Catastrophe!!

The wolf template was finally dry enough to start making the mask from it, so I lathered it up with vaseline to create a barrier...

Shiny shiny nose

All lathered up.

Here I began to add the clay of the mask.

The mask complete.

But alas, catastrophe! The actual template split suddenly, leaving it nearly impossible to create a smooth layer on top and thus cracking the mask...

I did try to work around it and fill in the gaps with clay but the more I worked upon it, the more the template underneath broke.

So I decided to give up and fix the template before carrying on, which meant discarding the whole layer of the mask.

Poor Wolfy. He is dead.

And so, back to the beginning! Here is the template now fixed, but now I have the problem of clay drying at different speeds and not bonding with the original clay, making it flaky. 

So I think I'll have to make sure the template is fully dry again, perhaps adding another type of adhesive to make sure we don't have the same problem the second time around.

The poor Wolf head. He is crying.