, that way I could position them properly. They were a little big and I ended up just trimming them down. They didn't need to be perfect bc they were going to get covered with monster mud and detail wasn't really necessary with a statue of this size. For the arms.. went back to the mannequin guy and bought a couple arms. I think they were both right arms, but it didn't matter. I cut them up so I could position them. Ran some stiff wire through the hands, arms and into the dress form. I used regular old expanding foam in a can from Home Depot to fill in the spaces of the elbows and wrists. I drilled the hands to the face. Don't worry about those screws showing -it's time for another coat of monster mud!
Things were starting to look good, but now was another dreaded moment.. the wings. I looked all over Amazon and ebay for a short cut, but once again, they were all either feathers, or small wings. Going to have to do it the hard way again.
The process started with a trip to the Dollar Tree. They have sheets of foam core for.. you guessed it, A DOLLAR! Which is good because you'll probably need several sheets. I had to tape two together to get the size i wanted, then drew out the shape. I traced that shape onto a few more sheets and glued them all together for thickness. The traces and edges don't have to be perfect, monster mud again will fill it and cover it. Next, was the expanding foam again. I sprayed down the whole wing, front and back, waited for it to dry and started cutting away with a blade. This takes awhile but it's a lot better than sanding. I filled some of the big gaps in the foam with spackling paste but didn't mind the porous look of old weathered concrete.
I had some junk plastic parts that were part of some kind of hangers laying around, but you probably could use wire or something to make a real tight upside down "V" shape on the part of the wing that attaches to the body. I drilled a hole in the body and basically "hung" the wings into the hole/slot. They were loose of course, so I used foam again to steady them up and fill the gaps. After that.. MORE MUD! I should point out that at no point did I ever run out of monster mud. In fact, I ended up with leftovers. It goes a long way, so don't be shy with it.
At this point, she looked pretty done but was listing a little to the back and left. I realized that (as I mentioned earlier) she shoulda been mounted on a big solid base. The bottom of the dress was in no way solid enough to move her, it kept cracking. So back to the hardware store for some lumber for a base. I had to cut a hole in the back of the dress to get in there and bolt her down to the new bigger base, and also had the idea to fill up the hollow dress with foam for more support. This took several "big gap" cans of foam but def' made things a lot sturdier.
The final stages were to really make things solid and also to weatherize her. I don't know how waterproof monster mud is on its own. Some people have claimed to just painted it on stuff and that was good, but I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to melt after the first rain. First I thinned out some bondo with fiberglass resin (wear a respirator!) and then added the appropriate hardener for the resin and bondo, mixed it all up and slathered it on the entire base of her dress and around the edges of the base platform to give it a rounder look. The bondo on the dress really made it strong. I also mixed up JUST the resin and painted the whole thing with that. This put a plastic "shield" on her which helped keep things strong and waterproof-ish. The final stage, I painted the whole thing with some Thompson's water seal (or some kind of water seal brand) just for a liittttlle more water proofing. I did some painted on weathering too at this point, and then called it done!
I'm pretty happy with her. There are a few things I know I could do better the second time around, but I think she turned out pretty good. Done right, probably wouldn't cost much more than $100-150 to do the whole thing. (depending what you spend on mannequin parts)
A quick epilogue: I sent a pic to the guy I got the mannequin parts from and he said his wife was planning a Doctor Who wedding and wanted to know if she could borrow the statue for it.
First thing I did was dig around craigslist for a mannequin to start with. I found a guy who was selling a whole pile of them, and parts of them.
My thought was I'd find a mannequin with arms that were close to being the position I was looking for (covering the face) and I could just tweak them as necessary. This proved to be a lot harder than you'd think. He had some arms but not many hands and they were all in weird positions. I finally decided I'd have to do this the hard way and build the whole body from parts/scratch. I ended up buying a dress form torso from him.It had no arms/legs or head.
Next I stopped by Home Depot, got a long metal rod, that would be able to be clamped to the inside, and I also went back to the mannequin guy to get a base flange that I bolted to a round piece of plywood for the base. Now the thing could be adjusted and legs didn't matter bc I was going to cover the whole bottom with cloth for the dress anyway.
Next was the head. I used a regular old styrofoam wig head, but it seemed small, so I bought a plain white mask from Michaels, along with some paper mache stuff (Plaster mache?) to build up around the head to give it some volume. I wrapped it all in plaster bandages and attached it to the neck.
Next was a trip to Goodwill to look through women's dresses. I'm secure enough that I didn't mind the stares. haha.. I was looking for a sleeveless dress or something with a yoke of some sort, but again.. the whole dress wasn't going to work. I ended up cutting the top part off the dress for the yoke, and using a sheet (very cheap at Goodwill) for the rest of the shirt and the dress. I pinned it on and made the dress and shirt look pleated.
Now comes the fun part! MONSTER MUD! I'd never made or worked with monster mud before but there are plenty of videos out there. You really can't mess this up too much. You'll need a drill and paint mixer bit to mix this stuff up bc it'll kill your arm to do it manually. Once you do, just start slathering it on your statue. I used my (gloved) hands so I could work it into the fabric real good. You'll want to be pretty liberal and soak the fabric, otherwise it could crack and flake off when it dries. It took a good day to dry, then did a 2nd coat. You can do your forming and adjusting of the fabric during this stage too. Now it's starting to really look like a statue! It actually dries relatively solid, but be careful around the bottom. It cracked a lot and was evident I should have put the whole thing on a big square base which I did end up adding later. I used a mop head for the hair, as I saw in another video or how to somewhere. It works out well. Not perfect but pretty close.
Now she was going to need hands and arms. I looked online for some hands but finally decided to just make some molds of a friend's hands, that way I could position them properly. They were a little big and I ended up just trimming them down. They didn't need to be perfect bc they were going to get covered with monster mud and detail wasn't really necessary with a statue of this size. For the arms.. went back to the mannequin guy and bought a couple arms. I think they were both right arms, but it didn't matter. I cut them up so I could position them. Ran some stiff wire through the hands, arms and into the dress form. I used regular old expanding foam in a can from Home Depot to fill in the spaces of the elbows and wrists. I drilled the hands to the face. Don't worry about those screws showing -it's time for another coat of monster mud!
Things were starting to look good, but now was another dreaded moment.. the wings. I looked all over Amazon and ebay for a short cut, but once again, they were all either feathers, or small wings. Going to have to do it the hard way again.
The process started with a trip to the Dollar Tree. They have sheets of foam core for.. you guessed it, A DOLLAR! Which is good because you'll probably need several sheets. I had to tape two together to get the size i wanted, then drew out the shape. I traced that shape onto a few more sheets and glued them all together for thickness. The traces and edges don't have to be perfect, monster mud again will fill it and cover it. Next, was the expanding foam again. I sprayed down the whole wing, front and back, waited for it to dry and started cutting away with a blade. This takes awhile but it's a lot better than sanding. I filled some of the big gaps in the foam with spackling paste but didn't mind the porous look of old weathered concrete.
I had some junk plastic parts that were part of some kind of hangers laying around, but you probably could use wire or something to make a real tight upside down "V" shape on the part of the wing that attaches to the body. I drilled a hole in the body and basically "hung" the wings into the hole/slot. They were loose of course, so I used foam again to steady them up and fill the gaps. After that.. MORE MUD! I should point out that at no point did I ever run out of monster mud. In fact, I ended up with leftovers. It goes a long way, so don't be shy with it.
At this point, she looked pretty done but was listing a little to the back and left. I realized that (as I mentioned earlier) she shoulda been mounted on a big solid base. The bottom of the dress was in no way solid enough to move her, it kept cracking. So back to the hardware store for some lumber for a base. I had to cut a hole in the back of the dress to get in there and bolt her down to the new bigger base, and also had the idea to fill up the hollow dress with foam for more support. This took several "big gap" cans of foam but def' made things a lot sturdier.
The final stages were to really make things solid and also to weatherize her. I don't know how waterproof monster mud is on its own. Some people have claimed to just painted it on stuff and that was good, but I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to melt after the first rain. First I thinned out some bondo with fiberglass resin (wear a respirator!) and then added the appropriate hardener for the resin and bondo, mixed it all up and slathered it on the entire base of her dress and around the edges of the base platform to give it a rounder look. The bondo on the dress really made it strong. I also mixed up JUST the resin and painted the whole thing with that. This put a plastic "shield" on her which helped keep things strong and waterproof-ish. The final stage, I painted the whole thing with some Thompson's water seal (or some kind of water seal brand) just for a liittttlle more water proofing. I did some painted on weathering too at this point, and then called it done!
I'm pretty happy with her. There are a few things I know I could do better the second time around, but I think she turned out pretty good. Done right, probably wouldn't cost much more than $100-150 to do the whole thing. (depending what you spend on mannequin parts)
A quick epilogue: I sent a pic to the guy I got the mannequin parts from and he said his wife was planning a Doctor Who wedding and wanted to know if she could borrow the statue for it.
