Tauster'sTiles

[tauster]

Started a new little project today... yes I know, there's about a hunnerd or so unfinished things on the table, so many that they block the majority of the craft area.

I got two new types of LED chains with tufts of fiber optics, one white and multicolor each. The multicolor version immediately got me thinking of an underdark cavern with strange glowing ...things.



The whole thing needs space underneath for the cables and battery box, so I made a simple frame and taped the cables in place. I also taped the tufts with painters tape to be able to push them through the holes of the rocks.




Large drinking straws for extra protection against glueing the lights in place, as I want to be able to remove them later on.




Tin foil rocks shaped around the straws. I didn't use paper maché because the moisture would cause the birch plywood underneath to warp the whole project into oblivion.




I hotglued the tin foil rocks in place, then Lady Forscale interrupted with a disco session. I turned a blind eye to the break - she'll be in deep trouble again soon enough.




I covered the rest of the plywood surface with hotglue, then placed crinkled up tin foil over everything. I hope the PVA will bond with the foil... I wanted a final layer of glue over all everything, so I slathered all surfaces including the rocks with a generous helping of PVA, and with generous I mean like there's no tomorrow generous. I'll see in the morning whether that worked or not...





Next steps:
- cover everything with paper mache
- hide the holes in the rocks enough so that only a thin channel remains open, just big enough for the fibre tufts
- sculpt some nice formations
- texturing (sand, pebbles, small mushrooms, etc)
- paint the whole thing up

[angie1985]

Looks good so far. Can't wait to see the finished board!!

[tauster]

Apr 1, 2018 21:16:06 GMT tauster said:

(...)

Next steps:
- cover everything with paper mache
- hide the holes in the rocks enough so that only a thin channel remains open, just big enough for the fibre tufts
- sculpt some nice formations
- texturing (sand, pebbles, small mushrooms, etc)
- paint the whole thing up

I covered the whole thing with TP, left it a day in the sun to dry and basepainted it black. Yes, that means I skipped three of the planned steps (hiding the holes, decoration, additional texturing). When the black is dry, I'll drybrush it in white to get a general impression on how the whole thing looks, then decide what to do next (a trick learned from deafnala).





...oh, and I added a little permanent resident to the cavern:



Might be a real roper or a statue carved out of the rock by the neighbours, who knows?

[tauster]

Lightly drybrushed with white. As expected, the textures pop out so I can get a good sense of how the cavern might look when finished. Compare the drybrushed texture to the un-brushed spot behind Lady Forscale to see the difference.







Most places have a nice rock-like texture but some places look just like paper, like the rock beneath the orange straw. It even shows a line of circular dots that were impressed in the kitchen roll paper. I'll either have to conceal that with something (pebbles, sand, cave mushrooms, etc) or I highlight it with bright colors or small rhinestones to act like gems. Not sure yet.

[erho]

Leave it, its just a glitch in the Matrix.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

[tauster]

This will be a giant fly base for very large or heavy objects, that would cause smaller bases to topple over.

The company I work for uses a material called Alucore, and I could have some of the scraps like those circles. I drilled a 6.5mm hole in it (shame on me that I didn't hit the center!), that's where the fly stand will go into.



The sides were closed with spackle that I left intentionally a bit rough. I put approx. 2 oz of Milliput on top...




...and walzed over it with a large texture rolling pin from Greenstuffworld. The blank spots couldn't be reached by the rolling pin because the dimples are too deep, something that happens when you don't take enough time to smoothen the whole surface.




I didn't want to leave the blank spots, and the whole thing looked too new and unuses, so I rolled over the whole surface with a crumpled tinfoil ball to add more texture. The whole in the middle is where the acrylic rod of the fly stand will go into.




Can't wait to paint it up. If this works, I might make a whole lot of those things, put them on sturdy acrylic rods and use them on different elevations for a fun platform battle!

[tauster]

Just realized that I never shared the piece painted uo, so here it is, being explored by Fors and Cale:

Close up

In short: It's a total success. I love it. The only thing I don't like is that even with only a thin layer of milliput, you need a lot of this stuff for even a small (150 mm diameter) circle. Sure, that's huge for a base or a platform, but I could get these circles in much larger sizes (200 and up to 350mm diameter, or even larger). Using milliput or other epoxy putties would be too expensive.

So I started playing with recipes for different stuff. More details on that later. The goal is to come up with something cheaper but as durable as milliput, so I can do lots of textured terrain pieces.

And no, clay isn't a candidate. It crumbles and breaks too easily, and it shrinks too much when it dries. I'll try different recipes for salt paste (play dough) soon, plus a variety of ther stuff.

Helpful suggestions welcome!

[angie1985]

I use a homemade playdough recipe (oil, water, salt, flour, tartar) often...as long as you don't try for very thin it works well. Bake as low oven goes for overnight, turning piece a couple times, paint and seal. Have some pieces that I made years ago that are still perfect condition. Hard to make and keep sharp corners though. Works great for stone slabs, stairs etc where an aged look is desired. Just don't drop them or its all over...

[sgtslag]

I searched YouTube for recipes for modeling paste. Found several. I made a few batches, and they worked very well. I forget the exact ingredients, but I believe it consists of: Baking Soda, White PVA Glue, White Acrylic Paint, and maybe something else.

Regardless of the exact recipe, it was very inexpensive, easy to make, easy to use. It is NOT flexible, but it works well as a cheap substitute for hobby shop Modeling Pastes. I used mine to create rough, cavern rock surfaces painting it on top and bottom of pink foam pieces sculpted with a saw (now using a hot wire cutting table). I painted it on the surfaces I needed to texture, then I stippled it with a $1 Paint Brush, from Wal-Mart.

I do not know how fine it can be detailed. It will require experimentation. Cheers!

[tauster]

Thanks, I'll re-try the Baking Soda, White PVA Glue, White Acrylic Paint combo in one of the next experiment. The recipe I used recently took ages to dry, much longer than I seem to remember the combo you mentioned.

I also tried conrstarch, PVA and white acrylic paint, but it forms a hardened shell on the surface, and after that the stuff below can't dry out anymore. So I punched holes through the shell (the holes won't be visible in the build I have in mind) to create some 'breathing channels', which seems to work. It still takes ages for those things to harden completely. Maybe I should try applying the stuff in layers...

[erho]

FWIW, we used flour instead of Baking Soda back in school, by the end of the year we had a bug problem in the project display wall.

The teacher commented that it wouldnt have happened if we put peppermint oil in while mixing.

Take from that story what you will!

[sgtslag]

Flour = Bad (Insect food: attracts bugs, worms, etc. Blech!)

Actually, the recipes I used called for Talcum Powder, not Baking Soda -- I checked. Won't attract bugs because they cannot eat it.  Nice, inert inorganic mineral material; not water soluble, either.  I believe Baking Soda will dissolve in water.  Cheers!

[tauster]

Thanks for the reminder. I used up several packages of corn starch in the last years, but only combined with silicone to make moulds. There is no recognizable starch left when itis mixed thoroughly and after the moulds have completely cured. And honestly, if any bugs are able to digest that stuff, they have earned it.

[erho]

You could use flour, but you would need to roll Initiative every time you grab a piece for the table.

[angie1985]

My "clay" is flour and salt based, made from an non toxic playdough recipe from a daycare, but once is dried in oven, painted and sealed it must no longer be palatable... I have never found bugs in it. Some pieces are 5-6 years old, and they just sit on open shelves in the upstairs game room.

[tauster]

Got the glowing cave finished...just in time for tonight't Combatroom session. Can't wait to see my player's eyes when those whispy thingies light up!

When we came back from our holiday last weekend, my boy wanted immediately to start crafting. Paper maché, no less. We hadn't even emptied the bags, so the last thing I wanted was a water-and-woodglue mess. I could haggle him down to making tinfoil hills, that we later glued on an identical board of birch plywood. Now he has his own cave, sans the lights but with little ponds. I made a frame underneath so that both boards could be placed beside each other without one being higher than the other, and will borrow it for tonight's Tethyamar session.

[margaret]

super cool effect there! And very nice of the kid to lend you his board =)

[tauster]

More stuff to fill the underdark! This time: Another giant stalagmite.

Ever since I saw jennifer 's cavern center piece with the extremely slender waist (is there a terminus technicus for the middle part where stalagmite and stalagtire join???) I wanted to do something similar.

The core. I used a M8 threaded rod and drive-in nuts to make a stable joint.

I screwed the cylindersot the wooden disc and hotglued the disc into the pink foam.

Some foam scraps were made into smaller stalagmites.They are surprisingly sturdy for being so delicate, but wouldn't stand the rigors of gaming without an additional hotglue covering.

When the core was secured and stable, I started to sculpt the rest with tin foil and hotglue.

The other side would have required more foild than I had at hand, so I used packing paper to save on volume. I needed more hotglue that way and more time, but at least I didn't run out of foil. the outer hill was shaped with foil.

 

Then all the smaller pieces were positioned and the whole thing was covered in hotglue.

I painted a small part in black to get a sense of the texture. I don't really like the pure hotglue texture, so tomorrow I'll stipple everything with spackle and hope for the best.

[margaret]

Turned out great!

Apparently it's just called a column once the stalactite and stalagmite join. I think it would usually be pretty hard to tell where the actual join point was.

[tauster]

I tried different textures on the column (thanks, margaret!) but none of them really cut it.

I ended up using a complete tube of repair spackle (the very last bit covered the last empty spot...)

That's better. Lets see how it looks painted up!