Wizard's Towers

My main goal for this one was to make it look surreal/whimsical/almost cartoonish. So, I decided to make the towers twist.  The quickest/simplest way to make the shape I was going for was just to stack, twist & cut insulation foam.

Repeated the process with larger blocks & I've got my 2 towers. The large one is about 12" tall & the little about 9".
I added some rock formations to the bottom & other details for doors, etc.

And then let the fiddley games begin! To add to the hap-hazardous look of the tower, I placed all the stone work instead of drawing it into the foam. I was a little wary at first, but the more I put on the better it looks. I started with framing the door & window openings and then filled in the rest of the walls.

  I do know that the towers are built well enough to survive fuzzy dragon attacks. ;-)

And the wizards what lives here is powerful enough to enchant said dragon into being his new guard. :-)

So I painted it all black, got the open areas of the bricks a medium gray & then sponged on some white. I was originally thinking I might need, mortar, but after seeing this realized it was unnecessary.
(Disregard the color of the base rock. I know it's terrible & I fixed it later on.)

Then, I got an excellent suggestion from a Canadian to use iridescent paint. Basically, I had a pearl medium that I mixed into some wash colors - this made it almost too shiny and pastel. As if there was barely any color/texture to the bricks at all. What I ultimately did was take that mix of medium & wash on a large brush & randomly/quickly dry brushed this on, then put another wash over it of just the pure color - no pearl. Some areas are purple, some blue... I think it turned out well --

This is hard to photograph. So I also grabbed a video so you can kinda of see how the shine & color interact. You can see it here

Here is a shot of the repainted rock faces - less poop, more fantastical rock.

Of course such a unique shaped building can't have a normal roof. The only way I could think to make the roof the odd shape I was looking for was with Sculpey clay. So I made a basic shape out of card & covered it in aluminum foil.

I did my clay shape on top of that - then I gently removed the clay & foil to put it in the oven. And taadaa! One goofy roof:

Plus some wonky shingles:

The first roof attempt was actually conical; it looked odd & not in a good way. I'm much happier with the flat sides. 

 

  Here is the work done on the floating bits. The entry steps started with a strip of plastic forming an angle from the side & base of the tower

I then made stone steps with angle brackets glued to the bottom to give it a surface to attach to the plastic

Taadaa! We have some floaty steps with enough strength to easily hold a metal model.
 

That middle step does cause the plastic sheet to bend a little under the weight, but it's nothing major.


For the bridge, I took a hobby knife & cut a slots into either side of the bridge platforms to hold my weaker craft magnets
 

Then I took a sheet of plastic & added random floaty stones, plus 2 rare earth magnets to connect the bridge to the towers.

Here's the bridge attached. I mixed the 2 types of magnets because rare earth on rare earth was too strong of a hold, trying to disconnect the brdge would cause damage to one end or the other. Alternatively, craft magnet on craft magnet was too weak. Mixing the 2 was a happy medium.

The roofs painted:

Doors detailed with bits from an old bracelet

 

This was my first snow attempt & I've learned a few very important things. 1.) The ratio of baking soda to glue is very important 2.) pure baking soda tastes bad & 3.) baking soda is not a good thing to get into your eye.

On the roofs, I had my mixture too dry...

And on the base/bricks I had it too wet.

I some how need to find a good balance between the two.

For the icicles I took the hot glue gun & made some squiggles on a tin container I had handy.

Then glued them to the edges. At first attachment, some ended up sideways. So, I went it with the hot tip of the gun & gently melted them so they hung straight down. (the best I could, at least)

Ooo, ominous shadows:

Plus it looks right at home in the snowy out-of-doors.