'Sleeping beauty'-esque scenic diorama

[JGroeling 674]

Hey all, havent been around in a while due to work/life. Getting back to sculpting some things for fun and wanted to do a sleeping beauty scene with Reaper's sleeping beauty. 

 

 

The idea is to have an ascending staircase up to her on the bed, the sides and an archway above her all wreathed in growing vines and thorny brambles covered in roses. Will probably either find and convert a prince charming climbing the steps, or custom sculpt it. 

 

(All those little circles are going to be roses)

 

Right now I'll be sculpting in a lot of the base work (some fun stuff under the stairs), but looking for any tips/tricks on how to make thorny looking vines and roses. Oooor if anyone knows of somewhere to buy either of those things.... gonna need a lot of roses for what I have in mind. 

 

This one will likely take a long while to complete due to other projects, but think it'll be worth it. Any help and/or links appreciated.

Edited November 21, 2018 by JGroeling
Title change

[lexomatic 8438]

I think there's  maybe a thread somewhere by @Corporea

[LittleBluberry 35706]

Probably a good first step is to look up instructions on how to make frosting roses.  I remember Corporea's explanation on making flora elements and the best advice I got from that was to make them as separate elements and to make a lot of them.  I tried sculpting roses once and found that it took a few tries to get them small enough to be the right scale, the first few were just too big.  To get the right scale you'll probably also have to simplify and do fewer layers of petals.  

 

If I was going to do a bunch of climbing roses I would probably look for the miniature barbed wire you can get for military dioramas and see if that could work for the thorny vines.  If not, the thorns probably would be too small to be noticeable if you omitted them.  Then I'd sculpt roses and leaves on bits of wire and use just the wire as the stems twisted around the archway.  

 

Being able to buy pre-cast resin roses (like pumpkins or skulls) would be amazing, but I've never seen them.  A good place to look for bits would be the jewelry section of a craft store, but the roses I've seen in the past were all bigger than a 28mm mini's head.  So scale can be a major problem.  

 

I'll be very interested in following the progress of this project, though.  It sounds epic!  

[Rigel 10115]

I'd say a lot of florists' wire twisted into brambly tangles, adding your own thorns with tiny tiny daubs of some kind of cohesive plastic medium. You know how silicone caulk leaves sharp (but flexible) peaks when you pull the caulking nozzle away? If that can be replicated at pinpoint scale it might  work, without tattering your hands on wire barbs. Though I *would* like seeing that diorama barbed wire in action, as @LittleBluberry advises!

At this scale, and with a design this beautiful and elaborate, I think one would have to be a real grump to complain about lack of verisimilitude if you just used crimson flock for individual roses. But my standards are fairly low, so take that with a grain of salt. 
 

[Glitterwolf 202439]

I used crimson flock to emulate roses.

 

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/77556-kaladrax-on-her-mausoleum-by-glitterwolf/

 

 

[Sibling 1644]

You can make roses out of ribbons. I’m not sure that you could make them small enough for what you want to do here.

 

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/m.wikihow.com/Make-Folded-Ribbon-Roses%3famp=1

Edited November 19, 2018 by Sibling

[JGroeling 674]

After some searching, seems the florist wire (barbed wire approach) may be my best bet, just need to experiment a bit first. For the roses, seems I'm going to have to figure out how to sculpt them and make a bunch. Will update again tomorrow once glue from today's additions dries. 

[Brianuk 4436]

Javis (model railway supplier) do some nice creeping vines (spring, summer, winter) and perhaps you could add flock or greenstuff roses to that. 

 

Or see if bead suppliers on ebay make anything at the right size. 

[JGroeling 674]

9 hours ago, Brianuk said:

Javis (model railway supplier) do some nice creeping vines (spring, summer, winter) and perhaps you could add flock or greenstuff roses to that. 

 

Or see if bead suppliers on ebay make anything at the right size. 

Javis has some cool vines but not quite what I'm looking for on this. 

 

Did do some searching for beads and/or small flatback roses, unfortunately think they're all too large for my needs, so, back to the drawing board. 

----------------------------------------------------

Update: built the arch over the bed, and got the walls up, still need to putty/damage a few spots on the bricks. Underside needs a lot of work, and debating if a second arch over the base of the stairs makes sense or too obtrusive. 

 

Gaps between the steps and walls are going to be filled with the rose vines, dirt, and leaf detritus. 

Edited November 19, 2018 by JGroeling

[Glitterwolf 202439]

Very cool!

[Rahz 7265]

Very cool stuff!  Looking forward to more!

[malefactus 53897]

Scenic Express has a brier patch & rose bushes available also.

Edited November 19, 2018 by malefactus

[lexomatic 8438]

Ziterdes lasr cut rambler rose looks possible from a product page on my flgs internet is bad so I cant look for an image

[Heisler 10717]

Definitely Scenic Express. Type in climbing rose and you will get all sorts of options, including non-rose options that might work as well.

[Warlady 4348]

Looking good!