Plastered at Easter

Just after Christmas I wrote that I was keeping some old selection trays to use as plaster moulds (Post Christmas Box Sets) 

It has taken until Easter for me to mix up some plaster and start taking the moulds. 



I think I must have mixed the plaster too thin as after several days it still feels damp and a couple broke when I took them out of the moulds. 

These can be stuck back together, and I still think they have promise when painted up.

Post Christmas - Box Sets

Continuing my gathering of those unexpected goodies that can help the model maker that come at this time of year...

I'm gathering up some of the mince pie trays, sweet and biscuit trays that come from the selection boxes to use as moulds for plaster work.

Not sure exactly what I'm going to get from them yet, but I'll be experimenting in the new year.





This one has potential. Certainly the shield shaped tray.

I tried this a few years back when I modelled some stone pillars from an old chocolate selection tray.

Christmas 2011

   

Vorsteck versatile buildings

Continuing my short collection of posts about the Vorsteck Rock Town.

I think I mentioned that these buildings cost more to make than my usual projects, due to the nature of the building and thus the materials used. For this reason I wanted to be able to use them in more ways than one once their original purpose was finished. So aside from being the underground houses of Vorsteck I wanted to add adaption packs for them to turn them into various other countryside cottages.

The images that I had in mind came from the Torchwood episode Countryside where a small community of locals had some very unpleasant dietary habits, and the stone cottages of the recent remake of The Wolfman.

I built the basic house shape from four sides of rectangular foam board. I did not use the usual shape for the small sides with triangle roof as I had envisaged the Vorsteck houses as having flat roofs as there would be no rain to content with underground.

I built the flat Vorsteck roofs as being detachable from the main building, and then started to build additional separate roofs that could rest on top, and built them so that these roofs could be swapped when required for the flat stone of Vorsteck, or thatched or tiled country cottage roofs.

The windows and doorways I cut out so that they were open, the wet DAS putty I used to frame the cut edges of the foam board so that the frames were still stone looking but also more robust than just the tiled stone effect.

Because I was going to curtain the windows and doors with fake algae (see next post) I needed to have a way to fix them inside and still be changeable. I built up the insides with off cuts of foam board and covered them with card making insert areas to mount different effects for windows and doors. For the doors I made additional wooden doors stuck to card which could be slid in to these slots when I wanted the buildings to be cottages on the moors and the windows were shuttered by the addition of inserted clip in wooden panels made to look like closed shutters.

As each building was slightly different in size and shape each building had to be numbered and each set of adaption pieces made separately and also numbered so that they could be easily attached to the right buildings. I haven’t yet completed the adaption pieces for all the buildings as these were not priority but I think over all this is going to work to allow these buildings to have a varied lease of life.

NEXT: Vorsteck the algae curtains



Welcome to Vorsteck

This is the first of my short series of posts on the rock town of Vorsteck, built for a game that will now, I suspect, never get played. The irony of the whole thing is this was the project this blog was initially set up to talk about. I expected BigLee to report on the game and I would follow up as it were on the other channel with some behind the scenes extras.

That aside here at last are the buildings of Vorsteck.

The Brief:

A town built underground, carved from the rocks and built using just rock boulders. There is no wood used for building, except maybe the very odd piece that has found its way down. The windows and doors are curtained by dried algae taken from the underground lake. There is a ruined area off in one direction and a large town hall / palace building in the centre.

Unfortunately the palace building was never completed; the basic frame was built from recycled cartons and boxes to reduce some of the cost, but was thrown away during the great purge and clear up as it had not progressed any further than being a pile of glued together boxes.

The majority of these buildings used bought materials rather than recycled materials because of the nature of the buildings, so for these buildings to never be used is a bit of a disappointment, although I’m sure BigLee will come up with an idea for them in the future and the design I went with was with the intention of making them multipurpose so maybe all is not lost. (More on that later)

The build consisted of several box houses all of varying size designed to look as if they had been completely built of stone. These were made from foam board covered in small DAS putty tiles which were made separately and glued on.

For other buildings where they were designed to look as if they had been built directly into the rock face, plaster moulds were used to form the ragged rocks, and they were fixed to the foam board skeletons. Then additional DAS putty stones were attached to show the additional building work. The plaster rocks took some fixing and at first proved to be very heavy.

A number of the pieces I built for the ruined castle set were also going to be made available for some of the ruined buildings of Vorsteck.


For this reason there were no additional wooden fixtures put on to the castle-ruin pieces and no foliage either. Next year I’ll be completing these pieces with the extra decoration that until now has not been added.

NEXT: Vorsteck versatile buildings

Christmas Cards and Recycled Goodies

As this is probably my last post before Christmas let's have a few mumblings on the subject.

There is a lot of debate these days around Christmas cards, the cost of cards, cost of postage and the save the environment bandwagon, but I bet those people who use that as an excuse not to send cards still make more than their fare share of rubbish for the next bin collection over the festive period. 

Personally I still prefer that personal touch of a card written / scribbled (delete as applicable) by hand.

The designs vary from festive, wintry scenes, jokey and religious but this year I seem to have received more scenic and olde world house cards than usual. 

I'm thinking some family and friends may be secret readers of the blog, if so thanks very much. These cards will be added to my folder for ideas for next year, especially these two cards cut out in house shapes. I'm already thinking of building these two as models next year.

It's the season to over indulge on sweets, mince pies and numerous other treats. After munching my way through these I often then start examining the packaging wondering what can be made from them. Some of the things I'm planning on keeping hold of are any coloured transparent wrappers from a well know sweet assortment, these are good for coloured effects on fire places, windows etc.. 

I’ll be collecting some trays from mince pies, chocolates, and biscuit assortments, as these I've started using as short term plaster moulds. These columns I made by taking a casting from a sweet tray, only filling the cup parts to form the round stones I stacked up to give the pillars some height, whilst I filled some of the indents fully to make the bases with pillars. Let’s see what this year’s trays inspire.

 ... and with that I'd like to wish my readers a Merry Christmas and I'll see you in the new year.