He asked for a cube. Said I could decorate it however I wanted to. My first thought was to create a building (because he’s keen on architecture) but, truth is, a cubical building just looks wrong. Then I thought a Rubix cube or Lego block would be cute…but dreadfully boring to make. I wanted to create something unexpected, something not meant to be cubical. And I wanted an excuse to play with more Mexican paste.

So, inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, I created Cubeworld. Instead of elephants holding it up, there is a dragon holding it down…or something.

Along the way, I learned more about Mexican paste (or maybe I learned more about my sculpting skills…). Creating largish shapes with it is easy–it’s lovely to work with–but fashioning tiny animals was almost impossible (again, probably my skill here, not the Mexican paste at fault). I tried to make the dragon smaller, in keeping with the scale of the other parts of the scene, but I just couldn’t manage the tiny spikes and other sculptural details needed. And the longer I fussed with it, the drier it got, until the thin parts started crumbling. I just couldn’t work fast enough at a tiny scale.

In hindsight, it would have been good to practise with modelling clay or plasticine until I could form the dragon quickly.

Despite its limitations, the Mexican paste was, again, fun to play with, and was able to do things icing just can’t do.