This is the cave/cavern in the rough state before painting.
This is after it's first coat of paint - I just used some old white emulsion (latex) paint & used acrylics to get the base colour I wanted.
It now needs a few washes to bring it to life.
Today I spent ages trying to get the look I wanted & trying to get rid bits of polystyrene from all over the kitchen & me!!
The only way I found to get rid of the static was with water.
Anyway, I roughly carved the poly. pieces with a fork to make them look more like rock & got the back & one side assembled:
I don't know how well the pieces will stick, as I didn't have the proper glue, but as long as they stay tog
Well, I've managed to finish it & make a rock base to sit it on. The rock base is made from polystyrene packing.
I've not furnished the inside, as I did this project for the look of the outside.
I'm trying to make a cave using polystyrene packing pieces. I'm only doing it because I enjoyed painting the base for my Fantasy Villa, so much, I want to do more.
Thought I'd blog it in case anyone wanted to make a base for a house, as the steps invloved in making the cave can easily be adapted.
I broke the polystyrene into pieces which will make the sides of the cave:
I played about with them until I found something I liked:
Well, I've done quite a bit since the last entry. The stairs are complete & fully installed. I stained them with a beech stain, to keep them very natural looking & light.
I've widened most of the doorways so I can put in upgraded doors if I want to. My original idea was to make bead curtains for the doorways, but I'm not sure my patience will run to doing that for all of them!
The hall & landings are all wallpapered with full scale (1:1) wallpaper; it's the
Here are the early photos - 2 of the dry fit & then a couple of the staircases.
I decided to install the stairs before they were fully assembled, as I knew they could be a bit tricky to get in. Doing it this way, the staircases were quite flexible & easy to get into place. Finishing off the assembling was no problem either.
The trim is loosely attached, just so I could see the overall effect.
The stonework has had 2 coats of a dirty water type wash, then the individual stones were painted in 4 main colours & then I went over with the dirty wash again, just to tone it down a bit.
I mixed dusty pink & black acrylic paints for the trim & then went over it with a walnut stain. I'm quite pleased with the effect :whistle:
Well, I've made some progress, so thought I would add the photos to my blog.
It's definitely going to be a fantasy villa, so the decor will hopefully reflect this. Lots of enhancements to come, but this is the basic colour scheme.
The rest of the photos are of the paperclay stonework - it's NOT finished, the best bit is yet to come, the painting of the stones :whistle:
The paperclay has only had 2 washes so far.
I thought I'd better bring this uptodate with photos of the finished house. It still needs work on the landscaping, but the house is complete :whistle:
I decided to keep the original mezzanine floor, rather than fill it in, as I'd planned to do. I'm happy I went with it now, as the loss of space is more than made up for in the extra character the half floor gives this little cottage.
&
After looking at the new window positions for a couple of weeks, I decided I really liked them & so cut the holes in the shell, yesterday, to accommodate them. I used my Dremel - it was a bit scary at first, but I don't think I could have done it by hand, as the MDF was so thick.
I'm going to put a false room behind the door so you don't step through & fall off! The windows will all have some sort of view through them; I'm really looking forward to doing those.
I've had a :whistle: about my Grosvenor Hall - I've decided not to put the front opening doors on it; I'm going to make Perspex/Plexiglass doors instead.
A bold move for me, but it gives me spare windows which I think look good as part of the house. The empty box look of the house was putting me off carrying on with this build - it seemed to lack life.
It means a lot of cutting out (shame I didn't think of this before I assembled it!) but I think it'll be worth it.
After quite a few attempts with mixing different shades of brown, I found one I liked - Raw Umber, straight out of the tube
I used Polyfilla (spackle) first, to give the roof some texture, & then painted it.
Actually getting the roof on was quite a challenge. With this baby you assemble the main parts on the house & then remove it & finish it away from the body of the house.
This means you have the ro
Well here's a photo of the hearth. I found the 'washes' were a bit beyond me; I think I need to practice this technique a bit.
Still I'm pleased with how it turned out - not what I had in mind, but who cares!
Here are pics of the shell. I'm not going to wallpaper first anymore; I'm glad I tried it, but I found it very tricky to get the walls, slots & wallpaper all aligned at the same time.
I seem
Still following Grazhe's directions & am very pleased with how the hearth is turning out. This is the hearth after sanding the bigger lumps & bumps out, then smoothing the 'stones' with a wet cloth & finally going round the gaps with a tooth pick to give a bit more definition. I'll do the washes later.
I've assembled the dormer & the dormer thatch frame, but I can't say I'm happy with the gaps in between the wallpapered walls. On the downstairs walls I left enough wallpaper to turn the corners to fill these joining gaps, but couldn't really get my head round doing this in the dormer for some reason. I'll run a strip of trim around, so it will look OK when it's finished (hopefully!)
I've just realised that before I assemble the main body of the hou
Having done the dry fit, I thought I'd like a complete upper floor, rather than the mezzanine, so I filled the gap in & moved the stairs to the side - they'll just fit between the window & the door.
I then decided to try wallpapering before assembling - I've not done this before, so it will be interesting to see how well it works - watch this space!
Here's a photo showing the roof constructed (yes, you glue the roof together, remove it from the house & then
I got the roof on to my Grosvenor Hall yesterday, & can now see the size of the attic rooms. I'm not sure what they're going to be; maybe one will be a bathroom.
I've dry-fitted the Aster today. It went together like a dream, apart from trying to figure out which thatched roof fiddly bits went with other thatched roof equally fiddly bits! It was like doing a 3D jigsaw.
Anyway, I followed the instructions (yes, I do that sort of thing ) & see now how it fits together.
I think I'm going to fill in the gap in the bedroom floor - I don't really see the point in losing that amount of floor space, but I don't know, it's kind of
This is a momentus occasion - my first entry of my first ever blog.
I decided to do this as the UK kits are so different to the US ones & I thought you might see why these Dolls house Emporium kits are so expensive!
I primed most of the components & built the shell a while ago & have just been inspired to get going on it again; so this afternoon, I top coated most of the interior doors & some of the door trims.
I also made up t
