Buttoned Up My Overcoat

Back of cottage, from the tree side. All of the Tudor timbers are buried under heavy plaster work for now.
Garden side and interior detail of loft shelf and a crooked wall seam/join.
I brought out some of my visual references and spread them out on the floor, a couple of details from the cottage interior collection. I could lose myself in these precious images that I've collected for Halfland from books, magazines and off the web.

Follow up: the plaster mache, where I use thin plaster instead of starch on paper to make it stronger more quickly, worked really well. It did dry all the way out and was indeed hard as a rock. Good trick.

Another 10 today, I added heavy brown papier mache to the interior of the tree to fortify it before a plaster layer goes on because if a substrate flexes the plaster will flake right off. I made many many small batches (ask me how many big batches went hard in the pail before I figured that out!) of plaster and coated everything inside and out again. I used wax paper strips between each wall panel to enable me to build up plaster at the joins, while being able to separate them when dry. I took the all the walls panels apart in order to plaster mache the underside of the little loft/shelf under the eyebrow window over the bay window.

In prior layers of these walls, I tried to be very clean and as precise as possible. But I realized that in this case, texture is a plus, so I roughed it up, slop slop style. It will photograph better and looks perfectly fine for in person viewing. I also found that I actually like the places where the walls come together to be crooked and imprecise. After all, all this is supposed to look like a goat built it!!!

Next steps:
1.) Swirl on diluted acrylic paint colors in umber and brown washes onto the walls, inside and out. COLOR!!!!!!
2.) Brush on the two pints of Flex All flexible filler that I have onto the tree's branches. NO MORE PAPER!!!!!
3.) Craft landscape set satellite piece bases out of cardboard flats, and support tube legs. REAL PROGRESS!!!!!