2025 PROJECT NO. 1 - ST. NICHOLAS FIGURE

Post by **Howard** » Wed Jan 01, 2025 3:47 pm

Greetings to all…and Happy New Year!...

The inspiration for my St. Nicholas came from the 1st Dibs website…the original was a candy box…but I made mine without that feature…go here and gasp at the asking price…

https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/more- ... _37413702/

There won’t be exact patterns for every piece…(see the paragraph below)…but I’m going to show and explain how I made my St. Nicholas…See the pattern PDFs below...

HEAD…it’s key to the entire project…and presented the biggest challenge…all the dimensions and proportions of the St. Nickolas parts are based on the head size…(a larger head would mean a taller overall figure)…I couldn’t find a suitable head online…so I sculpted one with oven baked Sculpey polymer clay…a piece of aluminum wire bent into a “U” was used as an armature and painting handle…

BODY…paper towel cardboard tube cut to about 6 1/4” tall…a marker tube was used as the neck form…two paper clips held the tube sides closed while the glue dried and formed the shoulders…

CHEST AND SHOULDER OVERLAY…I cut the cardboard oversize and trimmed for best fit…

ARMS AND HANDS…a double thickness of heavy-duty poster board…I gently bent and molded the hands to fit around the crosier and cradle the Bible…I didn’t make entire arms since only the hands will be seen…the arms and head received a couple of thin coats of clear poly acrylic after painting…

BASE…3” square of plywood approximately 1/4” thick…

TUBE BODY FOUNDATION…an oval of double thickness corrugated cardboard that fits in the tube body…it’s securely glued to the base…the body tube will be glued it later…

MITRE…(hat)…cardboard covered with felt…the circumference of the head determines if pattern adjustments will be needed…inside surfaces were painted red…

CROSIER…(staff)…a length of survey flag wire…(you see these discarded on the roadside…they’re about 20” long with a colored plastic flag at the top)…I wrapped with a strip of paper and white glue to make the diameter slightly larger…the bead looking thing near the top is tightly wrapped thread…a poster board cross is attached with super glue…three coats of gold metallic paint tie it altogether…

BIBLE…black card stock cover over foam board…finished size is about 1/2” x 3/4”…the cross is 1/32” wide gold tape…

PADDING UNDER VESTMENTS…multiple layers of batting-like absorbent pads and paper towels applied with white glue…this was done to fill out the front of the figure…the arms received a little wrapping to fill them out as well…

VESTMENTS…red, white and black felt…(see the notes on the pattern sheets and photos)…the embellishments are embossed gold Dresden scraps and white lace…I found the lace at Walmart for about $1.25…

Stay tuned,,,I'll be posting additional photos and more info about this project…

Howard…