Low Level Butcher covers his hole...

On Castle Grayskull that is... I now have no dumbass hole making the extra Pie Piece look stupid.
I've bitched and moaned about the hole before. Even in the CG Review...
I said I was eyeing some alternatives for covers, but Shapeways has an issue with shipping to Puerto Rico. I'm testing a weird solution that Shapeways CS gave me. (UPS and USPS PO box addresses don't always agree.) That takes DJ Force's Cosmic Key Holder away from My Castle. (As well as other alternatives like He-Bro's Door shaped plug.) Now, I still have that dumbass hole and I can't do anything about it... Other than cover it myself!

OK. remember I'm not a super customizer, I'm more of a low level butcher.

Day 1:
So, I took an index card and marked the hole by pushing the card against the edges. I cut a circle out of that and used it to mark a piece of thin Balsa wood in order to make the cover.

I made sure that the Circle was a bit smaller than the actual hole because I was going to add some Crayola Model Magic Clay that I had lying around. While it shrinks a little as it dries, I had to make sure that I was able to remove it from the hole IF I ever wanted to use the WR stand (or put another cover) Then I used Glue and Index card paper to reinforce the Balsa Wood piece. (It was starting to break in some places while cutting it.) I let that dry for a few hours.

Once the wood was dry, I put some brown Model Magic on it. Technically it's closer to terracotta, but that's not the point. Using a rolling pin (not a kitchen rolling pin, but one I have for non culinary stuff.) I made the ball of Model Magic spread and cover most of the Actual wood... to sculpt Fake Wood... Then I let that dry for a whole day. (I sped up the process a little bit with a hair dryer.) I used a toothpick to carve the wood grain, separate the planks, and create the nail holes.

Day 2:
Once the Wooden side was a lot dryer, with a second Hair Dryer attack, the "Wood" was hard...  Which meant I could tackle the Other side. I mean, since I'm already doing a cover, let's do a reversible one! 2-for-1. Dammit! I should've said All for one so I could've used an I swear reference!

To be honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to do a Metallic Sewer cover for it, or if I was going to do a rocky cover. Ended up going for the stone cover, because it allows me a bit more wiggle room for error. So, I used the rest of my Model Magic Clay... Which is Purple... Need to get more but in White... As you can see on the WIP Pic, I am getting ahead of my self. Forgot to mention the Skull on it. That Skull was when I was hellbent on Building my own Grayskull (biting a lot more than I could chew.) but that skull was a remnant of that project. Basically a Halloween Decoration 5" Skeleton who got his face off... I glued the sucker down to the Sewer cover... Think about it Castle GraySKULL should have skulls as part of its Deco. Then I surrounded the Skull with a bunch of globs of Model Magic to make the rocks...
This needed to be left alone to dry before the next stage...

Day 3:
While the Wood got hard super fast, the stones weren't that lucky.
While they have retained their shape , the insides are still soft. I noticed that when popping them out of the Pie Piece after taking the final pic... After the paint dried and all that. Why am I pointing this out? To make sure you avoid my mistake if you try this. I'm learning as I go and relaying my experiences as a novice.

So, painting: I started with the easy side. Wood!
All I had to do was give it a black wash. The terracotta color + Black Wash was close enough to the wash on the wood outside Grayskull. BTW (a wash is paint diluted in water, so it can easily get in the crevices and not leave too much paint on the top. Yes, as you can see I messed up my wash when I started. Live and learn!)
 Now to be fair. I did not use plain black. I added some burnt sienna to the black so it wasn't BLACK BLACK... but I still messed up a little. I let that dry and sealed it... Mental note. Get a non-Glossy sealer.

I let that dry for an hour or so so the sealer wasn't sticky when I held the cover. Then I went to the Harder side. Rock!
As you could see on the WIP Pic, the colors don't match... Stop! Primer time! Or it would have if I had a primer. I did the next best thing I could think of. Paint everything in a base color, then go from there. I used Black, based on Mattel's adventures with Black Plastic! So, I painted the whole stoned side black... Let it dry and then I began mixing paints. I used a combination of colors that I obtained from other projects not related to toys. I mixed some Sky Blue with some Yellow and tan to produce a turquoise-like blue. If I had some Sea Foam green instead of having to mix blues and yellows it would have been a closer match. In the end, I like that it looks slightly different. Because it creates the look that there is a hole and this is covering it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I dry brushed the Blue paint on the skull and rocks. Once that dried, I added a mix of tan and yellow to some areas and I mixed some gray with the turquoise to try and mimic the color variations on the Castle itself. I let that dry, then sealed and let that dry once more. After all was dry, I took the pics.

Remember what I mentioned about it not hardening well. Now I'll leave the cover alone for a few weeks. That'll make it hard enough for usage... I hope. I don't know why I have a bit of a bad feeling about this... It's telling me that I should've used air dry clay.