Hirst Arts Project #3: Wishing Well

This is my third Hirst Arts project, a wishing well. Just before xmas last year I bought the Small Turret Mold, and while most people who get it use it to make some kind of fountain, I decided to try something a little different. As I mentioned in the Mage Knight Tower writeup, my sister plays Mage Knight with her friends, and I thought I could make a cool multipurpose terrain piece for her games. This is the result: a well filled with treasure, which could be the goal of a treasure quest, or maybe it has magical powers, or maybe it's some sort of shrine to a goddess.

Rear view. The body of the well is two rings of curved pieces from the turret mold. The arched pieces on top are arched window tops from the turret mold, and the caps for those arches (as well as the step in front) are curved floor tiles. You can't see them here, but the inside of the well is 8 pie-shaped floor tiles. The whole thing is glued to a piece of cardboard (this project is small enough that I wasn't worried about the glue warping the cardboard and causing the pieces to misalign on opposite ends. The holes in the top of the cap pieces are for the pins sticking out of the half-dome cover I'm making for the well (unfinished, not shown).

Front view. After the well itself was assembled, glued, and painted (and painting this sort of thing is really easy, as drybrushing the textured bricks does all the work for you) I painted the inside base of the well with silver paint. That way, if any gaps were visible in between the coins and such, it would still reflect light back toward the viewer. For the coins and gems I made a stop at the local Michael's craft store and picked up some plastic -- some golden yellow, some coppery red, and some larger and faceted like gems. I put a layer of white glue on the bottom of the well, mixed the gold and copper beads to my satisfaction, and poured them in, letting the glue take care of where they stuck. When that dried (the glue dries clear) I made a small lump of glue in the center and added more "coin" beads as well as the gems. The result is a nice pile of treasure at the bottom of the well (to see what it looks like without the resin "water" which I added next, see this picture).

Left view. While at Michael's I picked up some resin. Smelly stuff! It comes in a metal can, smells like rubber cement, and uses a few drops of catalyst to harden. Do not use this in a place that lacks good ventilation, the fumes can make you sick, and it smelled up the apartment for a while even with the windows open. Anyway, I mixed the resin in a cup and poured it into the well until the treasure was covered, then I let it harden. Two problems. One, something in the glue made the now-clear white glue turn white again, so there were some white spots under the resin, but I can explain that away as pearls, ivory, or whatever. Two, all of the air trapped in and under the beads floated up and bubbled the resin's surface. To fix that I mixed a little more resin and poured it evenly over the top, which dried nice and mostly-smooth (smooth enough that I can justify the surface distortion as to-scale wind force on the well. The angle of this picture lets you see the reflection on the "water." I think it turned out nice.

	Rear view. The body of the well is two rings of curved pieces from the turret mold. The arched pieces on top are arched window tops from the turret mold, and the caps for those arches (as well as the step in front) are curved floor tiles. You can't see them here, but the inside of the well is 8 pie-shaped floor tiles. The whole thing is glued to a piece of cardboard (this project is small enough that I wasn't worried about the glue warping the cardboard and causing the pieces to misalign on opposite ends. The holes in the top of the cap pieces are for the pins sticking out of the half-dome cover I'm making for the well (unfinished, not shown).
	Front view. After the well itself was assembled, glued, and painted (and painting this sort of thing is really easy, as drybrushing the textured bricks does all the work for you) I painted the inside base of the well with silver paint. That way, if any gaps were visible in between the coins and such, it would still reflect light back toward the viewer. For the coins and gems I made a stop at the local Michael's craft store and picked up some plastic -- some golden yellow, some coppery red, and some larger and faceted like gems. I put a layer of white glue on the bottom of the well, mixed the gold and copper beads to my satisfaction, and poured them in, letting the glue take care of where they stuck. When that dried (the glue dries clear) I made a small lump of glue in the center and added more "coin" beads as well as the gems. The result is a nice pile of treasure at the bottom of the well (to see what it looks like without the resin "water" which I added next, see this picture).
	Left view. While at Michael's I picked up some resin. Smelly stuff! It comes in a metal can, smells like rubber cement, and uses a few drops of catalyst to harden. Do not use this in a place that lacks good ventilation, the fumes can make you sick, and it smelled up the apartment for a while even with the windows open. Anyway, I mixed the resin in a cup and poured it into the well until the treasure was covered, then I let it harden. Two problems. One, something in the glue made the now-clear white glue turn white again, so there were some white spots under the resin, but I can explain that away as pearls, ivory, or whatever. Two, all of the air trapped in and under the beads floated up and bubbled the resin's surface. To fix that I mixed a little more resin and poured it evenly over the top, which dried nice and mostly-smooth (smooth enough that I can justify the surface distortion as to-scale wind force on the well. The angle of this picture lets you see the reflection on the "water." I think it turned out nice.