Once Upon A Time.....

Once upon a time a miniaturist starting to build a castle room!  (Screeching halt!!)  Yes I did start one back in 2010!  Yes I said 2010.  This is the prototype (not my finished work).  I had grand plans to make it into an old restored castle room in today's world, something straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest!  (Screeching halt again!!) 

Then I did the unthinkable, I carved one wall incorrectly, and I promptly packed up the castle and stored it away in my workroom.  Nothing brings me to a halt faster than making a mistake!  What me, yes me, I get so discouraged I have to walk away from the project and move on to other work.  Which I did. 

 

As I started one project after another, the castle room kept calling out to me, "What about me, what about me?", (guess the old castle is haunted by ghost!)

 

So while paint was drying on all the mini accessories for my other projects, I took the castle room out of it's storage area and sized it up.  Started thinking, what if I painted one wall and see if I could hide the incorrectly carved wall in the painting.  The plans called for adding sand to the paint to give the walls a feel of real stone, maybe with a little spackle and a lot of sandy paint, I could hide my mistake.

 

Well I started to paint the walls, first coat has to be very dark, (it will be lighter I promise).

 

Still have lots of builder foam to paint yet, plus the carved wood floors have to be painted.

 

Here's a close up of the first coat.  I had to run a skewer stick through the grout lines to make them more pronounced.   You can still see the pink lettering of the builder foam, but there are many more layers to go.  I had to give the walls a rough brushing after they dried to get rid of all the clumps of sand made from dragging the skewer stick through the grout lines.

 

The masked areas denote where walls have to be glued, so the masking tape will be removed later once I glue the walls together.

 

Here's a sample paint board I did at Camp, back in 2010.  This was the first coat.

 

Then a lighter second coat.

 

And still a lighter third coat.  This is more the colour I am aiming for in the end.

 

So don't think I have fallen through the cracks (of the castle) again.  I am still here, still reading everyone's blog postings, following everyone's miniature Facebook pages, and quietly (cough, cough) working away. 

 

It's been a stressful week of work and doing this aimless painting has been very therapeutic.  Now if I could only make miniatures all day long and not have to go to work!  Then I wouldn't have any stress at all. (But really I would be stressing out about having no job)

So until the next time......

I'll be searching for that Pot of Gold, or that lucky winning lottery ticket, or that rich husband, (scratch that one, already have a wonderful husband!)

 

Wanda