Dollhouse Miniature Trash to Treasure Fountain

 

Watch the video here.

 

This week I have a really fun Trash to Treasure project for you guys. The trash part is one of those cover thingies that is on the top of stick deodorant. You know the thing I mean, right? The shape has intrigued me for the longest time and I kept thinking I should be able to come up with a mini project of some kind to use it. Then it hit me a couple of days ago, its perfect for the base of a fountain. So here we have a trash to treasure project for the this week’s midweek tutorial.

We need to start by building a base for our fountain to sit on since the bottom of the plastic piece is not flat. For that I cut 2 pieces of a regular width craft stick to 2” and also a wider craft stick to 2” long. I placed the two skinnier ones on a piece of tape that is taped down sticky side up on my work tile with a small space between them. (I used a scrap of craft stick as a spacer) Then I glued the wider craft stick piece on top, trying my best to have it centered side to side and all the ends even. Let the glue dry. I do suggest adding a weight to the top of this while it dries to prevent warping.

Now we need to add our fountain basin to the base. Since I am gluing together a plastic piece to the wooden base I would normally have to dig out my e6000 or something similar to make that work. We all know that those types of glue smell really bad and take a while to dry. Since I am going to be using my UV resin for the water in the project I decided to use it as the glue for this part also. Since my basin piece is clear it will allow the light to reach the resin to cure it just fine. So put a bead of the UV resin in that space you left on the base add the basin and place under the UV light for the time your resin requires.

 

 

Next I gave the entire fountain a base coat of black craft paint. This will be the final color for the base but just a base color for the bowl. If you feel it needs it give the fountain 2 or more coats until you happy with the coverage.

 

For the bowl of my fountain I wanted a copper color but I don’t have any copper color paint (or nail polish, which would have also worked here) so I mixed craft paint to get a color I liked. I started with some gold and pumpkin colored paint but after the first coat of paint dried I decided it needed a bit of an adjustment so I added just a touch of a bight red and it turned out perfect. I did need 2 full coats to get both the color and coverage I wanted.

Now onto the fountain part of our fountain. I had to make a quick run to Dollar Tree and of course I had to check out the craft aisle. They had these black beads and I thought this would be the perfect piece for the fountain. The only down side is they have a huge hole in them, I needed to fill in that hole and at the same time add the little bit that comes out the top for the water to come out of. For this I grabbed a wooden skewer and painted a portion black. Once the paint dried I cut a piece of the skewer that was just a bit longer than the diameter of the bead. The bead is about ½” in diameter and I cut the skewer to just under 5/8” long. I then wrapped a few layers of black paper around the base of the skewer to help fill that hole a bit better. You will have to play around with yours to get the right amount of paper to fill the hole and still fit in there. Allow the glue to dry.

Off camera I took a small container to the parking lot and found a small pile of sand that would work for rocks in my fountain. I then took those home and washed them and allowed them to dry completely. Remember sand in real scale is the size of small rocks in mini.

 

 

For the first layer in the fountain I wanted just a thin layer of the “rocks” along with some resin to make a level base to set the bead part on top of.

 

 

 

 

Next add just a thin layer of resin and set the bead in place. Do be careful that it sits straight up and down and cure as directed on your resin.

 

Next I added another thin layer of rocks followed by a very thin layer of resin and cured it again. You can add as many layers as you want to get the look you want. I did leave mine so that the very top surface of the larger rocks are just peeking out of the top of the resin.

Now it is time to add the water coming out of the top of the bead. I have no idea what that part is called, maybe the spout or bubbler (???) I have no idea. But anyway start by adding just a drop of resin the top of that skewer that sticks out of the top of the bead and cure it. Keep repeating this until the water stands up on top to form a what looks like the water coming out of the top of the fountain.

Now we can add some water running down the sides of the bead into the basin of the fountain. I like the look of this with more areas of the bead dry and just a few streams of water going down but make yours the way you like best. Just work with a small amount of resin at a time and cure it often. Remember gravity is a thing and will pull that carefully placed resin down until you cure it.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.