stash adventures presents: tiny graveyards

In my mission to use as much of the junk that I have in my studio at any given moment, I have again decided to create something entirely unnecessary, yet cute as hell. I've got cardboard scraps, the rounded ends of some popsicle sticks, and approximately three dozen aging acrylic paints. It's time to make some tiny graveyards.

I'm starting by cutting out a couple of disks from the cardboard and finishing the exposed edges with some hot-glue piping. For the ground I'm using this stuff I have called cellu-clay. Its a paper mache type of material that I think will make a really good rough texture for the soil. After mixing it with some water, I'm building it up about half an inch on the thickest part and smoothing it down towards the outer edge. While its still wet, I took the rough ends of my craft sticks and pushed them into the wet clay to leave indents and make assembly a lot easier after its all dry.

I started looking around my studio, worried that the landscape alone would look a bit too simple. What if it looked like ~something~ had escaped from its coffin?

I found a small section of these really grimy looking staples that seemed to be pretty good match for scale and pushed them in the clay, building up and over the upper edges.

While the clay is drying, I can get started on the tombstones themselves. I used a mix of white, black, and yellow oxide acrylic for the base, and then gave it a light wash of silver that I thought could make it look kinda cool in different lighting. I then used black and white colored pencils to try to give the rough look of an engraved headstone.

Once the ground clay is dry, I can start layering on some color. Starting with black around the outer edges and deep indents where the stones and open grave sit. Then filling in the rest with a dark brown, adding a lighter brown on the higher points, and eventually dry brushing on some yellow oxide and an olive green color for a soft mossy look.

I had originally planned for four headstones to sit on the piece that featured the open grave, but in testing out the final placements, I thought it looked a little too busy. So I decided to take out one of the taller pieces and even out the spacing. Using one of the longer sticks I opened up one of the indents a bit more (the dried paper clay is still pretty soft even after its hardened) and built up the surrounding area again after securing everything with a hidden daub of glue.

And with the extra piece of wood I had now, I thought maybe a little broken casket lid should be in order. The grave was looking a little plain, and also, I could not paint away that staple texture to save my life. So I cut it up into two smaller, jagged pieces out with a box cutter and dyed them a deep brown with a mix of alcohol inks.

After the new area I built up was fully dried and painted over, I added a bit of hot glue in the corners of my staple grave to give a little support to the new lid pieces and then stuck them on top. From there I added some finishing touches like a bit of moss painted on the headstones, and then a wash of black paint emanating from the grave for added spookiness.

On my second vignette, I gave it a brighter look in the final stages. I brightened up the greenery a lot more and added in some scattered sakura flowers made from confetti that I had left over from another project. Honestly, I think it came out looking really pretty.

These were both really fun to make, but please let me know what you think and if you have a favorite in the comments- I'd love to know. Thank you so much for reading and I'll see you next time.