For a while, I’ve been searching for a 1:12 scale lava lamp to put in Sam & Max’s office.

I found several options that could work, if only they were still available. American Girl used to have a line of 1:12 AG Mini furniture and accessories that included a lava lamp that lit up. I also came across a necklace from Hot Topic, a cell phone charm made by Mathmos (which also sells life-sized lava lamps), and a super pricey charm from Juicy Couture.

I’d almost given up when I decided to try “lava lamp toy” on eBay and landed on this hideous thing.

This is a 6″ action figure, which makes him 1:12 scale. The lava lamp is a little large — it’s 2″ tall (the equivalent of 24″) and a standard lava lamp is only 16.3″ tall. But after searching high and low, I didn’t think I’d find anything better. And the lava’s even the right color!

But the base and cap were not the right color. I used my Molotow Liquid Chrome marker to color the black parts silver. This is the best silver pen ever — it really looks like metal.

Next I tackled the bulletin board.

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Boss Fight Studio says their Sam & Max figures are *finally* close to shipping, so I decided to dust off the Freelance Police office that I finished a year ago and start cluttering it up.

I’m waiting for the figures to get here so I can use them as a size reference for building furniture, but in the meantime I’ll work on some accessories, starting with — drum roll please — a dead plant and a severed hand!

The dead plant, which happens to be named Hubert, sits on a small table near the window.

I made the table out of a golf tee and a 1 1/8″ wood disc. I started out with two sizes of disks, planning to stack the larger one on top of the smaller one, but as I played around with them I decided to only use the smaller one. (Both because the larger disk didn’t take stain nicely, and because it made the table top-heavy.)

The golf tee has a finish similar to Golden Oak stain, so I stained the disk to match it. Then I cut the tip off the tee and drilled a hole in the center of the disk the same diameter. First I did a pilot hole with my micro drill, shown here, and then I drilled the larger hole with the power drill.

Next I made the plant. I filled a 1:12 terracotta pot with air dry clay.

This is a piece of caspia basil with the leafy parts removed. I cut off a segment and painted it brown.

I poked a toothpick into the clay to make a hole, and then smeared glue on the clay. I kept the toothpick in during this process so the hole wouldn’t get plugged up.

I added coffee grounds for dirt, and glued the painted caspia basil piece into the hole.

Then I glued on one dead leaf. This is “leaf litter” left over from the fall section of the Four Seasons Roombox.

Voila! A dead plant!

The plant is okay, but I didn’t like how the table turned out. The light colored stain doesn’t match the rest of the room.

I sanded it with fine grit sandpaper and applied a coat of Minwax Aged Oak gel stain. This is the same stain I used for Sam’s desk. The golden color underneath changes the tone but it still darkened up nicely. I’m not sure if this would have worked with regular stain, since the sandpaper didn’t take all the shiny finish off the tee, but gel stain works over polyurethane.

Hubert looks right at home!

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