Saturday, March 18, 2017

The Vampire Slayer Research Table

Welcome, welcome, welcome, my miniature friends, to the Hellmouth! Today I'm showing off this lovely piece I made for Alpha Stamps featuring a collage sheet I designed with all the books from the Buffyverse. So there's quite a few books tucked into this piece, but not nearly enough to make a dent in what's available in the sheet itself, so check out the materials list at the bottom.



I love my overview pictures, so check out the next couple of views all around the scene.

Stacks of papers and research, books, and some secrets hidden.

Someones burning the midnight candles.

Candles are made from air dry translucent clay. 



The stakes are whittled down from sticks found in my backyard, which is exactly as messy as you'd think it is and my living room is covered in bits of  bark now. Which is totally fine because now I have tiny vampire stakes, which is awesome. The glasses are made from copper wire that I just bent into shape.


Moloch book and lovely candle from Alpha Stamps.


A spell being created, another stake, the "Vampyr" book and the "Witchcraft" book in the back, with a jar I altered from Alpha stamps using Tim Holtz alcohol inks.


The most important research of all - the Vampire research.


The werewolf research - maybe they'll find out something new about Oz!


Bynums History of Witchcraft on a stack of aged paper.


Stack of paper and a scroll on top with an old seal made from hot glue.

Alpha Stamps Materials




Friday, March 10, 2017

Red Dragon Dice Tower


Goodmorrow fellow crafters, Jess here this week showing you how to make a dragonscale effect on the new GSLC Dice Tower.


While putting the tower together, I painted the inside black - it's too fiddly to paint the inside once everything is assembled and glued.


Then basecoat the whole tower black.


I made french toast for dinner for the family so that I would have enough egg shells for the next part. To work with the egg shells, you have to remove the immediate inner part from the shell and the more difficult to see inner skin of the shell. If you don't, the shell doesn't stick to the glue and vice versa - it only sticks to the skin.


Work in small portions, laying down your glue and pushing the eggshell into it and crunching it down.


This is the whole tower covered in eggshell - I think it looks pretty cool.


Painting is ultimately up to your own creativity and imagination. I chose red because it's one of my favourite colours. Then I made a wash out of a little black paint and water to go in between the cracks to bring out scales. To finish I also added a copper metallic paint and some green in certain places.






Close up of scales.

I made a tutorial a while ago on using egg shells to create a dragon scale effect if you'd like to check it out here

Materials

Egg Shells
Paint
Glue

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Little Slugger Bedroom


Today I'm doing something completely different and out of left field (hah - I did a pun!) because I normally do either fantasy or horror or sci-fi things. This is probably the most down-to-earth and ordinary thing I've ever crafted, but it's so adorably cute, I hope you'll still love it! 

I designed some teeny tiny dollhouse baseball cards for Alpha Stamps and wanted to show them off and needed a scene to showcase them in, so this Little Slugger Bedroom came to pass.



I started out with a chipboard bed from GSLC (materials list at the end) and a piece of half inch insulation foam cut to size for the mattress. 


I used a piece of one inch insulation foam for the base and covered it in balsa wood for a hardwood floor look.


I hot glued my foam in place with my low-temp glue gun (don't use a high temp glue gun with foam, you'll cry and it will melt and you'll be very sad)


I painted the whole bed with my cheapo dollarstore white paint and used some Tim Holtz Distress Ink Walnut Stain stamp pad around the edges of the bed just to give it some definition.


I stole some of my husbands old PJ's (yes, I really did!) that he didn't want anymore (well, there's a hole in them now, so he'd be chilly...so I hope he doesn't want them anymore...) to make the bedspread and folded and hot glued it into place in the position I wanted.


Then I took an old sheet and tucked it in underneath and hot glued it into place as well. I sure do love my hot glue - haha! I used sharp scissors to cut the material down to size.


I used the same sheet to make a matching pillow and stuffed said pillow with said sheet (who said it had to be stuffed with cotton? Not me, that's for sure!)


My little baseball kit came with the bat on the left looking as such, but of course I wasn't satisfied, so I took some electrical tape (right) and cut it into a small strip to wrap it around the bottom of the bat.


The effect is a more defined bat - it might not be highly noticeable in the scene, but I notice and I'm all about the tiny details.


I cut out ALL the baseball cards from my collage sheet and stored them in my little box here - seriously, there's so many baseball cards, I'll never run out. I only used a tiny bit for this scene and I have a tonne left over!


Full side one.


Foot of bed view.


Full side two.


Back of bed view.


Some books on the ground with baseball cards.



The bed is scattered with baseball cards.


The baseball, glove and a book.


The little sluggers favourites!


The baseball bat.


A cardboard box I made from scratch and filled with "Baseball books"


The pillow.


The bed itself.

Thanks for checking in with me and I hope you liked this little detour into the normal!

Materials List

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Aldraths Academy

Goodmorrow my fellow crafters and miniaturists! Today I'm presenting to you something that I've been agonizing over for ages now because it is just so completely stuffed full of magical goodness, your eyes just won't know where to land, so let me ease you gently through the tour of the Headmasters very messy office in Aldraths Academy.

To begin, Aldraths Academy is not Hogwarts. It's not, but it totally is. But it's not. Except it is. Not.


As you know, I'm a big fan of roughing things up. I had this lovely pristine desk to work with and so of course, I had to take a nail file to it to make it look like it had been sitting in the Headmasters office for the last century or so. I hit every edge with the file I could.


I even did the drawers as you can see here. I found it really made the whole desk "pop" out from the background as well. Obviously if you're doing a desk scene, you don't have to do this. but I'm very fond of ruining nice and sparkly things as you may have noticed.


One of my main go-to craft supplies for this whole scene were some of the Tim Holtz alcohol inks (check out my materials list at the end of the post). On the eggs inside jars, I dripped the ink on and then painted on spots to create a more magical, otherworldly egg. However, I was much more blown away by the effect created by adding the alcohol ink to the tiny glass jars you'll see throughout the scenes. I'll point them out for you along the tour.

The Headmasters office in Aldraths Academy. How he actually gets to his chair, we'll never know.


I've recently become addicted to creating stacks of paper.




What good wizard would be without a stack of papers about Conjuration? All tied up and bound with a seal.


An illusion stack and hiding in the bottom an old cabinet photograph.


The old leather wingback chair of the Headmaster, piled with old scrolls and a map.


The messy desk.


This is actually my favourite part. The little vial comes clear, but after you drop a few droplets of red alcohol ink from Alpha Stamps on there and let it dry (it seriously only takes a minute or so), it looks like a healing potion - and it works so perfectly. You could have shelves filled with these and use different shades of alcohol inks to show different kinds of potions. I'm so in love with this and it's seriously the most simple thing in the universe. 


The Headmaster has some acceptance letters ready to be mailed out to prospective students sitting on his desk, along with his morning tea.


Framed portraits of teachers at Aldraths Academy.


School books for the various courses available at Aldraths Academy, along with some magical red eggs.


The shelf above the Headmasters desk, filled with special potion ingredients, scrolls and various other tidbits.


Newtonium Figmule eggs, which are normal brown and white kitchen eggs with blue alcohol ink droplets and some white dots added.


Posters of the 4 Houses.


The beautiful planter and blue plant next to his desk.


More shelf space, with the Headmasters picture in the shelf itself.


Hephaestus the Owl watches over the Headmasters office.


Alpha Stamps Materials



Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Materials