Easy & Realistic Fake Stone Walls from Foam 2!

foreign [Music] welcome back to another video now recently Mrs Van Oaks and I took a much needed vacation and during our stay we saw our fair share of cobblestone streets and rock walls so in this video I'm going to show you another way to tackle making fake rocks for your home or haunted attraction so let's get to it what makes this method different from my previous video is that each Stone will be cut from one inch foam so to get started I'll grab a marker and sketch out some general Stone shapes it doesn't really matter if they fit together but it does help to get the most yield from your foam [Music] once I have my Stones drawn out I'll grab a hot wire tool to cut out the shapes you can use anything from a serrated knife to a jigsaw to cut these out I just like this method because it's less messy although that won't last for long with my individual Stones cut I'll start to trim off the hard Edge to help bring them closer to their final shape while I don't typically do this with a hot wire I figured since I had it out I'd give it a try [Music] in the end I switch back over to my rasp since the hot wire leaves behind a hardened surface on the foam that's more time consuming to smooth out with a rasp which will eventually be used to shape each piece but also use a wire brush to give the foam even more shape and with my rasp in hand and my shop back by my side I got to shaping now I know this seems like a really time consuming process and that just carving out the gaps between the stones would have been faster but it's this kind of detail that really makes a difference in your finished product during the shaping process you'll really want to make sure to round over all of your edges as well as give each Stone varying dimension by creating more organic shapes you make it more difficult to tell what the original material is which is what sells the effect now that all my stones have been shaped I can get down to gluing them in place since this is just for demonstration I'm using a piece of cardboard as my backing but this method will work on everything from foam to plywood I'll be using Gorilla Glue to keep everything in place since it's my preferred adhesive for foam but you could also use construction adhesive to mount all of your stones if you prefer a tighter pattern you'll want to make yourself a plan for installation for me I just grabbed pieces and worked them around until they fit although I think a more planned approach would create a more visually appealing finish so keep that in mind should you decide to make a stone wall of your own now that everything is in place and the glue is set up it's time to coat our stones for this technique I'm using a powdered tile mortar and an acrylic polymer additive this is one of the hard Coatings I featured in my monster mud video and I'll leave a link in the video description if you want to check that one out but for this video this mixture is roughly four parts mortar to one part liquid and then gets painted on with a chip brush foreign [Music] foreign [Music] is coated I like to sprinkle some of the dry mortar mix Over The Damp foam to give it a bit more texture this will help to catch some of the paint that I'll be applying once it's had a chance to dry [Music] thank you now that everything is dry I'm going to grab a few shades of brown and green acrylic paints some small containers with water and make some color washes to apply to our stones whenever I'm planning on blending colors I like to dampen the surface first to make the process easier but you'll want to make sure not to over saturate this surface since it can reactivate the tile mortar so keep a rag handy just in case you need to offload some water paint or both then it's just a matter of applying the different color washes blending and repeating until you're happy with how everything looks this paint job is pretty subtle but you can go much heavier on the color to fit the look of your project foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] at this point I thought it would be a nice touch to add a bit of moss for some visual interest so I grabbed an even lighter green color and applied it along the undersides of some of the stones and then used a bit of the lighter brown wash to help soften it a bit since it was a bit stronger than I wanted understanding how this piece will be seen will help you decide just how subtle or overt to make your finish so it's always good to have an idea of how much or how little light it will be viewed under as you make these types of decisions [Music] now that the color wash has dried we can move on to the final step a bit of white dry brushing across the tops of the stones think of this as a highlight it's designed to give the stones a bit more shape and helps to separate them from one another it's also a great way to accentuate some of the texture which helps to further sell the illusion of them being real Stone if you'll be using this Outdoors you'll want to apply a clear sealer that's designed for outdoor use like Thompson's water seal a few coats will help protect it from the elements for years to come and if it'll be living indoors then you can call this one finished so there you have it and while I'll admit it definitely takes longer than some other approaches I think it pays dividends in the finished product that's going to do it for this one be sure to like And subscribe if you haven't already but most importantly go make something [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: VanOaksProps

Views: 44,323

Keywords: diy halloween, diy halloween props, diy halloween decorations, halloween props diy, halloween diy, halloween diy props, halloween props, easy halloween props, cheap halloween props, halloween decorations, Halloween How To, vanoaks props, fake rocks from foam, fake rock diy, foam rocks, foam rocks diy, foam rock background, foam rock carving, foam rock terrain, foam rock painting, fake rock fireplace wall, foam carving, fake rock, foam carving halloween

Id: 4XI45QxcAG0

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023