Finished Plague Victims and Dead Bodies

Hi! I have finally completed my bodies and dead people! Here are pics:



To make my linen wrapped body look dirty and gross, I used dry (not oil) artists pastels. I scribbled with the brown pastel on a piece of paper and mixed it with an teeny tiny bit of water. I then used my finger to spread the pastel over the body in smudges.




Here is a picture of my finished dead cart with the bodies. I stained the dead cart a darker color, used a thin black wash over it, and then scored it with the blunt end of a craft knife, to make it look like there are many planks nailed together to built the cart. I also used a super fine tipped black sharpie marker to dot little nail holes.




Here are pictures of my finish living, or freshly deceased, plague victims. I used blue and black pastels mixed with water to give my people a blueish black tinge. The lady in green is gonna have a head covering and be a dead body, because she has plastic hair, which I don't like.



As you can see,  all my dead people are looking a lot more realistic and dead. Here's one more picture of a new creation:



This is a tiny jar of leeches for my plague hospital. To make it, I first used black clay and made some leeches mirroring those I found in pictures. My favorite leech picture that I mirrored my tiny ones on is below. After I baked my leeches, I used a hardening clear liquid, like scenic water. I melted this with a makeshift double boiler and poured it in my jar in layers, putting in the leeches a few at a time. I put in my cork and I was done! I'm going to cover the cork with a brown linen, but other then that, I'm finished!



So, as you can see I'm really progressing fast. I'll be posting pics of my medieval food dollhouse soon. I've mostly glued it together, so hopefully (cross you fingers for me) it will be done by the end of the week.

Bye!

Hospital Patients

Hi! On Saturday, my mom and I went to the Seattle dollhouse show, and we bought some cheap dolls. Yesterday I was hard at work on them. Not dressing them, but instead I was giving them buboes (boils filled with pus that the bubonic plague, which was part of the Black Death, caused). Here are some pics (The sheet on the women is because I didn't want to post naked dolls on my blog) :

So, as you can see, my buboes look pretty real. To make the sores, I first mixed Polymer clay (sculpey, to be exact) and matched my doll's skin tone exactly. I then formed small balls from the soft clay, and smoothed the edges so it looked just like the dolls own skin. I never baked my buboes to make them harden because I wanted to blend them to the skin really well.Then, I used a tooth pick, a tiny paint brush, and some blood red paint. I dipped the toothpick in the paint and carefully dotted each buboe with tiny specks of paint. Using a dry paint brush, I brushed my sores and slightly spread the paint. After I did this, I gently dipped only the very tip of the brush in a tiny bit of paint, which I then brushed over the sore, and around its edges. Ta da! Your sores are now completed! If you do decide to make your own plague people, just remember that if you make a mistake on a buboe, all you have to do is wipe it off and start again! I really hope you're not disgusted. My dad and brother thought that my people were disgusting. I don't know why. All the buboes are is clay and paint! Though, I guess the thought of plague victims is rather gross. Anyway, good luck if you make your own! Adios!  

MORE DEAD PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi! I just tea-stained my bodies. Now they are a yellowy color. They looked better, but I still need to stain them more with brown paint or something and make them look dirtier. Anyway, here is a picture of the tea-stained bodies:

Bye!

Pics of my Dead People!!!!!

   Strange title, right? Well, last night I mostly finished my dead bodies. I hot glued twine to the back and wrapped it around and around my linnen-wrapped tin foil chunks in an x-pattern. I know, its kind of confusing. But the pictures will help. All I have left to do now is make my cloth look more dirty because clean linen would have been very scarce during the plague. Well, here are my pictures! If you have any questions, feel free to coment below this post!

The Dead Cart and its Riders...

      Hi! If you are reading this now, that means I didn't freak you out too much in my last post. That's a good thing. Maybe, if I'm lucky, this post won't creep you out either, although I highly doubt it. As you can probably guess from my title, I've been hard at work on a dead cart and some bodies. The cart was very difficult to make.
      But first, you may be wondering, what even is a dead cart? Well, a dead cart is basically a two-wheeled wheel barrow type cart to carry dead bodies. I made my wonderful piece of artwork (the dead cart) out of balsa wood planks, really strong glue, and flat headed pins, like I use for sewing, which is yet another of my ongoing projects that I don't really have time for. Back to the cart. I used a craft knife and carefully cut out all the pieces I would need. Very carefully, I glued each piece together, then pushed my pins into the wood to hold it. If you try this technique, I suggest you use a thimble to push the pins, because my finger was very sore and painful after inserting so many pins.

      For the bodies, I made dead-people shaped lumps out of tinfoil and covered them with a plain white cloth. My dead people are not completely finished, though, because I still need to tie them with some waxed string or fake sinew so they look more authentic. I will post pics after they are finished. But for now, here is a picture of my cart: