My Vivarium Background

[Animalnstinct]

Today I needed a break from work so I decided to start on a new background for one of my vivariums. I got tons of free foam a few weeks ago and figured it was time to start using it.

It's not finished yet, but I thought I would share what I have so far. I started with a large sheet of foam, a knife, and this metal toothpick looking thing and just started carving. It's going to go in one of my 10 Gallons.

I'm going to try and create an old ruins look and have the bricks and wall cracked. Then in the center I'm trying to make it look like a dragon carved in where part of the wall has been worn and broken off.

I still have some cleaning up on it and then I'm going to add vines growing in between some of the bricks. I will probably start the vines tomorrow and then maybe within the next day or so start cementing it.

Here is what it looks like so far.

[TheBambooGoanna]

Nice!! I like it already!

[clownonfire]

How cool!

[Leefrogs]

very cool! What kind of frog gets to live in there? I love the concrete look.

[MikeM670]

That is very nice. Wish I was that talented.

[Animalnstinct]

Thanks for the compliments everyone

I put the first coat of Quikrete on today and I also added a bottom piece to create an "L" shape. I don't want this to be a permanent background so I added the piece to the bottom to give it support and the substrate will go on top of it. I

This background is going to be for my biggest pacman, Appa. I'm hoping he will enjoy burrowing in front of it, lol.

[spankyg]

I love this,,,
I'm actually studying a subject at uni called "sculpture and small objects", and this has given me a great Idea for my upcoming assignment.
I’m very Intrigued…
Did you just chip away at the foam to create that “brick” design? And that dragon looks great.

[Animalnstinct]

Thank you

I used a little piece of metal that was like a toothpick and a box cutter. I went and used the box cutter to basically draw / slice the lines of where I would carve then since the foam is made of up tons of little compressed foam balls, I would slowly chip away the individual balls a few at a time.

Also, since the overall piece is made up of the individual balls compressed together some become loose from removing surrounding ones so when I finished I used an embossing heat gun to heat everything together. I wish I would of heated it bit more to give more of a bound because when I put on a few layers of the quikrete some areas of the foam pieces did fall off from brushing over it, especially in the thinner foam areas on the dragon.

The other thing I decided to do with this background is to mix the acrylic paint in with the cement. Which I really love how it's working out. You just put different colored coats on then you can sand down to each of the different colored layers and it blends in really well.

[spankyg]

Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation.

I was thinking of drawing out an image and just using a heat gun to carve straight into it.
What you’ve done seems much more meticulous and thorough (and works) lol.

Mixing the acrylic paint in with the cement is a great idea. I hope you don’t mind if I steal this idea haha, (don’t worry, I’ll create something different), but yeah, love the idea. I rekon you could really create some good looking stuff if you spent some crazy time on it… It reminded me of this artist who uses cork to create models of ancient architecture (like the Acropolis in Athens etc.) lol, I’ll have to find his name, but yeah. You’ve got my creative juices flowing hah

[Animalnstinct]

No problem

Yeah I'm actually thinking of getting one of those floral foam heat cutters next time I make it out of town. I'm thinking it would make things a lot quicker and smoother.

Thought I would share an update of what I have so far. I think I have about 4-5 coats on so far and I sanded it a bit down today and you can see the different colors starting to show. I'm going to still add probably at least 2-3 more coats as when I started to sand a few of the edges chipped off a bit.

Once I finish coating everything I'm going to go in and clean up things and then stain it a little bit. When it's stained and ready to go I'm going to go in and probably add vines and moss to it.