I’m sure you’ve all been thinking Phew! thank heaven Sylvia has retired from blogging and quit bugging me Sorry, no, I have just been super busy building a home in which my princess and other characters can act out the beginning of my story. :)
“Blue Peter” was a favorite TV program from my childhood in England and one of the best segments was when the presenters showed you how to use cardboard boxes etc to make dolls house furniture. I spent my youth making shoebox wardrobes, match box chests of drawers, and cotton reel chairs for my toys. I am now well into my second childhood - so here we go again…!
I initially wanted to make a cave home for my princess and so to the annoyance of my husband I brought some big rocks in from the garden (to go with my huge twig collection!) Then I decided to use up my twigs and create a log cabin at one end too. A unique hybrid type of home was formed - I now have a cabin/cave in my studio, and the garden is stripped bare!
Who looks at this and says “Hey, perfect for a fireplace…!” ?
After my success with my little camp fire one thing I was excited to make was a fireplace. I began with a piece of packaging that came with my new studio light. I cut out a fireplace opening and hot glued a bunch of stones from the garden on to it.
A cosy fire.
I created the actual fire by gluing little pieces of twig to a battery operated tealight (2 for $1 at the dollar store) and adding some wool for flames. The light flickers and ended up looking really effective in photographs and I am thrilled to bits with it! I also hot glued some flat stones together to make a hearth in front of the fireplace, and (in a fit of madness) used some excess hot glue to make “candles” which sit on the rocks of the fireplace. My inner child is euphoric!
First empty the box of wine - hic! - then build the log cabin!
To make the log cabin part of Nieva’s home I cut one side off a large box, made a window and door and proceeded to glue my twigs to the inside walls. This took a lot of hot glue and time, as the twigs I have are mostly curved and had to be cut into smaller straightish pieces. My apologies to all those familiar with log cabins because this is not structurally correct, But, hey, this is fantasy…! My window has some nice shutters, which open, and the door eventually used up some of my stash of bark pieces and odd shaped bits of wood.
Oil pastel rock background
Once the cabin was finished it became clear that my cave end was a little short on rocks and as I had no room on my table for more stones I decided to create a rock backdrop.
I made this with oil pastels and just placed it behind the real rocks. It looks pretty effective.
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Here’s the overall scene in my studio
In setting up scenes from my story I also needed to indicate the outdoors, so I used one of my oil pastel paintings as a backdrop for the view from the cabin door. The painting featured a poor excuse for bison on it, so I had no qualms about turning them into poor excuses for reindeer. (brownie points for anyone who can find them!)
I played around with my existing fairy furniture (see previous old blogs for that) to organize the living space and voila! a home is made. As you can see, I didn’t make a roof, but use some tissue paper to create different atmospheric effects (warm or cool) inside the “house”.
The completed log cabin interior
Who wouldn’t want to visit this cozy home?!
My story writing continues apace, and I am busy photographing scenes which will introduce my story and also also provide backstory info later on. I am learning a lot about writing, character development, photography, and illustration. And I am only in the beginning scene - there are many more to come. A big challenge!