Soft Sculptures:
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A soft sculpture is one that has been made with materials that are supple and non-rigid, such as cloth or foam.
Stuffed Jackalope:



I have a book of patterns to make small stuffed animals, two of which are deer and rabbits! So of course, I combined the two into my very own stuffed Jackalope, a.k.a. Jackalopsy! I named it Lopsy, as it is rather lop-sided. I completed the jackalope entirely on a sewing machine, and stuffed it with a polyester-fibre-stuffing. I'm very proud of it! I expected it too be fiddley and difficult, but I think it went well! It was very experimental but I really like the results.
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I'd like to use this as part of my project, I might say that it's a childhood toy of my narrator - maybe one made by their mother - and there could be a story attached about ow she was making my narrator a rabbit, but that they had seen one with antlers and demanded they be added to the toy.
Stuffed Kraken(s)

This is the pattern I created to make the krakens, I tried too make it as simple to make as possible, using as few seams as I could manage so that it was less fiddly on the sewing machine. Fortunately there weren't any incidents during the sewing and my first pattern was successful.


Both krakens are longer than my forearm and each tentacle is about the width of my thumb, they were great fun to make and I intend on using them both in my final piece.
Ceramics:
Ceramic Glazed Jackalopes:


I started with making the basic jackalope shape from balling up newspaper and attaching it together with masking tape. I then rolled out the clay to a consistent thickness to prevent it from exploding in the kiln. With the smaller jackalope I could take the newspaper out immediately through a hole in the bottom using pliers and scissors, with the bigger one I had to wait for it to dry some to prevent it from collapsing


Once the sculptures were finished and the newspaper had been pulled out I had to let them dry out and fire them, this took around a week to complete. Here is a photo of one of the jackalopes drying and one of the both of them having been fired.

Glazing was great fun! I had to mix up the glazed with help from Graham B and Mary from glass and ceramics, and ended up picking my colours based on photos Mary showed me, and went with a bright yellow and a blue that seemed to speckle once fired. To apply the glaze I poured it over the jackalopes, with the exception of the antlers, and then left them to dry. Once they were done I painted on the antlers using iron-water and then added the faces using a brown glaze. It was uncertain whether or not the faces would stay after being fired but I'm very glad that they did.

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Close-ups, pre second firing


Ta-da! Freshly fired jackalopes! I found them on a set of shelves by the kilns in the glass centre and I'm very happy with how they turned out. I'll be displaying them in my final exhibition on plinths.

My growing army of jackalopes: