A Scratch Built Cottage

 When our friend Blue Bear Jeff passed away I inherited his ECW army, his 18th century Blood Axe Miniatures collection and some other items including a small house he had made. I had forgotten all about it but it turned up when I was working in the basement this spring. I decided to enhance it a little with a new roof and textured walls as there were a couple of materials I wanted to try.

Jeff's cottage was a perfectly suitable but straight forward build; a foam core structure with balsa wood trim on a thin card base.

My first addition to it was a thatch roof. In the past I have tried teddy bear fur (which was OK) and dried grass for a south seas hut (which was too coarse) but I wanted to try toweling.

I think this will be my preferred method from now on. Although a little coarse it has a great texture and takes white glue and paint very well. 

I have been using wood filler to texture bases now for a while but I wanted to use it for creating texture on daub walls. For this I used LePages Wood Filler, smeared between the timber framing, textured with both a fine brush and a damp bit of sponge.

I think it requires a little more experimentation. The original colour of the filler was good, but bright and a bit too yellow. When I got to painting it I went little too dark and attempts at lightening it came out with it looking too "painted".

In the end, the finished colour is too orange (lets just say they mixed a lot of ox blood in for colour...). I will have another crack at it but I will try a different wood filler; something a little more creamy or light brown.