Operation Elephant Restoration is Finished!

All right, I was all prepared to slice open the stitching on the back side of the trunk, stuff in more excelsior, and stitch it back up and I chickened out. Nope, just couldn't bring myself to make the cut. So it's going to continue having a broken trunk indefinitely.

I did, however, make new tusks and an eye!

Judging by internet pictures of other Steiff elephants I'm pretty sure the original tusks were plastic. I'm pretty sure that by the time I had access to my elephant the tusks were already gone; if not I don't remember them at all. I know that the eyes were made of glass because (of course) that's what the remaining original eye is. Since I don't know where to get "friendly plastic" anymore (if they even make it) and glass is not one of the mediums I know how to use, I decided to make all of the replacement pieces out of premo sculpy.

To make the eye look more like the glass one I first painted it with watered down black paint, painted the pupil in solid black, then added a little dark brown around the outside of the pupil. The paint and sculpy were both matte and the glass eye is very shiny, so I used several coats of clear nail polish to give it both shine and depth.

Here's a photo of the side with the original eye for comparison:

The tusks were simpler because they stayed white, all I had to do after sculpting and baking them was to give them a quick sanding.

Apparently the elephant originally came with a red blanket with bells on it; I'm thinking about making a blanket and maybe a headdress for it, but probably something fancier than plain red. If I do, I promise to post pictures!