Goblin Halloween Diorama- Part 23- Photos- Field Project

Now that the house has been glued to the board, I can start adding details that will start to tell the story of the diorama.  I want to make this a spooky Halloween diorama.  So it becomes an issue of how to get across the idea of spooky.  I have to ask myself what makes things spooky and why do we think they are eerie?  What gives us a warning that causes our hair to stand on end and makes us feel that something is not quite right even when nothing is apparently wrong? 

Old abandoned houses are spooky in and of themselves.  We may not have any information on why someone abandoned a house, so we project our personal abandonment fears onto the situation.  That creates a fearful situation to begin with.  We also tend to view a house as having a story of the people who inhabited it.  When we don't know the story ended, we have a feeling of things left unfinished or prematurely ended.  This leaves us with an uncomfortable feeling as well.  Sometimes we do know the story, and if it is an ominous story with a bad ending, it scares us when we confront the unknown.  (For example:  Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.)  So an abandoned house by itself sets a tone.  It is time to build on those themes.  Read on.

Today the average city or suburban dweller does not generally give a lot of thought to birds except when birds leave a mess on their cars.  Birds are just some creatures that fly away when you move in their direction.   But we unconsciously carry a lot of symbolism and unconscious memory about birds.  It is always there, we just don't normally call that information to consciousness and think about it.  (I'd go into more detail here, but it may be too upsetting for some people, especially if he or she should  stumble upon it unexpectedly.)  Anyway, when we see a flock of large black birds, or for that matter a large flock of birds, it gives us an ominous feeling.  To add an ominous feeling to the diorama, it needed to have a lot of large black birds.  And that is when I ran into a arts and crafts product that was just what I needed.

My craft store had added a new product to its shelves.  This product is made by Modge Podge.  Basically, it was small silicone molds that could be used with their hot glue.  You used your hot glue gun to heat their product and pipe it into the molds.  The glue came in clear or white.  You squeezed the glue out of the glue gun into the mold.  When the glue was dried, it popped right out of the mold.  The pieces were very tiny, and held an incredible amount of detail.  No mold release was needed.   When the pieces came out of the mold I had to clean up the edges with a craft knife.  After that, they could be painted.  For the record, I purchased and experimented with Modge Podge sticks of glue first.  Afterwards, I tried it with some of my regular hot glue and it worked just as well as far as coming out of the mold, but it was not as clear as the Modge Podge product.

I saw a couple of different molds, but the one that interested me was the one that had birds in various poses.  These molds were very tiny.  The largest of the birds was only about three quarters of an inch to an inch across.  Other birds were smaller.  They were the perfect scale for my diorama.  The only unfortunate part of this was that the molds are for only one side of the birds; the back is flat.  I had to work on the other side to make it look like a three dimensional bird by building up the flat side with hot glue.  After a little practice, I was able to get things working well enough that I could make birds for the diorama.  So now I have started adding birds.  I don't want to add too many on the house, but there will be more in trees.

Because the product uses hot glue and a sharp craft knife, I'd say that it was best used by adults or teenagers under supervision.  However, your inner child will find a number of ways to use this product. 

Today's field project photo was taken at 9:00 am.  The temperature was 53 degrees (Fahrenheit).  Winds were calm.  The field seems to have a slight purplish cast to it in some spots.  The haze is actually tiny seed pods on the weeds.

Check back on Wednesday for the next step in the diorama.

Goblin Halloween Diorama- Part 22- House on the Board- Field Project

At long last, I have completed the house for the diorama.  I am pleased to say that the old farmhouse is now glued down to the board.  It took a long time to get the house completed.  I hope the rest of the diorama will not be as labor intensive as building the house. 

I completed the painting on the roof.  There is a temptation to add a little more detail to the roof, to really get the feel of an old roof, but at some point you have to stop working on detail and get on with the rest of the diorama.  I guess I've reached the "don't mess this up stage.  It works well enough that I don't care to have to start over if things don't turn out as I planned.

The house has been glued down to the board.  I also attached some steps. There will be a few
embellishments added to the house.  I'll have pictures of them next time.  I did not paint the ground on the board because the glue is only as strong as the surface to which it is attached.  If that surface is a coat of paint, the hold is only as strong as the bond between the wood and the paint.  I build these things to last as long as possible.

I forgot to put up my field picture on Sunday.  I thought I would post the photo today.  This is a picture of the field on Autumn Equinox.

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 21 - "Tin" Roof

Under-painting to make it look covered with grime.

Most of my time since I last blogged has been spent watching glue dry.  There were a few places on the roof where the glue did not hold.  I had to re-glue those areas.  Just when I thought I had them all, I found two more areas that needed more glue.  I have glued and taped those areas.  Hopefully, I will be able to move forward with the project tomorrow.

Terracotta paining over the dark under-painting.

While waiting for glue to dry, I added some spots and streaks of black paint to the roof.  Some of the spots are dabbed on, others are streaked, smeared, and lifted off.  The spots will be painted over with a semi-transparent terracotta paint color.  The under-painting will show through and make it look as if the roof is old and dirty.  A close up of the upper roof shows the area prior to applying the terracotta paint.  (Blue tape is holding down the roof ridge, which needed more glue.) 

I found it helpful to tell myself a story about the roof while painting the the dark under-painting.  It helped to determine where the dark spots should go.  Some examples of the story:  "Dirt collects in the crease of the ridges."   "Morning dew washes dirt down towards the bottom of the roof.  The dirt stays where it ends up when the dew dries."   "Leaves collect in the corners and they stay damp after a rain."  All of these little stories help to create an image of what I want the roof to look like when it is completed. 

The lower roof has been painted with the terracotta color.  It is still a little brighter than I was hoping it would be.  The white metal primer bounces a lot of light back through the terracotta color.  If I ever make another house with a tin roof, I would consider painting a gray base coat before painting on the black splotches.  It might have saved me giving it another coat of paint. I would like to take down the brightness, so I think I will give the roof a thin wash of terracotta and burnt umber.  That should take down the brightness without doing too much to change the transparency level.  Anyway, it sounds good as I am writing this.  I should have that ready for the next blog post. 

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 20- Photos- Field Project

Adding a foil roof.

As I blogged last time, I want to put a tin roof on my miniature house for the diorama.  I experimented on different paint treatments, and on how to make that ridge in the tin look like a real roof.  I think I have succeeded.  At least, the tin is on the roof.  Although I have used hot glue on the rest of this project, I decided to try Elmer's Multipurpose Glue for the roof.  Hot glue dries quickly and I was concerned that viewers would be able to see lumps from where the hot glue dried.  Fortunately, the glue dried and held.  I did have to go in and re-glue on edge, but that was because it had not made good contact with the glue on the first try.

Field 9-14-2014

Before gluing the foil

Morning sun on a painted gazing ball.

onto the roof, I sprayed it with metal primer.  I had to put the foil on the roof before it was painted because the process of creating the creases caused the paint to scratch.  At least the damage was minimal.  Next I have to trim off the excess foil.  I did not attempt to trim it exactly to size before putting it on the building because pressing it into the creases of the small dowels change the width of the aluminum sheet.  I thought it would be easier to use a larger piece and trim it afterwards.  This also gave me a little extra wiggle  room in case I messed up the cut out for the dormer and had to make a deeper cut.  After I trim the piece, I'll paint on another coat of primer before I start using the black and terracotta colors. 


So all in all, progress is being made.  I'm glad that the foil sheeting worked.  It is a product I purchased at the craft store called Aluminum Tooling Foil.  It is an aluminum sheet that is much thicker than regular aluminum foil.  I suppose I could have purchased something similar at the hardware store, but I would have needed to purchase a much larger quantity.  Sometimes it is worth it to pay a larger price per foot at a craft store rather than to have a large amount left over that I have to find something to make to use it up.

Once the roof is completed, the house will be glued to the diorama and the steps will be added.  I can hardly wait.  I am looking  forward to getting on with the rest of the diorama.  Check back on Wednesday for more on the diorama.

It is Sunday, so that is field picture day.  The temperature was 59 degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds were from the North at seven miles per hour.  It was very cool.  The weeds seem to be growing, but it is hard to tell how the crops are doing because they are so far away in the field.  Well, perhaps things will be better next year.  The new owner started late in the season, so there was not a lot of time to get anything in the ground for this growing season.  The majority of the land is fallow.

Just thought I'd check in on an older project while I was at it.  Earlier this year I had made a ball from a papier mache' base which I covered in concrete.  I painted the ball and put it outside to see how the ball and the paint held up.  So far, it has been holding up pretty well.  The paint is not chipping.  Even though it has been a rainy summer, the ball is not showing any sign of water damage.  I think that this could be a viable alternative to using bowling balls as a base if I can figure out how to make the papier mache/ part more stable.  Once it is pulled off its mold, the ball's shape warps into an oval.  It was difficult to get the ball back into a spherical shape.  It took a long time to get it to do what I wanted it to do.  One of these days I will work on that project.  I'd still like to have an easier way to make a base for gazing balls.

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 19 - Tin Roof

Color and distressing experiments.

Today I am blogging about creating the roof for the house on my diorama.  I have been doing some experiments on how to make a tin roof for the house.  In real life this style of old farm house had either a terracotta or forest green colored tin roof made by overlapping panels of tin. Trying to replicate that has been easier said than done.  However, I am moving towards a solution.  As usual, I have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C. 

Shaping the ridge damaged the paint.

Here is the situation:  I need to make a roof that fits the age of the house.  This will not be a new looking roof in perfect condition.  It needs to be an old metal roof that has rusted, pitted and covered with grime.  The second part of the situation is that the roof needs to have the look of overlapping pieces of roofing, which calls for ridges along the roof.  The scale is so small that it was difficult to come up with something that looks right.  Trying to get those ridges in has been a real challenge.  Fixing the ridge problem has caused problems in the other area of painting the roof.   It is a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I think I have a solution, but it will be easier to explain while I blog about the experiments.  See below.

Small dowels added to create ridge shape.

I purchased some Aluminum Tooling Foil at the craft store.  It looks like aluminum foil, but much thicker.  It is very malleable.  My first experiments were in trying to figure out how to paint the roof to look as I wanted it to look.  I tried different methods.  The first was to paint in blotches of black first and paint the terracotta color over that. The second was to paint terracotta color directly onto the foil.  The third was to paint Gesso on first, then paint.   The next trial was to paint the foil with multipurpose glue and then paint.  And the last trial was to distress the foil with a wire brush before painting to see how paint would settle into the pits and streaks.  Of all the tests, the one that I liked the best was the terracotta paint over the black paint.  The terracotta color is semi-transparent so the black showed up as streaks and blotches.  That will be the base for all the distressing that would come afterward.  I experiment because I only have a general idea of what might work.  I just experiment until I get what I want or find I have to do something else.

So, with a paint choice in mind, I started experimenting with how to make the creases in the roofing material.  The big problem is that most things were too large to be of any use.  I tried folding it over a bone folder tool  and a butter knife, but neither looked right.  The folding tool was too thick and the butter knife left too deep a fold in it.  A rounded piece of wire did not yield the right look.  I make another trip to the raft store and found a tiny, very fragile, square wooden dowel that was only 1/16 inch thick.  After some experimentation, I was able to get an authentic look.  But, when I used a tool to push against the foil to create the shape, the friction scraped the paint off the foil.  Furthermore, once the foil was removed from the shape, it did not look quite as defined as when the dowel was underneath it.  So I decided that the dowel should stay.  I also decided that the roof would have to go onto the house before it was painted in order to keep from damaging the paint job. 

So my Plan A is to cut the roof as one piece of foil, spray paint it with metal primer, and once the roof is shaped over the small dowels it will be painted.  I will have to be careful, but if any of the roof paint gets on the house it can be sanded off and repainted.  The blotchy, peeling paint of the house will hide the repairs easily.

If Plan A does not work, my Plan B is to try to try to use panels of foil rather than shape it from one piece.  I am not sure that this will work very well because it was difficult to get the panel to end at the base of the tiny dowel.  I don't hold out too much hope for Plan B.

If neither Plan A or Plan B work, my Plan C is to just paint over the dowels and the foam core board and make the roof look as good as I can and move on with the diorama.  I think Plan C is going to be the winner here, but I would like to at least give the tin roof a try.  Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't.  You never know until you try.

I have glued small bits of dowel to the roof in preparation for adding the foil sheeting.  I will be working on adding the roof this week.  Check back on Sunday for further progress on the house.  Once the roof is on, the house will be glued to the diorama base.  After that, I will be adding the steps.  Then it will be on to other parts of the diorama.  I have some fun things in store, but they won't be nearly as labor intensive as the house.  At least I hope so.  

Roadside Attraction - Photos

I am at the point of working on the roof of the house for my diorama, but this week I only had time to do some experiments on making the roof.  As the house is old and the paint is peeling, it needs a roof to match that age.  I want to make a tin roof, but one that shows dirt and rust.  I performed a few experiments, but only one really looked anything like what I had in mind.  I'm going to do some more experiments.  I will post all of the results on Wednesday.  So, in the mean time, I thought you might enjoy some of my photos of a road side attraction. 

In our travels, we came across a restaurant named Pink Cadillac Diner.  If you say Pink Cadillac to me, I say Springsteen.  However, if you say Pink Cadillac to some people they say something else.  They say.......Elvis??????  Yes.  Apparently Elvis' first touring car was a 1954 pink Cadillac.  So there is some connection.  And I think he might have used the words "pink Cadillac" in one of his songs. 


Anyway, we are driving down on Route 11 just past Natural Bridge Virginia, and the first thing you see is an old 1951 pink Cadillac.  Up the road from that is the Pink Cadillac Restaurant.  There is a statue of King Kong holding a bi-plane in the other.  Obviously this is a replica from the first King Kong movie.  So you know we have to check this out. 

The diner has an Elvis room.  Photos of Elvis everywhere and every sort of collectible.  One wall is covered in wallpaper showing 1951 Cadillacs in pastels of pink, blue, and green.  I'm guessing that this must have been wallpaper made for a dealership because I don't think that many people would have wanted it for their living room.  The other two rooms also have Elvis memorabilia, except not as much.

One of the other rooms was set up as a 1950's style soda fountain.  You could sit at the stools at the bar and order a milk shake or a sundae.  They also had some tables.  The rest rooms were off this area.  They were labeled Lucy and Ricky with a lot of hearts around the names.  Yes, that Lucy and Ricky.   This diner is about the 1950s and they were the hottest couple on television then. 

I looked on the internet to see if I could find any information on how long the diner had been there.  It did not say when they moved to Natural Bridge area.  I know it has been several years, but I don't know how much longer beyond that. 

All in all, it is an homage to the American Road Trip in the big touring cars.  Before the general public took to air travel, the way to vacation was to take to the road.  You can still see the old hotels along the way, although many of them have fallen on hard times after the building of the interstates.  But it was the family vacation and adventure of the times.  This place is a little time capsule of how things used to be.

Cabin Ceiling - Photos

I did not blog on Sunday because we headed out for the cabin.  My husband and I worked on putting in a V-groove wood slat ceiling in the kitchen of our cabin.  I must say, it looks terrific.  It took us a day and a half of work, but the results were well worth it. 

We were able to get the ceiling up so quickly because Bill had done a lot of prep work in the weeks before our trip.  Each slat was covered with a coat of Clear Matte Polyurethane.  In an earlier blog post I had posted a picture of how he had re-purposed an old crib as a drying rack for numerous slats.  That allowed him to do numerous slats at once rather than doing a couple and sitting them on saw horses to dry. 

Anyway, once we got up there we could put up the slats without treating them.  Most of the boards required numerous cuts and measurements.  The cabin is old and the joists were not exactly sixteen inches on center.  Any mistakes we made are now a part of the history of the cabin.  All in all, I think we did a really good job.  It makes the cabin look so much brighter.  We will put on another clear coat of the polyurethane next trip up to cover the nail heads.  By the way, we used a brad nailer with an air compressor.  We did not do any hammering by hand.  From time to time we had to use a painting tool to help pry a stubborn board into the groove or if it hugged the ceiling too tightly. 

Next trip up we hope to paint the rest of the walls in the dining area and living room.  We may get the furring strips up for the new wood ceiling which will also be going in those rooms.  But before all that, we have some plumbing issues in the kitchen that need to be addressed.  We may get some of the flooring in, but I don't know if that will be on the next trip. 

Construction work is dirty hot work.  Some people are able to pull it off and look nice while they are doing it, but that is definitely not me.  I always end up looking like some bedraggled creature that the cat has dragged in.   However, when we finish a project, we always take a victory shot to show the state we were in at the end of the project.  It is easy to enjoy the ceiling, but we also like to remind ourselves of just how much work actually went into it.  So far, reminding ourselves of the hard work has not done anything to discourage us from taking on another big project. 

The old ceiling.

When we arrived, we had to mow the grass.  The grass was knee high.  It was just grass.  Not a leaf was on it.  But Sunday night we noticed a slight reddish tinge on the dogwood tree.  By Monday morning, leaves were starting to fall.  The yard was fairly well covered with leaves.  The roof had many leaves on the flatter part over the porch.  By whatever mechanism that they have, the trees decided unilaterally that the fall of leaves had  begun.  As we wended our way down the mountain, the leave continued to blow.  I also saw some Locust trees whose leaves were turning red.  It is a reminder that autumn is on its way. 

Next trip up, we will be draining the cabin for the winter.  We will be back up there after that, but will have to drain it each time.  We were up there last year in late November but came home early because the wind chill was expected to be negative five degrees, Fahrenheit.  In the higher elevations, it does not take long to get really cold.

By Sunday I will have some new photos of my art project.  Check back then to see the latest on the diorama.