Witch Shop - Week Two

The obvious component missing at the end of last week was a roof so this week I pulled out yet more air dry clay and another impress mould to "tile" the roof.  I bought the roof tile mould at the same time as the brick moulds nearly twelve months ago, but hadn't used it before.  You may be wondering why I didn't use it for the roof of the Dancing Dragon Inn and spent weeks cutting individual tiles from cardboard instead.  The simple answer to that question is that I forgot all about the mould!  I didn't remember it until the next time I opened up the box that holds the various moulds I have and lo! there it was.

As usual when using these types of mould I started by rolling out a sheet of clay about 2mm thick and glueing it onto the roof of the shop.  Most of this was then covered with cling film, leaving exposed only the area I was working on.  The mould was then pressed down onto the flat clay to create the impression of tiles.  I then smoothed the clay over to erase what I had just done, turned the mould up the other way and started again.  If you ever want to try using one of these moulds, I'd reccommend using a marker pen to draw a big arrow on the back so you can't mistake which way is up.  Unlike the brick moulds that work beautifully by pressing straight down and pulling straight up again, the roof tile mould needs to be pushed down into the clay and slid up it a little, then pulled off by sliding down and pulling up to get a good impression.  Otherwise all you get is the vertical lines and nothing of the horizontal ones.  It took a couple of tries to get the right technique, but from there the rest of the roof was a breeze.  I used a metal palette knife and a ball tipped stylus to add the tile impressions in the tight spots where the mould wouldn't fit and to fix up where the impressions left didn't come out quite right.

The next day when the clay was dry, I started painting it.  A couple of coats of a medium brown were followed by dry brushing some burnt sienna (a reddish-brown) over the top.  I had been going to add some more layers of colour, but the roof looked so good at that point I decided not to risk messing it up.

Inside, I used a tessalated tile paper to cover the floor of the ground floor.  Yes, using paper is a cheat and not as effective as a dimensional floor (i.e real tiles) but by the time the shop is full of stuff, I don't think enough floor will be visible for this to make much difference.  I'm still trying to decide the best way to lay out the shop on this level.  Lots of shelves around the walls and a variety of display tables in the middle is most likely, but I keep running out of space for a counter.  In fact, I keep running out of space period.  When I dry built the kit it seemed like the inside space was massive and I'd never be able to fill it.  Now I think it's shrunk and needs to be bigger!

The shop still doesn't have a name and I'm still appealing for suggestions.  If seeing what I've done so far has given you any inspirations as to what the shop should be called, please enter my Suggest-A-Name Giveaway.  The prized include all manner of oddments from a faux window to a meat pie, all hand made and I'll be adding more items to the prize before the giveaway closes.  All you have to do to enter is suggest a name for the shop or suggest something to include in the shop by leaving a comment on the Giveaway post.  I have managed to come up with one idea myself; "The Crack'd Cauldron".  What do you think?