Working with LEDs Again

I shot a real quick video of the Cauldron piece after I added turf/flocking to the foam “rock” base.

I have another flickering LED base, so I might do a little step by step tutorial on how to make one of these. I will, of course, post that here so check back.

Here are the progress shots I took as I made this one. It’s not quite done as I plan to get some embers to glue down inside the turf, under the fire.

Simple bamboo forks for a tripod, hot glued for a “weld” at the top and mounted to the foam block is the first step. I just rough cut the edges around a circle and glued the tripod down to it.

Metal jewelry chain was used with a simple hook fabricated from wire with needle nose pliers makes the hanging cauldron. The cauldron itself is a plastic cup that’s had the stem cut off and was painted steel. I drilled small holes around its top with a needle file, and used wire again to fabricate the mounts on the cauldron. I affixed them with super glue and also used the same wire to make the center ring that the 3 hanging chains are attached to.

These flickering LED candles are always on super cheap clearance prices after the holidays at your big box department stores. The first one I disassembled came apart easily, this one not as much. I had to break the plastic by prying it with a pliers and then cutting it with clippers along the lines where it tore.

I love the design of these, that allows you to replace the batteries. I fear the day that the cheap holiday LED candles all become “disposable”. The two hearing aid size batteries in these are easy to replace.

The fire wood is from these vine wreath things I picked up at the craft store for just this type of application. I cut the pieces and broke them up into fire-log sized pieces for large creatures in the usual FRPG scales of 26/28 mm. The cauldron is huge for a halfling or gnome, but perfect for a large orc, ogre or giant.

 

 

I filled in around the LED plastic parts and wires with hot glue to protect them. When that set, I glued down filler material (mostly torn up pieces of pleather, in this case) and covered the whole thing in gesso.

I used a bit of “fur” from an old gag fake mustache and a set of tentacles I’d sculpted a long time ago out of Milliput. Adding a bunch of goopy gore in the form of Citadel’s Blood for the Blood God technical paint, and finally covering the whole mess in Woodland Scenic’s Realistic Water.

She’s almost done. As I mentioned, I plan to put down some embers underneath the fire wood in the future, to really finish off the detail, but this is mostly complete. The flickering light really adds to the realism of the whole thing and I am really pleased with how this came out.

 

This piece will be added to the Shop.