Update on Diorama -- Competition Voting -- Photos

Still adding leaves and branches.

I have spent a couple more hours adding leaves and branches to the diorama.  I don't have a new photo yet.  I'll post the new photo once I complete this part.  It seems as if I should be further along, but making the leaves and branches takes a beastly long time.  It is starting to look better now that they have been added.  I also made the house in this diorama.  Check back through earlier posts on how I constructed the house.

Branch made of wire and plaster cloth wrap.

As I had blogged earlier, the branches are made from flexible wire wrapped with Plaster Wrap Cloth.  It was a bit of a mess.  Because the project scale is so small, I had to cut the Plaster Wrap Cloth into short lengths and then cut those strips into quarters lengthwise.  The plaster was powdery.  While cutting and manipulating the strips, the some of the powder fell off.  If you use Plaster Wrap Cloth, make sure you have something on your work surface to collect the powder.  Although it does not say to use them on the usage directions for the product I wore gloves. Plaster can dry out your skin.  With as much plaster dust as there was around, it might also be a good idea to wear a dust mask, at least during the point that you are cutting the product into pieces.

About that Flying Dream.

Once the pieces were cut, I dipped a strip in water to soften the plaster.  It only takes a second to dampen it.  Then I used my gloved fingers to smooth the strip to spread the plaster across the cloth.  Then I wound it around the wire that served as the armature.  You don't have very long before the plaster starts to set up.  It has to be done one piece at a time.  The strips were small, and sometimes they would tangle.  Sometimes I could untangle them and sometimes I just had to consider a piece a loss.

I used this method to construct the branches for the Goblin Halloween Diorama and  also in the diorama I made for the Mystery Build competition.  The Plaster Wrap Cloth came in the Mystery Build Kit.  For this competition, you purchase a kit.  You have to make an art piece using nothing but what comes in the kit and on the theme that is given by the company.  After I had completed my project, I had some of the Plaster Wrap Cloth left over.  That is how it ended up in the Goblin Halloween Diorama.

The Mystery Build competition first prize is awarded by a jury.  There is also a People's Choice award.  The public can vote for their favorite art piece.  My piece is titled: About that Flying Dream.  It is project number 37 on page 2.    Here is a link to the voting site:  http://mysterybuild.com/ Naturally, I hope my readers will be voting for my project, but there are a lot of good projects out there.  Enjoy.

Next blog I will have new photos for the Goblin Halloween Diorama.