Brawling Bears

I was pretty disappointed by the Cooking with Teddy Re-Ment set (too few items, items bigger than I like) until I found out I could pose the teddies like this. Rawr! Teddy punch out!

Strawberry slices and raspberries

I made my first strawberry cane! (the matchstick in the photo is for size reference--I think I shall use a ruler next time) It came out a lot better than I thought it would, especially with the way the cane was looking when I reduced it (all thick ugly white lines). I did end up wasting a lot of clay trying to get the Skinner blend (the graduating red -> white colour effect) right though. I kept getting white streaks in my blends. I had to dig out all the white clay that kept getting caught in my pasta machine after each roll through.

I also made raspberries for the first time ever! I've found a couple of tutorials on the net for making raspberries, but neither worked for me due to the lack of materials. Eventually, I just pressed red microbeads into a small lump of red clay and poked a hole in it to simulate a raspberry. I think it ended up looking quite okay, but if any one has any tips on creating mini raspberries without the use of casting silicone or liquid air dry clay, let me know!

Now, to make a kiwi cane that isn't full of fail like the last one...

The Proposal

Bronte has just met the man of her dreams and she's not about to let him get away!

Bronte: Here's a flower. I like you. There I said it, now you have to marry me or I'll die of shame.

Rosetti: Er... This is kind of sudden...

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First time trying out a Lomo style effect on the photo. I think it's a bit too dark, but it doesn't look too bad to me. :) It's really the first time I've done anything with a photo asides from cropping and resizing and maybe small touch ups. I used this tutorial.

I also posted up a hedgehog and vole comparison on the Sylvanian Families forums. They're the same mold, but a different shade of brown. The voles are like little bald hedgehogs lol.





I actually hadn't realized they were voles, I had thought they were brown moles. Flair should have added at least a tail to the voles to differentiate them from the moles and to make them more accurate!

Catrionasfailed posted a picture of a water vole on the forums and I think that this is what Flair was going for. All the other voles looked more like mice.

New minor repaints and a new layout

I didn't like the colour of the original Sylvanian books. They are a solid grey, rather like the cans in my previous post. So I repainted them. The result is not as even as I would have liked, but they do look better! And they look nicer in person as opposed to close up. You can't see all the flaws so clearly then!



Painted the tops of the bottles too. Again, lumpy painting.



Also changed the blog lay out to this one. It's more crowded, but I like it better. There are no problems with the sidebar headings Like I'd been having with the previous layout.

Various small mods

Woo! First post of 2011! XD (I actually wrote 2010 and had to go back and edit it =A=)


This post is almost a duplicate of a small mods thread I just posted on the Sylvanian Families message board. It just contains more blah blahing here. I thought I'd show my Sylvanian mods on my blog too!

I got a PC Bobby Roberts bike with a secondhand post office building I bought and decided to repaint it and turn it into a postman's bike. I'm quite happy with the way the colour scheme's worked out, but it's still a bit sticky now. I originally tried to paint the spokes on the tyres with silver acrylics, but it looked so uneven and clumpy in the end that I took off all the paint and some of the black tyre paint as well. That was unexpected, as I thought that black was the default colour of the plastic. Turns out the plastic is the same default colour as the original body of the bike--blue. I spray painted the tyres chrome and then painted on the black by hand with some enamel Tamiya paint that William gave me. The fumes...

Before:


After:


I also spray painted the cans that came with my Sylvanian Village bakery chrome as I didn't like the default dull grey colour. The scratches on the top are from me trying to sand the seam lines down. Didn't work very well... I think I'd been using sandpaper that was too coarse on it. Well, lesson learnt!

Before:


After:


I also painted the tops of these bottles from the reissued green vanity. Originally they were one solid colour. Solid colours tend to make things look more plasticky and cheap IMHO.