Finished terrain pieces, and tavern progress!

I know, I haven't been posting anything on the miniature scale in a while.  I have an excuse tho!  My kitten gets into everything.  She insists on being in the same room as me, usually on my lap or on whatever I'm working on, or at least on the floor at my feet.  I've had her jump up and step on my wet paint a few times.... Thats an interesting clean up... paw prints trailing away from the craft area and catching her to clean her up too......  yeah....

So you can see why I haven't been working much on crafts.

The other day I was staring at my projects, and really had the urge to work on them, and said 'screw it!  I'm working on these!'

It helped that my 6 yr old niece was here and I have a laser pointer, so Arya the kitten was completely entranced and distracted.  For a while.

Anyway, so I had the chance to finish some little pieces of terrain!  And I was able to work on the tavern a little!

So, here we go!  First up....  Chicken coop!  So, I finished painting up the little hens (two standing, two sitting) and finally put a roof on the coop itself.  I darkened up the trim on front, as well as the door so that they would match the roof and stand out a little more from the rest of the coop, giving it a little more dimensionality than it had before.

 If you were wondering where the second sitting hen is, its in the little chicken doorway for the coop.  I'll try to get a better picture of it and post it on my instagram profile.  (HINT:  Its @seryfyre on Instagram!  Go follow me, cause I'll most likely post finished pictures on there before uploading the blog post!)

And then I broke out the foliage stuff and put a little tree next to the coop, cause it just felt so empty without something there!  The white is glue, I took the pictures before it dried completely.

 And another view of the coop, so you can see the grain in the roof (made from a piece of balsa wood, and the paint is just the Agrax Earthshade brushed on it.  I thought it gave it great color as well as bringing out the grains really well!)

So yeah, that is the finished coop!  I'm happy with it, and I think the paint on the chickens worked out really well.

Next up on the finished projects is the pig sty!!!  I finally got a roof on the dang thing.  I've been debating and debating on what type of roof to do, and I finally decided on a shingle style.  Its intentionally a little rough and crooked, cause come on... its for a pig sty... and yeah.  So, I made it out of pieces of thin cardboard (or would you call it cardstock?  Its from a canned cat food box.) cut in small strips with slits cut in to make it look like individual shingles.  They were then layered up and up and up until the top which is just a larger piece to give the roof a slight 'peak'.

The painting of it went like so:  Base it with black paint.  Wait for it to dry.  Next coat was a dark brown over most of it, leaving a little black in the cracks between the shingles.  On top of that came a slightly lighter brown.  Not as complete as the darker brown, but covering a good portion of the roof still.  This is building highlights.  As that dried, make dinner for the niece and I (heating up leftover pasta... yum!)  Eat dinner while contemplating the final highlight. Do the final highlight with a light brown (I believe it was 'coffee' colored), just along the edges of the shingles, and pulling up with give a texture to it.  

All in all, I thought it turned out great!!!  I'm gonna have to do that style of painting more often XD

And once that was all finished I got to put on the foliage!  I had planned right from the beginning of making it look like there was plants going up the back of the pig sty.  I don't know why, but I thought it would look really good, and make it look like an older sty that has been there a while.  So I did!  I broke out the pack of Woodland Scenics stuff that I got.  It has a lot of stuff in it, and I think its a great deal (especially as someone who just started on this stuff and hasn't accumulated a ton of stuff yet.)

 So some little trees made their way on either side of the sty, and the ground cover bushes that I already had on the terrain was built up on top of the sty to make it look like its been growing up.  I then sprinkled on some 'yellow flowers' on it to give it less of a flat look with just the one color of green.

 Paint still needed to dry when I took this picture, but thats ok!  Check the instagram for dry pictures!

 Here is a slightly closer look at the roof and greenery added to it.

So yes, that is the finished terrain.  I am pretty proud of it, and proud of the fact that they are finished in a way that I am pleased with.

And on to the progress of the tavern!  I added the porch!  Man, that took quite a while haha.  I was inspired by DMScotty's bridge technique (check out his videos, I get so much inspiration from them!).  I'm not sure how I'm going to do the stairs heading up to the tavern yet, but it will be two sets, one for each doorway.

 And painting.  I probably should have painted it all before glueing it onto the tavern itself, but I apparently like making things difficult on myself.  I won't paint until I get stairs put on tho, thats for sure.  I did finish painting the stonework on the whole tavern, though.  I still have the rest of the walls to paint.  I'm going to work on the porch and walls at the same time.  I will be working on it!

 Still to do for the tavern:  Doors.  Windows.  Painting the walls and porch.  Building the stairs.  The roof.  (I am no longer adding a second story to the tavern, the inn will be a different project).  Finish the inner workings of the kitchen and tavern (bits and bobs....  tables, chairs, bear skin rug, etc).

I still have quite a bit to do, but I am really pleased with the porch and I just had to share it with everyone.

And here is the reason why I didn't get much farther than the porch.  

Yup... my niece went home by this time, and Arya felt I was not paying enough attention to her.  So, yeah..... Kitteh.