Working on the View

The Crystal Garden has changed only slightly over the course of the past week.  The tiles have been added around the front beds and the central fountain, the mirror being broken up by using some white tiles to tone down the level of glitz and keep it from being painfull to look at.  The tiles of the floor and back wall have also been grouted with a pale grey grout.  You may be wondering about the currently blank side walls, but never fear I have been working hard to address them.

 These two panels are made of faux leadlighting paints.  The designs are from a cheap colouring-in book whith two designs traced and mashed together for each panel to create something the right size and shape to completely cover the side wall.  Each design was slipped into a plastic document pocket and the leadlighting was created ontop of the pocket using the traced design as a guide.  The side walls of the garden will be lined with mirror paper and then the panels will be adhered over the top once they have had another day or two to completely dry and I can peel them off the pockets.  The backing of mirror paper will cause the light to bounce back through the leadlighting and give the impression of light coming in through the window.  I wil then add "walls" with large windows over the panels.  The idea is that the leadlight panels will look not so much like leadlight windows but like a "crystal landscape" beyond the Crystal Garden.

When planning the Garden I almost decided to try using the faux leadlighting paints instead of tiles.  The idea I had was to use the outliner to create a grid (tile-esque) pattern and then fill it in with the colours to create a tile effect.  Obviously I went with real tiles instead, but I think this could look quite effective and if any of you are brave enough to try it before I do get around to it, I'd love to see the results.

DHE announced the winner of their Creative Competition last week, and sadly it was not Mill Cottage.  Nor was it the Steampunk Inventor's Workshop.  Although DHE haven't revealled the second and third place winners yet, if you work on the theory that the winners would be notified well before the announcements are made publicly, they haven't won second or third either.  Well, maybe next year then.  The winning entry is certainly well done and rather clever (although I can't say it's really to my taste . . . um no pun intended).  I for one could never spend that many hours working with polymer clay, nor get anything like those results!  If you would like to see it you'll find it on the DHE website by clicking here.