Here's a couple more stone walls. The one on the left is just a lark, all I did was press a stone pattern into some modeling clay and then fold it over so that it had two sides with stones, sealed up the ends and poured some casting plaster into it. The one on the right is really more interesting since that is the first attempt I've made so far to duplicate the basic ideas of Dwarvenforge or Hirst Arts stuff. It's just one wall section, but it's a start. Because I wanted to make something that I could cast a bunch of copies of, I used sculpey clay to make the mold. I made a classic two-part mold out of sculpey clay and baked the clay. The wall is 1.5" x 4". I should be able to cast a couple dozen copies from the mold I made, or at least I hope so. Based on how this turned out (which I think is pretty good) I am going to start working on more complex shapes. Corners, doorways, windows, etc. I've even come up with a way to make round walls. Using sculpey is 1/10 the cost of expensive silicon molds, and certain shapes (like my round walls) are actually easier to make with sculpey than the same mold would be to make with silicon. I'm thinking this could be the start of something big. I also have a brick pattern I can do the same thing with.
And finally, yet another example of my penchant for finding cheap miniatures. Yes, once again, they are dragons.
I had started on a sculpey clay design that I was going to mold, but as my plaster has begun to dwindle, I've realized that craft sticks are quite a bit cheaper than molds and plaster.
Wellsmv, you did it the hard way. I did one or two that way and decided that was nuts. Then I decided to use some cross-braces just like in an actual bookshelf using some square toothpick like sticks. Once you have the braces glued in, gluing the shelves is a piece of cake. Yours came out real nice though.
What I do now is cut the sides to the height I want, usually a dozen or so at a time, then I lay them all out side by side (with the edges touching) then I lay out the wooden sticks I use for crossbraces so that they are all the same height, then I glue them all in. After the glue dries, I cut them apart (or break them if I'm lazy and in a hurry) and then cut out the shelves as close to the same length as possible (but it's not critical that they be exact since I will be glueing them to the cross braces instead of the sides of the bookshelves, they just have to be long enough to reach the cross-braces). The glue itself will usually hold them in place while they dry.
Piece o' cake once you get the hang of it.
Heh, I have been told that my posts are too wordy and that I go into too much detail about every little thing I do, so I've been trying to be more concise. I actually had that whole process described in a much longer version of the post on my blog and decided nobody would read it...