I made a Discworld "Book Nook"! A ✨Magical✨ Nighttime Forest Bookshelf Insert with GLOWING STARS ⭐

greetings fellow humans today i am going to be making a book nook book insert thing because i was having a bit of a rough time and just needed a project that would bring me some joy so decided to just make some tiny tiny things my book nook is going to be based on terry pratchett's discworld i started rereading the we free men last week and i have always always heavily identified with the main character tiffany aching but the we free men takes place on the chalk and it wouldn't be a very interesting environment to make so i decided to fast forward a bit in the timeline to when she is an apprentice witch in a kind of foresty mountainous area near the town of lanka all the materials i'm going to use for this are just things i had lying around i have never made any models or miniatures or dioramas or anything before so i don't have any special supplies what i had to actually create the container the nook for this book nook was a small cardboard box cut one side off of it so that it would be open i wanted to make a sort of whimsical night scene so i used a pin to poke holes in the back wall of the box and then widened those holes with a few different sizes of safety pins and kill pins and then it was mountain time i sketched out two craggy steep mountain sides on some cardboard that came from the back of a notepad and cut them out with a scalpel then i grabbed some foam clay the foam clay that i used was just leftover material from when i made my lock shock and barrel nightmare before christmas masks i found it a pretty difficult material to get smooth but have found that it's excellent for making more organic shapes i started layering foam clay onto my cliffs and adding texture with different sculpting tools as i went and because i planned to layer the cliffs one on top of the other i only added material where it would actually be visible so that i had a flat surface on the larger cliff to glue the smaller one too i found that the square tipped plastic tools were really good for adding rock texture and i tried to vary the level of the clay as i sculpted it so that it would look really dimensional when i painted them because it's a forest i wanted at least one big old tree if you're going to do this please do as i say not as i do and wear gloves because i did cut my hands a few times on the sharp wire i twisted together a few pieces of wire to create a support for the trunk of the tree and then tested to make sure it would fit and i added some extra wire pieces to be supports for the branches and i bent them all into shapes that i liked and looked aesthetic to me i grabbed more foam clay and i used that to form the branches just the branches we'll get to the rest of the tree later now time for the rest of the scenery i wanted to make a waterfall and while i could have made the entire structure out of foam clay the chunkier a foam clay sculpt is the longer it will take to dry so i used some scrunched up cardboard hot glued into place as a base for the rocky structure to minimize my foam clay usage i then realized i could make the rest of this rocky section by just crumpling up bits of paper and gluing them into place by the way this project uses a lot of hot glue like heavily relies on hot glue now i wanted more branches on my tree than i really had space for so i figured out where i wanted to position my tree and sketched out some spots on the side of the nook to paint some branches on then i went back to my waterfall area and started adding a thin layer of foam clay over the whole thing as well as that sweet sweet rock texture the reason that there are points it looks wet is because rehydrating foam clay if it starts to dry out makes it malleable and sculptable again i suddenly realized that painting my branches would look like absolute trash so i traced my tree schematics onto cling film and i sculpted two extra branches out of foam clay instead i didn't think that they'd need a wire armature like the rest of the branches because they would be glued to the wall of the book nook then i popped my tree in between those branches and started laying down more foam clay to create the trunk of the tree being very careful to cover all of the very shiny very pink wire and then going over it all to create a bark texture i really wanted my tree to look kind of extra old and grizzled so used a little more clay to add one or two knots to my tree trunk and i am really happy with the way that those turned out i think they're really cute to be honest i set that aside to dry out and use the same trick of crunching up cardboard and hot gluing it into place before covering it in a layer of foam clay to create an appropriately tree rooty structure and again i went in and created some bulk like texture i left a gap in the top of the roots and exposed wire on the bottom of the tree so that i would be able to lay down a line of hot glue on the wall and just slide the tree into its proper spot i thought it would be tidier to stick the wall branches down with super glue but i think my super glue might be old or have gone off or something because it took ages for it to actually start to stick and even longer to fully cure it was very weird anyway i filled in the gap between the roots and the trunk of the tree with more foam clay and tried to blend them in a way that looked as natural as possible again adding more texture and actually trying to connect the lines i was making in the fresh clay to the lines on the roots and the trunk just to keep everything cohesive there are various bits of this that i forgot to film like the attempts at reeds that i made out of wire and faux clay that you can now see me hot gluing into place there are many things in this project that i improvised like this i wanted some ground texture now proper model and diorama makers have legit products that actually do this i have pva glue and kinetic sand mixed on a bit of cardboard and slapped on with vigor and hope i wouldn't recommend using kinetic sand for this please use normal sand kinetic sand is already vaguely sticky this was very hard to control don't follow my lead on this after my improvised ground texture had dried out i primed everything with a rubberized spray paint to seal the foam clay and to give me a good surface to paint on then left that to dry i primed my clips earlier so they were already dry and i could start painting the process i followed for painting is pretty straightforward none of the techniques are actually difficult it's just about doing the right steps in the right order and decent color choices so on my cliffs i laid down a dark gray base color and let that dry then followed it up with some sort of mid-tone purple and blue that were each on one edge of my brush so i could apply them at the same time then i dry brushed them i started with a very pale purple on both of them but that didn't give enough definition between the two of them when they were side by side so i went back forgot to film and dry brush them again using a pale blue on the back cliff and a pale yellow on the front one to create a bit of perspective and speaking of materials that i macgyvered why yes i am fraying tiny scraps of green fabric why yes i am cutting off impossibly tiny threads why yes i am making little pools of pva glue and poking said threads into them to create little patches of moss and lycan do not forget lycan you can buy model scale vegetation or cut pieces off fake plants you don't have to do the things that i did like oh i don't know soaking long threads in glue letting them dry cutting them up and then carefully arranging them into tiny clumps of long grass if you want to make your own book nook you can just be a reasonable human being and buy scenic flora for yours with the primer dry it was then painting time when putting acrylic paint over black it will dry much darker and more muted than it looks when it's wet which was excellent for my night sky but would not be great for my forest so i did a thin base coat of light grey where i wanted to paint my forest and after it dried i channeled my best inner bob ross and spent some time painting happy little trees with the terrible pound shot paint brushes that i got in my christmas stocking i used my darkest green to create the first line of trees and very carefully added the tiniest blue highlights to them to try and create some dimension as i moved towards the foreground i used lighter greens and higher contrast highlights for each layer creating like a little misty bit between each line of trees by really really gently dry brushing with the light gray in a sort of swirly motion i painted the background images first because i figured it would be easier to paint the scenery without getting paint on the background than it would be to paint the background without ruining my perfectly painted scenery and if the random splotches of gray and green paint i got everywhere told me anything it's that i made the right choice i put a base coat of gray on the waterfall rocks and brown on the tree and after they dried it was time to dark wash both of them a wash is literally just very watered down paint i laid it on generously so that it settled into the recesses that i had made when i was sculpting and then lightly dabbed them away on the surface with a paper towel then it was once again dry brushing time because of the yellow and the blue tones on the other rocky sections i thought it would be fun to go a little pastel fairyland so used some pale pinkish purple color to start on the rocks and then went back in with a peachy orange color later to hit the areas that i'd missed with the purple that still needed a little bit of highlight for the tree i didn't use pale colors because i really wanted to keep it dark so i chose a golden yellow to start off and then for variation and dimension i chose a contrasting color and dry brushed any spots i'd missed with some blue i'll link a video about color theory in the description in case you're interested in knowing more about that this is a bit i completely forgot to film but i made a little outcrop of rocks on the top of the book nook to kind of tie it all together and hide the battery pack for the lights that would make the stars glow but having sculpted and glued down bits of vegetation i thought i'd better paint them so you used this let's call it chartreuse color to paint the grassy plants that i've made out of foam clay i glued my two cliffs together and then glued them to the back wall and then it was basically down to the finishing touches here are more plants that like some kind of crafting pedant i also made the leaves of foam clay and i hot glued them to wire stems i painted them individually and they have five different colors of paint on them because of course they do why am i like this whatever it's fine the only pieces of scenery that i didn't actually make are these little fur branch things that i cut off a six inch tall faux christmas tree that is still hanging out in our living room in april i went through finding places to add little pieces of lichen and moss and long grass i used hot glue to create the water for my waterfall i would have preferred a prettier less yellow material but this is what i had to hand so it's what i used i hid the fairy lights in a little compartment i built from the cardboard offcuts of the box hot glued down the battery pack to stop it slipping around and it was done [Music] right so i am absolutely thrilled with how this turned out i think it is wonderful and whimsical and magical it just makes me so happy it was really lovely to take on a low stakes project that didn't have to serve any functional purpose it was just for funsies i've discovered that i really like making tiny things when you're making something that's like this big the entire world melts away and this space where you're making this tiny thing that's all that exists and it's very calming and therapeutic in its own way it was just for fun to make a cute thing and i did have fun and did make a cute thing so success deciding to make it a nighttime scene wow whimsical nighttime fairy speaks to my soul it makes it kind of difficult to see some parts of it and the stars love the stars the stars are my favorite bit to be honest but the stars aren't bright enough to actually light the back of the book nook so kind of difficult to see the details of what's back there but i don't know that i would like it as much if it was a daytime scene so yeah i sent a picture to a couple of friends one of my friends was like i want to shrink down and go and explore it which i think is the greatest compliment i could possibly receive it's just so damn cute i don't have enough words to express the like internal squee i have about this project i was having a really rough time with the sewing project i'm working on and a rough time in general mental health wise doing this project has made me happier than i've been in weeks so it's a good call if you guys make your own book nooks tag me on instagram or like point me in their direction because i just think these things are so freaking cute anyway i hope you had a good time watching me create this tiny world if you liked this video then give it a like if you'd like to see the other projects i get up to then subscribe to my channel but whether you keep hanging out or not i hope everything is okay in your world and i'll see you guys next time [Music] nearly completely forgot to film an outro oops it's gone numb oh no it's the worst anyway i nope nope nope nope swelling why is there a bobbin on the radiator the cat's been in here hasn't changed around my bobbins tiny fairy

Channel: Emily Snee

Views: 1,521

Rating: 4.8275862 out of 5

Keywords: book nook, bookshelf insert, bookshelf diorama, bookshelf insert diy, bookshelf insert diorama, bookshelf insert diorama diy, bookshelf insert tutorial, bookshelf insert how to make, book nook ideas, book nook diy, diy book nook, how to make a book nook, Terry Pratchett, terry pratchett discworld, diorama building, diorama projects, diy diorama, the wee free men, tiffany aching, wintersmith terry pratchett, forest book nook, forest diorama, miniatures diy, miniatures

Id: sxt0d1vD9dc

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021