Adventures in DIY silicone sex toys

I just shipped a commission of a xenomorph facehugger gag, and the client had asked me to take photos of the process of making it, so I thought, hey, why not write an essay showing how the entire process works? Each facehugger gag and hiphugger strapon is hand-made in a rather lengthy and quite fiddly process, using medical-grade platinum-cure silicone cast in 3D printed molds. The facehugger mold is a 7-part mold that’s extremely fiddly to use.

I currently only make and sell one facehugger and one hiphugger per month, because the process is so demanding and fiddly. I’m looking at ways to make the process easier, starting with moving away from 3D printed molds. (I’d hoped each mold would be good for about ten castings, but right now I’m only getting 2-3 castings from each mold. The entire facehugger mold takes about two weeks to print, so this is clearly unsustainable.)

Anyway, if you want to learn more, read on!

Each facehugger starts with the ovipositor, which goes in the wearer’s mouth. The ovipositor is hollow and has a tube running down it, to make it possible to squirt…um, fluids into the helpless victim.

The mold has a round plug for attaching a food-grade silicone tube, as you can see here. Once the tube is slid onto the plug, I assemble and clamp the mold, routing the tube out so it doesn’t touch the sides of the mold, then fill it with silicone.

The ovipositor is made from a type of silicone that’s different from the rest of the facehugger. The facehugger itself (the body, legs, and tail) are made from the same sort of silicone that’s normally used for dildos and such. The ovipositor is a very soft (Shore hardness 00-20), fleshy silicone that’s normally used for Fleshlights. This gives it a super-soft, “fleshy” feel in the mouth. When it’s cast, it looks like this:

Once the silicone cures, I mount the ovipositor, still in the mold, to the underside fo the body mold, which is a one-piece plate, and then add some more silicone, to adhere the ovipositor to the body.

If you look closely, you can see the tube running out the right hand side.

While this cures, I pour the tail. The tail is cast in a three-piece mold, printed in a spiral to fit my large-format 3D printer. (The facehugger mold can’t be printed on a normal 3D printer; it’s much too big.)

What’s that small piece? Good question! I’ll get to that in a second. 🙂

If you look closely at the tip of the tail, you’ll see there’s a hole through the mold on one side. I’ll get to that in a minute too.

The tail mold is assembled, clamped, and cast using regular silicone, not the super-soft squishy silicone of the ovipositor.

The tricky thing about the facehugger gag is the assembled mold is closed all the way around; there’s no place to fill it with silicone. Hence the third part of the tail mold, which goes on top of the tail like so.

I pour the tail by filling the mold with silicone. The mold is closed at the bottom, which creates a tricky problem: how to fill the entire mold without getting air trapped inside the spiral?

That’s where the hole comes in. As silicone flows into the tail, air flows out that little hole. I know the mold is completely full when silicone flows from the hole in the tip of the tail, at which point I plug the hole and clean off the silicone.

Now I wait again for the tail to cure. The tail, ovipositor, and silicone mounting the ovipositor to the body plate must all be 100% cured before I move on to the next step.

Once everything is solidly set, I pry the top piece off the tail. This creates a “plug” or extension of the tail that is the exact size and shape of the opening in the body mold, so I can fill the body, then assemble the body and tail, and the facehugger holds together without any opening to pour the silicone! (It took quite a lot of work and thought to come up with this way to assemble the mold.)

Now it’s time to start assembling the body. The facehugger body is a 3-part mold: the bottom plate, where the ovipositor mounts, and the left and right sides of the upper body.

Because the facehugger legs are wide and bumpy, the first several prototypes I cast had air trapped in the legs. So I finally started casting these by pouring silicone into the open mold, waiting until it was juuuuust reaching the end of its pot life and starting to get tacky, and then quickly assembling the mold, clamping it, inserting the tail, and clamping it. That takes timing and coordination and has to be done all at once (and if I get it wrong, it’s expensive; the medical-grade silicone I use is more than $200 a gallon!).

You can see the body mold has a notch cut out for the tube that runs through the ovipositor. Routing the tube through the body is actually fairly tricky and requires careful attention, so that it doesn’t touch the edge of the mold.

Once the whole thing cures, all that’s left is to mount the straps! The xenomorph facehugger gag is held in place by two sets of adjustable straps mounted to the legs, which is why the upper and lower legs are jointed together with little “bridges.”

The straps are nylon webbing, riveted together and connected to quick-release latches.

At this point, I’m still experimenting with the design, so every single facehugger is slightly different from all the others. This particular facehugger does something new: the tube for the ovipositor is removable, and connects to the body of the facehugger via a one-way valve. (I didn’t take any photos of that bit before I shipped this one out.)

As you can see, making these things is a complex and kind of nerve-wracking process. That’s why I will only make two a month. I’m working on ways to streamline the process and make it less labor-intensive, at which point I can start making them faster, because a lot more people than I ever would have imagined have said they want one of these.

The young lady walks alone down the deserted street, between the dim pools of light from the wide-spaced streetlights. The neighborhood, once a busy industrial area now falling into decay, is deserted. Not another soul disturbs the quiet night.

She is distracted by a streak of light across the sky, a ball of fire slashing the night with a long, glowing trail. A meteor? As she stands transfixed, it grows larger and larger. Her heart races. A meteorite? A loud crack splits the air. With a dull boom, the object crashes to earth behind a decaying warehouse only a few blocks away.

She hurries down the road, driven by curiosity. At the warehouse, she finds a hole in the pitched roof, its edges still glowing. A dim orange light glows through broken windows. A strange crackling hiss reaches her ears.

She picks her way carefully across a rubble-strewn parking lot, abandoned so long plants have begun sprouting through holes in the asphalt. She finds a door, partly open, a rusted chain long ago cut by vandals, and squeezes inside. In the gloom beyond, she sees a faint radiance streaming around a pile of long-abandoned junk. Shadows seem to move and dnce in the corners. Her heart beats faster. She edges farther into the vast space, cautious and alert. Stars gleam through the hole in the roof.

From the corner of her eye, she catches a quick hint of motion. She takes a step back toward the safety of the door, the outside. Another quick motion—did she imagine it? She takes another step back. A sound comes to her, like the scuffle of feet on the dusty concrete floor. She turns to run, but it is already too late. The drones come at her from the darkness, far too fast, impossibly agile, sleek black bodies and long, grasping arms, and there are so many of them…

She screams as they catch her, their long bony claws strong and unyielding. They are hideous, unlike anything she’s ever seen before, tall and angular, their black bodies armored with glossy chitin. They drag her toward the center of the room, toward the fading glow behind the pile of detritus…

She screams again when she sees it, the capsule, its heat shield still radiating waves of heat that warm her skin. From the hatch, the thing emerges, a slick wet body surrounded by writhing masses of tentacles that reach for her… She screams again, fighting desperately to escape, but the drones lock her in their grip. They hold her arms out as though presenting her to the writhing, tentacled mass before her.

The tentacles take her in their grip, tearing her clothes from her body. She cries out in fear and shock. Instantly, one of the tentacles forces its way into her mouth, sends a gush of something warm and thick down her throat. Her head spins. She floats away from her body, watching from the outside as it embraces her in strong, rubbery, slick tentacles. They slide over her bare skin, probe for entry between her legs, slide up inside her, and then ecstasy unlike anything she’s ever known…

That was basically the start of a fun, hot fantasy between me and my Talespinner. You have to be careful with the spinning of tales, because there’s never any telling where they might end up.

We spun all sorts of scenarios from this starting point, not realizing where it would lead: to an odd anatomical experiment, several hours in a 3D modeling program, and ultimately to a new type of sex toy.

The tentacles slide over her skin, thrust into all of her openings, fill her with gush after gush of thick slime, splatter her body with it. She surrenders to pleasure overwhelming, pleasure beyond anything she ever dreamed possible, until at last she succumbs and darkness swallows her.

She wakes, maybe hours later, maybe days, naked and covered in thick slippery goo, with memories of ecstasy beyond imagining still ringing through her. She staggers from the warehouse, driven by a hunger she cannot name.

A few blocks away, she stumbles across a seedy bar, a red neon sign above the door advertising “Drinks! Dancing! Drinks Dancing!” A young man is just leaving. He looks at her, startled, as she approaches, a nude woman, skin slick and glossy with slime. “Hey, are you okay?” he says.

That’s as far as he gets before the pheromones hit. Instantly, his knees buckle and his eyes go glassy. A moment later, he is in her arms, kissing her frantically, grinding his hips against her. She pulls at his clothes, stripping him right there in the street in front of the club, desperate to feel that overwhelming ecstasy once more.

He enters her with a groan. She barely feels it; instead, she becomes aware of something inside her, within her, something that folds around his erection, pulsing, pulling him deeper. He kisses her again, even more urgently. She slides her tongue between his lips. His eyes open wide in surprise as her tongue unfolds in his mouth, sliding deeper and deeper, down his throat. A long flexible ovipositor extends from the thing inside her, sliding down his erection, probing for his entrance, slipping easily up his ass. He thrashes and moans as ecstasy crashes through him, humping her helplessly, lost beyond reason in pleasure he cannot understand or control. She feels her own release, the flood through her tongue down his throat and up into his ass, exquisite beyond compare.

She releases him. He slumps unconscious to the ground, still dripping. A woman steps out of the bar, dressed for partying: short microskirt, haltar top with a UV-reactive cat on the front. Her eyes widen when she sees the unconscious man on the grouund. “Hey!” she cries. “What do you think you’re doing—” Then the pheromones hit, and she is helpless, unresisting, compliant as the young woman embraces her. Her tongue slides down her throat. A thick, pulsing appendage extends from between her legs, sliding into her…

There’s something kind of fun about the idea of an alien parasite that drives its host to a frenzy of uncontrolled lust, something living within its host that steals the host’s pleasure, forcing the host to a frenzy of mindless copulation but preventing the host from reaching orgasm in the normal way.

So of course we thought, how can we make that happen?

And this was Project Ladybug born.

It should properly be “Project Ladybits,” but my iPhone doesn’t like that word, and I didn’t notice when it auto(in)corrected “ladybits” to “ladybug.”

Anyway, the goal of the project is a custom-fitted soft silicone insert, shaped precisely to fit the wearer, with a stroker like a Fleshlight built in, so that the host cannot feel or gain pleasure from the intercourse. The final version of the toy will have an alien mouth surrounded by tentacles, that wrap around the host’s legs to hold it firmly in place.

The first part of Project Ladybug was making a cast of my Talespinner’s ladybug—err, ladybits. That turned out to be trickier than we’d anticipated. We used dental alginate, a female condom, and a lot of trial and error, and after several tries finally got it to work.

The initial attempts failed, due to the alginate setting too quickly (solved by using cold water to mix a new batch) and too much wiggling around (solved by her rather clever idea of using a canning funnel to provide support as the alginate set). A large syringe, a female condom, and a canning funnel later…

…and we had a successful cast.

That created a new problem, because my Talespinner lives in Springfield, alginate is fragile, and I was concerned it wouldn’t survive the trip home.

As an emergency backup, I used my phone to make a 3D scan of the cast, then embedded the cast in casting plaster to make a durable mold.

This caused a bit of a ruckus at TSA, by which I mean “they searched my luggage, took it out, passed it through the X-ray machine twice, swabbed it for explosives twice, then shut down the security lane and called for a supervisor, who took one look at the X-ray, said ‘oh, I know what that is,’ and waved me through.

I have no idea what he thought it was, but no matter.

Back home, I cracked open the mold…

…and brought the shape into a 3D modeling program for cleanup and building a 3D printable mold to cast silicone.

I am, as I type this, printing a mold on my 3D printer to cast this shape. This is a test mule, a simple check to test fit and size. Ideally, if this shape fits her properly, I will then remove the handle on the end and replace it with the alien parasite stroker, and cast it in soft silicone.

Variations on fantasy monster penis dildos are all well and good, but if you’re going to go with the alien monster sex theme, lean into it, I say!

I’ve finalized the v3.0 mold for the Xenomorph Ovipositer Facehugger Gag. This version is considerably lighter (about half the weight!) of the v2.0 design, with thinner sacs, a deeper groove for the wearer’s nose, and other design features to increase comfort. Because, after all, if you’re going to be orally violated by an alien parasite, you ought to be comfortable, right?

I’ve cast two of the v3.0 gag, one brown and beige, one white with glow-in-the-dark pigments. I had a chance to beta test and photograph the glow-in-the-dark prototype a couple of nights ago, and it worked even better than I ancicipated!

When it’s charged with a UV flashlight, the silicone glows quite intensely. This glow fades after about five or ten minutes, but it continues to glow at reduced brightness for a couple of hours.

The model here is wearing the v3.0 facehugger gag and the xenomorph nipplehugger pasties, also in glow-in-the-dark silicone:

Haven’t updated in a while, but mad science is still happening here at tentacle.love! I’ve been experimenting with glow-in-the-dark silicone pigments, and also finished a new, lighter, more comfortable version 3.0 Xenomorph Facehugger Gag, now suitable for more…extended wear.

I’ve done a test cast of the Spikey Silicone Butt Plug in glow-in-the-dark pigment, which glows rather nicely, I think:

And I’ve made some Xenomorph Tithugger Pasties in the same color. They aren’t as interesting as I’d hoped in strong light, but they glow rather wickedly in the dark. I may experiment with combining the glowing pigment with other pigments, to see if I can create glowing toys that also look interesting in the light.

And finally, the v3.0 Xenomorph Facehugger Gag! You can get a sense of what a beast this mold is as the gag emerges from the mold. These take about three days to cast, and require five separate pours.

I’ll be beta-testing the facehugger gag later this week. For those of you who missed the last beta test, the v1.0 Xenomorph Facehugger Gag worked well, but testing revealed several areas where the design could be improved, and improved it’s been.

These will be available soon, stay tuned!

Whilst the extended polyamorous netowork and I were in Barcelona, we took time out from seeing the Sagrada Familia and doing…um, other stuff to take a ton of photos of the xenomorph sex toy prototypes.

I’m still working through the mass of photos, bit by bit, but in the meantime I’ve actually put the hiphugger strapon up for sale!

That’s right, now you can order your very own hiphugger, for all your xenomorph ovipositor violation needs.

These things each take about three days of fussy, fiddly work to make, so for the foreseeable future I will only make one of them a month. First come, first served, and yes, they’re expensive.

If you order one, I’ll make it specifically for you, in whatever color you like.

We had a ton of fun doing the photo shoot, and got pics of some other xenomorphic goodness as well, including the xenomorph pacifiers and nipple pasties. (Yes, I made xenomorph pacifiers and nipple pasties. What can I say? My parents brought me to see Alien when I was, like, 12 or so, and it scared the holy hell out of me for the next thirty years.)

Now my nightmares are yours too. You’re welcome.

Two more photos for your viewing pleasure, one of the xenomorph hiphugger strapon (with the Borg Queen xenomorph cosplay, of course) ad one of the facehugger gag.

First, the Borg Queen hiphugger strapon:

The vertebrae and other parts of the costume are 3D printed directly onto fabric which is then sewn onto the costume. This is the very first usable hiphugger strapon, and the only one with a detatchable tube for making it squirt.

Here’s another shot of the version 1.1 xenomorph facehugger gag:

This gag features an ovipositor made of very soft squishy silicone that extends into the wearer’s mouth, the better to introduce the alien eggs, of course.

The version 1 facehugger is a trifle wide and quite heavy. The 2.0 facehugger will be narrower, with thinner sacs.

I haven’t made the molds for the version 2 mold yet, but the design looks good!

The test fit of the xenomorph hiphugger strapon revealed a design flaw in the harness, fixed in the new v9.0 mold, now almost done printing. (This print looks a bit weird because I ran out of red filament so replaced it with black.) #MadScience