hi guys welcome back today is an exciting day because we are going to be
doing two different methods of bark and I'm also going to show you an updated
version of making the paper towel bark which I've been doing since 2014 on the
gnome home and I have figured out a better way of painting so let's take a
look at these different methods of bark so here is my gnome home my constant
work in progress that I started back in 2014 and I've been continually adding on
to it well the bark on there is made with paper towel and then we'll take a
look at my big tree the bark on here looks really fantastic and a lot of that
has to do with the paint so I'm gonna be I'm so excited to be showing you how we
did all of this today and I think both of them are wonderful and hopefully by
the end of this video series you're going to have two different options and
either one is going to work just as good as the other
so not shown on the table is some homemade clay that I make myself and I
actually have the video here on YouTube that will show you how to make it in
your kitchen sink that video should be popping up on your screen so you need
homemade clay or some other sort of clay and for this one here with the paper
towel I used paper towel and tacky glue we need tinfoil that's important make
sure it doesn't say nonstick because you need masking tape to stick to it and
this is black tissue paper that's optional although I highly recommend
getting some that's very easy to get I got some at the dollar store and also at
Walmart I need hot glue paint brushes and of course some paint the most
important one to get is black then the rest of the colors the tones can vary
and it's up to you whatever you have in your stash
I used burnt umber so that's a very dark brown and a cinnamon brown which is a
lighter reddish type Brown and then a tan color
this one's called soft suede but you can use another tab color and then a gray
you can use all different shades of grey it doesn't matter I actually mix this
one with black and this one is just your regular light grey I also used a plastic
bone folder I think that's what they're called it's for crafting and it was used
to cut my lines into the clay we don't use anything to cut lines into the paper
towel bark because we actually make those lines as we're laying down the
paper towel so you just need to find something if you're using the clay
something to cut lines with I found this was super easy to use and easy to handle
you can use whatever you want to to build your tinfoil around I'll show you
in the next clip what I use to build both of these guys and I just used an
empty milk jug the cardboard type for both of them
so I already got started with the first one and I all I did here was just glue
on tin foil and I'm using hot glue let's do that with this one here so there's a
piece of tin foil I just folded it over and scrunched it up you can see I didn't
scrunch it up too tight alright guys, I think I'm finished with the shapes that I want and this one is
just kind of plain and this guy here I started seeing a shape in my mind like a
crooked stump so I added more on the bottom just on this side here you can
see it's pretty fat on that area okay so now I will do a layer of masking tape
all right guys I got my masking tape on the one and you can see I wrapped right
around underneath and I always do that with my projects anyway my material
always wraps around and under and over top that just makes a more solid piece
but especially on these guys because I noticed that the hot glue lifts away
from these little jugs here and that's probably because there's a film of wax
over top I didn't even think of that they are sticking but I can see with
some of it has popped away so definitely will be wrapping the masking tape
underneath and over top as well okay and like I said just one layer of masking
tape but of course it overlaps in many areas
there's my layer of masking tape and I did wrap it around underneath and on the
sides of the jug so there's no separation once I get my clay on there
there's no chance of it separating the top I did a little bit different because
I'm just gonna be adding a shingled roof to this so I didn't need anything fancy
on top this guy over here is gonna have a solid top like someone cut the the
top of the tree stump that's what it's gonna look like there and same thing masking tape
wrapped all around the inside top and bottom all right so now this is where
our bark is gonna start differing for this one it's gonna get the clay what I'm
gonna do first is I'm gonna add a layer of tissue paper now the clay will stick
to the masking tape by itself the clay I use in fact I did do that on one of my
branches on that tree and I just used a masking tape and it worked fine but for
the huge project of the tree itself the entire tree I actually did cover it all
first in black tissue paper and that just makes it a lot easier as I'm working
with the clay when I cut the lines of the clay there is nothing it in the
background except for black and that's what I wanted okay so if you don't have
any black tissue paper this stuff is real easy to get I got this at Walmart I
also got some at the dollar store and it cost the same price at both places about
a dollar for a package like this and one package did my entire tree my big tree
so what I do is I brush glue on and then I just lay the tissue paper over
top so let's do that okay and my glue is straight tacky glue but I mixed it with
some water just to make it easier to work with
I don't measure the water I just put in a little bit of water and it becomes a
little bit more drippy and easier to work with otherwise it's just too thick
and like I said I did skip this step when I was putting on one of the
branches when I replaced one of the branches actually I had done a branch
and then I decided I didn't like it so I took it off and then I made another
branch and then because I was kind of in a hurry I just I skipped this step all
together and it worked out fine but I did prefer working with the clay over
the tissue paper like this so the choice is yours and if you just have regular
tissue paper like light or paper towel or newspaper you can do that as well
okay so I'm just gonna keep doing this and tell my entire piece is covered with
the black tissue paper okay so I dried it up somewhat it's still wet you can
see but I just like to have a little bit of dry service to work with it doesn't
have to be completely dry so I'm going to take my clay and again this is that
homemade clay that I make myself and I'm just going to place it on and I just
spread it out with my fingers this is a thin layer the thicker the layer the
longer it's gonna take to dry and I'm gonna be putting this guy in the oven to
dry which is gonna speed things up for us on my big tree I couldn't put it in
the oven so it took mmm three days I think I think it was three days before I
attempted to paint and I had fans going on it steady
alright guys I'm just editing the video and I thought I better pop in with a
little tip for you when you are making the shapes of your clay on your bark and
you want to add any of these little ridges here that pop off of your main
structure make sure that it has in foil underneath it otherwise it could
break off once it's dry so all of these pieces here need to have a foundation
underneath it otherwise if I hit it too hard or if it drops or whatever that
piece here could break off on paper towel bark you don't have to worry about
that paper towel you could build up and away from the main structure and it
won't break it could bend but it would never break not like clay clay is kind
of like glass once it's dry so it can break if you don't make sure that you
have a good foundation underneath it there we go all covered in a layer of
clay and before I do my bark lines I thought would try this weigh this piece
before I dry it because I get this question a lot how much do my how much
does my gnome home weigh and how much does my tree way and I I don't know
because I can't lift them up or put them on a scale so let's do this little guy
here and then we'll weigh him again once he's dry so there we go just a little
over two pounds all right so let's add those bark lines now and all I'm using
is my bone folder so I'm just gonna start at the bottom and just pull it up
that's all I do I'm just criss crossing I do straight lines and crisscross do
straight lines and criss cross you could take a lot of time and go over this part
slowly and really methodically add lines and stuff but I find on most it just you
know you just go for it and don't spend too much time and in the end it just
works out beautifully
alright guys so let's do the bark on this other little stump the way I used
to do it and still will do it in upcoming
projects I'm not going to abandon this way at all I think both ways are
wonderful I know the clay looks very realistic and if you spend more time
with the paper towel bark you can make it look just as realistic - it all
depends on what you're going for okay so I just take my paper towel I've dipped
it in glue I've taken off the excess and I'm just gonna lay it over top my
masking tape and then this is where I put in my texture I squish it up make
sure there's wrinkles in there and there we go so I'm just gonna repeat this
process all the way around there we go all ready for drying now and you can see
why there's such a need for parchment paper or wax paper underneath because it
it drips quite a bit as its drying so this one is going to get stuck under
fans because if you stick paper towel in the oven that's been soaked in glue it
balloons out you'll notice as its drying it'll swell out and then you'll lose a
lot of that texture that we just worked so hard at creating
you stumped it's gonna go into the oven right now here we go all nice and warm
in the oven and you can see I preheated to 175 and I'm gonna do it at a super
low temperature I could have turned it up if I didn't use that jug that I was
using but I have never used one of those before so I'm not sure how well it will
hold up to the heat so I want to do at a super low temperature so I'm gonna set
my timer for an hour and I just see where we're at in an hour all right my
timer just went off and that's still pretty damp to the touch what I'm gonna
do I'm gonna turn this up five degrees to 180 set my timer again for another
hour and over here this guy is still still too wet to paint but dry to
the touch so we'll just turn our fans back on all right guys we've got three
hours in the oven and some of it has dried but some still has a long ways to
go so I'm going to set the timer again for another hour so that's three hours
in and I just set the timer again for another hour here's our paper towel bark
and it is dry enough to paint no it's actually dry to the touch everything is
dry you can see in the deep creases that there is still some wet glue and over
the next few hours and even over the next day or so you'll notice a change in
that if you don't paint paint it that will dry even more but like I said this
is absolutely something that you go ahead and work with you could paint this
you could add a roof to it yeah you can go ahead and and do what you want to do
to this now anyway because I'm going to be painting the the stumps at the same
time I'm gonna go ahead and stick this back under the fans It's not gonna hurt
it at all and let it dry some more while that other one is sitting in the oven
all right another hour and a half in the oven well look at that almost exactly
half so it was a little over 207 when we stuck it in there and now it's just a
little over 107 oh that's pretty cool so now we know that clay loses almost
half its weight once it's dry so recapping the dry time
our little clay stump took four and a half hours in the oven at 185 I started
at 175 they slowly upped it until we got to 185 and our
little paper towel bark stump took three hours to dry under fans and this one is
going to continue to dry I could see a little bit of glue there I've done a
number of these over the last few years now ever since 2014 and yeah you can go
ahead and paint this even though you can see a little bit of wet glue there
nothing bad's gonna happen so the ones that you have to make sure is completely
dry before painting is the clay always make sure that the clay is completely
dry before you add paint alright guys the video is getting a little bit long
so we're gonna end it here and I'm gonna break it up into two more parts part two
will show you how to add on to these after they're dry you can see I've
changed the shape of both of these stumps after they were dry and that is
part two and in part three we will paint the stumps alright so we'll just see you
over there in part two or in part three