Okay, so maybe it wasn't the most original idea. But I thought it might be fun to build. 
Mr Slug was going to get very expensive if I made him entirely from something like Super Sculpey. So, I found a suitable piece of dead wood while out dog walking, bulked it out with tin foil and masking tape and then covered the whole thing in a cheap air-dry paper clay. It took a couple of days to fully dry but, while I waited, I sculpted the head.
However, once I'd placed it, I realised that it looked better upside-down! So I remounted it, added a couple of extra eyestalks and then sculpted the neck and baked it onto the clay body.
Slug Part 1 completed.
Now, back to the house. I decided on blue roof tiles as I figured they'd go nicely with the colour scheme I had planned for Mr Slug. Then I painted the walls with actual wall paint (upcycled paint samplers thrown out by a DIY store). The chimney and the tower's spire were the only plastic elements, being part of a burger restaurant ice cream spoon and a super glue lid.
I finished covering the slug in Super Sculpey and baked it. Then I added some teddy bear eyes and gave the thing a white primer coat followed by washes of green with highlights in pink and cream.
I made a kind of 'saddle' for the house to sit on. This was made from coffee stirrers, twisted wire to simulate ropes, and 'bones' - Super Sculpey over a wire armature.
And it was done!
And then, just six months later, while in the process of tidying my study ... I knocked it onto the hard wooden parquet floor. And, being made of oven-baked polymer clay, it shattered into a bazillion pieces.
Sigh.
I could have repaired it but it would have taken hours and hours and, frankly, the work involved wasn't worth it. The house, though - being mostly made from card and wood, was completely undamaged.
Meanwhile, spring was in the air and the weather was getting better. And remembering the excitement generated by the Monster Zoo project (see here) the previous year, I decided to hide it in the same woods in which I'd hidden my first monsters.
It wasn't long before it was spotted by a few people. Local children went looking for it with their parents. And then photographer Chris Rowan took this lovely moody photo of it in situ.
A week later, this splendid house appeared nearby. It's made of slip cast plaster and I still don't know who made it. It's lovely.
Sadly, it was the only such house that appeared but I guess that, post-Covid (or, at least, the worst of the pandemic), life has returned to normal for most people. There are many more distractions available now that the lockdowns are over.
In the meantime, it's been interesting to see how a mostly cardboard house fares in the wild. It's had to cope with last year's drought and extreme heat, torrential rain, high winds and snow. But, over the course of a year it fared rather well.
However, I did notice a marked deterioration around Christmas time when the roof fell off. After that, things got progressively worse very quickly.
Then, yesterday, I paid a visit and found that it had completely collapsed. I therefore picked up all of the pieces and disposed of them responsibly.
I imagine that some of you might see this as a waste or a great shame but it really isn't. It was entirely made from throw-away waste materials that can now be recycled. All of that cardboard and wood enjoyed a second life for over a year and made a lot of small children smile when they found it - just like the monsters did.
I've already had local people asking me whether I'll do something new for this year.
Perhaps I will.
And for the rest of this week on the blog I'll share some of the other junk sculptures I've made in the past two years and how they were constructed.
That was a most impressive task Stevyen, and equally skillfully applied, a shame it has had to go!
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