Some of you will already know this because
I've already talked about it on patreon Back at the end of September, I suddenly lost
one of my cats to a super unexpected heart issue To be honest, it kind of um ruined my life And I really wanted to make a project for him I would really like to believe that he is now
living like one of the cats in a Ghibli film so I've been wanting to design a Ghibli
film set in autumn- adding him to it just makes it that much more special In a cookie tin of course
which is extra fitting because- I'm sorry, I would love to give
them to you but they're not-awww Starting by coming up with our concept There are two main things about him that
I wanted to incorporate into this project First of all, I wanted it to be a dessert
shop- whenever desert came around he was ready to try and snatch it from us I don't know why he was so obsessed
with sweets- it was kind of adorable. And he absolutely loved going
outside and being in nature, which I thought was very fitting for a Ghibli film He could totally be a Ghibli
character and the best one at that~ The concept that I wanted to do was
essentially the back of the dessert shop with a whole garden area
There's not gonna be that much to signify that it's a dessert shop, but
that was the concept- so at least you know So of course we're starting with the base Now structurally, this is very similar to the
Spirited Away project, but with like an added deck area so a lot of how I built the
base was pretty similar- I'm just using a lot more wood elements this time- I'm
throwing some popsicle sticks into the mix Pretty much all the base structures were
made from paperboard, cardboard, chipboard, and some popsicle stick elements where
it needed to be a little bit more stiff Essentially the same sliding system it's
just a little bit better done this time A lot of this was just texturing things, so I did texture the inside floor to look like a
tatami mat- you never see it, but it is in there The whole entire thing was really inspired by
traditional Japanese architecture, of course, again much inspired by Spirited Away
and some of the other Ghibli films Now one of the most important
elements for me that I wanted to include was this bottom koi pond
to include as much nature as possible Look at the shadow and tell
me it doesn't look like Totoro The doors are one of the most
important parts of this project- pretty similar to the Spirited Away project I was extremely lucky to
get a Dremel for Christmas- thank you to my family, of course, for that <3 So I wanted to try doing some wood carving with
that- Should I have done more of it before just going in on a project with it? Yes, but I didn't. You'll soon
find that that is a trend with me With this piece, I wanted to focus on the
four seasons- wanted it to be a seasonal garden and then my wonderful kitty is the sort
of seasonal spirit lives in the dessert shop On the bottom there will be a small carved wooden
area each door themed with a different season, so for example- for summer I have the
waves, winter snowy mountain sort of things, for spring I have a lot of flowers, and for
fall I have of course the falling leaves I really just wanted to add lots of different
small elements to add to the story (so graceful) Before we put any of this stuff
in, I need to paint this back wall I decided that I wanted to do mango print
wallpaper because my cat's name was Mango A light purple background
with some leaves and mangoes Now a lot of what I had to paint on this, of course, was wood so obviously
a lot of things got painted brown Then to weather all these things- Studson's
destroyed Howl's Moving Castle video just kept running through my head... or maybe hobbling? So I finally pulled out one of my cheesy makeup
brushes to dry brush on some of the texture, which worked very nice- I'm sure you've
seen a lot of people do it by now And, of course, we want to paint absolutely
everything before sticking it in to the tin pretty much all the wood, I'm
using a relatively dark brown base In a lot of areas i varnish over the top to
make the wood look a little bit more shiny Now one of the focal point pieces
of this whole project were the stained glass designs for the sliding doors
Again, they're going along with the seasonal theme Drew the designs on paper first, flip
it over and use that part where it's bled through to see the mirrored
image to be able to transfer them For the fall, I decided to do a koi fish in a pond with leaves- inspired by a bunch
of stained glass pieces that I saw ♪ Singing Ventura Highway ♪ There's a ton of different
methods to color the stained glass I thought it would look the
best and I wanted to try doing it with lighting gels from previous projects
Used that paper that I had drawn as a template to know what shape I needed to cut out for any
super small or thin pieces, kind of like the flower stems, just colored them on with permanent
marker- a really easy option, it just gets a little bit streaky when it's a big area
Attach them onto the door frames To create the outside border of the windows, I
painted all around the edge- made that top long window above the doors a more simple stained
glass window as well with an old shower loofah Turns out it's just one giant long tube
Cut a piece of that, stretched it out, painted that black, and laid it onto the window coloring
in random diamond pieces with permanent markers Stippled on some mod podge to give that sort of
textured stained glass look and I think that this honestly really made a pretty big difference
The bottom area is where the koi pond will be and I'm going to be using resin for that, so I
needed to seal everything super well at the bottom to make sure that the resin didn't leak in places
Then I started layering on some terrain, which will be under the water
Rocks, trying to paint on some moss while also gluing on different pieces
I glued in the floor and the deck supports underneath it
I need to have everything line up correctly for both of the tracks and push it in at the same time
The benefit of using the wood is that it's not flexible, but the drawback
is also that it's not flexible I'm a little impressed that I got it
to fit in there and they can still open because that... was not easy I am including some lights- created a hole in the
back of the tin to thread the light strand through so that the battery pack could stay on the back
of the tin and have the switch easily accessible I made the roof super similarly to
the one in the Spirited Away project, just with some added stick width variation So essentially I just lay all the sticks down,
lay cardstock over it, trim off the edges to make the roof the right shape to fit in the tin
Painted it a really dark red and, of course, painting on highlights and shadows on
the high areas and low areas of the roof As with everything else, painting
on and putting actual moss pieces on I painted the inner sides of
the tin fall, leafy colors I also made an upper roof piece that
you won't see at all (what else is new?) Like the Spirited Away one- we are going to
paint a night sky, am I making that video again? This night sky is going to
be a slightly different color Ohhhhhh no
Is this telling me not to do the sky? Is this a sign?
If it was, I did not heed the warning I've painted night skies in too many of my
videos and they all look exactly the same, so... here it is After the sky was painted,
I could stick the roof in Yeah that's about as well
as I thought it was gonna go Another really important element of
this project was the tree- pieces of sticks to glue into sort of the shape
while also fitting it into the tin For the leaves, we had had a whole bunch of
fall flowers grow in our garden right over by where Mango used to sit
Using those as leaves on the tree- it doesn't exactly look realistic,
but we can add a little Ghibli fantasy All of the little petals that I pressed ended
up looking so much like tiny phoenix feathers I went in and added moss, put
some tiny leaves on some of them, just starting to work in some of these details Then it was time to start making all of the props That also means that it was clay time I wanted to make a bunch of statue sort of
things that I could intersperse throughout the project with different little faces
all super inspired by Spirited Away and a bunch of the other movies
Sculpted them out of sculpey and did my absolute best at that scale and with
my... somewhat regrettable sculpting skills I also made the mask for the
seasonal spirit- like everything in this project inspired by Spirited Away!
It's a little bit similar for sure to no face Went ahead and made the koi fish- probably the
most difficult thing that I had to sculpt because it had a lot of really small thin pieces for the
fins and they needed a decent amount of texturing Cutting out the tail, adding on the
eyes and like the little mouthpiece I also made a little gecko- he
always really liked chasing them The most important piece of this entire
project is making my little Mango cat I love you, I love you so much~ Now this was not easy
I did have some practice recreating him recently in that I painted
a portrait of him for my mom for Christmas, but honestly I don't feel
like it helped me that much Yeah it was just uh really hard to sculpt him at
this scale and to get the likeness right, which I did not so... we're just doing our best, as always
Making the tail and all the little ears and one of the hardest parts definitely shaping the
face, which I didn't quite get right but After that I had to paint all of them, so the
statues of course I'm just painting to look like stone and adding some moss with some green paint
and also laying on really tiny pieces of moss
I painted the mask, I also used a bunch of
those dried flower petals to bring more of the seasonal fall theme into it- kind of reminded me
a little bit of a lion's mane which he kinda had? Painted the koi fish- I did use some pearl
paint to give it just a little bit of sort of a metallic shine for the scales and then
I also painted on details in orange and black Then I painted my little Mango figure
with different shades of orange, putting the white around his nose area it doesn't
look like my cat but it looks like a cat so- I do want to add some fur- I feel like this is
going to be really weird to a lot of people... this is my other cat's fur my
other cat is a very similar color Cat fur is a very plentiful resource in my house
No pets were harmed in the making of this, in fact they were extra loved,
so if you think that is weird... ♪ Look away look away! ♪ And then the final thing that I had to do was
create the whiskers, which I used white thread for One of the things that I really wanted
to add were the Japanese wind chimes They have like a glass dome at the top with
a metal piece that hangs down and makes the bell sound as it hits against the glass
So to make those I'm using transparent beads as the glass top and the bottom pieces that hang
down are just going to be made of cardstock and everything will be hanging by a piece of thread
The bottom pieces that hang down usually have designs on them, so I went ahead
and painted them on some cardstock One of them was a purple
flower theme and the other one- you all knew there would
be a moon, let's be honest Of course we want to add as many
plants as possible to our garden The acorns are back from the Arrietty project, I love using these acorns for stuff- I
don't know why it just makes me so happy! Painted the outsides of them- don't mind me, just
changing my mind about the color about 400 times To make the ropes for the hanging
ones, I'm using yarn separated into four strands to go around the pot part
At the top, I also threaded a tiny little seed bead onto it that ties all of the
separated strands together in one spot Then of course we had to fill our little acorn
pots with moss and cut flower petals- the yellow sunflowers that I pressed at the beginning of the
video are actually ones that my friend sent me when we lost him, so I had to press some of them
to include because they just meant so much to me If you're wondering why I'm wearing
these- I'm just taking after Wybie (I'd wear gloves next time) I also added a birdhouse-
it's all made of cardstock, relatively simple construction just cutting
out the shapes and gluing them all together Painted that and also added a
thread so that I could hang it, then I had to start working on the resin koi pond To prepare for pouring the resin, I needed
to make some holders that would hold the entire project in place and level I also had to glue the koi fish onto the
two support pieces so that they would stick in the area
This is my first time using resin so I'm not exactly an
expert, however- resin is a chemical! Make sure that you're taking after
Nausicaa- you want to have a respirator, do it in a well-ventilated space that
is not your living area, wear gloves, safety glasses, and fully cover your arms-
this stuff is just as toxic as the forest Please watch some videos on safety! Now that I've said all that, I am
using just one glove in this video- only using that hand to touch
near it however- don't do that! Every project that I use resin in in
the future, I will have both gloves~ The surface of the resin that
touches whatever your mold is will mimic the surface of whatever
that material that you use is If you want to be shiny, you have
to use a shiny material or polish it There are so many different kinds
of resin and the one that I'm using, I had to do three pours to
get the depth that I wanted In one of Real Terrain Hobbies' videos, he
mixed the color into one part first and stored that for each pour so that it's consistent
throughout when you mix the hardener in To color mine, I am also using a method that I
saw from Bentley House Minis to create essentially what is an alcohol ink- I was a little bit
heavy-handed with the color- it was my first time! One of the most important things
when using resin is to mix everything super super well
I'm scared. but here we go! This was a relatively tiny
space to be pouring resin into I poured it extremely messily
because that was very difficult, but the good news- I literally mixed exactly
the amount and I don't know how that happened And then it was time to de-mold and
we'll see if everything falls apart! I was not expecting it to go
this well to be honest with you I did make it a little bit too dark The final thing that I needed to do
before assembly was the outside of the tin Sort of a combination of the two past tin
projects that I've done, so I did a collage in the background and then I
painted scenes over that as well So I divided the outside into four
sections- trying to transition the colors and just blend all the seasons and of
course- I had to add mango onto all of them After all of that was done,
it's time for final assembly So here is Mango's dessert
shop, inspired by Studio Ghibli This was an unbelievably long
project for me and to be honest, it was not the easiest for me to work on sometimes I miss him so much!
Definitely the most special project to me that I've done- it
just feels like I have a little piece of him I love him so so much and I just
hope that I've honored him with this And everyone out there with pets give them
just a little bit of love from me today <3 I would love to see other people
design their own Ghibli films Let me know if you would watch my
Mango's dessert shop Ghibli film~
