Sooo I have wanted to make one of these for a long time, and now I finally have! This project took about 5 hours total I think, over the last couple of days, and most of that was painting and drying time.
I'll try to get some better photos later of the whole piece because the lighting in here is poor atm and my workspace is kind of messy. First three photos are of the finished mermaid, 4th and 5th photos are earlier stages of construction.
She is made from a plastic monkey skeleton with the legs removed, covered in some pieces of a plastic drop cloth, then painted with acrylics and her hair is just some faux fur cut from the fabric backing and glued in place. This is my first ever corpsed skeleton prop and I think for a first try she turned out really well.
