Thunderdrum & Jesters Folly

The miniature thunderdrum/thunder drum is just under an inch high. Its real life counterpart is 14" in the photo where the two are pictured together. The little one is made with a bead, opaque plastic & jewellery wire all wrapped up to create a coil & not as simple as it sounds! I was inspired to make this after meeting Jesters Folly (ha! Link <-- ) two highly entertaining, utterly bonkers showmen at the Lightwater Valley Christmas Fayre 2013. They had unusual musical instruments & various bits & did juggling. They played the didgeridoo for me & other instruments. Mental guys in a truly brilliant way!

Close Up of the Treasure Pile

The Goblin has been busy hoarding & gathering his treasures. Close ups of the treasure pile, the area of missing treasure is because once in place in the scene it butts up against the treasure chest :-)

The Huge Treasure pile & the Guardian Dragon

Two full shots of the Dragon on the huge pile of treasure :-D The treasure is made of the various bits I'd posted about previously, the Crowns, swords, shield, jewelled plates, chalices, goblets, gold fimo coins & gold & Silver coins from the haberdashery department at Boyes which were on braiding. Will do a separate post with closer detail of the treasure pile. Really happy with how it's all worked out :-)

Crowning the Dragon

On the top of the Huge pile of stashed goblin treasure is the dragon. Considering himself superior to his goblin owner he is wearing a small Elfin crown on his head :-)

The dragon was originally a red childs Papo toy & he got a makeover from me, as did his jewelled crown which was dull brass & is now glitter gold :-)

Hob, the Goblin made by miniaturo-mango

Introducing the Goblin for the Goblin Treasure House whose home is so near completion. I am seriously not talented enough to do figures, some of my elfin critters come out more like transvestites on a bad hair day...... This little guy, Hob is made by the exceptionally talented miniaturo-mango on eBay. All I've done is to add a bunch of keys to his belt, the rest is original. I've stone painted his stand & added gold & silver coins to the base :-) His home is almost finished :-)

Treasure Chest

Part of the Goblin Treasure House scene is the Treasure chest which is packed with valuable gems & jewellery :-)
The chest was bare wood then stained. The gold studs were dots of PVA glue then gold paint carefully placed over the top. The hanging lantern over the end is a broken silver ring of mine with a  'ruby'  added to the centre :-) Quite damn chuffed with the treasure chest :-)

And then there was light....

Quite damn chuffed with how the lighting suddenly worked out in the Goblin Treasure House. The lights are a 2m metal wired micro rice bulb system (actually submersible!) which has 20 lights spread out & the Goblin Treasure House scene is in a lantern with glass panels on each side, & the glass is secured like that of a picture frame, small folding pieces of metal. Suddenly in designing the hidey hole for the battery box I got hit with a Different idea to that which I'd worked on all along. Instead of immediately running the wire up the side to the roof & having the lights shine down, I have run the wire Around the bottom of lantern using those metal pieces to tuck the cable behind! Then run it up the side & around the Top of the glass panels using the metal clips again. From there it then coils twice around 3 hooks hanging from the ceiling & this sudden idea out of the blue has meant that the scene will be lit from the bottom, from above, then right down on. I'm still gobsmacked at how the 'urk' of the last 2 weeks suddenly became a 'fuck me I'm a genuis' big grin result :-D

Glow in the dark candles

Finished the other day & designed to go on the inside of the Goblin Treasure House behind the Mounted Dragon Heads (blog post 2 days ago) I was pleased to come up with this design using materials from my supplies. The glow in the dark candles I made myself with fimo & jewellery wire & look quite damn good if I say so myself :-) I created the same plaque shape as the mounted dragons heads design but added a shelf across it & a support beam under it which seems to work well. Again stained then clear glossed. The photos show the empty plaque/shield shaped shelf, the candles in daylight in place, then the candles glowing in the dark :-) Unfortunately the photo of the latter hasn't done them any justice & they look more like glowing vampire teeth than candles lol Thank fk they look good in daylight :-D

The Roof That Is :-)

Following on from a recent post about the Roof That Was
where my extensive plans didn't work out the finished roof for the Goblin Treasure House is now ready to share.....
I repainted the roof gold, then adhered burlap to the roof once dry & it looks great, went on a treat & I'd bought both sheets of burlap for just 99p total from The Works some months ago without knowing what I wanted it for! Then I added the tiny rhinestones in the roof the other night, then silver coins under the eaves & there's some moss around the chimney due to stone paint that came off with the PVA glued tiles. I am quite damn happy with it :-)

Mounted Dragon Heads

These wonderful dragon heads are made of pewter & were pin badges. They are now painted, pins trimmed & mounted on wooden plaques. I made the plaques from Balsa wood which is fabulous for muscle weakness & arthritis as it's so soft a craft knife cuts it. That was then stained with permanent ink & clear glossed. Now the dragon heads are mounted & will be going on the outside of the Goblin Treasure House :-)

More treasure

All the following have been painted by me & are a small part of the Goblin Treasure. The Buddha was a charm specifically bought for this, the Mayan style Goddess was found at the Bring & Buy stall at St Mary Church Christmas Tree Exhibition at Thirsk. Adding gems over the hooks hides them well & looks alright as they were too strong even with my heavy duty wire cutters!  The Egyptian bird statue & Roman duck oil lamp are replicas from the Dorman Museum. The vase was poor quality pottery but greatly improved with painting! The coins are from braiding.
The pewter Plates I added 'precious' jewels to, for amethyst, ruby, sapphire & emerald. They look the part now.
The chalices are very cheap wooden ones, painted up & with rhinestones added on one, seed beads on the others.

The Roof That Was...

Ah those best made plans. For the roof of the Goblin Treasure House I'd devised individual tiles of gold & silver randomly coloured. It took some time to get it set up, sorting the tiles, trimming, painting then placing them. It looked good. But wasn't right!
I left it overnight incase daylight brought new hope. No. Having roofed the bugger I was now going to have to remove all the individual roof tiles. The Good bits of roof looked good but the bad does look bad. It would have been better if the tiles had been an exact fit from end to end but the roof is wider one side than the other, & Nothing would have helped the roof join! Argh! The photos show how it came out & it no longer looks like that.

Swords, shield & helmet

These appear in the Goblin Treasure House miniature scene I'm working on. All of these were plain pewter or metal. The shield was a  Warwick miniature pewter, the swords were plain metal & are painted with brilliant silver for the blades & nail varnish for the hilts/ handles then with 'precious' jewels inset ;-) The helmet was actually a replica helmet in a thimble & was plain pewter. The helmet was found in Coppergate, York & is Anglo-Saxon dating to the 8th century.

Miniature Crowns

These crowns are used in the Goblin Treasure House :-)

From left to right St Edward's Crown, the Imperial State Crown, St Edward's Crown, Crown of William II.

Basic info on each Crown, the Crown of William II, also known as the Hohenzollern Crown, is the 1888 crown made for William II, German Emperor, in his role as King of Prussia. It was only used for heraldic purposes. A Crown of the German Empire was never made.
St Edward's Crown is one of the oldest of British Crown Jewels & considered the principal piece of the Regalia, being the coronation crown traditionally used in the coronation of first English, then British, monarchs, including Queen Elizabeth II. The crown takes its name from St Edward the Confessor, but the present crown is a reconstruction made for the coronation of King Charles II in 1661, following the destruction of its medieval predecessor by order of Oliver Cromwell.
The Imperial State Crown is one of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom & symbolises the sovereignty of the monarch. The crown has existed in several versions since the 15th century. The modern version of the Imperial State Crown is of a design similar to that of St Edward's Crown, but shorter, inside is a purple velvet cap & ermine, externally the Imperial State Crown includes many precious gems, including 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds & 5 rubies.