Volcanic Teacup Model

Today I made a little volcanic inspired teacup model/sculpture.

• Teacup & saucer
• Expandable foam
• Old packaging paper
• Glue gun & glue sticks
• Acrylic paint
• Twigs
• Air drying clay
• Cotton wool
• PVA glue

See how to make this little teacup model plus others in video format, otherwise continue scrolling for step by step pictured instructions.

First thing you'll need is a teacup & saucer, preferably a darker one that has an 'earthy' kind of design.

Next up fill the teacup with expandable foam, remember that it expands so you don't need loads of it. Once the foam has set and expanded, cut the excess away so you have a flat even surface to work on.

To make the actual volcano for this, I just used some old packaging paper, soaked it in water for about half an hour, and then mushed the paper together and sculpted a mountain shape with my hands. Wait for the paper to dry and trim any excess off, and then hot glue the mountain to the base of the foam.

Once everything was set, I decided to paint the entire thing in PVA glue just to make sure everything was together and held in place. It also give you a nice smooth surface to paint on. One the glue was set just paint your volcano brown with acrylic paint, and then add some extra highlights and details if you want to.

In order to make the lava for the volcano, I just used some air drying clay in various different 'firey' colours, mixed them together but not too much so that they'd turn into one colour. Rolled the clay out flat and then cut a 'drip' shape out of the air drying clay.

Once the clay was still malleable, I placed it over once side of the volcano and positioned it so that it would drip down the teacup and finally rest on to the saucer at the bottom.

Finally I just decorated the rest of the volcano scene by hot gluing twigs around the base of the volcano. I then used cotton wool, hot glued it to the top of the volcano, molded and shaped it into smoke, and finally added some bits of grey paint to the smoke for some extra detail. Once everything is dry you should have a pretty cool looking volcanic inspired teacup model!