Friday, March 15, 2013

Making mud huts with dryer lint

Are you prepared to follow me into crafting madness? Be certain, for in this blog post I will detail a formula so strange that it will violate everything you hold sacred and leave you gaping at the heartless black void with no illusions of God or logic to comfort you.

Well, it might not be that difficult to grasp, but it's certainly outside the proverbial box.

So, dryer lint, right? I have always wanted to find an industrial use for dryer lint. It's cotton -- a valuable commodity. It built the South! And now we're throwing it away? No, sir. Not in my domain.

 Figure 1 is a clump of dryer lint sitting in a plastic bowl.


 Figure 2 is a blurry picture of me pouring a glue-water solution into the bowl of lint.





 This is dryer lint -- not just cotton fluff, but also human and cat hair -- sitting in a pool of glue and water. Hey, anybody hungry?


 Glob by glob, I picked the waterlogged lint out of the solution and stuck it all over this half a box, a box that cough medicine came in. Just squish it on there. There's no need to make it even because what you're going for is a wattle-and-daub look.




 Here are two huts-in-progress, lint smooshed into place. I left space for doors.



 Primed white, doorways painted black, roof made of gluing sticks side by side.


 Doors by same method. Miniatures for scale. Don't think you're taking down a Greek with slingstones, kids.




Is anything ever done? I'm pretty happy with what I'm seeing here. I initially wanted to give it a tan wash, and I probably still should because even though the white looks good, rain or moss or blowing dirt would give it at least a little color in any environment. Right? I also belatedly wonder -- do mud huts have windows? I don't think so. I think if you live in a mud hut and you want some sun, you walk the hell outside.

I'm thinking about sticking these huts on a terrain piece, maybe with grass, trees, and a pen with a goat, maybe a shepherd, maybe a shepherd's wife. It'll be quaint.

4 comments:

  1. Man, those huts look better than they should knowing they are constructed of such humble materials. Well done.

    Your huts look very similar to one of the first images that appeared on a google search of "mud hut". The only difference is your arched door (which is a bit fancy for hut) compared to the square door in the picture I found.

    In terms of terrain, maybe you can make an animal pen out of sticks, or maybe simple fencing that would keep animals out of a small garden.



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  2. Thanks, Dave. Arched doors do seem a little highfalutin, now that you mention it, for hut dwellers. Wish I'd thought of that before I textured three more huts.

    I think I'll go with an animal pen rather than a garden because I don't want to sculpt a bunch of 28mm scale produce. It would just be posts, perpendicular sticks, and a little string. You can be sure I will post it when and if it gets done.

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  3. Very impressive! Nice tuto...
    Phil.

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  4. Liked this post a lot. Not only did it make me smile but I might even use the idea.

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