There’s a mouse eating my flour sack!

In Tutorials
Posted

A few years back we had the unfortunate pleasure of finding a mouse in our workshop.  After capturing said mouse and re-homing him in Sainsbury’s car park, we soon discovered that the little fella had become quite partial to our stock of sacks. At this time we filled our sacks with rice to give them a good weight. Unfortunately for us, the mouse (having thought Christmas had come early) decided to eat through every sack and ruined it all. Needless to say, we stopped using rice and swapped to a less edible substitute! On the upside, this did give us the idea to re-create the devastation but with a mouse more fitting to scale!

Things you will need:

  • Flour sack
  • Fine white sand (which is already inside the sack, but can be found at aquarium suppliers if making your own)
  • Brown pigment (optional)
  • Mouse/rat..which ever you prefer!
  • Scalpel with new blade
  • PVA glue
  • Non-stick surface (we used a silicone sheet, however, a non stick baking sheet is also a good option)
  • Heavy weight
  • Funnel
  • Mixing pot
  • Mixing stick
  • Cocktail sticks

 

1. Firstly find yourself a sack of flour. Our sacks contain the sand you will need for the following steps.
2. Start by cutting a jagged hole towards the bottom of the sack. It doesn’t need to be too neat as you are replicating what a mouse would do.
3. Pour the sand into your mixing pot.
4. Add a small amount of PVA, a bit at a time; you don’t want the mix to be too wet as the glue will soak through the sack.
5. Mix together until the sand starts to clump, adding more PVA if you feel the mix is too dry.
6. If you feel the sand is too white, try adding a very tiny amount of pigment dye (food colouring would work fine).
As you can see, you only need the merest amount, just to take the starkness off the white.
7. Once the sand and PVA are well mixed, pour most of the mixture back into the sack…you may need a funnel for this bit.
Save about 5% to go outside of the sack.
8. Put the filled sack onto your non-stick surface and lean it against a heavy weight. Squish the sack into the corner so it looks more natural.
9. Lay some of your mix next to the hole, which, at this point is probably already spilling out the mix. Use cocktail stick to lift the fabric so you can still see there is a hole.
10. Press down the mix with your finger to get the desired look. Compacting the mix will also help it bond together, making it stronger. If you have a mouse, you could stick that on now.
Finally, leave it to dry. We would recommend leaving it over night to dry fully. If you try to peel it off to soon it is likely to crumble.
11. Once dry you should be able to carefully peal the non-stick sheet away sack. If you find it sticking, try sliding a knife under the powder and easing it away from the sheet.
If you haven’t already, you can now stick on your mouse or rat.
12. Hopefully you should end up with something like this.
Have fun and remember to share your creations with us on our facebook page! We’d love to see how people get on.
Views: (2712)