New Quarter scale cottage/tree house

My current quarter scale house build is a little cottage. I was inspired by a picture I had seen on the internet. It was of a little house built into the top of a tree. So I decided to build one with my own spin on it.

I built the walls in the same manner as my other quarter scale cottage (see previous posts). I built the walls using matte board and then added a layer of paper clay to make the plaster siding. The windows and doors were plastic inserts that I purchased. The stones are paper clay as well.

The roof is small strips of wood veneer that I stained. It is such tedious work! As you can see I only have half the roof completed. I also used the thin wood veneer for trim on the windows, doors and architectural details.

 

 

Ceramic Dice Counters

I decided it's time to continue working on my ceramic dice counters. I like to play Magic the Gathering and whenever I get a new deck I like to coordinate my card sleeves, deck box and dice.

I figured I should try and make some dice counters out of clay. At first if proved quite tricky, when I would go to add the pips or design into the clay it was so soft that it would squish, etc. Soon I realized that if I let it stand in the air for a few minutes prior to shaping my dice, the surface becomes a bit more firm and less sticky, making it easier to stamp.

Currently I'm working on D6 (6 sided dice) that feature a design inspired by MTG mana. So far I have made "Island" and "Swamp" mana designs for the #6 of the dice. It's working pretty good so far. I'd like to eventually get some to sell at the local card stores and on my Etsy site. The plan is to get more colors done as well as make D10 (10 sided dice) infect counters.

It's kinda hard to tell from the picture but these dice have been dyed with blue color. The clay dries lighter in color. Below the drier black dice have a grey appearance. I'm hoping that once I bake the dice in my kiln the colors will be vibrant again. If not I may have to try using a sealant to bring out

the colors. 

A nice close up of the Skull dice. When they are dry I want to color in the pips and skull design white. The blue Island dice will get dark blue pips and water drop design.

Etsy store is now open!

My Etsy store is now open! You can now check out my miniatures for sale on Etsy.

Etsy store: gkminiatures.etsy.com

The following pictures are a few of the items I have listed in my Etsy store. I have not finished stocking my site, so there will be new listings added over the next few days.

My new picture/camera set up turned out great. I was able to take some relatively nice shots that weren't blurry and showed nice details. The tripod in particular was fantastic and I used a Bluetooth camera shutter button, so every time I took a picture nothing was touching my camera and causing any kind of vibration or movement that could affect my pictures.

I'm back!

Lately I've been working on making 1:12 scale miniature dishes and filling them with polymer clay foods. I'm also in the process of setting up my Etsy store. Hopefully it will be up and running in the next few weeks. The goal is to try to take some decent photos of my work. Unfortunately with my current set up I often get blurred images when I try to get the close up shots of the minis. I have a new tripod and macro camera lens coming in next week so that should take care of those issues. 

So many tiny dishes!

Chocolate boxes and candy dishes :)