Building Teaspoon's Lava Rock Diorama, Part 1

Transcript

Okay, so last time we finished our pet. We generated his stats and now we need to make the teaspoon diorama. This is a very old, as you can tell when using mulch and wood chips was the coolest thing to do. Uh, it’s pretty busted up. It’s pretty old.

Uh, I made this when Shadespire first came out and I actually I won best painted Shadespire war band. Um, I’ll see if I have the models that were that used to fit in here somewhere. I don’t think I do anymore. I’m pretty sure if I if I pull this this piece of bark up. It should be magnetized even.

There’s a magnet in here somewhere because this is where the leader stood. It was the the skeleton boys. Uh I played a lot of Shadespire when it first came out. I really enjoyed it. Um it got to just be too too many cards.

I didn’t like how you had to like buy all the expansions even if you didn’t really uh want to play the figures because you needed to get the cards. And there’s definitely a magnet somewhere in this mess. So, I will I’ll try to find it. But, uh I’m going to scrap this. I’m going to rip all this out really.

Actually, I was just able to pull it right out of this little shadow box frame cuz I hot glued it. So, I’m going to throw this in the train bits. I’ll definitely reuse all of this. So, I was actually I just popped those mulch strips off and mostly off and I’ve got a little bit of room in the front here. So, I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to flip this over.

I’m going to cut a bottom the bottom part of this off so it just sits in here a little bit more uh like recess maybe because I want to be able to build up on it. And then this part, uh, I’ll put like some water. I should probably map out a plan actually before I get too destructive here. Okay, so I just shaved off this bottom layer cuz I wanted it to sit like down in the diorama. Like I was trying to recycle all the foam from this.

So that’s why like the off cuts galore, but uh, so the back going to be slightly higher than the front. So you can kind of see if I do this right. I gota I’m gonna cut this. I’ll bevel this so it slants down. Um I got to get the hot glue.

Nothing’s actually glued in. But I just used the off cuts. So these are slightly higher than the ones in the front. I was thinking about it again and I just I just took the wire cutter and I just scraped off the whole top level uh without hitting right here. I guess technically I did hit some of the base material uh and it ripped my wire, which is exactly what I said I wanted to avoid, but that’s okay.

So, we’re going to I think we’re going to roll roll with this. Um I’m going to cut give this a little bit more of a bevel here. And uh this tiny box cutter is probably not the best tool, but it’s what was sitting on my desk. And there’s nothing there’s no tool better for the job than the tool you can reach at the exact moment you want to do the job. And I stand by that.

So, I had this Loctite superglue that I thought was almost empty and it was glued shut. Uh, so I cut the lid off and I was thinking I’d only get a couple drops out, but I actually I had think I’m going to have enough to glue everything down, which is pretty cool. So, I’m just I’ve got the scaffolding underneath it uh in place. getting ready to put our put our filling material on top of it. Uh you can see we’ve got a little bit of variation in the height.

This will be mo all of it’s going to be most like water like it’s going to be like our base. Our goal is kind of this like volcano volcanic reef kind of thing. And I’m just making sure the superlue melts the foam. And I’m hoping it’s going to melt it together. I’m going to come back in with some white glue.

There’s going to be a lot of white glue involved in what we’re doing anyway. So, let this dry. It literally melted. So, now our piece is one solid chunk melted together. Probably not the safest thing to do, but uh now it’s time to get this thing covered up.

project is it’s going to turn into scrap scrap pieces. So, different thicknesses of cork. And I usually uh I got a couple different sizes. This bag is a ton of different different sizes here. So, what what we’ll do, and this is how I made the base, too.

So, there’s it’s a little bit of cork, a little bit of everything. um is you take take the cork pieces and you glue it down and then you rip off the top so that you it’s not obviously cork. And uh we’re going to get into it and we’re going to usually I would sketch this project out. But I’m just kind of having fun not doing that at all. So if I Let’s see.

How do we want to do this? I don’t want this curved shape. So even even if uh I was going to use like that whole piece, I don’t want it to be an obvious semicircle. And this cork specifically uh came from IKEA and you used to be able to get cork really cheap. Let me maybe if I change the angle on this, you can kind of get an idea of the dimensionality on it.

So if we have this this here, maybe this will be our corner corner piece. And so if you come in and it’s easier once it’s based because once it’s based like I’m going to simulate that it’s based if you have it like if you’re making a base for a model, you can come in and you can actually use a pair of pliers and like just rip the top off of it. And like I’m intentionally not just like plucking it. And in some cases you can, but when you do that, you expose like the more I don’t know, fibrous is the word I’m looking for. You you get that texture and it’s not just an obvious piece of cork, you know?

I think it’s it’s really it’s really easy to just throw cork on a base and no matter how you paint it, it’s going to look like cork because very very few places in nature are actually flat on the top. So now by ripping off the top and getting getting it down in there, you can see the difference. Uh hopefully. And I’m gonna save all this cork that I’ve ripped off here, all these chunks, and I’m gonna mix this in later with some PVA glue, Elmer’s glue, and paint. And that’ll help make the texture merge in with the rest of this.

So, this is again, we’re just going to go and uh it’s easier if you have longer fingernails. And you don’t want to use a knife here. You don’t want to cut it. Um, if you, like I said, you can use the pliers, but you have to be careful using pliers, too, because it can become obvious and you can just kind of like scrape it, mess with it. You just want to create rough up that texture so that it’s not obvious.

And you can leave some slat spots like once you get it going. It’s okay to leave a little bit of flat spots, but this is like that secret to using cork and having it not just be like, “Oh, yeah, that dude dude threw some cork on that.” So, see, now we have like this looks starting to look like something, you know? Maybe I’ll throw this piece in the corner to hide what we have going on here. Um, I think I just need to cut this piece of mulch out of here entirely.

And make sure you put your finger right in the line of the razor blade, the dull razor blade, too. So, optimum safety. Uh, that that’s not professional advice. Uh, you’re responsible or whatever. >> If you’re dumb enough to listen to me, that is your own fault.

Uh, so now we can chuck this in the corner to hide hide that maybe corner boy. Little corner boy. Um, and I’m not going to make you watch me dig all the cork off the top. I’m just going to pl it out. And you see you just like you pull it and roll it back.

And that’s how you can break off the edges. Cuz if you if you’re breaking stuff off, like you can take off a ton of your cork like I just did there. I just did exactly what I was telling you not to do. Like I always do. Like I always do.

Okay. Uh and we’re just remember I want to save all that. Uh but I also want you to be able to see what I’m doing here. And uh before we glue, actually I don’t know. We’ll probably put some cork down in here too.

And we don’t I’m gonna use cork at different sizes. So I’ve got those three big pieces. That’s this thicker thicker cork. And we’ve got to we’ve got to put use some cork in here to mix up this coastline, shoreline, whatever it’s going to be. This hole.

And now I think with all of these like all of this and I’ll mix in mix in rocks and sand and all that good stuff. I’m just going to rough I’m going to make sure there’s no like we don’t want any of that where it’s obviously rounded and flat still. So I’m just going to pinch this all up. I’m going to break this all down, you know, uh as one does. Okay, we’ve got trusty glue bottle.

We should get our finished model out of here before we mess them up. All right, I just want to show you this before. I’m just going to come in and I’m going to score the bottom of this with our knife because we want places for the glue to soak up into the piece of cork. I’m going to do this on all the bigger pieces. The smaller ones is not a big deal.

Uh but we definitely want to rough up the bottom of this or otherwise it’ll all just peel off. Okay, so I roughed up I kept this one intentionally flat cuz I’m going to add I want I just wanted a flat platform to work with. And I’ve covered this thing in a bunch of glue. And now you can see I wanted to make sure I had these holes filled in, but I didn’t want to make it obvious. Like if I if if there’s holes that are obviously filled in, then you just have obviously filled holes.

You know what I mean? So we I want I I’m just building up texture. And this this stuff isn’t gonna be perfectly locked in at this stage, but there’s going to be so many other layers that go on top of this that it’s okay. And so I’m just I’m breaking everything up at a a finer level again. Just grinding it in and trying to find some of the finer pieces of cork just so there’s not you don’t want to have an obvious glue line if you can help it because that’s just less less things you have to pick.

And I honestly should probably have gone and gotten some sand and that’s going to be the next step anyway. So, I pull this stuff off of here, finish up this coastline, and I’m working on my cutting mat because there’s definitely going to be glue that falls, slips in between the cracks and everything, and that’s okay. That’s kind of what I want to do cuz there’s a glue that does stay behind. Uh, yeah, and there’s big puddles of glue underneath me, which is fine. Uh, it’s just going to happen, you know.

That’s just what uh this will however much glue you think you need, do way more and just have something good that’s going to catch it, you know. And so we’re just going to fill in this crack now with all of our little chunks. And the I like to use these. These are these. My cutting mat right now is like one of the cheap flexible cutting boards from the dollar store.

I like using these because they’re flexible and like extremely flexible. I know that the normal cutting mat is flexible, but this I can like almost fold completely in half as long as I don’t crease the edge. And I’ll just be able to pop all that glue right off. And even if this thing ends up glued to the the board, we’ll be good. So, and and now it’s about to be time to go.

I’m just going to I’m sprinkle I’m going to sprinkle some more of these chunks in this line of glue I just laid down. And this is the fun part. Like, you can’t mess this up. You’re literally just gluing trash together. You’re gluing trash together.

What? How could you possibly glue trash together incorrectly? I’m pulling out these big chunks down here. And let’s And this glue mixture is not just glue. It’s glue and isopropyl alcohol, which is why it looks I probably honestly need to add a little bit more isopropyl alcohol, but it’s going to flow down into the cracks and everything.

So, we’re using this mainly to hide where all of our pieces of foam that we salvaged meet and to cover up the holes in the foam. Cuz we’re still we’re going to hit it with sand. We’re going to hit it with other cool things. And there’s going to be a massive puddle of glue underneath it. But now we get this foundation in here and things won’t look so bad.

Goal is to get all this trash glue together tonight. Get the sand on it. I’m going to let this dry a little bit before I add the sand cuz I don’t want the sand to just obliterate everything. Okay. Uh, and now we’ve got uh pop this razor blade out of here.

And that’s why I like having a leather one at my desk. It’s like don’t need to reach all my other tools. So, pop this pop this razor blade out and then kind of use it as a bench scraper. Maybe if I can unscrew it. screw has way more thread than I thought it did.

Okay. So, like come here, you know, just going to scrape all this stuff the end of my big chunky boys. And you definitely don’t I don’t want to move this around cuz you can see there’s a ton of glue under there. And as long as none of the glue hits out to my edge, I mean, even if it does glue itself, it’s Elmer’s glue. So, I’ll just be able to pry it off the bottom, but I would prefer that not happen.

So, again, you know, just cutting up I wanted I want this to be finer. That piece might just be too big for what I’m going for right now. So, again, you just cut it up. These extra This is all the stuff that just fell off. And now I can pinch it and just get it in.

It’s I’m putting this where any place where the glue has puddled because even with basing texture, it’s going to be hard to correct a glob of puddled ink or puddled glue. And that’s also why I was saying I probably should have more isopropyl alcohol in here cuz if you have enough isopropyl alcohol, it’ll just keep flowing and it won’t puddle up in obvious puddles. But I think I think we’re good because most of this we’re going to be this front side will be painting blue. All right. And any anything that’s not locked in place will be locked in place.

Like this stuff at the edge right here. I’m going to put sand there. I’ll glue. Actually, let’s go ahead and just glue some. So again, scoring the underside of these chunks.

scoring there. Big way more glue than I possibly would ever need right there. And let’s hit here. And again, we’re just we’re using the chunks of cork now to break up the space and just make it look organic and not like we just had a bunch of old foam. Way more glue.

No such thing as too much glue until you have put too much glue. But you’ll be you’ll be very aware at that point. So, I think uh I think we might be done for the day. I don’t know how I I’ll check it tonight if I can get the sand on it tonight. Uh the problem is I want to I don’t want to have a ton of sand on here.

And when I knock the excess sand off, I don’t want to take all the cork and stuff with me. So, I need it doesn’t need to be perfectly dry, but I need I need the cork to be uh dry enough to not fall off with the sand is what I’m trying to say. I don’t know why that thought just totally left me. Totally left me. Um, and as as you get towards the end, you’ll see the spots like over here doesn’t have anything.

Over there doesn’t have anything. Let’s just put a dollop of glue. And this is our last little bit of cork. This just needs to be enough to tack it down. Uh you can kind of see like I I want there to be obvious spots where I’m just going to bop my guy around.

So I can I can move them around here. On this flat spot, I’m going to add basing texture. And same on these these flat spots. But I just I wanted a foundation if I wanted to put vegetation or plants in where all my material wasn’t totally gone. I can always go back in and scrape it off.

once it’s once it’s glued in there. So, now I’m going to let this dry. And honestly, I might even hit it with some matte spray after the glue dries, just so I know a lot of this stuff is just kind of there. It’s holding on uh like over here. And the matte spray, it won’t permanently lock it in place, but it’ll keep it in place long enough for the paint and the other rest of the glue and stuff I put on it to lock it in place.

So, uh in case I don’t come back tonight for sand, I’ll see you tomorrow. >> I was afraid it was going to happen happened. So, I came down here to check it just because I had a feeling I maybe it was a little bit too much glue. Uh, so it did pull in the corner as you can see. So, I’m going to keep I’m going to flip this back around.

So, obviously my desk has a slant. So, now all that stuff will run back the other way and hopefully it dries. >> Cardboard box with packaging material on the floor trick. So, now it’ll all run to to this corner and fall down there and it won’t pull on the actual frame itself. And if it does, I’ll just peel it all off cuz it’s Elmer’s glue.

You know, one thing I want to talk about before I actually wrap this is this little hole right here. Things like this are spots where you can add character elements or characterful, is that a word? Elements to the diorama that really like kick it up a notch. So, like I could put a skull down in there. I could put maybe like the glint of some treasure down there.

I could put a tentacle coming out. I could put a claw coming out. Uh there’s just something there. And I’m I’m intentionally going to leave that crevice in there because it’ll it’ll draw the eye. The people you want to put little Easter eggs in for people who are actually looking at the diorama to find.

Uh so I don’t know. I’m pretty happy with how this looks already. Actually, it’s turning out great. I got to paint that Bellwoken guy in the back uh soon. Uh my plan is to have that done this week for the competition, the Belling competition.

And I also I need to paint something for Westfalia’s competition too. That’s due on the 3rd. But here we go. Uh, it’s already looking pretty good in my opinion, even though we’re still in the glue trash glue phase. See you tomorrow.