Recreating a painting in 3D

Last autumn I was looking for a theme for a longer project, like a room box. Typically I build room boxes around a particular miniature, for instance, a piece of furniture, or a category of miniatures, such as clocks, shoes, bread, vegetables or flowers. But a theme can also be a starting point, for instance, a wedding.  

One day as I was having dinner, I looked at a painting I have on my kitchen wall, and suddenly I saw my new project. I would make a room box based on the painting. 

It is a gouache painting, titled appropriately "Found on the Beach" by the Swedish artist Lars Norrman,  and I have always been fond of it, but now I saw a completely new potential in it, with its array of weird objects. And it is obviously a painting emulating depth. 

I once made a room box inspired by a painting, and it was a challenge. I like challenges. 

I had a small box that I won in a lottery at the Swedish Miniature Association's Christmas meeting the year before (the first and only time I ever won anything in a lottery). I had been saving it for the right occasion, and here it was. I painted the box very dark blue on the inside and started thinking about making all those interesting details. Some were more straightforward than other, and some gave me trouble. It would be boring to take step-by-step pictures, so I will just show a couple of pictures and explain how I made the objects. 

The focal point of the painting is the blue washing basin, and it was also the first object I made from card and fixed provisionally to place the other objects around it. The painting is dark, and it isn't always easy to discern exactly what is hidden in the background, but the foreground was easier. I used real dried plants and a real conch shell. I painted a plastic bottle dark green and covered a wooden barrel with dirt. The pots in the front are bottle caps. I made the crate from an egg carton, and I cut a pill bottle in half and painted it for rusty effect. I added a rod and a rope, and I put a glass marble in a fruit net. So far so good. 

I made a half-decayed wooden boat with a mast and a torn sail. The sail was probably the most difficult thing to do as it had to be fixed in appropriate folds. I also added some random bits of wood here and there, for depth. Some details aren't even visible, but they contribute to the whole. I had to shift the objects several times before I was happy.

I glued on everything carefully before I inserted glass and added the provided frame. 

I am really pleased with this project, and it was fun to make. I will definitely be looking for more paintings to turn into a three-dimensional scene. 

Small makeovers

Today was an exceptionaly lucky charity-shop day.

 

I don't really need the kitchen set; in fact, I have another one like this, only in darker wood. But could you resist the temptation? Baskets are always good to have, not to mention frames. And the napkin ring - I saw immediately that it was a ceiling lamp! And exactly the kind of lamp I need right now for the gentlemen's smoking room.




I just need to add the ceiling rose, and if I can figure out how to attach a tea light it will be marvelous. By the way, the tiny whisky bottle on the smoking table has real whisky in it - a souvenir from Scotland.

I also made a quick transformation of an ugly pin into a lovely portrait frame.

 

Another frame makeover

Whenever I do my usual round of thrift shops, I find a couple of miniature photo frames for 30p a piece that are highly useful for all kinds of projects. The problem is that they are unevitably ugly so I paint and decorate them in any number of ways. I had this frame with a nice oval shape for a while and finally found a good picture to put into it - not all pictures go well with an oval frame. For the picture, I wanted a heavy, ornate frame. I had a jar of old, almost dry gold paint that I used more or less like modelling clay to mould the frame. Please judge the result for yourself.

 

A half-scale study

I never tried the half-scale, that is, the 1:24 scale, and never had any intention to do so until I bought this set of furniture in a thrift shop, bundled in a plastic bag among children's toys. I had no particular plans, and I didn't even like the furniture, but miniaturists are hopeless - they buy things they think may perhaps eventually likely come handy one day. I have no idea where these things come from - except that some time later I found a matching armchair in a serious antique shop, but the owner didn't know what it was and didn't see much value in it.

 

What I did have was a wooden wine-bottle box, the kind that come with very expensive wines that you get as a gift. It felt exactly the right size to make a half-scale room box. To begin with I simply put the sofa, desk and clock in the box and added a couple of things.

 

The fireplace is made from embossed wallpaper which in this scale proved just right for the carved-marble effect. The fireguard is a clothes hook. The table is made from a chess piece with a large copper coin on top. The kettle and milk jar - probably bracelet charms - were part of a lot I bought at Portobello Road market in London. I made the bookcase from two building blocks, added decoration to match the desk and glued on book rows from a catalogue (the famous image from Bodlean Library). The window is cut from a plastic fruit container. 

I then tried various flooring, but in this scale even very thin strips of wood look unnatural so I had to compromise with paper floors. I chose the smallest-patterned wallpaper, and I also used paper for rugs because even the thinnest fabric felt wrong. I made curtains from ribbons

And of course I added pictures, candlesticks and other small things. The round picture frames are buttons. The vase is the tip of a ball-point pen.

Of course most of the furniture was ready-made, and there isn't much to add to this project. Yet it was very interesting to work in this scale because everything you are used to suddenly becomes gigantic. Now I certainly understand the attraction of this scale. 

More frames

Here are some of the many ways I have made picture frames, apart from those I have shown before and those in the previous post.

 

These frames, except the little one on the right, are made with lace. The two top frames are made with several layers of plastic lace to create depth, then painted gold. The two frames below are made with real lace which creates an effect of a delicate carved frame. The dark wooden frame is stained lolly sticks. 

All these frames are made with different techniques. Upper row, left: lolly sticks. Middle: cut from a cork placemat which creates a nice, uneven surface. Right: an unidentifiable piece of twisted metal rod (most likely a Christmas decoration) that I bent into a square and glued onto a piece of cardboard. Bottom left: a ribbon. Next: lolly sticks and grill sticks, but an ordinary yellow paint rather than gold. Next: metal foil folded around the edges of the picture. Right: a ribbon.

These are fake: just cut from a catalogue.

Art gallery

The mantelpiece I described in the previous post gave me the idea of an art gallery. I had a rather shallow wine box where I couldn't make anything that demanded depth, but lots of pictures on the walls would be just right.

I made wallpaper from ordinary coloured printer paper and used self-adhesive paper border for cornice. The floor was temporary when I made it over a year ago, but it is still there. I made the mirror frame from grill sticks to match the decoration on the mantelpiece. The angels on the mantelpiece come from Christmas crackers; they were a hideous blue-green colour so I painted them gold. The angels over the mirror come from a hobby shop. The two oval picture frames are also from a hobby shop, but generally the point of having an art gallery was to try various ways of making picture frames. The one above the oval frames is made by placing the picture (cut from a magazine and glued onto card) on a piece of tin foil and folding it over the edges. It creates an effect of a heavy gilded frame. The round frame on the left is cut from a very special Russian candy box: I have another frame like this in my Victorian house, but I will probably never find this candy again.

 

Candy boxes are excellent material for all kinds of things. Here is another one, perfect for a picture frame. 

 

Otherwise, using lolly sticks is the easiest way to make simple frames.

That said, who wants a simple frame if the point of the box room is to make as many different frames as possible? I'll show some more in the next post.

 

Picture frames

I know that you can buy dollhouse pictures and picture frames by the dozen, but I like to make them myself. I cut pictures from magazines and paint them with varnish to make them look old. For frames I use lolly sticks, paint them and decorate with lace. I have also made some more elaborate frames.

 

 First  a single frame and then another on top, to create a sense of depth and weight.

 

 Then I glued on several layers of grill sticks. When you look at the stages of this process, it's amazing what a difference it makes. Then I just painted it gold