Floating Rocks

Inspired by some of the art work in the Legends of Chima advertising and cartoon, I decided I wanted to try making some floating rocks with a floating waterfall as the center piece. If you've never seen terranscapes pandoran themes board, do yourself a favor and take a look HERE

So with that as additional inspiration, I went to work. I started the same way I would make any rocks, but then I flipped them over. I cut up a bunch of pink foam and layered them from biggest to smallest. I then tried to disguise the seams with bits of scrap foam and then gave each piece a coat of joint compound. For the waterfall, I also used a lighter to burn and melt the small steams that lead to the falls - I just like this effect. Wire hangers (Yes mommy dearest) were dressed up as vines and used to to suspend the the three rocks. Sorry for the lack of wip pics, but I'm sure most of you know how to make rock from foam.

Since I wanted the waterfalls rock to be suspended by the water itself, I needed something sturdy. I went to the dollar store and bought a pair of plastic champaign glasses for, you guessed it, $1. I broke the stems off and hot glued them to the MDF base and to the bottom of the rock. For added strength, I broke off chunks from the remaining portions of the glasses and melted it over the edge of the falls.

 

The water was then built up using DAP 3.0 crystal clear caulk smeared on witha popsicle stick. It took several layers to get this built up enough and frankly I'm not positive all the layers were 100% cured at the end. Anyway, I tried a different technique than I normally would have. Usually I paint the water color first and then caulk over it. It's a nice effect, and its what i did for the pond, but I wanted something different for the streams and falls. I painted the final layer of caulk blue and then wet blended white from the stream all the way down the waterfalls. The problem with that is that you lose your shine. To solve this, I covered the falls and streams in several layers of mod podge. Then added aquarium plants to everthing and slapped 'em on the table.

I'm calling these done...for now anyway. I feel like they need more vegetation. Would love to hear your opinion! They're studier than I expeced...especially the waterfall rock. There's no wiggle on that piece!