The Log Mansion: Bloggin and Loggin!

Good day good folk!

I thought I would do a little update on log cabin I am working on for my customer..(now on referred to Ms. K ;) )

Ms. K suggested the title of this post ..lots of loggin' lately!

I have been cutting log siding over the last few days and fitting them to the front wall of the bottom floor. As you can see I've taped them together quickly for the show:

The issue with any pieced dollhouse like this is when using lines, siding, stone.. you have to make sure that they will match up once the house is glued together. 

Lucky enough Leonards dollhouses are just absolute precision pieces. So there is not much doubt on how it will fit together the dry fit is as perfect as the glue will be!

But with logs they had to be clamped a bit for them to adhere. So each wall has to be fitted and then i laid the first log to make sure the siding line matched.

So the overall front panel of the separate windows and face have a even siding line:

Here is the wood flooring, you can see its cut along the bay windows. For this floor I am using a wood strip sheet that I lined and cut for lay lines.

Ms. K wanted a older stone base for the house, after gluing the base I set about creating a paperclay stone foundation under the deck.

I decided to use a reverse mold pattern for this build. While paperclay stonework is not so difficult for rough stones. This type of foundation has mortar and the stones are set into the face:

So instead of doing individual stones and smoothing the lines I thought doing a mold with the stones poking through the line would be the smart and simple solution.

Instead of doing a line of stoness, then doing a mold.. I found a technique that I used on my Elven Bowyer by creating a stamp mold from polymer clay.

I flattened a line of scrap clay and dented the flat line with some lumpy stone indentations. Easily done with scrap wood for this look. My stones are rotated wooden ends. 

Once I baked my stamp mold, I simply pressed the paperclay into the mold and adhered it to the base

With a bit of pressing about you can see there is no "repeated pattern" And the application for this was very quick and effective!

I will do a bigger post on reverse molding methods at another time, I know a few of you might be drooling at this technique already ;P

Hugs and well wishes to you all, keep crafting!