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Mandrake Plant

For Halloween (yeah, I'm a bit behind in my posts), my team at work agreed to decorate in a Harry Potter theme (we're all super geeky about Harry Potter). I decided to turn my cubicle into the Hufflepuff Common Room (the House yours truly was sorted into). Besides the usual House-centric banners; yellow and black damask "wallpaper" made from scrapbook paper; and the framed picture of House founder Helga Hufflepuff, I figured that the common room would be full of cheery plants. After all, the House sponsor was Herbology Professor, Pamona Sprout.

Besides mini pots of plants that look like gilly weed, a womping willow, and some devil's snare, I decided I needed a mandrake plant. I got some Crayola air-dry clay, a mini terracotta pot, and got to work sculpting an angry, baby-faced knot of roots and vines.


 Mistakes were made... air dry clay isn't quite like the clay I used in grade school that would stick together if you added water. Adding water caused the clay to crack as it dried. Instead, I was supposed to score and smoosh together the ends of the pieces I was trying to graft together. I discovered this halfway through the sculpting process, so I was able to fix some parts. 


 After the sculpture dried, I painted it up and glued some silk leaves to finish him off. During the drive to work, he tipped over and some leaves and roots broke off, but a trip to the craft store to retrieve some glue put him back to rights rather easily. He was definitely the star of my Hufflepuff decorations.


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