lalalala!
i'm an artist and a perfectionist - meaning i hate showing off my work. but maybe you won't see all the tiny mistakes i hate. hell you might even enjoy it.
my second original miniature build is one of many i plan to make in a series for my lol dolls. in order to curb my impulses to keep buying those little gatcha balls that are soooo satisfying to unwrap, i made myself promise that each doll would get her own little room for a larger dollhouse i plan to build. The garden was the first one because i got the perfect green box base to put them in.
there were a few things i knew needed to exist in this build.
Originally I'd also thought about including a horse shelter. I'd gotten a random horse toy along the way, but over the course of building I nixed that and turned the whole thing into the shed.
Lastly I knew i wanted to use as much natural elements as I could, but keep it true to LOL and not get into gritty realism. At the time I'd been watching a lot of DnD builders making cool fake dirt and wanted something similar... but I also had a lot of leftover green turf from my first cafe set build.
i accidentally ended up spending way too much time in the beginning for what ended up showing - but to keep my environment feeling nature based but also synthetic I wanted to make part of the flooring from a puzzle I was gifted. my mom likes to do a lot of puzzles based off impressionism because of the challenge.... not me though. I'm very bad at telling the different blobs apart. It was a great idea to upcycle it this way... but putting together a fraction of the puzzle to get to where i could use it in the build.... was ... impressively long
but let's move past that
once i got a workable section of puzzle to glue to the bottom of the box I covered the edges with the turf scraps I'd saved. I was able to make a lot of natural holes and curves just from the shape of the scraps. But how to blend it all together?
This next part was clearly inspired by my youtube search history. Using some spackling i layed a foundation to add more grit and natural elements. I collected some dirt outside and pressed it in over the super obvious holes and cracks. I think I added some modge podge over the grass and puzzle pieces to give it a lighter dust as well. i dont remember, I did this ages ago. next time i'll take better notes.
The largest piece for this build was a garden shed (formerly intended to be a horse barn). I frankensteined this structure out of a jewelry box container, leftover ply wood, and cardboard. I used cereal boxes to create the shingles and added a nice white dry brush over them to make it look a little more rustic. You can see on the side where I glued random plywood to make a garden workbench and little shelves. Did I mention this was the first time I learned about dry brushing this craft?
