Some more dungeon furniture

Hi, everyone. Here are a few more dungeon items. All of these are scratch-built. I forgot to take some in progress pics, though, so I added some after the fact.

Summoning Circle

 The base of the Summoning Circle was made from Hirst Arts Fieldstone parts.

 These are the 2 types of bricks used. The 3 stone piece on the left makes a circle 2 1/2 inches wide. These were used to make the base of the Summoning Circle, pictured below. The longer, 5-stone piece makes a 2" circle.

Big circle above, smaller circle below.

Smaller circle above. Naturally I ran out out bricks for the re-enactment. 

 Pic above: First I tried freehanding cutting out a pentagram. I suck.

Then I printed out a pentagram, much better.

The Pentagram on top was made by printing out a pentagram found with Google. I glued the Pentagram onto thin plastic card, then cut out the Pentagram shape with a hobby knife.

The pentagram was then glued to a circle of plastic card. I then painted the pentagram and glued it to the Hirst Arts pedestal base. I added the red gems by gluing round pieces of plastic card punched out with a 2mm hole puncher. The gems were them painted red with Tamiya Clear Red (TCR).

The Summoning Circle in its natural habitat.

Altar

This Altar was made from some bits from a custom mold and some Hirst Arts bits. The top was cut from a piece of vinyl floor tile.

                           
 Front view: The red gems, tongue and eyes were done with TCR.

 Side view: The Altar was mounted onto a piece of craft foam.

 Back view: I left room behind the altar for a mini to stand.

 Other side: The paint job was a series of grays drybrushed up.

 Here's the Altar with a couple of the new torches, and a mini from the D&D boardgame Wrath of Ashardalon. The boardgame itself is pretty fun and it comes with 42 unpainted D&D minis. Those minis make a nice project by themselves. So far I've almost 15 of them finished.

 This view shows a casualty mini I made a while ago from an old Heroclix mini. Either about to be sacrificed or already was. There's an excellent tutorial for making these casualties on the Combat Zone Chronicles website, here.

 Here's the altar in place in one of the rooms. There's a few other of our recent projects pictured also. The torches, portrait and clock.

Here are a few tapestries. These were made following the directions on the Abaroth's World website, under the heading: Additions and Adornments, under the Tips and Tricks section, here. Abaroth's World is a great site full of useful resources. You should give it a read.

Ingredients:

Toothpicks, different types of beads for the endcaps, and some textured art paper. I'm not sure if this is the same stuff Abaroth used. I bought mine at Hobby Lobby for 49 cents per 8.5 x 11.5 inch sheet.

 Dance of Death tapestry. Sufficiently creepy?

 I searched with google for "free fantasy art" images and printed out 10 different images, sized to 1.75 inches high by whatever width maintained height and width ratio. I used Gimp2 for the photo editing.

The first 2 tapestries were made using strips of the textured paper as hangers from the toothpick rods. The last tapestry (above) has the tapestry glued directly to the rod. I think I like the style with the cloth hanger pieces better.

Idols 

Here are a couple of Idols from another custom mold. I think these originally were part of some toy. A Hirst Arts friend sent me one a while back.

Idols in place in one of the rooms. These were painted with FolkArt Antique Metallic Copper, given a black "magic wash", and then the eyes were hit with Tamiya Clear Green.

Here's the idols with a 28mm mini for scale.

Added in the Altar.

Thanks for looking.

More Stuff for the Dungeon

Hi, folks. We have a few more things for the dungeon. No real tutorials made or necessary for these. First up: Rugs.

I ordered a couple of rugs I saw pictured in a post on the Dwarven Forge forums. The supplier is a gentleman from Istanbul, Turkey. I ordered a couple of the extra-small rugs for $2.50 each. Free shipping. I received the rugs about 2 weeks after payment, which is what they specify on their website, here. They are perfect and I'm sure I will be ordering more and larger rugs soon.

The first one. I was thinking about printing out pictures of rugs, but I'm glad I went with the real thing. I was amazed at the quality of the weave. Even my wife liked them. :)

The second one. 

I think these rugs are very cool and really help make a dungeon a home. :)

How about another rug. This is a bear skin rug I sculpted from Sculpey Polymer clay. Sorry, no tutorial on this one either. I just took a piece of clay, flattened it, shaped it and cut away everything that didn't look like a bear. Then I painted it.

Hmm, I never said it was good. :) But it is vaguely bear shaped. This one looks a lot better the further you get from it. You can also buy miniature bearskin rugs pre-made from a number of manufacturers.

Okay, here's the next couple. A portrait and a wall clock.

The Portrait

I picked up a pony tail holder from Hobby Lobby. I cut off the piece on the back securing the elastic ring to the metal bezel. Found a picture I liked with Google, printed it out and glued it to the bezel. Stuck it on the wall with poster-tac.

There it is. A nice little framed portrait. You can swap out different pictures if you like. You could also buy some reflective material to insert in the frame for a mirror, instead.

The Clock

Another find from the bead aisle. I kinda liked the lizard frame.

I trimmed off the little ring from the frame and stuck it on the wall with post-tac.

Clock and Portrait

So if you have some blank wall space or floor space you want to fill, here's a few options. 

Thanks for looking and I hope you found this helpful.

Making stuff for the Dungeon

Hi, everyone. I'm starting a series of posts about making things for our Dungeons. We have a couple of nice Hirst Arts layouts, and we have some Dwarven Forge Game Tiles coming from their recent wildly successful KickStarter.

 I'll also include some things we've bought instead of scratch-built, with a source in case you decide to buy them, too. A lot of it is stuff made using Hirst Arts molds, some are totally scratch-built or made from custom molds or a combination of sources.

Here's the first little article on torches.

I have a few Dwarven Forge Torches. They are part of one of the Accessory Packs. Very nice. Pre-painted, they are ready to go right out of the package.

I also have Hirst Arts torches I made using one of his many excellent tutorials. I just made one small modification, as you can see. I added a bead to act as a frame for the torch.

This latest project was to make some nice looking torches cheaply, similar to the Hirst Arts project, but not using any HA components.

Here's what you'll need.

Some likely looking beads. I initially was going to use these beads for a variant for the torch top but decided they'd be better for part of the base of the torch stand. The beads came from Hobby Lobby.

These nice filigree beads will be used for a basket for the torch top to hold the flames. Hobby Lobby

Toothpicks or cocktail sticks

These are little 1/2" circular magnets. These will be the bottom part of the base and will help make the torches more stable and less likely to fall over if someone bumps the table. Hobby Lobby

Q-tips. The cotton heads are used to make the flames for the torches.

Here's one of the toothpicks cut down and trimmed, inserted into a base bead, and superglued in place.

The basket for the flame has been added and superglued in place.

A bunch of the torches have had a magnet attached to the bottom and all have been spray painted black.

While the black spray paint was drying, the flames were made using the Q-tips. I made mine slightly differently from the HA tutorial. I teased most of the cotton from the Q-tip, then shaped it into a point. Then I dipped them into a 50-50 mixture of PVA glue and water, allowing them to dry and harden. When dry I dipped them into yellow craft paint and allowed them to dry. Once that was dry I dipped them into some red craft paint. I then went back over them, making the red and yellow juncture a little irregular.

 The flames have been cut off of the Q-tips and glued into place in the baskets.

The finished product.

Here's a 28mm D&D Orc Archer from the Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame to show torch sizes.

Here's some of the torches in one of the dungeon rooms.

Well, there it is. A fun and quick project that can yield some nice items for your dungeons. I went with gold for the color of these torch stands, but you can of course use a black or a silver for a completely different look, or use different beads for a different style. These torch stands are a little ornate, different colors and beads will give a completely different look. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little article. If you make some of these I'd love to see them.

Hirst Arts Water Caverns for D&D

Hi, folks. In the last post I ended with a teaser pic showing our Hirst Arts Water Caverns. Ever since I first saw these I've been wanting them. There's even an excellent step by step tutorial on making the Water Caverns. It's a very thorough tutorial, covering everything from casting the pieces, through assembly and layout, painting, even has sections on making water for the river pieces. Well worth a read and full of useful tips, even if you aren't  making a water cavern right now. :)

As I said I really wanted a water cavern, but I didn't own any of the molds. It takes 5 molds to make these which cost $140. Bruce generously offers 10% off for orders between 5-9 molds which cuts the cost to $126 plus $7 shipping for a total of $133. A decent deal, I almost went with that. The problem would have been all of the casting I would have had to do. The project plans say:

Cast Mold #81 ten times
Cast Mold #82 ten times
Cast Mold #85 six times
Cast Mold #281 thirty times
Cast Mold #282 twelve times

That's a lot of casting. And I didn't have a lot of time available. This is where Naloomi's Workshop comes in. He offers a complete Water Cavern Set, already precast, of all of the components you need, plus many extra pieces. Saves a great deal of time. And at $120 it's a steal. So that's what I did. I bought Naloomi's Water Cavern set and then Mark and I constructed it following the Hirst Arts tutorial. Shipping was fast and almost everything arrived perfectly intact. A few of the longer cavern wall pieces were broken in transit. But that wasn't from poor packaging. I have enough bubble wrap from the packaging to start my own packing company. And the few broken pieces were easily glued back together.

Thanks for bearing with me through the text. I wanted to give credit to Hirst Arts and Naloomi's Workshop. Pic time :)

 Here's the Water Cavern set layout connected to the Gothic Dungeon.

This is the broken wall section in the Gothic Dungeon which connects the dungeon to the Water Caverns. That's one of the Orcs from the Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame. You get 42 unpainted plastic D&D minis with the set. We are slowly painting all of them.

 This is from the river opening out into a lake. The room to the right has a treasure pile across a deep chasm. Think that bridge is safe?

 Overhead view.

 Continuing west from the treasure cave.

 Another shot continuing west.

 The river mouth with dock and a bridge.

 This shot from the west shows the connection between dungeon and caverns. The hall with the blue and yellow floor tiles contains the broken wall section entry.

A different shot of the broken wall section.

 This shows the rope bridge. Sir Kaeleth essays crossing the span. I wonder if he noticed that lever behind him? 

 Another shot from the eastern section.

 A shot through the Southern entry arch. Sir Kaeleth is almost there. "Somebody pull the lever!" :)

Thanks for looking. This is a great set. Mark and I had a good time building it. Another nice feature is it is modular and can be laid out in many different patterns.