The Tower of Prin’gl

With all the peas and details added, I then made a stepped hill up to the main door. Similar to the other hill, crumpled foil, DAS modelling clay and cardboard leftovers pushed into to make steps.

Working my way up the tower with all those peas, I also tackled the balcony floor itself. Rolling out FIMO and then using a green stuff world paving stones roller over the top gave a very pleasing effect. I also made a small hatch/trap door out of coffee stirrers and match sticks. This will be covered by the second tower when used, and then otherwise explains how people get up to the tower top.

With the small tower progressing well, I turn back to the big tower. I’d used masking tape to help smooth some of the transition between the packaging shapes, and then coated with dilute PVA.

One thing I decided to build was a small garderobe/privy to help break up the shape and add a bit of fun. It’s just a matchbox with coffee stirrer planking.

Once it had dried, it all looked a lot better, and the smaller tower seated on it looks really good too.

I decide that I’ll do some work on this little hill so it can be usable even when on its own.

I’m building the tower in two parts for ease of handling – with the intention of gluing them together towards the end. But then it struck me – why not go modular?

It’ll make it easier to store and give me more options for how to use them on the table.

This means I’ll need a base for the smaller tower to stand on when not seated atop the other tower.

using some trusty ready meal containers (Bombay potatoes and Coleslaw I think) I made a stack on an MDF base.

Then, crumpled foil added bulk and made it more organic, before having a liberal application of DAS modelling clay. I pushed some small rocks, bits of card for steps and then pressed foil and stone texture into it.

It looks terrible!

Ah ah, they’re Ebeneezer Good.

This is what the towers end up looking like when fully pea-d. I’ve got a little tub of cardboard bits from punching out board games and these little cardboard crosses look like those reinforcing bracers that really old buildings sometimes have. Painted up in metal, they’ll look pretty good I reckon.

With the FIMO elements baked, I looked at what other materials I could use to add more details.

I did cut some bricks from FIMO, to mainly be used around windows and doors, and in some areas to break up the cobblestone – like it’s been repaired or made with repurposed stone.

I also used trimmed cotton bud (q-tip) wands as window supports and detailing around the main door.

And of course, you can’t do a scratch build without some obligatory coffee stirrers!

My next challenge was to figure out how to cover the walls with a stone texture. I could cut out lots of bricks or stones from FIMO, but instead came up with an idea that is either genius or very, very daft.

Enter the split pea.

Because they have a curved side and a flat side, I thought I could just glue them and they might give a good cobbled effect, like Portchester Castle or something.

So that’s what I did.