Guest Artist - Jillian's pond

As a club, the Miniature Enthusiasts of Edmonton has been fortunate to attract a few younger members in the last couple years. Jillian K. is one of those. She is a lovely, bright, multi-talented and sharing young woman who is a wonderful addition to our club.

For show and tell at our last club meeting, Jillian brought the pond she had made from builder's foam. In addition to the pond, she also used the builder's foam for the base of her camping scene for the camping display for the show and sale in September.

 (I'm so sorry. These pictures are upright in my album but when I upload them here they turn on their sides. Tried twice and I'm unable to fix them.)

She'll be teaching the basic technique for the base at an upcoming all-day workshop. I'm not doing a camping scene this year but I really want to use her technique to make a small pond for the secret garden that is on my to-do list. (In fact, her pond has really motivated me to move the garden up on the to-do list!)

Anyway, I asked her if I could post pictures of the pond here and, not only did she agree to that, she sent me brief instructions on how she made it and gave me permission to publish them.

From Jillian:

Right now I am obsessed with landscapes! So many neat tricks that I have learned on the internet mostly from model train forums. I will give you a breakdown here of what I did. (And please feel free to use whatever info you like for your blog :)

1) cut a square chunk of 1.5" blue foam

2) cut two smaller triangular piece to fit in the corner of the large piece

3) used Weldbond to glue the two smaller pieces to the larger one in the corner

4) used a long X-Acto blade to carve down the edges and chisel out some rock formations, carved out a rough hole in the middle

5) used the cut out pieces and glued back on around edges to create rocks.

6) coated the entire piece in Weldbond glue

7) mixed plaster according to instructions and poured over the entire thing moving it around to spread etc. Let dry.

8) used earth tone watered down acrylic paints to create rock colours, several layers. When the paints are watered down you get amazing effects of the colours blending with plaster.

9) painted the inner pond darker to create depth. (Use high quality acrylics for this part)

10) inserted my rushes into the foam in the pond part

11) poured my woodland scenics realistic water from the bottle into my pond let partially set

12) once almost set but not quiet I attached my Lilly pads onto the water mixture (I did not use the wires I removed them)

13) used clear silicone caulk in squeeze tube to create waterfall. Once tacky I used a toothpick to create effects and bubbles at the bottom.

Done!! 

I'm in particular admiration of her use of colour to give dimension to the rocks. I can hardly wait to try her techniques.

Jillian is active on Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/jilliankearey/miniatures/ so if you're a member there, you might want to check her out.

I don't follow Pinterest myself. I think it's a wonderful resource but by the time I deal with my e-mail, my groups and write my blog, there is already so little time to actually work on minis that I just can't add one more thing to my computer time.