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| I thought they smelled bad on the outside! |
I am continuing my JSVB posts on making my own homemade Necronomicon, or Book Of The Dead.
Once I fashioned the Super Sculpey into an evil face on the front cover of my Necronomicon and an evil spine on the back... ("What is that?!" my wife demands. I tell her: "Don't you know? All books have spines!" She leaves me alone for the rest of the day after that, which is just as well all things considered) ... I had to bake the Sculpey to harden it. That meant putting the entire book into the oven.
Super Sculpey should be baked for around half an hour at around 250 degrees. I did this a day after applying the turpentine so that the turpentine would have a chance to dry. Even so, I filled the house with the characteristic reek of overheated Necronomicon. It was very fortunate (or evil) that my wife was out of the house long enough for me to use all of the fans on full to dissipate the odor.
Pro tip: cheap duct tape melts when baked at 250 degrees for around half an hour. A good example is the cheap duct tape I used to repair the book when I made a crooked cut taking out its original pages with a circular saw. The tape goo melted onto the oven rack. I was able to scrape the tape goo off before my wife returned home, thank the Necronomicon. Or thank goodness, take your pick.
Since I had the oven on, I decided to do some more baking. I know the method for easily creating paper that looks ancient by soaking the pages in coffee and baking them dry.
First you have to make coffee, which for me is the hardest step. I don't drink coffee at all. I've only made three cups in my lifetime, and after the last one my father (who I made the coffee for) made me swear upon my honour never to make another cup of coffee again.
So here on the stove is a pot of art pigment, and not coffee. Once cooled, I poured it into a baking tray and submerged my Necronomicon pages. I was careful to wet both sides of the paper, but I did not leave the sheets in to soak as I wanted them to dry quickly.
I baked the paper on a clean cookie tray at 420 degrees, which seemed to be just right to dry the paper in two minutes without scorching (that happens at 451 degrees, apparently). Once all four corners lifted off of the sheet, I knew the paper was done.
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