Ah, dinner time.
Wait a minute...
When life gives you long lemons...
You gotta build a place to hoard them.
Today i'm going to build Donkey Kong's treehouse
This idea was born from a previous comment, so leave a comment about what
else i should be bound by blood to build.
To build this thing, you're going to need
a big branch
some more branches
coffee stirring sticks
and an old plastic lid
You'll need a few other crafting things that we'll get into later
To start, first grab your chunk of wood that would make a righteous tree house and trim it to size
Yep, that's wood
We'll be building a log cabin so for the scale logs go find a stick
And then go find 50 more
If you find baby sticks like these make sure to leave them be so they can keep growing
These twigs are still raw so don't eat them right away
We first need to bake them for one hour at 170°F until they're still brown and sticky
This is actually just to sterilize the sticks
so you don't accidentally ingest some of the tree-coli bacteria
Before we start building,
go grab your other log cabin and try a quick fit test for your main tree trunk
If you don't have one, that's very reasonable
Now this step is optional, but I'm going to take a coffee break
to see if i can get a little crafting epiphany going...
Oh! Like this! This would make great lumber for the treehouse deck.
I'll leave a link in the description for the particular stirring sticks i'm using
Here's a crafting tip: using a coffee can and a bunch of rocks,
you can add years of wear and tear to things by throwing in a bunch of sticks
and shaking the Funky Kong out of it
It did nothing. We'll have to weather them a different way.
These sticks are *too* long so use a pair of scissors to make them one long
Then lay down a platter of masking tape with the sticky side up to hold
your wood in place while you assemble it
Try to stagger and alternate your wood pattern
so it's less boring while you're assembling and less boring to look at
The real magic in keeping this deck together are these supports,
which I'm attaching with super glue
and then weighing down with something flat and heavy
Some of the glue leaked through,so just something to keep in mind
Then just wrestle your deck from the tape and trim off the extra bits hanging off the edges
If you want a more rustic deck, just keep those bits on, I don't care
Shaking my can around earlier didn't really impress anyone so
I'm adding some weathering and battle damage using a craft blade
This next part is a (w)hole endeavor.
We get one shot to add a hole to the deck we just built
so make a hole template using paper or foam board and
use it to trace out the perfect pear shape in your deck
To attach the deck to the tree, I used hot glue
Don't worry about messy globs because they'll be hidden under the tree house
Then I used a level to make it level
Drill a hole in the bottom for attaching the base
I almost put the base on first which would have been a mistake
like trying to put your pants on over your shoes
For the base, I'm using a plastic lid I don't need
and then attaching it using a wood screw
This lid was a rare find when it comes to lids
The edges are smooth and don't have ridges like many plastic lids
Keep on the lookout for these
I must protect this smooth edge, so i'm sealing it away with masking tape for now
The top is going to be covered in various glues and pastes,
so i'm roughing up the plastic with sandpaper
This will give your glue/paint some texture to hold on to, as well as the clay in the next step
We can't legally call this stick a tree until it has some roots
so i'm using air-dry clay to rough out a few water legs for our trunk
For the tree skin, I'm using a silicone sculpting tool
and a wire brush to blend it into the bark
As you can see, the clay starts to look really shaggy, but you can smooth out
and blend out all these details using isopropyl alcohol
Use a paint brush to smooth it on, but don't go too nuts with the alcohol
or you'll melt away all your detail
For the base structure of the treehouse, I made four walls from foam core
If you're wondering why this last one looks like Frankenstein's monster,
it's because i resurrected these pieces from my foam core scrap heap
Great job!
The walls are hot glued together and then attached to the deck
For the roof base, any old cardboard will do
The jungle pattern on this tissue box felt appropriate and helped me get into the mood
even though you'll never see it ever again
Then i realized i didn't keep enough overhang on my roof pieces
So I used a redundant sheet of balsa wood even though it'll be totally covered up later
Is that a 28mm scale tabletop door template?
Is this going to be used in a Dungeons and donkey kong game?
Maybe!
Hey, thanks for sticking around this far
Time to cut some of these to size, but be careful though because they really go flying
Try to catch them if you can
Or just launch them into a backboard or something
But your best bet might just be to do a little E.T. pinch while you clip each branch
There's no shortcut to this step... it's just clipping and gluing and clipping
and gluing and telekinesis and gluing until you've covered up the entire house
For the window trim, I'm adding deeper wood grain to this balsa wood sheet then
slicing and dicing until I have a nice set of reclaimed balsa wood beams
I love whenever the art direction of a thing i'm building is sloppy and uneven
because it makes my unsteady hand look intentional
This circular window presented a problem though
The logs are very uneven, so i'm gluing these trim pieces onto this cardboard ring
I assembled the whole thing off-site, including the tiniest of window grilles
and then attached the whole thing in one piece
You know how the roof is already made of wood? Now cover it up with more wood.
We're attaching coffee stirrers in alternating rows with white PVA glue
Don't forget to set your house free and admire those long wings on the side
Time for a haircut. I'm trimming the excess off with some clippers making
sure to save the excess for later and then offering it some gel
And the final detail was the beam across the top of the roof,
which i carved and textured using a craft blade
We're just about ready to paint, but first we need to add some texture to the base
I'm spreading on some modeling paste and then stippling it using a paper towel to
remove the brush strokes add some randomness and to hide the fact that
this is really just a lid
Before painting, i'm priming and sealing in one step
using a mixture of matte Mod Podge and black acrylic paint
This is a recipe I learned from Black Magic Craft (link in description)
After sealing, I give it a crown of brown from the top down
so we don't lack black in the cracks
Now let's start painting using this exciting array of browns
Okay, so you might be asking... "Wasn't the wood already brown?"
"Why are you painting a brown thing brown again?"First of all...
W̴̧̔H̴͔̓O̷̙̎ ̷̧̾Ȁ̴͎Ŗ̸͛E̵̦̎ ̵̢̄Y̶̗̍Ò̶̺U̵̩̽ ̸̹̐T̵͇̀Ó̵̪ ̸̞̈A̸̱̕C̶̣͝C̴̲͘U̴͇͘S̶͎̔Ȩ̴͋ ̸̺̕M̷̰͒Ë̷̦?̸̫̕
But second, I don't want to steal mother nature's work -- that's plagiarism
But most importantly, natural outside brown is good, it's beautiful
But we need that low poly DK64 brown
So for that, we're simplifying the color palette with these exciting browns
working our way up from darker shades in our sloppy base coats
to lighter and lighter shades with dry brushing
The goal is to not cover up the earlier browns completely
so i'm dry brushing with the smallest amount of paint on the brush and only
trying to hit the edges and raised details with lighter shades
For the deck posts, I carved a couple pieces of balsa wood and painted them
If you have some disposable chopsticks lying around,
those also work great for this type of thing
Then i moved on to building and painting. the sign for the top of the treehouse
I was thankful that DK's penmanship isn't great
so i didn't have to work too hard for this
For the underside of the treehouse, I added a couple non-functional support
beams with glue, then capped them off with tiny nails just for the aesthetic
For the base, I'm going to try gluing down some actual dirt from outside
Dirt is available pretty much anywhere, you just have to dig
Or if you have a mole problem, half the work is already done for you
Borrowing a sieve from the kitchen, I sifted dirty ground dirt through it
until i had powdered dirt and whole-grain dirt
Then put that powdered cinnamon all over your forbidden cinnamon roll
I'm brushing off the excess dirt that didn't stick to the watered-down glue
then spraying on isopropyl alcohol and using an eyedropper with watered-down
glue to seal in the dirt
Shout out to Luke Towan's YouTube channel for this dirty secret (link in description)
next let's build this DK barrel from scratch
aka Diddy Kong's prison
Next, make the worst egg you've ever seen from chunks of foam board and
glue strips of balsa wood around it until it's a wood football
Clip off the overhang wood bits
cap it with a wood lid and
use strips of cardboard as the metal hoops around the barrel
I used a craft blade to make two different sized DK logos and glued
them on the prettiest side of the barrel
After Mod Podge and primer, I slapped on some base coats for the main colors
including this very sloppy brown coat
and then only marginally less sloppy yellow, red, and gunmetal gray
Painting is all done so i'm sealing it all with a matte top coat
Since acrylic is water soluble, it needs protection from the nice dirty bath it's
about to get. Let this grime soak into every little crevice
It looks pretty dark now, but it'll be much more subtle after it dries
If the wash is pooling in places, you can just dab off the extra using a paper towel
For the rope around the deck, get hairless twine if you can otherwise
use a lighter to singe off the leg hairs
I finished up the top deck using super glue to secure the ropes to the posts
and then capped it off with Diddy's guest house
Next, roll some jungle joints
Just kidding, that was a jungle jape
I'm using this moss i got from the craft store to glue on a few strands
to resemble a few climbing vines
To fill out the vines, i'm sprinkling on some of this fine grain green turf
I'm dabbing on some glue and then sprinkling it on in places to resemble ivy or moss
Time to add some grass
I'm using 4mm static grass and a static grass applicator
to add some green in a few select places around the base of the tree
Not every blade will stick, so make sure
to knock off the extra and save the rest for later
For trees, i have a pack of these super budget palm trees,
but i think i can improve on them
I'm keeping the green foliage, but i'm going to use some of my leftover sticks from earlier
Use a pin vise to drill out a hole add some metal wire or a toothpick for mounting
then use super glue to attach the palm fronds and to add the trees to the base
Yeah, that's looking pretty good
But this spot needs a rock
Maybe one more rock
And finally a banana hoard needs bananas
so let's sculpt some using bananas as reference
Oh, these are bad...
For the bananas, start by rolling out a ball of Super Sculpey into a long snake,
cutting it into little hamster poops
then gently coercing them into curved bunches
After baking them in the oven, let them cool and
then dip them directly into your pot of paint for a lazy paint job and
don't drop them
You can mount the bananas directly on these toothpicks to let them dry which
will let you dab off the extra paint from that terrible paint dip you did
Shame on you
then i dry-brushed the stems green and added a brown wash for some contrast
And finally finally, we can peel off this tape and call the build done
Let's roll the beauty shots
Thanks for watching me turn a bunch of sticks into this tree house
Special thanks to MoonLight Angel and all the other people dropping ideas in the comments
Donkey Kong 64 was always one of my favorites growing up,
but let me know what some of your favorite games are
In upcoming videos, i'll be tackling some things from Zelda and Stardew Valley so
I welcome you to subscribe if that's your thing
Until next time, my name is Studson, this is Studson Studio and i'll see you next time