The Swamp - MMC Part 4

So the next phase in my little (HA!) project is a swamp. There is nothing creepier than a stagnant body of water with who knows what rotting and decaying just under the surface!

First, I had to make a bunch of stuff to fill the swamp. The rocks I made from paper mache and painted them with acrylics until they looked natural. Swamp grass and some water plants were mostly from old dried floral arrangements, mounted in more paper mache.

 And what is a marsh without cattails? I used brown clay to make the tops and stuck them onto green craft wire stems. Once the clay was cured I rolled the tops in glue and dipped them in sand. I painted some dried corn husk green and used that as the leaves.

 Once I had all the flora made I started assembling the actual swamp. I made a tissue paper template of the area it had to fit in and rolled out more clay for the base and sides. Once I had it all done I started filling it up.

 I found some more printable goodies online and this skeleton was perfect for the swamp!

Around Halloween I found a package of little rubber bugs and knew I could use the centipede in here. Once I had all these things glued down in place I started on the water. I did a lot of brainstorming on how to get realistic water and after some trial and error I decided to buy model railroad E-Z Water pellets. They were so much fun to work with! The instructions suggested melting them in a pot on the stove and pouring it, which really didn't work out that well, so I used my heat gun to melt them instead. That gave me much better control over where it went and not as many bubbles as pouring created.