There have been tons of amazing stable and barn buildings created over the last few years with ever greater realism. My old simple stables, which were made from a dolls house shed bought from eBay, were looking a bit plain and boring by comparison. I had just painted them white and stained the wooden doors. They were definitely in need of a facelift! I’ve often thought about doing a stable or yard building in Cotswold stone, a lovely honey-coloured stone commonly seen in my home county of Oxfordshire.
My first attempt was passable I guess. I painted some card with various beiges, ochres and greys and cut them into rough stone shapes and glued them onto the stable building. It looked flat though and not as realistic as I’d hoped.
After this, I decided to have a go at a separate stable front section. First off, I cut out a rectangle of foam board in A4 size. I much prefer using foam board to thick card as it seems to maintain its flatness better and not warp when glued and painted. Next, I glued to that an A4 grey craft foam sheet (bought from hobby craft but I’ve since discovered you can get them cheaper in bulk packs on eBay).
The foam is easy to mark so I started by gently scoring the horizontal lines of each row of stones with a ruler and pencil. Once happy with how that looked, I went over them again with a metal sculpting tool that has a narrow but blunt end. You have to press firmly to permanently mark the line but not so firm you go all the way through. After the horizontal lines were done it was then just a case of adding random size stones by popping vertical lines in, and going back in after to round off any sharp corners. It takes a while but it wasn’t so bad with a bit of Radio 4 and a good podcast on in the background! The texture was added by rolling up a ball of kitchen foil and rolling it over the stones, applying lots of pressure so it presses deep enough for the marks to be permanent in the foam. I advise wearing gloves for this bit as it’s surprisingly hard on the hands!
If I did this project again I would definitely finish and cut out the foam layer before sticking it to the foam board. It was tricky cutting the door section out and I am still not happy with some of the rough edges on the stones along the doorway.
There was quite a bit of faff at this stage as I thought I had cut a door wide enough for nine lolly sticks side by side. This wasn’t the case though so I first tried to add an extra half lolly stick to both door sections to make it fit. After checking my reference pics again I realised that the majority of buildings actually had a wooden frame inside the stonework which the doors were hinged onto so I set about constructing a frame from coffee stirrers and a plank above the door made from an extra-wide lolly stick. Once I’d made the frame I had to resize the door sections and re-glue the planks on the back of them but finally, it all fitted nicely.
Next, it was on to the painting stage. The stones had a base coat of brown followed by various different hues of cotswold stone honey colours and some greys (I based it on a reference picture of a pub in my local area which has a mixture of stones). The weathering was several layers of dry brushing with light browns and beige to off white. After that some dirty washes with Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade towards the bottom of the wall, and lighter washes in random areas elsewhere. Then finally I splattered on some off-white and light green speckles to give the effect of lichen and little plants.
The doors were initially just given a brown wash which looked ok… but I wanted more depth to them so opted to base coat them again in black and work up from there with dry brushed layers of light brown then beige. To add some variation, different planks were then washed with watered down brown and green shade paints.
The hinges are made from several layers of aluminium tape cut to size, textured with a rolled up ball of kitchen foil and sprayed black. They are stuck on with blutack right now but I plan to turn them into working hinges soon. The bolt is a bit of a cheat as it was pinched from an old magpie stable.
And here's some of the Julip herd in the finished stable! The door was a bit bigger than I originally intended so it'll have to be for larger Julip moulds like Hunters and TBs only.
