BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Have any of you ever made your own hides or basking spots etc... using Styrofoam and grout/concrete and then painting them to look realistic? It all looks pretty sturdy after the grout hardens if you put enough layers on and seal it. I have been watching these vids on youtube by "lizard landscapes" where he makes some beautiful cage furniture using this method and I think I'm going to give it a try once my wallet recoups from the original set up/lizard purchase and I get some free time. My plan is to make a large Mayan style pyramid, or something similar if I can find an idea from Indonesia to be a little more authentic to my Merauke, and make this lead up to the basking spot but then also have a door way to go inside as a hide. I'm not an artist by any means but if I could even approach a simplified version of what this lizard landscape guy does, and his stuff looks very realistic, then my enclosure would look awesome. The Mayan style pyramid seems like it would be an easy design just stacking progressively smaller squares on top of each other then adding some stairs down the middle and adding texture and paint to set it off.

We've had several threads on this in the Everything Off-topic forum; maybe do some searches in there?

I've made 2, a hide for my Pueblan (pic) and a climbing wall for my Cresteds

It was surprisingly easy

For my 20 inch high climbing wall I didn't trust the glue between the styrofoam and shoved metal dowels from top to bottom in some areas to reinforce it BEFORE I glued it togeather as the glue was rock hard and I would not have been able to go through it. I also had a wider bottom level to prevent it from tipping forward

Remember to make the styrofoam foundation quite a bit smaller than your cage or it can be a very tight fit once you've put on 2 or 3 layers of grout.

Dood wrote:It was surprisingly easy

From the videos I've watched it did look fairly easy but that lizard landscapes guy is clearly an artist so I figured he was just making it look a little too easy. I would have never thought that your hut was made from Styrofoam by looking at it, that looks way better than most of the store bought stuff.