Lunch Break Hobby Time, Part IV

As you might've seen in my last post, I was going to try gluing part of a dryer sheet to add texture to my A-frame tents. I tried it and was most unhappy with the results.

Even with white Contrast paint, I think it looks awful. The texture is much too large for that scale and makes it look too weird. That base is also way too big (but it's what I had on hand).

So, I've pulled the dryer sheet off and will be starting from the beginning again. Ben from Weasel Miniatures suggested that I try Kleenex (instead of a paper towel) and watered down PVA glue so I'm going to give that a try. 

Cutting up the Kleenex was a bit therapeutic, to be honest. But since this is going to be a bit of a messy endeavor, I'm going to wait until one of my days off to tackle it when I have the time to spare.

While it's frustrating that my initial idea didn't work out, it was worth a shot. I'm learning from my failure here and learning from it. I feel like that's a good lesson for life in general. 

Lunch Break Hobby Time, Part III

While taking out the trash last week, two bits of packaging for our new exercise bike fell out. I instantly had an idea to make A-frame tents out of them. I've been using a lot of my break time to work on them and I think the project is coming along nicely. 

I measured 2 inches and made the appropriate marks. 

The dimensions aren't perfect, but I figure they're good enough for my purposes. Plus I think I'll mount them onto individual bases so that should help with the height a bit.

For the tent flaps, I traced the outline onto some thin bits of cardboard that came with our cats' food. 

Voila! I'll probably cut some flaps open to give it a more realistic effect but we'll see what happens. 

Now, there are two methods I'm thinking of trying from here for texture. One involves a dryer sheet, and the other a paper towel and heavily watered down PVA glue.