Making your own decor is fun and really great when you're going for custom enclosures. Steps for making your own enclosure elements:
1. Pick your base/molding material
For base construction, I've seen people use pink foam which you can pick up at Home Depot/ Lowes. I've also seen a lot of people use air-dry clay and home made clay (recipes online for the DIY clay) with great success.
2. Paint
Most people opt to go with acrylic paint as other forms of paint can leech into the sealant and make contact with your reptiles, which is obviously something you want to avoid.
3. Seal
The most obvious choice for the sealant would be Silicone Aquarium Sealant as my logic train goes: if you can drop it in a tank full of fish and it be safe, I'm sure it would be safe for your reptiles as well. Let cure per instructions on bottle before introducing it into your tank/tub.
I've also seen people use modpodge and haven't heard anything negative on that front but why take the risk when you can go straight for "the good stuff"?
To answer your hot glue question, I would imagine that it wouldn't be harmful as long as it was cured but if you don't want to take a risk, slap some of that aquarium sealant on over the glue
For logs, you could do one of the following or both:
- If the wood will fit in your oven, clean it up a little bit with a hard bristle brush and bake it at 250-300 degrees for 1-3 hours
AND/OR
- Mix together a bleach solution (10% bleach to 90% water), put it in a container / your bathtub and let those soak for about 10 minutes. Rinse thoroughly with extremely hot water and let them dry for 48-72 hours.
For rocks, the soaking solution mentioned above works pretty well but you need to scrub the crap out of it with a stiff bristle brush before soaking of course.
And DON'T bake them for the love of all you hold sacred as they can and will EXPLODE.
I've also heard of people boiling leaf litter that they find but can't vouch personally for the safety of this (although the person that I got this info from keeps frogs and they're pretty delicate and they've had no issues with the leaf litter).
Also, just a side note: freezing is not as thorough as the other methods listed above so best not to waste time with freezing
*takes deep breath* That's all I can think of at the moment - I'm sure I'll be back with more ideas - curious though: what are you wanting to craft in particular?
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