How to Make a Perfect Armature for Pal Tiya Premium

Making The Perfect Armature

Make sure you've read the 'Before you Begin' section.

Sculpting With Foil and Hot Glue

Heavy duty crushed tinfoil (aluminium foil) is THE PERFECT armature material to use as a base for your Pal Tiya Premium sculpture.
Crushed dense tinfoil provides the perfect grip for Pal Tiya Premium. Our sculpting medium has no tensile strength of its own until it begins to cure, so the grip that tinfoil provides is excellent.
Tinfoil sculptures are not only simple to make, they're truly fun too. They can also be unbelievably sophisticated!
As soon as you start ripping tinfoil, you are sculpting!
We make ours into large fluffy (what we call popcorn balls) and long twisted cigar shapes, and with these two shapes you can create almost any shape of armature you like. We do this by using a hot glue gun and form our shapes.

Ball and 'cigar' shapes are the most useful building blocks.

Use hot glue to join ball and cigar shapes to make many forms.

When building something like a foil bunny - compress the surface down while making sure the inside remains 'fluffy'.

Aluminium foil is an optimal sculpting material. Using hot glue, assemble fluffy balls together. When just the surface is compressed, it is strong enough to apply a thin coat of Pal Tiya Premium. PTP will hold on vertical and upside down surfaces, because the foil is so textured.

Other Materials That Can Be Sculpted Over

Of course, you can use whatever you like for your armature to bulk the form out. Sometimes to save on tinfoil we use cardboard, papier mache, plastic food containers, or occasionally wood (*wood needs to be used carefully as it distorts when wet so can cause problems if care is not taken.) No matter what you use - you should cover the armature in well crushed tinfoil before applying your Pal Tiya Premium. This serves two purposes.
1. Excellent grip
2. Provides a barrier so moisture isn’t wicked away from the curing product which would make it set too fast and become weak.

* As wood is porous & flexible and Pal Tiya Premium is rigid and dense, if the wood distorts at all it can put enormous pressure on the Pal Tiya Premium. Wood swells in the presence of water, especially in the curing/strengthening stage - this swelling can apply pressure inside a piece and cause it to crack. Ensure that any expected distortion in the wood is prevented from applying any force against the Pal Tiya Premium shell.

Cardboard

The best material for bulking out large hollow areas. Only a thin coat of foil is needed to achieve details.
Cardboard as a hollow bulk filler or as a base to add foil forms on top . This can be useful for building out symmetrical figures more easily.

Wood

Wood core under thick foil layers. Exterior wood support during curing.
As wood is porous & flexible and Pal Tiya Premium is rigid and dense, if the wood distorts at all it can put enormous pressure on the Pal Tiya Premium. Wood swells in the presence of water, especially in the curing/strengthening stage - this swelling can apply pressure inside a piece and cause it to crack. Ensure that any expected distortion in the wood is prevented from applying any force against the Pal Tiya Premium shell.

As wood swells and distorts you must prevent direct contact with PTP. Seal the wood or protect the PTP with layers of foil.

Foam

With foam, the short answer is painting the foam first, dry thoroughly, then apply foil. An outdoor Acrylic-based paint can help seal it.
White bead foam is the exception; hot glue ony sticks lightly to this surface. This would only become a problem on a very large vertical piece, such as an adult size standing human figure. The surface can be burned back lightly with a torch. The burning make the surface very sharp and rigid.

PTP clings well to flame and desified foam (Do this in well venilated areas and use a suitable mask).

Glass And Plastic Containers

May need a thin layer of foil on them for the PTP to adhere to the surface.
Also you can bulk out your form like in the tower image, and leave holes for windows to allow light to shine out of the Pal Tiya Premium shell.

Steel and Wire

In case of steel armatures however the Pal Tiya Premium should connect with the steel so there is no movement of the sculpture inside when cured. (See the Planning section).
You can also use tinfoil and wire - again connecting PTP directly to the wire in several places.

No Armature

NO ARMATURE? … NO PROBLEM!
Of course, you don’t even need to use an armature if you want to do bas relief or delicate pieces like these:

If you are making a more complex piece with thin legs or an appendage or you want to go BIG then there are some things to take into considerations. It can be done, visit our Planning Page Here before you begin!

A quick video on armatures is available here: