Hypertufa Hand, Grasping

A Sempervivum Bouquet

This hypertufa hand was made a little differently than my usual ones, with the hand propped up to dry so it forms a circle with the thumb and fingers, just the way a child offering a bouquet of dandelions would.

The worst part of this project was removing the glove - although there were originally two, one of them didn't make it through this process as the fingers were so fragile they just broke off, the most common failure with this project.

The hand in this project is simply set on a pot of soil, so the plants can be planted in the clay pot, and the soil inside the hand. 

I used a few Sempervivum (hens and chicks) and a sprig or two of Sedum album which will eventually spill over onto the soil below. 

Because removing the glove is so tedious, I placed these where I thought the sun and weather would make the gloves more brittle...I was wrong.

Two years of weathering didn't make any difference, so I had to remove the gloves by the process of cutting the gloves wherever I could with a razor blade, then feathering the edges to get them off as much as possible.

In hindsight, I could have burned them off with the judicious application of flame, as the hypertufa seems unaffected by fire. I did some experimenting with that aspect of making hypertufa, when someone asked me, is hypertufa fire proof?

The cement really cured the best where it was exposed to the elements.  That will teach me.

The finished project turned out very whimsical and cute, even if it did take a while to get it completed.  Wanting to make some of these?