What is a dragon without his cave filled with gold. For my knit Smaug doll, I decided to make a cave for him. Though not much like his domain in The Hobbit movies, I think it came out perfectly.
So here is the base of my cave. Sorry I don’t have pictures of how a friend and I did it. We used a cardboard box, cereal boxes, a wire to get the arch, and a lot of newspaper.
I used my first dragon, Snugglemuffins the Adorable (yes that’s his name), for size comparison
.For paper mache, I combined 2 cups flower with 1 cup water and a pinch of salt. I used a spoon to mix it and sometimes apply it to the paper. Small batches of paste worked well for me.
Next I used a lot of newspaper. Tearing the paper into strips about 2 inches wide, but sometimes thicker strips work better.
So I did one layer of paper mache on the inside. So many more layers to come.
Here is the back on my first layer.
The top after my first layer.
So I decided to put a lip on the cave. In some ways the ledge is a fourth wall (theater term). It was difficult to paste the lip to the sides.
Adding more layers made it sturdy.
The back was a bit more work then the front.
The underside was tricky. I had to turn the cave upside down to make sure the strips stuck to the top, not being pulled down by gravity.
My jeans ended up with lots of paste on them. I’m so glad they were not a nice pair.
I used a box to prop up the back while the inside dried.
With a box cutter, I was able to trim the edges of the bottom box. This made going around the edge with the paper mache easier.
Here is the bottom edge. It was tricky trying to make sure it dried while not sticking to the plastic tablecloth under it. A school binder works really well when tackling this part.
I decided to make the floor of the cave hilly. This is to give it a more “piles of gold’ look. I used wads of newspaper to create the hills. I made them kinda small, but they could be made bigger.
So here are the pictures of it before I painted the cave. I think I ended up putting 3-4 layers all together. The paper mache makes the whole structure solid. The more layers the stronger it will become, however, too many layers just takes too long.
I will have how I painted the cave posted soon, so look for that. This took me about 3ish weeks to finish while working on it every day or every other day for 30 minutes to 45 minutes.