OOAK SCULPTING GLOSSARY
OOAK
"One Of A Kind". This term isn't just used when talking about sculptures, although it seems to be its primary place of use, it's also used for OOAK toys and other collectible, non-sculpture related items.
Viscose Doll Hair
This is a very fine hair. It's very smooth and a little stringy. In my experience I find that this is the closest to straight human hair.
TLS (Translucent Liquid Sculpey)
Translucent Liquid Sculpey, also referred to as Liquid Sculpey. This is used as an adhesive to attach two pieces of polymer clay that have already been cured and are hard. Brush it on both sides of item needing to be joined, then bake. If you allow the TLS to sit a bit, it will become thicker and might work better to hold pieces together prior to and while baking.
BJD (Ball-Jointed Doll)
A Ball-Jointed Doll is any doll that is articulated with ball and socket joints.
Curing/Baking
the process of putting a sculpture, usually made of polymer clay, in an oven to "cure" or harden the sculpt to solidify its shape. More commonly known/referred to as "baking".
Moonies
A moonie is a bubble of air that gets trapped in the polymer clay and when you bake your piece, it will show as a whitish spot in the form of a half moon or a bump in a lighter color. That’s why they’re called “moonies”
Polymer Clay
is a shapeable material based on the polymer polyvinyl chloride (PVC). It usually contains no clay minerals, and is only called "clay" because its texture and properties resemble mineral clay.
WIP (Work-In-Progress)
Often used when people post incomplete photos of the project they're currently working on.
Armature
a framework to support the clay or other material used in modeling. It can be thought of as the sculpture's "bones". It's a wire frame on the inside of the sculpture to help with keeping the sculpture from just being a floppy clump of clay, much like our bones do for us.
Mohair & Tibetan Lamb
Mohair starts at about 5" and can be up to 12" long! It comes from goats. The older the goat, the longer and silkier the mohair so they are prized for the mohair they grow. Mohair is sheared off the goat, in other words, the mohair is cut off, so the goat grows more mohair again. Mohair tends to be more coarse to work with.
Tibetan is a lot cheaper to practice on. It's shorter too. Tibetan is sold on the hide, so the animal is sacrificed for this. They are a source of food (Lamb) in foreign countries so they are raised for this, like beef cattle are here. Tibetan is about 5" long at the longest length. Tibetan is softer. Tibetan works great for small sculptures because it is so soft.