I have been fairly busy lately. I managed to buy a pack of paperclay, but then it took me over a month to find time to do anything with it!
I used the clay on the modern house. After I carefully rolled, applied glue, carved little bricks and all that on the side wall, I was hopeful.
So I let the clay dry and looked at the result. I was very unhappy. It shrank a lot more than when I used it on the log cabin. I had cut it long and left room for expected shrinkage. Still, it shrank too much and left huge, awkward gaps in the brick pattern. The gaps were not just along the edges, but also in the center of rows.
I know my original idea was that the modern building was partially an old converted brick building with a new small addition on the side. The brick pattern does look wavy and old, but it might be too irregular for me. The gaps along the base are definitely no good. I'm going to have to make some changes before I do the big front wall.
Setbacks. They happen.
Once the brickwork is good enough, I can paint and grout it. I was planning on making it a dark red dirty brick. The thought of having a some kind of faded logo painted onto the brick even has some appeal.
I also realized that I've talked about my idea sketches without actually posting them! Well, I'm fixing that now. Here are my sketches. The blue squares are blue Post-It notes I cut out. I drew different window pane patterns on each square to test out what pattern looked the best.
In the next photo, I don't have a kitchen window. I added that later after I started to work on the house.
Hopefully, I'll be able to patch up the wonky clay and get back into business quickly. Between doctor appointments, special events with the kids, and just regular daily life, I've been lucky to find one hour on the weekends to do something fun. By the way, we're expecting another baby, a girl, in August! So my energy has been drained by supporting new life. Moms, you know what I mean!
Anyhow, I'll try to keep up on the blog, but I can't promise it. I'll be back when I'm not sleeping. Hopefully it won't be another month before I can manage to post again.
Bye for now.
