hi guys welcome back to where the gnomes live I have a video for you that I
wasn't even planning on making I ended up making these hollow logs the other
night and these are the first hollow logs that I've ever made I've made a number
of trees over the years but I've never attempted hollow logs and these were
really fun to make the reason why I made these was I am working on a new
background scene for my blog it's for stop animation and also for taking
photos and I recently have used this background for some of my crochet
patterns
so I'm sitting here at my sewing table and I actually have the background set
up somewhat I don't have the ground down but I do have the back I'll take a look
here so there's my wonderful paper clay trees and I have some moss there and I
crocheted some mushrooms and then I decided I needed a hollow log for a
scene that I have in mind so that's what brings us to these guys because this
video wasn't planned and I'm still in the middle of doing my background I
haven't yet had the chance to add mushrooms or any other features to the
log so this video is only going to show you how to make the log and how to paint
it and then once I get the chance to add the mushrooms and the moss and all that
great stuff then I will upload another video for you and you can see this log
all decorated but for now we'll just get through making the log itself and
hopefully that will get you on your way to making yourself a great scene next
I'm going to break down the supplies that you need to make one of those
gorgeous little logs I'm also going to write this list down in the description
box below so we need six feet of tinfoil and this is 30 centimeters wide and make
sure it doesn't say nonstick because you need masking tape to stick to it so you
need tinfoil six feet of it and masking tape once we make our tinfoil form and
cover it in masking tape I'm also going to cover it in paper so you need some
white glue or tacky glue and I water it down a little bit and for the paper I
use black tissue paper you don't have to use the same thing that's not necessary
you can use paper towel you can use brown paper or a newspaper we'll be
using a pair of scissors and if you have a point a knife on hand they come in
handy for making the little nut holes because you can just pierce the tin foil
when you need to scissors will work too but I found a point a knife works a
little bit faster and of course we're gonna paint the log when we're all done
so you're gonna need a variety of different colors you can choose the
colors of your own choice of course but this is what I've used I used black
burnt umber cinnamon brown and a soft suede
before I made this video I actually never made hollow logs before I've made
a number of trees over the years I've painted a lot of trees but I've never
painted the inside of bark and I attempted it here and I'm pretty happy
with how that looks you can of course play around with different colors of
your choosing what I did to do the inside here was use some of these colors
that I just showed you and then I also used a little bit of golden brown and a
tiny bit of antique white you're also gonna need a paintbrush you need one
bigger one and if you have a smaller one like this it comes in handy as well and
of course you're going to be needing paper clay that's how we get this
beautiful bark texture on here and there's tons of recipes out there for
paper clay I actually have a recipe here on my youtube channel you can use any
paper clay of your own choice if you want to see how I make my paper clay you
can click that little link that's popping up on your screen and that will
bring you right to the video I show you how to make the paper clay from start to
finish and to cut these beautiful lines into the paper clay I used a plastic
bone folder if you don't have one of these try to find something similar in
something plastic because that works wonderful on paper clay alright guys now
you know what you need let's get started that took a 6-foot length of tinfoil and
I folded it in half so now it's three feet long and I'm going to fold this
over three times one two and three so
these open ends I'm going to roll towards each other
I don't overlap it too far
the outside is all covered in masking tape and I want to do the inside as well
but first I want to decide what kind of shapes I want up here if I want to cut
away any like this then I'll do that now it'll make it easier for putting the
tape inside and now I will lay some tape inside there
you
outside there's no foil showing through anywhere and if you wanted to add a
little knot hole on the top very easy to do that just cut a hole wherever you
want the knot hole to go the hole here too and I was just thinking maybe I'll
add a little branch coming off here as well so it's rolled up some tinfoil I'm
going to spread open the bottom and just place it anywhere I want it to
go and I'll cover that with masking tape so now we are ready for the next step
and what I do and you don't have to do the same thing you can do whatever you
want from this point on I cover mine with black tissue paper and this is very
very cheap I get mine at the dollar store you can cover this with newspaper
paper towel brown paper so what I do is I take tacky glue and I've watered it
down just a little bit I don't measure it out I just water it
down so it's easier to brush on top of the surface tacky glue is very very
thick and it's hard to paint over paper when it's so thick so I like to water it
down and I just lay that over top I actually don't bother with the very
bottom that's just gonna make it difficult I cover the entire surface
except for the very bottom you can do the bottom two as well but you just have
to wait for the other parts to dry first and then flip it over okay once it's dry
on the outside then I start working on the inside it doesn't take long for the
paper to dry I just put a fan on it I'll paint my glue in there on both sides and
just like I did with the masking tape I'll reach in there grab one end and I
can just lay it down we are now ready for the paper clay and I'm gonna be
working inside out so I'm gonna put paper clay on the inside first and
before I do that I just want to tell you a little something that I thought of
yesterday because this is the very first one I made I wasn't really thinking
about the heaviness of the clay on top of the foil and then after I put the
clay on top of course it kind of pushed the log down and you can see it here
collapsed right here but I like that design I think that's a great feature
actually for a log that's running here's something to think about if you don't
want to talk to collapse under the weight then think of a little brace that
you can put inside I just made one out of tinfoil so after I get my paper clay
in there I'm going to put this inside and I want the top to stay up and then
the front of it I think I'm gonna collapse down on purpose kind of make it
look like it's rotting let's do that let's play around this book a little bit
so I'm gonna get my plastic bone folder and gonna get my paper clay and just
push it in there and I'll spread it around with my little knife here boom
foot bone folder makes a great knife and then we'll come back and we'll put that
brace on
in the front like I said I'm going to collapse it a little bit after I get the
paper clay on the top I'll just play around with that design
after I'm ready to cut my lines in and one nice thin layer the thicker the
layer is longer it's gonna take to dry and paper clay takes a really long time
to dry out already so we want to help the long by making sure that's a nice
thin layer I go as soon as I can without starting to see the background
you
get my paper clay is on and my brace did fall out a few times I had to keep
putting it back in there and then I had to readjust it just before I turn the
camera back on but yeah that's the first time I've tried that so it's working
well now and like I said the front here I'm gonna collapse out a little bit and
push that down so this part can be collapsed down on purpose so now I'm
ready to cut my lines and I'm just gonna pull the lines across and I'm gonna
crisscross them and here you can see where the black tissue paper comes in
handy I can see it underneath already
anything you do to this now once it's dry it's going to keep that shape
forever so I just looking at Google at the ends of hollow logs and you can see
where the bark is separating from the tree itself so that's what I'm trying to
recreate here okay from this point you can if you have a nice sunny day take
advantage of that free energy and stick it out in the Sun for as long as it
can stay out there if you don't have Sun use fans on it otherwise it's gonna take
a super long time to dry and if you want to you can dry it in the oven at the
lowest setting I'm gonna go stick mine in the oven actually and I'll time it
and see how long this takes to dry so it just came out of the oven and it took
five hours to dry it completely and that was on 175 so five hours is a very long
time I've done most of my paper clay after I've dried in the Sun or under
fans usually I leave it overnight under fans that's a lot of energy to use five
hours of the oven but I did want to see how long it would take using the oven so
and now I can pop out this brace in here
you can see I ended up with a hole in there I can file that down
there we go managed to file that down now if that
was a very visible spot all I would do is just fill it in with paper clay and
let it dry but it's out of the way there so I'm not going to worry about it so
now what I'm going to do is paint this I'm gonna paint it black first like I
said that gives a nice base for the highlights of the tree color and how I
do it is do a black wash and I take a one bottle like this it doesn't matter
what size bottle but I'm gonna make mix it with equal amounts of water so one
bottle of this this one bottle of water and I have a big brush in a little brush
I can get in those little nooks and crannies you don't want any white spots so you'll
notice right away mixed with that water if that paint just flows into every
little crack that it needs to and it takes half the time out of
painting the black is all dry and you'll notice after it is dry the the black
coat if once you turn it and look at it at different angles you'll find little
white spots and if you have a lot of those fill them in because they will
show up after your final coat is on and you don't want to see all those white
spots I've already touched mine up I could see one or two left over and I'm
not worried about just a couple of them but if there was a lot then I would
paint over those again now I'm gonna take earth umber and I'm gonna go over
the surface okay and you'll notice when I'm painting this coat I'm not getting
into all the little cracks I'm just going over top this is where you'll
start seeing the part come to life and I don't want to get into all the cracks I
want to have some of that black showing through like I said my hollow log I just
made my first one the other night this is my second one now I haven't totally
figured out the color for the inside yet but I will
before this tutorial is over I'm thinking I will look at some more
pictures on Google and just the the color of the inside of hollow logs and
I'll go from there but I do know around the front part around
the front of the opening it'll be a little bit darker than the rest
depending on how long it's been out in the open air rotting away on the ground
if that burnt umber coat is dry and now I'm going to go over it with a cinnamon
brown and I don't clean my brush in between I'm just going to wipe off the
excess on my paper here so dip my brush in there and then I get that excess off
brush it off on paper and just go lightly over top again I just want to do
highlights I'm not getting in and tough all the cracks I'm just gonna set that
aside for a few minutes and then we'll do the final highlight color
ok that coat is dry and I'm gonna take a soft suede I'm running out of here
oops I don't need very much of it and again
I'm not cleaning my brush in between I'm just taking the excess off on my paper I
just want a little bit of that color
okay at the inside I'm still not completely sure but I'm gonna try this
golden brown and I'm just gonna go very lightly I'm gonna take my smaller brush
and I'm gonna go very lightly and just see if I can just add a little bit of
color in there just highlight it all right guys I kept playing around with
color and I think I'll leave it here I added in that golden brown toned it down
quite a bit with that soft suede use some Brown again and some black yeah I
think that looks pretty good I think the trick is to not just do one solid color
you don't ever want to do that with a tree because then it just starts to look
yucky so you want to you know use some dabbing motions and pull some color
through and then you take your smaller brush and then you can highlight some of
those cracks with your black and I think that works well all right so the next
thing I want to show you is with the black so I've taken my smaller brush and
what I do is just shadow out different areas here and there just to give the
log or the tree even more depth I just go around and just shadow it out a
little areas like this it adds a lot of depth to your overall finished piece so
when I dab my brush in there again just getting the excess off and then go in
anywhere where you think there should be a little bit of a shadow
around the bottom of this knot hole and he's deep deep cracks I would put some
extra black in there and after I'm all done I take that soft suede again it's
just a tad of it and anywhere where there's protruding parts I highlight
those and again that just just like the shadowing does it adds a lot of depth to
the tree alright my friends I hope you enjoyed this video showing you how I
made this beautiful little hollow log and I hope you get yourself one made and
as soon as I get a chance to like I said I'll be uploading another video showing
you how I ended up decorating this until then I hope you have fun crafting and
we'll see you super soon