Castle Renovations

I started out the month of December taking lots of new 'Special Days' photos, with plans to photograph the ones for later in the month in Medieval times.  However....I've wanted to make new castle walls for some time, and decided I wasn't going to set up the castle interior with the old walls, but to wait until I'd made new ones.  Well, that took a little longer than expected.

I make my walls out of foam core. A single sheet is not big enough, so we've been making the basic walls out of a full sheet and half sheet attached together.

Now, foam core will warp when it's painted. ​The first two sets of walls we made were fine. I thought it was because I painted the backs as well, so any warp from the first layer of paint on the front would be counteracted by a coat of paint on the back.

​But we learned after making the castle walls that there was more to it than that.  The first two sets of walls had been made by attaching the half sheet of foam core below the full sheet and then scoring the fold along both. See the example on the left....

But, when making the castle walls, we thought it would seem easier, and more logical to just attach the half sheet to the full sheet along the fold.  But when it was painted, the walls warped very badly, and no amount of paint on the back helped at all.  Jan put strips of wood on the back to try straighten the walls, but with no luck. I've used the warped walls for a couple of years now, but they drive me crazy. Especially since there isn't a lot of space in my dining room to take full width shots, so I have to use my wide angle lens, and that warps the walls even more.

Then it dawned on us that the warping had to do with the basic design. So when we made the walls for the Wood Cutter's cottage a year ago, we went back to the old method, and the walls turned out nice and straight. So I've wanted to make a new set of straight castle walls, but had been putting it off. It is a lot of work after all. 

So Jan made the new foam core castle walls the same way all my straight walls were made, and added some foam core strips which I wanted to portray 'pillars'.  After doing the underpainting it was clear that we were back on track. There was hardly any warping. Just a tiny bit, which a coat of diluted paint on the back totally solved. Then it was time to stamp on the stonework.

I squirted different earth tone colours of paint onto a plate and used cut out sponge rectangles for the different sizes of stone. I started by stamping the 'pillars' first. Then made my way up the wall....

After the stonework dried I did some shading....

...and then overpainted everything with a coat of very diluted gray paint. The idea is to soften the look of the stone, as the camera will highlight all the details. The unmuted walls might look nicer to the casual observer, but the camera will make the details stand out way too much. So they need to be softened....

So now I have two new, nice straight castle walls.  But I also want to make some new festive wallhangings. I picked up two table runners at Value Village last week. The one with the red pattern will make nice festive wallhangings for Christmas, while the floral tapestry one will make nice wallhangings for Naomi's dress shop whenever I get to that.....