Current photos of Great Hall

This morning I decided to take a few photos of the pieces we've made recently and of the Great Hall in general.

First up, here's one of the early dolls I've made from polymer clay -- she's actually my first doll -- sitting on our new settle in front of the fireplace I worked on yesterday.  The settle is from an eBay seller. Above her head you can see the brass double candle sconce I painted black.  The rug on the wall I also bought from an eBay seller -- I'm very pleased with it.  The enormous cat's name is Ralph Roister Doister, after one of our cats, whom he greatly resembles.

Here's a complete view of the Great Hall as it looked this morning.  The minstrel's gallery to the left hasn't been glued in place -- we're still working out how the little inhabitants of the castle are going to get to it :)  My husband rejected the stairs I had worked out as unrealistic, so we now think we'll cut a door to it from the library which will be next door in the Tower.

(Am I nuts, or do other people turn on the lights in their dollhouses or roomboxes nearly every day and just gaze with profound satisfaction at the tiny world they're creating?)

Looking at the photo I realize that we really have to deal with those windows -- we haven't figured out the best way to divide them or frame them or anything, so for the moment they're just big ugly holes.

Here's the table, groaning with the books the kids and I made last week.

It's amazing what scraps of leather, pieces of balsa wood and gold paint can do, eh?  This is a very good craft to do with children --even very young ones can produce satisfying results, although you'd have to watch them with craft knives.  If you cut the scraps of balsa wood for them, thin leather can be easily cut with scissors, though.  (The children making these books were 9, 12 and 15).  If you get the grain of the balsa wood going the right way, it looks very like pages when it's been gilded.  If you get it the wrong way (as I did, nearly every time) you just shelve them and hope for the best!

Library Fireplace, day one

The next section of the dolls castle we're going to work on is the first Tower, the one that houses the Throne Room, the Library and the Guest Bedroom.  It's to the left of the Great Hall.

In preparation for that, I'm working on the fireplace that will go in the Library.  It's a basic, prebuilt Jamestown fireplace, chosen because it's reminiscent of a Tudor limestone fireplace (it's almost, but not quite, got the Tudor arch :)

To make it look more authentic, I want to line the firebox with herringbone brick and add a fireback.  My inspiration includes this wonderful, REAL minature limestone fireplace by UK artisan Gavin Poyner:

I recently bought a selection of Malcolm's Miniatures' brick impress molds from Silly Sisters in the Netherlands.  The instructions suggest using air dry clay, which I'd use if I were doing a floor or a wall (I want a brick floor in the castle kitchen, for example).  But I just couldn't see using air dry clay in the rather restricted confines of the firebox.

Polymer clay to the rescue!  I made a paper pattern (see photo above) of the three surfaces I have to cover in the fireplace, rolled out some scrap clay (a particularly virulent yellow) in my pasta machine, cut out the pieces of clay using the pattern and used the mold on them.  (The white you see is baby powder -- first of all on the tile I bake my clay on, to keep the thin sheets of clay from sticking, and secondly to dip my mold into, to keep the mold from sticking to the clay).

Voila!  This works brilliantly -- the pieces of baked clay are stable enough that I could try them in the fireplace for fit and thin enough that I was able to further trim them to size using an ordinary pair of scissors.

I then painted them grey (for grout -- I could have saved this step if I'd made them in grey clay to begin with :). 

Here they are, being worked on for the first layer of colour.  I'm using cadmium red medium, raw sienna, black and burnt umber in various combinations.

This was my first use of the impress molds, and it's far from perfect.  I didn't use even pressure, so some of the grout lines are fainter and less impressed than others. I forgot to stipple or texture the clay after impressing it.   I also messed up the pattern a little :)  Still, for all my faults, I have to say the results are pretty darned good -- well worth the 7 euros for the mold -- and relatively idiot-proof.  Thank you, Malcolm's Miniatures!

This is a close up of the first layer of colour.  I picked out a few bricks in raw sienna, then applied a base coat of red and umber to the other bricks -- the base coat was put on rather "dry", so as to keep it out of the grout lines.  I've drawn in some of the grout with a thinner wash, to make the bricks clearer.  I will clean things up on the next pass, and add some more character and age.

So here it is with the brickwork more or less finished, and the panels in place but not yet glued down.  I've very happy with the brick impress mold and love the contrast between the warm brick and the pale "limestone" finish of the mantel.

Great Hall Chandelier

I wanted a large, central chandelier for the Great Hall, one based on a wheel shape.  There are folks out there making and selling working versions of this kind of period light fixture, but I wanted to try my hand at it myself.

Here's what I came up with.

Black polymer clay is brilliant at imitatating wrought iron, so I based my chandelier on that.  I cut a long strip of rolled clay and wrapped it around a metal lid for a circular tin -- it's about 3.5 inches in diameter, I think.  I baked the clay on the tin.

Wait for it to cool totally before you take it off! It's still quite flexible when warm.

Then I made cross bracing from clay rolls and added twists of thin wire to act as eyes for the chain -- one eye at each end of a cross brace.  Then I made little curved "cups" of black clay to hold the white polymer candles.  I used two lengths of black jewellery chain and hung the chandelier from the ceiling using a couple of lengths of wire, each bent into an s curve.

It's not perfect, but it's surprisingly satisfying and was very inexpensive to build!  Next time I'll figure out how to electrify it ...

Great Hall Lights

David gave me a Dremel-type rotary tool with a range of attachments, so I installed some lights in the Great Hall this morning.
I put a double sconce on the right wall by the door (it's a brass sconce I painted black), the flickering unit in the fireplace and a small pewter finish hanging lantern up in the minstrel's gallery.  I also want to build and install torches in this room, but this is a good start.

Here's what it looked like this evening:

Tudor Bed

I've been housebound for a few days, recovering from a back injury, and inaction combined with a tempting heap of balsa wood proved too much for me :)  I made a Tudorish bed.

I should have taken photos of the process, but it was very much improvisational (to say the least!)  I started with some basic dimensions:  6.5 long by 6.5 tall by 4" wide.  I built the head panel first (without doing all the decorative panelling -- I wanted to wait to see how high the frame would be first), then the decorative posts at the foot of the bed and attached them to a foot board.

I was pleased with the turned posts.  They're just ordinary 3" craft turnings bunged into square balsa wood top and bottom.  I made a real hash of this, so had to cover up my ghastly workmanship with some trim, which, while ghastly in itself, is better than my first attempt!

Most of the trim I cut with scissors -- gotta love balsa wood when you're feeling impatient, eh?

After these parts glued up, I joined headboard and footboard with the side rails.  I used little bits of toothpick as dowels, here, to give more strength to the joints (and to keep the darned thing together while the glue dried.

The canopy went on next, with side pieces, which further strengthened the piece, then, finally, craft sticks (popsicle or ice lolly sticks) were the perfect size for the base slats.  I painted it with burnt umber for a dark Tudor finish.

I'd like to make a fine bed out of basswood or hardwood, with everything just so, and a rope support for the mattress, but for two afternoons' work, I'm perfectly happy with this one!

Great Hall Fireplace, day 3

Yesterday I assembled the fireplace, and painted it.  I used a base coat of natural titanium (a buff colour) then added layers of greys, finally stippling the surface with umber and black to resemble stone.  I applied scrapbook stickers to resemble the tiles of my inspiration photo and installed both fireplace and chimney breast.  This morning, this is how it looks:

 

I am really pleased with the way my miniature medieval fireplace turned out!  It looks like stone and has exactly the feel I was hoping for.  I love this photo, taken from the left hand door -- it looks perfect to me, and I have a wonderful sense of accomplishment :)

Great Hall Fireplace, day 2

Having designed the fireplace, it's time to build it.  Here are all the components, cut out -- two uprights made of laminated plywood, a lintel made of balsa wood (6' wide by 1.5 inches deep), two pine corbels cut on our electric fretsaw, and two purchased pressed wood appliques, bought at Lee Valley Tools.

I glued them all together with white carpenter's glue like so:

Now I just wait for them to glue up ...

Painting bricks on the castle walls

Today the girls painted the exterior of the castle.  The girls who did the painting are 12 and 9 years old, respectively.  To simplify things, I had them paint the entire exterior pale grey (I used latex primer with a bit of artist's acrylic black added).  Then they "stamped" blocks on the outside using small pieces of cellulose sponge -- we had four colours:  dark grey, light grey, medium brown, light brown and they just alternated colour randomly.  It worked much better than I thought it would!

We set the block colours out on paper plates:  each colour had its own plate and sponge:

 

 

Furniture from balsa wood

Here are my first table and chair, made of balsa wood.  They're extremely rough, and I shall make better versions soon now that I know what to expect, but they'll do for now.

The table is 10" long and 3" wide. Both pieces are balsa wood, put together with wood glue and, in the case of the table, pegs made from toothpicks.  I scored the top of the table with a blunt pencil before construction, to make it look like boards.  I painted them with my "Tudor wood" blend paint:  one part raw sienna, two parts burnt umber and some water.  Then I varnished them.

Great Hall Fireplace

It's fireplace day!

First of all, this is my "inspiration" photo.  It's a medieval fireplace in the Tower of London:

Our backstory for this castle is that it was built in the 12th century, and has been remodelled by the early Tudor family who is now living in it.  Some rooms will be more Tudor in mood (wood panelling, etc.) but we imagined the Great Hall as having a more medieval feel.  The open fireplace is an important part of that feel.

Here are some of the elements of the fireplace stuck together with Museum Putty (it's like Blu Tac, but stickier) in situ, so I can get an idea of how to compose the piece.

The mantel will be supported by large corbels, and the chimney breast will be angled as in the inspiration photo.  I'll paint blocks on the back wall, making them nice and sooty, and I'll put in very sooty Poly Filla "stones" at the base.  The whole piece will be painted to look like stone, and I'll use some tiny stick on tiles to embellish the mantel.

Here it is, in the same shot with the Minstrel's Gallery, to show scale.  It could be bigger (it's 6" x 6") but I'm practising selective scale here, and don't want it too big.

I got a flickering unit for this fireplace during my shopping spree in Toronto last week, and we'll make a nice fire for it to warm up the room.

Here's the  mocked up fireplace, with the back wall painted, a few sticks from my driveway, and the flickering unit.