Animal friendly fake taxidermy *tutorial*

[Hemi*Housewife]

This is one of the funnest projects I've done and this is my first piece.  He's a bubble gum pink wild boar rug.  No animal products were used here.

First I bought a rug head mold, complete with glass eyes and a plastic jawset from Van Dykes taxidermy.  I also purchased some high quality long fake fur, some magisculpt, and with the help of my glue gun, a little acrylic paint and my husbands hair clippers...I got some pretty cool results!

This first pic is the foam base...after I sculpted around the eyes and snout to make him look a little more scary.....I painted his gums too....



I glued the fur on his head, cut around the face with the clippers...gave him a little mohawk.....



Then I cut out a 6 foot long body, lined it with heavy velveteen and gave him some ears and a goatee......



Voila!  Taxidermy...guilt free and better than the real thing!  LOL!  But seriously...I'm pretty darned excited about making more of these.  If anyones interested in trying it...I'll elaborate more on details.

[Puppy_girl]

that's awesome!  yet also kinda creepy....

[krazigal72]

haha thats so cool!!

[greenkitchen]

Very cool! Very original. The possibilities are endless. Thanks for the new idea.

[AshGav]

very cool!

[imamunke]

That is incredible! I can't even get over it.
Wow. I love how creepy it is.
So..uh... how much does a rug head mold cost?
You should make more, absolutely. Maybe some funky home furnishing type place would carry them, and then urban hipster's around the world would just have to have one. (i'm not an urban hipster and i want one).

[Hemi*Housewife]

Thanks!  That particular mold was in thier catalogue...you should order the catalogue..its free...thier site doesn't have much, but that mold I believe was $45.00...with the eyes and mouth built in.  They had to custom pour that one...but I got it in a week...these people are great to deal with!  They have other animals that are cheaper too...they also have wall mounts that are awesome!  Heres the link....

http://www.vandykestaxidermy.com/

I'm totally gonna make more...they're time consuming tho...I wanna make a half rabbit half goat rug...LOL!  Yeah...I like the creepy stuff...but cute and creepy right?

[worthwhilegirl]

That is soooooo cool! I can't believe you said you were intimidated by the creativity here! That is one of the most creative projects I have seen here in a long time! Awesome job!!

[EmilyFlew]

THAT IS AWESOME! I love it. I would love to have that in my house. It reminds me of http://www.morbidtendencies.com/ but I like yours even better. Great job!

[sarahdotcom]

You should submit this to Readymade - it's just the sort of thing they'd go crazy over!