How-To

How To Make A Water Bucket Part 2

Kristian BeverlyLeave a comment

Here’s the next installment of making a water bucket!

Now that your container is dry, it’s time to make the water.
I use Clear Tar Gel, and you can get it at your local craft store(I bought mine at Michaels). It does smell and does look cloudy when you get it, but it dries clear.

Pour it into the container, but not a ton of it. I’d say less than a fourth of an inch and let dry. What I did wrong the first time was pour too much. It took a TON of time to dry (like 3 days+). So do it in thin layers until it’s the amount that you want.

So let dry and that’s that part. Next will be ads. 

How To Make A Traditional Sized Balloon Race Prop

Kristian Beverly4 Comments

The Balloon Race is a pony club game in which riders ride up alongside six balloons, pop one, and ride back to their group so that the next rider can pop the next. Actual explanation of the game can be found here.

Anyways, the first part to the prop is the balloons. I bought them on Amazon since my local stores didn’t seem to sell them. Now, if you have a local store that sells balloon cake toppers, lucky you! You really just want small ones.

So after trying to encourage Bullet the bunny that the outdoors is good for him (if human he would be a person who’d hiss at sunlight), I started on the how-to.

First you need to measure your wood. It should be only slightly wider than your balloons.

Next I cut the wood,

and cut a thinner piece of wood to go under the wood. It should be only a little bit wider than the width of the wood.

Then I painted it,

and glued the pieces together.

I used gel super glue, but wood glue should work too.

I began gluing the balloons but I wanted to have a popped one(you don’t have to have a popped one)

I make a popped one, cut into it, making it almost sliver like.

Then using my heat gun, I shaped it to look ‘popped’.

Glued the last one on.

Done!

The Body Buying Season-and an understanding of the sellers

Kristian BeverlyLeave a comment

‘Tis the season to buy to load up on bodies for the rest of the year! The best way to know that spring and summer are upon us is to see yard sale signs.
The yard sales were sparse today, but I came home with the first body of the season. An old FAM. She will join last year’s bodies, a waiting for inspiration to hit( which ultimately means dremel, sculpting, and hacking before reaching the permanent state of custom model horsey-ness).

There are two types of model horse sellers. Generally the model is in the same condition or worse than the model below. One seller sees ‘old breyer’ and ‘collectable’ and decides that the model is actually worth 30$. They will not bargain or be educated about the hobby. They will shout until they are blue that ‘THIS IS BREYER. BREYERS ARE WORTH A TON OF MONEY NO MATTER IF I LET A BIRD POOP ON IT!’ ‘YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING. I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT COLLECTABLES AND NO MATTER THE CONDITION, I SHOULD GET RICH OFF OF THE THREE LEGGED STABLEMATE!’
 Then there is the other type of seller, who is very wonderful. The seller notices the flaws, crooked legs (or lack of legs), and says, ‘well, this model may be a breyer but it is not in good condition. It is in very bad condition.’ This seller marks the model for 10$ or less, leaning more towards less than $5 if the model is a smaller scale or has broken parts. These sellers I have found are generally more friendly too. They understand that condition affects value. The best way to know whether a person has a clue about what they are selling is if they are knowledgeable about conditioning affecting price. Sure, if it is a rare model (like the dragon raffle model from a couple of years back), sure it will still bring in a pretty penny in bad condition. But the number produced does affect value, as does mold.
So there’s a little briefing before the full fledged yard sale season. Happy Hunting!

How To Make a Basic Zombie Doll

Kristian Beverly4 Comments

To make a zombie doll there are a couple of things you need to do. This how-to will be only for making a basic zombie doll. I will do one on making a hard one later (With sculpting and such)
First here are the supplies I use

  • Doll
  • modeling paste
  • Pastels
  • Acrylic Paint
  • Makeup of some sort ( I use Halloween)
  • Reference pic

Your zombie reference is very important right now. There are so many different ways that you can do this, so having a reference will help with any shading (just like painting horses, right?) and general ideas of what you want.

I started with a stripped doll. You don’t want to get your doll’s clothes dirty.

Then I took out my heat gun and heated the face up. The face looked very ‘normal’ so I wanted to make the eyes look shadowed and deep in the doll’s face.

Once it was heated up I stuck the end of a paintbrush where the doll’s eye socket would be and twirled it around until I had the eyes deep enough and wide enough.

Beautiful? Just like when customizing horses, the doll will go through an ugly phase before it gets better.

Then I grabbed my modeling paste,

And dabbed it onto the doll’s face. I wanted the zombie to have uneven skin and some wounds.

I put a layer of Fawn Acrylic paint onto the doll’s face and neck. Doing it in multiple light coats is best.

I broke out pastels,

 and gave a layer of light grey onto the doll’s face, focusing along on the hollow eye sockets.

Next I used purple pastel and further placed pastel into the eyes, trying to go for a sick look and make the eyes look even more hallow. I also put some on the mouth area, and some red pastel where I wanted some wounds to be.

This part I used my halloween makeup for. It is thicker than paint, and wettish-but not runny. It’s more of a paste. Anyways, I put that on the nose and into the eye socket.
I put some of the yellow halloween makeup and placed it here and there on the doll’s face. I also put some black into the eye socket.

Blend. I blended the colors together until I got the contrast that I wanted. So here, you can take some liberty (not that you can’t for the whole thing.)

Using some black halloween makeup, you want the face to look haggard, so I put it in the upper part of the head and along the side of the of the nose.

Blend it, and then add color to the lips. Keep playing with the colors until you are happy with how it is.
I did the same with some of the body.

Grabbed my blood gel.

And added it to the wounds on the face.

Done.
The eyes. You can make them completely white, or you can blue, or red. The sky’s the only limit with this. I made mine white and then put the pupil and iris area in as a goldish color.

Done!
PS.
If you make a doll using this how-to, I’d love to see pictures of it. Send me pics of it at breyerhorselover11@gmail.com and I will do a post showing them off. :)