Liv Inspires

Today I can share with you something I have not done before in quite a while. But it was so much fun to do! If you are following my Facebook page or Instagram, you would have seen, that I posted some “preview” of what I was working on.

… so without further ado, let the drumrolls come in…. I present to you: The Dinosaur Playtable!

A friend has asked me if I would be able to make something like a playmat – or rather playtable- for her son, who very much loves dinosaurs. She has seen a cool one somewhere on the internet, and wanted to recreate something like it.
To be quite honest, I’ve had my eye on those kind of projects too for some time now, but it is always easier to get into it, if it is for someone else, and if you have a deadline, rather than for yourself/home/own family… sorry, kiddos.

(Also, on a side note, sorry, but from now on there are going to be only crappy photos from me made in a hurry, since I had no time left to make better ones… A huge thanks for the first two photos to you, Katka! They are wonderful!)

After giving it some initial thoughts, we have decided, there might be a volcano, a cave, some kind of water-ish thing (a kind of lake or something), and a tree-house. It is a playtable after all, and there are surely going to be some human-shaped figures, be it play figures/lego/playmobile/or whatever, coming to play on the playtable too.

I was wondering just now how much I should write about the process of making it, and have come to the conclusion, that it would make the post too long, if I were to go into more detail. I am going to write a seperate post about the making of it. Therefore I shall write only briefly about it now.

I mainly used plaster bandages for the volcano and the cave, polysterene and plaster (not bandages this time) for the lake, and modeling clay on a toilet-paper-roll-and-wire core for the tree. The treehouse and platform is made out of wooden sticks (that look like popsicle sticks), as is the sidewalk.

My friend bought an IKEA LACK table specifically for this purpose, and they wanted it all to be attached on to it permanently. After all, kids are going to play with it :)
I then have bought a fake grass carpet from a modelling store as a base ground layer.

Everything has been painted with acrylic base paint and then acrylic, tempera or toning colours for wall paint, mostly. (or whatever else I had at home that would give me a good colour, heh).

One thing I have definitely learned (or re-learned?) with painting dioramas is that the wet-washing technique (applying very little colour with very much water) and the DRY-BRUSH technique (applying very little colour on your dry brush – hence, no water!) are seriously your best friends here to make your dioramas look as close to reality as you can! Seriously. Best thing ever. Nothing makes it pop to realisticity (is that even a word?) than those two…

To give it a little bit more texture, I added some modelling grasses and sands around. And of course Islandic Moss, mostly on the tree as leaves, but also here and there a bit too.

Throw in a few stones, found plainly outside at any walk (but washed before glued to the table!).

I probably might have added a bit more textures overall (I also intedned to), but then again, it is meant to be as a base ground for play with different figurines (for kids), not a super high realistic diorama display model, so I didn’t want to make it too full, but rather leave enough room for various plays.

Also I added some fake plants from IKEA (because those were the best in size/price/look relations from what I have found), to add background and foliage. Again, might have been more, but I didn’t want to take away from the play field.