plaster of paris

[laura-borealis.livejournal.com]

I checked the faq but didn't find anything on plaster of paris.

I'm currently obsessed with the idea of making a pair of bookends out of plaster of paris. I want them to be solid, so they'll be decently heavy. But I don't know that much about plaster of paris. I'm sure someone here is an experienced plasterer!

First question: can you make solid forms with it? I just did a decently thorough search online, but all the projects I found were either small (like making casts of animal prints, or putting it in candy molds) or if they were large projects, they used newspaper inside, or were built on chicken wire frames. I'm wondering if the center would ever dry if I tried to make something fairly large and bulky...

Also, even if it can be made into solid forms, will it be heavy enough to work as a bookend? Or should I be thinking about sticking a rock or something heavy inside?

What I want to make out of the plaster of paris is a pair of volcanos... they will have lava tracks running down the sides, and the craters will be hollowed out to be the right size to hold tealights. Very tacky ^_^ I got this idea from the book Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living, but I don't actually have the book, and I didn't read the instructions very well. My innovation on the book's idea is that my volcanos will be bookends (for my desk) and I think in the book, the volcano had incense rather than a tealight.

Any advice from experienced plastered people will be appreciated!