Again with Craig Ferguson

[DollyKim]

You can use a nest of polyfill stuffing but it might leave some marks from the fibers.

One way is to use paper mache paste or a paper clay, definitely a paper/wood based product, as a base. It will cure rock hard but you can soak the pieces in water and scrape it out. I toyed with that on Garak and Bashir.

[MeltedCaramel]

DollyKim, that's an awesome idea about the foil skulls!!! That's one of my main issues with sculpey, whenever I make anything thicker than about a 1/3rd of an inch it will invariably start to "sugar lump" as ShortNCuddlyAm puts it. And...paper clay? I actually have no idea what you're talking about, could you educate me? I desperately need something besides metal as a base to keep the air circulating evenly in the oven.

[DollyKim]

Paperclay is a brand name but it's also a class of air dry "clays" with paper as their main ingredient, basically they're paper and water with some odds and ends. Or there's powdered paper mache paste you add water to. I've used it fill out all sorts of things and because it's cheap I don't mind trimming, soaking, or carving it away. It shouldn't burn at polymer clay temperatures.

Craig's head was done on bases that are collars of mesh with paper wads to bulk up the skulls. A thin layer of air dry clay went over it all to hold it together. From there I used better stuff to make him.