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The Day of the Dead Fairy Tavern "Zapata's Skull & Rose" This is a present for my daughter, so the pictures are of the tavern just before we left to take her back to Buffalo. The glue holding the grass around the base is still curing and my quick studio backdrop is a large cardboard box. However, I present to you the tavern... To see more of how this came about, you can checkout my Work in Progress post. Enjoy!

It's the holidays, so I present to you ... The Day of the Dead Fairy Tavern "Zapata's Skull & Rose" Okay, it's hokey, but my daughter enjoys the masks and such from the Day of the Dead and as I was trying out my homemade paper clay, I started to shape the fairy garden house. When I placed the windows where they ended up, they reminded me of a cockeyed skull and the idea was born. The List Das Air Dry Clay Two Plastic Bottles of different size with the bottoms cut off. Glue Gun and Hot Glue Aluminum Foil Painters or Masking Tape Cardboard for the base Extra Plastic from Product Packaging Homemade Paper Clay Construction First off, if you haven't had the chance and want to do something like this ... I do plan to make terrain, etc. using these components ... I suggest Creative Mom's YouTube channel. Yes, it's all Fairy Homes and such but she does a damn good job on construction and design using the above components. They are lightweight and durable and hold a solid edge if you want to use any of those cool terrain stamps many of us bought into or a mold. I hot glued the two bottles together so the cut ends are flush. I used a lot of glue to ensure that they were together solidly. Then after measuring a terracotta pot against the cardboard round from a frozen pizza, I glued the bottles to the cardboard. I wanted to ensure that there was space to glue the base to the pot's rim but not have the building flush to the edge. I then glued some aluminum foil to the bottles to form some shapes. The "hat" was planned all along but it's going to be a sombrero now. So I glued a ring of foil around the bottle top and then added foil over the ring and flattened the edges. To strengthen the form and blend the bottleneck out a bit I used the painters' tape around the brim and across the back where the "smokestack" comes up. To help bridge in between the two bottles a bit more I added a rope of foil from the front to the back in an arc and glued it down. Then I added more foil atop the cap of the second bottle to make it taller like and then used more foil and painters' tape to make it more of a long neck bottle. I glued a rectangle of packaging to the front as a box window. With everything constructed, I spackled the shape with the Homemade Paper Clay. The reason I used the Homemade Paper Clay first is that I used recycled shredded paper instead of toilet paper to make the clay so it's very, lumpy. The initial skinning of Homemade Paper Clay. The Stucco From here I wanted to apply a smoother surface for the finished product and wanted to add some sculpting. So instead of using a finer Homemade Paper Clay, I went for my Das Air Dry Clay. I created the skull face first. Then tonight I skinned the "bottle" side of the tavern adding a petal edge to the front and back around the neck and blocking out the window. What's Next? Well, I have to finish the back of the skull side and then the sombrero. I have three Day of the Dead skull buttons I am going to embed in the sombrero per fairly common costumes. I'll also add a bunch of details to the building and naturally, I will do my usual work on the ground. There are a lot of skulls that show a thin mustache for male ones, so I think I might make a series of boards tacked up to make a thin mustache to frame the doorway. This is a vector skull I manipulated to sort of match my quazy skull face. I am thinking of doing it black on white like this. As usual, thoughts and comments are welcome. Enjoy and Stay Tuned!

I was in my local Dollar Tree over the weekend, and noticed they too had jumped on the Fairy Garden bandwagon. The have an assortment of blister-carded figures, of which this set of mushrooms seemed the most useful. There was also an assortment of poorly sculpted fairies, and another assortment of cartoonish animals. They also have a selection of buildings, like the twig and leaf gazebo above, and those shown below. As is typical, they are a little soft on detail, but may be spruced up a bit with paint. I may go back and get one of those mushroom houses to see if I can improve it a bit with a proper paint job. They also had an assortment of artificial succulents that would make good judge foliage.

Mom's Birthday Present 2017 Wall-Mounted, Lighthouse "Fairy Garden" A while ago, I found a plank of boxwood for sale in Michael's. It had a slight s-curve to it and looked cool. So I thought it'd make a cool backboard to a hanging plant display. Well as some of you can plainly see, it turned into a full blown construction project. Checkout the full WIP for details on the planning, pieces-parts and what went into it. The bark crested pot on the left is open for my mother to add her own "fairy garden" elements. She's been talking it up for a while. Now she has no excuse. The top soil has moss that's been growing out back of my house for two seasons mixed in so it will regrow on the surface of the garden. Plant life: Top Left: Begonia Rex (Painted Leaf Begonia) Top Right: Dragon's Tongue Large Pot: Rabbit's Foot Fern (you can see one of the "feet" sticking out) The two buckets will likely require re-potting to larger homes and then she can place whatever she likes there. Here's the completed project: Enjoy!

Okay! In lieu of playing with the XBOX as one of my guilty as sin animals gnawed through the charging cord on the headset, I'll start my next WIP thread... From the title, this will actually be 2 WIPs: 1. My 6yr old wants a fairy garden, so a fairy garden she'll have! 2. A Bladesinger Sister that I ordered quite a while back as an opponent to *Varaug, whom I recently completed. So, without further ado, here's the sitch.... Jazzy's Fairy Garden This will be our first attempt at a diorama. Now, please note that this is for a 6yr old and she will be doing a lot of the work along with me, so goodness knows what we'll end up with! I'm not even sure if it will be a permanent fixture, or something she can switch up every now and then. I'm not even sure if she knows exactly what she'll want it to be/do, but we do know that it will have at least one custom tree, Liriel Silverlocks (03398 and 02458, depending on the mood), and a buttload of animals! (02756: Familiar Pack IV & 02848: Familiar Pack V) We'll be doing a large base, fallen trees, leaves, and whatever else my 6yr. old can think of. It should prove to be interesting and she'll be doing a lot of the painting... There may also be an occasional Kagunk (03162) in the woods, although she's not overly fond of the idea... Bladesinger Sister I'll be using model 14645: Bladesinger Sister for this build. I'm honestly a bit nervous about her as she's so dainty and, well, bendy! I'm going from Varaug, who's model seemed to be the definition of sturdiness, to this delicate model. It should be fun at any rate! Right now I'm debating on whether to glue her arm and hand on now, or simply attach them later. I was on pins and needles while drilling out her feet to insert the, er, pins in them. I don't have a definite direction for this build as I'd originally intended her as a combatant for Varaug, but haven't settled on that yet. I may go ahead and go in that direction so I can continue to work on my cork rock basing for now. At any rate, here's Jazzy's Garden Gang and the Bladesinger Sister (I'll have to name her soon...) in all of their *mostly* cleaned up and pinned glory! I'm not priming tonight as I don't feel like washing brushes... I've washed a lot of brushes lately. Enjoy! Comments? Suggestions? Let me hear 'em! *Varaug is here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/53647-varaug-the-great-finished/