hmmm

Wow!! Is there a frame under the skulls?? I think it looks awesome.

thanks. bit apprehensive when I was making it, yes an underframe as it made life much easier :)

Not my cup of tea, but I admire the skill it must have taken!

awesome!

Oh my gosh- this is AWESOME! What a lot of work, and what a great effect. It must feel like you're in an Indiana Jones movie in your own garden. The rest of your garden looks wonderful too- from what I can see. I love your sense of play. Thanks!

Very cool! I love the wild jungle feel. It reminds me of Predator, love that movie!

Amazing! Incredible! CSI would be intrigued!

Now THAT IS FREAKIN COOL! I would love to make stuff like that. I want to create an arch in a place in my yard, not neccessarily as ornate as your's, because I am not talented at all. Just a Gothic arch of the simplest form would make me happy. In my mind I can put together wire structure to hold the HyTuf and do it but, of course that is in my mind only, where things don't splat on the ground like diarrhea like in real life. Any clues on the skeleton. There is another word for it, I can't think of now. Armature..... that's it. When I become a millionaire can you do some work for me? Yeah, that ain't happening, but I can dream, right?

Glad you like it not going to be everyones cup of tea. The funny thing is I am not particularly good at diy. just start small and make a few small tufa objects, learn from that. Make mistakes...learn from them. Become more adventurous. Confidence to try comes with experience saying that this is only my third year doing hypertufa so still learning from my mistakes too. Each skull is a single piece so consider the whole structure is lots of tiny pieces and break it down that way it looks less daunting.

For the skeleton decide what shape you want what type of arch and look for something similar in shape. I was lucky i picked up my skeleton on ebay fairly close to me. When you want something you can train your eyes to see things or other peoples junk as a potential useful mould or skeleton. Good luck

This post was edited by themes on Wed, May 28, 14 at 21:17

I have made 2 pitiful HyTu things, I put the stuff in a 5 gal bucket. After a day I unmolded and carved a horrible gargoyle-ish thing and some strange creature. Not good at all, but have them outdoors near my plants, anyway, as odd as they look. I'll take a pic when I think about it before it gets too dark like now. If it's not too big of a pain, can you explain your skeleton/armature building. Did you make an arch yourself, or retro-fit a plant arch? If it's a pain, nevermind.

I did not take a pic of the skeleton but it was a wedding arch. I used this as the frame...it's about 30cm diameter all round. I then had to make the skulls. Before I started I estimated I would need approx 150 boy was I wrong. Before It starts to curve inwards I had gone through about 200 I stopped counting after that. Each row has seven skulls. Ideally I would have liked to have made all the skulls first then built it in a couple of days but this was not practical due to the space and mess. I would make about 60 and build them, make another 60 and so on

Themes, did you use wire on the wedding arch, then build up to cover the arch, then add skulls? If you made all the figures on the wall type thing you are talented. Even if you used premade molds, I am impressed. I would guess you did it yourself though. Either way it is all really great looking. I have an arch in my yard that I would love to do something like that with, but I will wait until it is in the shade. likely a few years at least.

No wire at all. I think there is a danger of making things more complicated then they should be. I think the talented people are the ones who carve or use the wire and build bespoke....this is far more difficult and involves a level of skill. I made the skulls and cemented them together on the skeleton...imagine the skulls are bricks I have made.

Start small make small things and go from there!

Reminds me of the Hawaian idol Greg Brady wore surfing. Just joking, it is Hawwaian (mispelled) looking though. It is cement not Hy Tu though, right? It is nice though. Are you in the tropics, by the way? It looks like you are in the subtropics at the least. Anyhow, you should try to sell your figurines or statues. If you didn't use wire how did you build up layers on the arch? If you want to keep your methods secret just say so. I want to eventually build up an arch I have, but can't imagine building layers without wire or something to build onto. I have used styrofoam before on a small gazing ball holder.

Tropics? I wish! I am in the uk. They contain peat moss but at a small proportion....it goes green eventually but takes a lot longer. With regard to the arch I cement 4 layers of skulls at a time wait until it dried giving me time to make a new batch of skulls and cement them on...the whole point of the skeleton is to make life easier something to cement on to :)

The tropical thing was because of some of the foliage in a picture of your's. The first 2 on this subject / thread whatever you want to name it. In my zone 6 Pa, nothing with those palm fronds would live here outdoors, without some good protection. I think you are mostly zone 7,8,9 maybe even 10 in the UK? I actually got to visit the UK in 2001 In May. Me and my best friend went to England Wales Scottland and Ireland was a super fast visit. We spent more time traveling back and forth to Ireland than in Ireland. We saw some rather beaten up palms, here and there. They were partially wrapped up, but the wind shredded the wrappings. They were still alive, though. There are many zone 7 hardy palms, so if you are zone 7 the palms are no big deal to you. You have a beautiful country, from what I've seen. We went castle hopping. My favorite castle was Cearphilly castle and my friend loved Conway. Conway was cool too. We were so rushed we would've loved to see more, Castle Coch was cute, but I think wasn't an actual castle of old times. We had to go to Sheffield, I love Pete Willis from Def Leppard, yeh, the one they kicked out before they got really famous. We were driving on a railcar track going the wrong way in Edinburgh, Scottland, my poor friend was driving, we had bus drivers yelling at us also. I hadn't gotten my driver's liscense yet, dispite being in my 30's, so my friend had to do all the driving. Well, sorry for rambling. We only had 2 weeks in the UK we tried to see it al, we saw the white cliffs of Dover. If we had more time Ozzy was from Manchester, Iron Maiden members.... Steve Harris from Bath, where was Bruce Dickenson from? It's not far from Sheffield, I think the region is close enough that the guys had the same type of accents. Sorry, you may be some 20 some yr old girl and be like whatever you say poaky, I don't care. Well, anyway, your plants look tropicalish, and your work is really cool.

I am supposed to be zone 8 but 2009 and especially 2010 I was getting -15c but I know the states can get much worse depending on where you are. After the narnia winter you had last year. Trachycarpus fortunei is hardy to -25c in some cases and I know some commited people are growing this in zone 5 in the US with protection mind. I want some lush planting..Easier said then done :)

I hope you did not judge the UK by your visit to Sheffield! Cornwall is lovely so is Scotland

In the U.S. Pittsburgh, Pa EQUALS Sheffield, England. I am near Pittsburgh, Pa by about 65 miles. Both were steel towns. Mills are shut down now. Now Pittsburgh is known for it's hospitals and the Steelers- Football team- american football though. I hate all sports though, so I hate our sports as well as yours equally, just don't get any of it. Even those areas, the country roads leading to Sheffield etc are nice. We have fields that are similar, you guys don't have your utilities aboveground, that I had seen anyway. We have poles so many feet apart with wires attached to the poles. You know telephone, electricity, that is likely it. I hadn't seen that on the country roads we traveled. Unless those folks had no electricity, I had assumed they had lines underground. I thought to myself "how smart" when ice forms onto the wires, or a tree falls onto our wires in a storm or whenever, we lose power, and if the wires were underground, it would'nt happen. Even Sheffield was nice. Wish I could've seen Pete Willis, he's just the most adorable man in the world.Since he has gotten older he reminds me of Ronnie James Dio in his last few years where I've seen pics. I would love to see the Uk again. If we had more than 2 weeks, we could've seen much more. There was so much to see in London, but the expense of staying anywhere overnight (besides the rental car) was too expensive. We saw the main castle near Trafalgar square, the gardens with the small pond, there is a small pretty little building near the pond, sorry I don't remember the name. Is the large Palace there Kensington Palace? It's the one with a famous guy on a tall plinth. Sorry for my ignorance, I know princess Di liked Kensington palace. I took pics posing against the black and gold gates near the palace. I would've liked to see MUCH more of London. Madam Toussoud's (misspelled) the wax museum would be at the top of my list. I posed with Big Ben etc. Not from a digital camera. though. I would proudly post my pic, that was several pounds ago, I was kinda slim back then. Well, anyway, I will try to make my tower.

We have electricity pylons here. Some underground depending where you are. Yorkshire has nice countryside I must admit. London is outlandishly expensive you're perfectly right.

Yorkshire, that's where Bruce Dickenson and some Iron Maiden guys are from, I could'nt thi nk of the name before you mentioned it. Wales was really pretty also. Cardiff castle was the only castle we had an official tour in. The smaller shell of a castle on the hill was cute. I guess what we toured was more like a manor house, it didn't have the look of the traditional castle. There was a really cool tree on the grounds. I think it was a Quercus Ilex or Holly oak. The roots were really big, the tree was almost up on a mound of the roots. Well, I hope to go back in the future, but that takes money. Well, it was nice anyways.

I'm interested to know how you made the skulls

have a look here..

http://www.hauntforum.com/showthread.php?t=34413&highlight=milk+jug+skull

made the skull and then make a mould from that but I made a mould of the mould and can do skulls in batches of 14 as I have 14 moulds but if you want just a few skulls you don't need to make numerous moulds

wow!!!! LOVE!!!! Please do post more!! Keep up the good work