Gingerbread House Ornament

I tried making a mini gingerbread house ornament a few years ago but I didn't like the way it looked. Since then I've come up with a better way to do it, which I'm going to share.

 I started the same way, cutting all the sides of the house out of my card of choice; Amazon packaging. Then I glued all the bits together.

 Next I needed to paint the house a gingerbready colour using acrylic paint.

 Here comes the game changer. Using the same polyfiller and water mix in a bottle with small nozzle that I used here I was able to be more precise with the piping of the 'icing'.

Not too bad if I say so myself! I could see myself getting a little production line going and making a whole bunch of these.

Model School Detail

Here's another detail from the model school I'm working on. At the top on the building there's this thing which I don't know the name for.

When thinking about how I was going to make it I remembered a technique I'd seen in David Neat's model making book. It said to use polyfiller to build up the shapes.

The book recommended applying the polyfiller using a small squeezy container with a small nozzle, which I managed to find at school. The filler I had from when I tried to make mini cardboard gingerbread houses.

Once I'd got the filler in the container, and added a little bit of water, it was ready to apply. I'd printed off the image I was creating at the right size and stuck it to a piece of mount board. This meant I could just trace over the picture with the filler. I found that once the filler has dried a little and formed a skin I was able to work into it with a cocktail stick to sculpt it.

I applied about 4 layers of filler altogether, allowing each layer to dry first.

Once the filler was completely dry, which happened over the weekend, I painted it with acrylics.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out and how well the technique worked. I think I'll be using it a lot more.