Fake Bark Made 2 Different Ways Part 1

hi guys welcome back today is an exciting day because we are going to be doing two different methods of bark and I'm also going to show you an updated version of making the paper towel bark which I've been doing since 2014 on the gnome home and I have figured out a better way of painting so let's take a look at these different methods of bark so here is my gnome home my constant work in progress that I started back in 2014 and I've been continually adding on to it well the bark on there is made with paper towel and then we'll take a look at my big tree the bark on here looks really fantastic and a lot of that has to do with the paint so I'm gonna be I'm so excited to be showing you how we did all of this today and I think both of them are wonderful and hopefully by the end of this video series you're going to have two different options and either one is going to work just as good as the other so not shown on the table is some homemade clay that I make myself and I actually have the video here on YouTube that will show you how to make it in your kitchen sink that video should be popping up on your screen so you need homemade clay or some other sort of clay and for this one here with the paper towel I used paper towel and tacky glue we need tinfoil that's important make sure it doesn't say nonstick because you need masking tape to stick to it and this is black tissue paper that's optional although I highly recommend getting some that's very easy to get I got some at the dollar store and also at Walmart I need hot glue paint brushes and of course some paint the most important one to get is black then the rest of the colors the tones can vary and it's up to you whatever you have in your stash I used burnt umber so that's a very dark brown and a cinnamon brown which is a lighter reddish type Brown and then a tan color this one's called soft suede but you can use another tab color and then a gray you can use all different shades of grey it doesn't matter I actually mix this one with black and this one is just your regular light grey I also used a plastic bone folder I think that's what they're called it's for crafting and it was used to cut my lines into the clay we don't use anything to cut lines into the paper towel bark because we actually make those lines as we're laying down the paper towel so you just need to find something if you're using the clay something to cut lines with I found this was super easy to use and easy to handle you can use whatever you want to to build your tinfoil around I'll show you in the next clip what I use to build both of these guys and I just used an empty milk jug the cardboard type for both of them so I already got started with the first one and I all I did here was just glue on tin foil and I'm using hot glue let's do that with this one here so there's a piece of tin foil I just folded it over and scrunched it up you can see I didn't scrunch it up too tight alright guys, I think I'm finished with the shapes that I want and this one is just kind of plain and this guy here I started seeing a shape in my mind like a crooked stump so I added more on the bottom just on this side here you can see it's pretty fat on that area okay so now I will do a layer of masking tape all right guys I got my masking tape on the one and you can see I wrapped right around underneath and I always do that with my projects anyway my material always wraps around and under and over top that just makes a more solid piece but especially on these guys because I noticed that the hot glue lifts away from these little jugs here and that's probably because there's a film of wax over top I didn't even think of that they are sticking but I can see with some of it has popped away so definitely will be wrapping the masking tape underneath and over top as well okay and like I said just one layer of masking tape but of course it overlaps in many areas there's my layer of masking tape and I did wrap it around underneath and on the sides of the jug so there's no separation once I get my clay on there there's no chance of it separating the top I did a little bit different because I'm just gonna be adding a shingled roof to this so I didn't need anything fancy on top this guy over here is gonna have a solid top like someone cut the the top of the tree stump that's what it's gonna look like there and same thing masking tape wrapped all around the inside top and bottom all right so now this is where our bark is gonna start differing for this one it's gonna get the clay what I'm gonna do first is I'm gonna add a layer of tissue paper now the clay will stick to the masking tape by itself the clay I use in fact I did do that on one of my branches on that tree and I just used a masking tape and it worked fine but for the huge project of the tree itself the entire tree I actually did cover it all first in black tissue paper and that just makes it a lot easier as I'm working with the clay when I cut the lines of the clay there is nothing it in the background except for black and that's what I wanted okay so if you don't have any black tissue paper this stuff is real easy to get I got this at Walmart I also got some at the dollar store and it cost the same price at both places about a dollar for a package like this and one package did my entire tree my big tree so what I do is I brush glue on and then I just lay the tissue paper over top so let's do that okay and my glue is straight tacky glue but I mixed it with some water just to make it easier to work with I don't measure the water I just put in a little bit of water and it becomes a little bit more drippy and easier to work with otherwise it's just too thick and like I said I did skip this step when I was putting on one of the branches when I replaced one of the branches actually I had done a branch and then I decided I didn't like it so I took it off and then I made another branch and then because I was kind of in a hurry I just I skipped this step all together and it worked out fine but I did prefer working with the clay over the tissue paper like this so the choice is yours and if you just have regular tissue paper like light or paper towel or newspaper you can do that as well okay so I'm just gonna keep doing this and tell my entire piece is covered with the black tissue paper okay so I dried it up somewhat it's still wet you can see but I just like to have a little bit of dry service to work with it doesn't have to be completely dry so I'm going to take my clay and again this is that homemade clay that I make myself and I'm just going to place it on and I just spread it out with my fingers this is a thin layer the thicker the layer the longer it's gonna take to dry and I'm gonna be putting this guy in the oven to dry which is gonna speed things up for us on my big tree I couldn't put it in the oven so it took mmm three days I think I think it was three days before I attempted to paint and I had fans going on it steady alright guys I'm just editing the video and I thought I better pop in with a little tip for you when you are making the shapes of your clay on your bark and you want to add any of these little ridges here that pop off of your main structure make sure that it has in foil underneath it otherwise it could break off once it's dry so all of these pieces here need to have a foundation underneath it otherwise if I hit it too hard or if it drops or whatever that piece here could break off on paper towel bark you don't have to worry about that paper towel you could build up and away from the main structure and it won't break it could bend but it would never break not like clay clay is kind of like glass once it's dry so it can break if you don't make sure that you have a good foundation underneath it there we go all covered in a layer of clay and before I do my bark lines I thought would try this weigh this piece before I dry it because I get this question a lot how much do my how much does my gnome home weigh and how much does my tree way and I I don't know because I can't lift them up or put them on a scale so let's do this little guy here and then we'll weigh him again once he's dry so there we go just a little over two pounds all right so let's add those bark lines now and all I'm using is my bone folder so I'm just gonna start at the bottom and just pull it up that's all I do I'm just criss crossing I do straight lines and crisscross do straight lines and criss cross you could take a lot of time and go over this part slowly and really methodically add lines and stuff but I find on most it just you know you just go for it and don't spend too much time and in the end it just works out beautifully alright guys so let's do the bark on this other little stump the way I used to do it and still will do it in upcoming projects I'm not going to abandon this way at all I think both ways are wonderful I know the clay looks very realistic and if you spend more time with the paper towel bark you can make it look just as realistic - it all depends on what you're going for okay so I just take my paper towel I've dipped it in glue I've taken off the excess and I'm just gonna lay it over top my masking tape and then this is where I put in my texture I squish it up make sure there's wrinkles in there and there we go so I'm just gonna repeat this process all the way around there we go all ready for drying now and you can see why there's such a need for parchment paper or wax paper underneath because it it drips quite a bit as its drying so this one is going to get stuck under fans because if you stick paper towel in the oven that's been soaked in glue it balloons out you'll notice as its drying it'll swell out and then you'll lose a lot of that texture that we just worked so hard at creating you stumped it's gonna go into the oven right now here we go all nice and warm in the oven and you can see I preheated to 175 and I'm gonna do it at a super low temperature I could have turned it up if I didn't use that jug that I was using but I have never used one of those before so I'm not sure how well it will hold up to the heat so I want to do at a super low temperature so I'm gonna set my timer for an hour and I just see where we're at in an hour all right my timer just went off and that's still pretty damp to the touch what I'm gonna do I'm gonna turn this up five degrees to 180 set my timer again for another hour and over here this guy is still still too wet to paint but dry to the touch so we'll just turn our fans back on all right guys we've got three hours in the oven and some of it has dried but some still has a long ways to go so I'm going to set the timer again for another hour so that's three hours in and I just set the timer again for another hour here's our paper towel bark and it is dry enough to paint no it's actually dry to the touch everything is dry you can see in the deep creases that there is still some wet glue and over the next few hours and even over the next day or so you'll notice a change in that if you don't paint paint it that will dry even more but like I said this is absolutely something that you go ahead and work with you could paint this you could add a roof to it yeah you can go ahead and and do what you want to do to this now anyway because I'm going to be painting the the stumps at the same time I'm gonna go ahead and stick this back under the fans It's not gonna hurt it at all and let it dry some more while that other one is sitting in the oven all right another hour and a half in the oven well look at that almost exactly half so it was a little over 207 when we stuck it in there and now it's just a little over 107 oh that's pretty cool so now we know that clay loses almost half its weight once it's dry so recapping the dry time our little clay stump took four and a half hours in the oven at 185 I started at 175 they slowly upped it until we got to 185 and our little paper towel bark stump took three hours to dry under fans and this one is going to continue to dry I could see a little bit of glue there I've done a number of these over the last few years now ever since 2014 and yeah you can go ahead and paint this even though you can see a little bit of wet glue there nothing bad's gonna happen so the ones that you have to make sure is completely dry before painting is the clay always make sure that the clay is completely dry before you add paint alright guys the video is getting a little bit long so we're gonna end it here and I'm gonna break it up into two more parts part two will show you how to add on to these after they're dry you can see I've changed the shape of both of these stumps after they were dry and that is part two and in part three we will paint the stumps alright so we'll just see you over there in part two or in part three

Channel: Where The Gnomes Live

Views: 217,739

Keywords: faux bark, paper towel bark, clay bark, fake bark tutorial, tree stump dollhouse, mouse house, sharon ojala bark, fake tree, paper mache tree

Id: xh7sLzH3Q4I

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 12 2018