Loose ends and fresh starts

I couldn’t believe the date of the last entry- I didn’t realize it had been so long ago. So much to catch you up on!

Last blog I had moved my work to the garage for the summer- there I worked out a method to create the birch leaves and got some help in that department from some lovely ladies that Kris McNamer from Blair Preston Library knew. They did a wonderful job cutting out all those leaves. Here is a photo of the trees that I’ve wired them to. I am very impressed with how realistic our birches look. Thank you so much for your help!

Since the cold weather I’ve moved up to our heated shop and will finish the work in this location. Here is moving day!

Now that I have a permanent place to work, I’ve been able to start projects and leave them as is without having to pack everything up again. I have a lot of unrelated projects going on at the same time right now; some working from the left side of the case and some from the right, but I’m beginning to see how it will all tie in together and I’m still excited and determined to finish this with every detail as polished as I can make it.

Another group of helpers were the kids from Blair Clover 4H who spent a Saturday morning painting rocks for our landscape.

Here is a shot of most of the group! thanks for the help; I can’t wait to add your rocks to the finished landscape.

Thanks to:

Addison Lejcher

Avery Peterson

Quinn Peterson

Bailey Peterson

Samantha Aguilar

Jonathon Aguilar

Here are a few of the other things I’ve been working on:

I was also able to almost finish the tops of all three bank sections over the summer

and start the tedious process of tying them into the trees already in place. I have two sections of the bank permanently mounted- only one remains. I keep adjusting things with it, but I'm close to attaching it permanently as well. I’ve added our squirrel, woodpecker and a hawk to the case.

I’ve painted in a couple of elk in the background. The tree on the far right is done, root finished and painted, with a grape vine attached to the trunk. On the other tree, I attached two huge shelf mushrooms

and created a cut-off section of tree root to highlight the tree rings and parts of the tree and I have attached that to the last bank

and will finish off the tree roots of the last section soon.

I’ve carved out the entrance to the badger den and finished the detail on most of it. Some of it will have to be altered to fit the bank as I work on that, but it will ultimately not look much different.

To make sure our badger fit right, I brought her home to build the entrance around her and noticed she was looking a little dull.I cleaned her up carefully and repaired some serious deterioration on her belly as well as brightening up the black on her nose and muzzle. Check out the before and after shots of her head.

The fawn also needed quite a lot of help and I was afraid to touch the delicate skin, but the more I got into it, the more confident I became. All in all, I’m very happy with how she looks now. She is my favorite makeover so far! The first shot is before, the next is how she turned out

Speaking of the fawn, I’ve created a “chunk” of her habitat that will fit around the cut-in-half birch near the door. There will be a canvas painting to make the roots of the birch look as though the tree is growing out of the bank. I've done a final fitting and now I can finish the painting of the front. The burrow that is carved out is for the mole. I also did a makeover on the mole, who had paled considerably over the years and gave him back a pink nose. He will also get a burrow and some earthworms to snack on.

Here he is, although the photo is blurry, you can see the pink I added to his nose and "fingers"

Other things:

I’ve started detailing the paint job on the huge cliff, adding moss, grass blades and eventually some different vegetation. I've also started carving the stream bank, cliffs and what will be a waterfall!

Biggest news of all- I tracked down a huge supply of foam to do all this carving to finish this project with! It is now stacked safely away and I've starting the carving to create a beaver lodge and the surrounding habitat. More blogs and photos to come soon!