Magic Instamorph Mushrooms

Instamorph is a plastic product that you heat with boiling water and form into whatever you want. This was an experiment to see what kind of magic I could bring out of this product. What is more magic than mushrooms?

I used a ceramic bowl and poured in the package of Instamorph. It sells for $9.99 on Amazon. It can be reheated and reshaped, so even though I didn't use the whole package for this project, I still heated it all. I poured boiling water over it, waited, it was still separate beads. I poured off the water and poured more boiling water on it. Still not pliable. I did this several times and finally got a wad of moldable plastic. (not a fan of wasting all that water!) At first I tried making a small grid to hold up seedlings. This product is not at all suitable for fine detail or small work. It hardens too quickly, can't be cut with scissors or scalpel. It stuck to my craft mat and ruined it. Frustrating!!!!

So I decided to change my project. I decided to start over and reuse the Instamorph.

This is where the magic happened!

What could I make that did not require any fine detail? What could I sculpt quickly before the medium hardened?

Mushrooms for my planter boxes, of course! I formed a couple of cute little funguys.

What else can do to make the mushrooms more fun?

Add magic!

These LEDs are cheap and bright. I already had them leftover from another project. They are 5mm RGB LEDs. I embedded them into the little mushroom sculptures, making sure the two wires did not touch.

I used some coin batteries to light up the mushrooms. The LEDs are bright enough to shine through the Instamorph, giving the mushrooms that magic glow. These LEDs are color changing.You can see the effect in this little video:

Magic Mushrooms Glowing

Next, I'll wire them together so I don't need a battery for each LED. I'll hide the wire and batteries under some moss for my diorama. I can also add an on/off switch.

This is the beginnings of my gnome diorama. Everybody's happy!