World in a walnut: Camping

For the observant visitor to my website (and I actually have some now 🤩), you can see that I previously made two scenes in walnuts, with one walnut standing upright: Pagoda and Cherryblossom and the other one is upside down: Crystal Cave. The shape of a walnut gives room to play with perspective. It makes sense to now make one with the walnut lying on its side. My mother's friend gave me a slightly larger walnut, so I could put in even more details 😁. My brother suggested to do something with a camping theme. I think he was thinking more along the line of a caravan, but I immediately saw a forest in my minds eye, a quiet place to enjoy nature. Microtrees are just as time-consuming to make as 'normal' miniature trees 😏. Especially if you want to make three different types of tree within half a walnut (silver birches, conifers and an oak tree). A cozy campfire in front of the tent and a curious gray squirrel complete this half. The bottom is a quiet lake, with cattails at the edge. A rowing boat floats at the small jetty and 18 fish of 2 to 3 millimeters swim in the water. All of which have eyes, a mouth, fins and a tail 🤪. Why so many fish? Well, this part of the project didn't go so smoothly. No matter how small and light the fish are, they still sink to the bottom in the epoxy resin. Especially if the walnut shell turns out to be split... I was wondering why so much epoxy was needed to fill half a walnut 😶. So a second epoxy casting was necessary, but this gave me the opportunity to distribute the fish over different heights in the water. Then I had to grind away the epoxy that had leaked out (risking my fingers in the process...). The thin shell of this walnut also meant that the hinge I used for the other two projects did not fit here. So to keep with the travel theme, I made two straps around it, like an old-fashioned suitcase. Despite the problems with this project, I think this is my most successful walnut so far 😊.

The scene is made of Fimo clay in a walnut shell. The straps around the outside are made of Fimo Leather, the buckles and 'nails' of Fimo Metallic Gold. The (closed) walnut is 4 x 4.8 x 4 cm (H x W x D). The base was printed by my partner with PLA filament with a stone look and is 5.3 x 4 x 6.6 cm (H x W x D). Due to the busy preparations for the pilot workshops, this project has been on hold for a while. The project therefore took about 3 months (started on 16-08-2023 and completed on 19-11-2023).