The idea for my tooth fairy came about as my husband works in the dental industry. His company makes crowns and other dental type things : ) I though that it may be funny to create a fairy for him- a fairy that had just come across a crown and was trying to decide if it was worth leaving money for. He would have to be an old and really experienced fairy.

Looking for inspiration and found it in this book:

This book covers with amazing detail and step by step pictures how to do something like this. Tools, clay, baking and finishing are all covered as well as looking for inspiration for your own creation. Love it!

The first part I decided to sculpt was the head. I decided once I had the head done then I could decide on the size of the body. I did have a pose in mind- the contemplative "What is this really?" look and stance. I used a strong metal armature wire (3mm or 16ga) and made a loop in both ends. I covered one loop with aluminum foil to make a basic egg shaped head. this was then covered in paper masking tape. You have to do this or the metal underneath can effect the baking and shrinkage. I used a mix of sculpey clay and sculpey premo. I find pure sculpey or living doll clay a bit soft so adding premo gives it a bit more stiffness for me.

The face is built up slowly. First a put a layer of clay over the whole head. About 2 mm thick and I smooth it out a bit. I mark the clay to where I will put in eyes, the mouth position and the nose. I like a bit of a caricature in my work so I emphasized the brow and the nose. Most of the shapes are long cones or spheres which I have cut in half. Once they are all located I can smooth them into each other. I use glass beads for the eyes- I have just found on Etsy a store that sells eyes that are hand painted glass and they can be baked in clay- Yay! Next guy may have blue eyes...
https://www.etsy.com/shop/artistJP  check them out! I smooth out using my hands a lot. Make sure your hands are clean as any color or dust on them will be absorbed by the clay.

I now have a head ready to bake.

I used quilting batting below the head  to support it and the ears. I bake in my home oven in a full roasting pan. Once I have all my parts ready to bake I close the lid, seal it with aluminum baking foil and put the pan into the oven. Only then do I turn the oven on to the temperature that the clay will bake at. In this case 275 Fahrenheit. I set the timer for the 35 minutes needed for these particular parts. At the end of 35 minutes I switch the oven off but I do not remove the baking pan. I leave that in there until it is cool and the oven is cool. The longer the better actually. The slow cooling helps the clay be less brittle.

The next step is to make the body armature...

At this point it was made clear to me that I had done enough. Nothing like a 150 lb chair stop...