"He Was No Dragon. Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon."
I've opened up an Etsy shop in case you don't want to do this yourself - we've kind of perfected the process so why mess with all that stupid glue!?! (IT'S HOT, YO!)
Visit my shop to see for yourself by looking me up,
LorishForrest
on Etsy.com
I saw this on another blog somewhere and I thought - GOSH HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!?! So for about 4 years now I have been bouncing around ideas to make this happen. It was always something though - the skull is too expensive or who has the time!?!? But this year I am SO HAPPY I finally made this happen and - to my shegrins - it wasn't too expensive to pull off either.
I was able to find a pretty cheap prop skull on Amazon (same place I find everything...) for a reasonable price. It's a resin cast and beautifully detailed skull that is not life-sized - it's smaller than a real skull but if you're looking for a life-sized skull, Amazon has plenty of options for you. I would only suggest that you look for a resin or other material with a higher temp melting point. ____________________________________________________________ For the "crown" I had a few options - gold acrylic paint? Maybe a gold wax? Paint would be inconsistent as far as the thickness not to mention messy... and it gets REALLY hot here in the summer time - I could easily imagine coming home to Viserys laughing at me as his gold "crown" was melted in a puddle on my floor... Terrible, right? So I hummed and hawed and came across gold glue sticks. GOLD GLUE STICKS, YA'LL! This was going to be a challenge that I happily accepted.
The glue sticks melt at 250 degrees F and the resin skull has a melting point at 350 F. We did a few things here. Here are the supplies you need:
- gold glue sticks (I used 12 of the small ones)
- Viserys head
- wooden kabob skewers
- tin foil
- an aluminum can (we used a soda can cut in half)
- tongs
- a hair dryer (If you want...)
- a pot to boil water in - careful not to screw up your pot!!
- a wax paper lined cookie sheet
Preheat your oven to 275 F.
Put your glue sticks in your can and make sure they don't stick up over the top too much otherwise they'll melt into your pot and ruin your pot. You've been warned!
Put the can in your pot and add water to the pot (don't get any in the can!) being careful not to fill it up too much otherwise the can will float and spill your gold glue all over the inside of your pot which will ruin your pot. Voice of experience - you've been warned!
Put the pot on your burner and cover it with tin foil - It might not be a bad idea to set your tongs over the top of the covered can to secure it and make sure it doesn't move around too much while the water is boiling.
You can check it a few times but it will take a few minutes to melt. Make sure your skull is ready on the wax-paper lined cookie sheet. Once it's melted (and bubbling a little) you'll want to pour it over your Viserys head. You'll want to encourage it to evacuate the can with some scraping with your kabob sticks knowing that you'll have to toss em after you're done - get some help with this! You'll need to hold the can with the tongs and scrape the glue carefully on top of the skull. It's not going to pour easily and keep in mind that the second you take the glue off the heat it will begin to cool making it harder to manipulate.
From here we set our hair dryer on high to keep it hot and maneuvered it to where we sorta wanted it to drip - it has a mind of it's own though and will do as it wants! I tried reasoning with it but it found my clothing choices offensive and didn't feel up to working with me. Once you have it sorta where you want it you can put it in your hot oven and let it go. I camped outside of my oven for about 5 minutes watching it melt and when I was happy with where it was I pulled it out and blew it dry with my COLD hair dryer. This is important because when you put the entire skull in the oven, it will get hot which will cause the glue to melt further even after its out of the oven - you have to cool it off. BLOW MAN, BLOOOW!
It doens't take too long to cool down and the result is pretty freaking amazing. I want to make more of them. Maybe for the finale party? Hmmm.....
