Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Extreme Kitbash: the stone walls...

I haven't been feeling that sporty lately, and hubby has had a touch of the flu. I think I have been trying to get it or a very bad cold but my body is fighting it off. I've been very tired and had a scratchy sore throat and had body aches. Today after I got some rest and pried hubby to give me his industrial dremel - mine is a wussy dremel, I wore out the carving tool on it, lol. I needed to finish the stone part on the front and do the two lower side walls.  The two upper mdf walls will be timbered and stucco-ed to give it the ye olde tudor - fairy look .
But let's look and see how I did the walls. 
First, I marked lines in one inch increments with my ruler and then marked them with the dremel. Then, I did random lines with the dremel, to resemble stones that had been laid, like a stone wall. 


Here's what it looks like with the 'stones' carved into the dremel. To make it look more realistic, take a blade or an exacto knife, and carve out little knicks of the stones, or sand it with a sanding block to make the stone look aged. When you spray paint it, the spray paint will 'eat' the foam in the insulation a bit and resemble the porous nature of stone and it will look like stone so do not spray too heavily as you will want to spray in light coats. This pink foam is quite heavy in color and it can be quite tempting, My pics are dark and not that clear, I was working in the afternoon and the light was not good inside or outside.




My last pic with Katniss showing off the stone looks the best. This had a good coat of grey spray paint and is one of the lower stone side walls. I am going to have to do something about the front door and building up the windows. 
See what I mean about the spray paint being porous?


Here is the front pinned together with the sides, and here you can see the part spray painted grey where the stones are. The lower parts and the upper part will be timbered and stuccoed . I have alot of more spray painting and work to do on these walls before that can happen.
I also attempted to spray paint the interior walls white, but that had to stop as it would be too much for the foam to take and it would dry.
Here it is, it's still pink. Might wait for a really hot day in a few weeks and/or use regular house paint. Like I said, spray paint really eats the foam


In the second pic, you can really see the foam sizzling. That is not such a bad thing, because it resembles the waub and dabble nature of those medieval cottages in England with the Thatch roofs and such. So I might just get out a big brush and use acrylic paint on this and spread it out on newspaper on a table outside if we have a sunny day. This week that won't happen as the temperatures are down in the teens and single digits. 

***One Tip...and this is from experience. I know some of my pics look bad. But remember- and this comes from my own experiences- when it looks bad- it will look amazing when you're done. I have had some of the worst pieces look awful=LaBelle's is an example,  and they turn out amazing if you have patience. Your diorama, room, or structure will have flaws but the flaws are what make the realism.  Don't freak when the foam begins to disintegrate- say hey that looks like crumbling plaster, stone, wood! I can throw some moss on that!( which is what I intend to do!) and some vines. voila! and aged fairy forest masterpiece made out of crap. The best part of the picture above me is all I now have to do is paint over it and the effects will stay there with my paint, crumbling plaster, and shade it a bit with paints and chalk if I want to for the look of a leaky cottage or white plaster. 

So hopefully I will be further along next time on another blog post. I haven't been posting pictures on my flicker as I am only going to be posting finished photos there when this project is done, so follow the blog to know more of how I progress here. ~Lisa

3 comments:

Phyllis said...

I can really see where you are going with this. The brick effect is really coming out nicely. It will look great when you are done painting and stuccoing the outside. I can already picture the old warped plaster look on the inside. It is very reminiscent of and old cottage or castle! Thanks for sharing your technique.

Lisa Neault said...

hi Phyllis and thank you! I worked on it today by painting the interior walls white and it looks alot better. My pics are not that great. I ran out of paint and will have to run out and get more. I did a vicscious cleaning out of my craft supplies that were old and threw out my old paints so need to buy more. The foam soaks up paint like a sponge even though the effect is cool like crumbling plaster when it is done. I hope to go out and get more paint tomorrow if possible and have more pics up soon when I am much further along.

Muff said...

This is great! I quite like the effect the spray paint is having on the board.