Hey Magicians!
Since I'm back, I thought it was also high time for me to try and publish some of the posts that have been languishing in my drafts folder for awhile. I took these photos a long time ago but never posted them, so now the time has come.
In this post I'll be telling you how to make a few different kinds of jumps for your stablemates. Unfortunately I didn't take process photos while making these, but they're pretty self-explanatory once you see the materials and finished pictures.
Keep in mind that there LOTS of different kinds of jumps. Most of these I just made using what I had on hand, and you can always go look at pictures of real jumps for more inspiration. It's pretty easy to make some really creative jumps by recycling junk that you can find around your house...and even out in your yard (hey, that's good for the environment)! Treat this post more as like a source of inspiration and construction suggestions.
Okay, let's go!!
Log and Brush
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Cardboard scrap
- Small sticks and twigs from outside (make sure they are dry)
- Small stones/pebbles from outside (wash and dry them so the glue sticks)
- Small wooden beads (1/3" / 0.75cm diameter) (optional)
- Red, white, black, and olive green acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Preserved moss (from the craft store) - can also use green pom-poms or scraps of green yarn, fabric, bits of sponge painted green, etc - get creative!
1. For the base, cut a rectangle of cardboard about 4"x 1.25" (10cm x 3cm) and paint it olive green. I also added some fading around the edges with black.
2. Cut or break a thick piece of twig/stick (about as big around as your pinky finger) to a bit less than 4" (10cm) long. This is your 'log'.
3. Use pieces of twigs and hot-glue to build triangular frames around either end of the 'log' so it can stand stably and is suspended off the ground a bit (see the picture). You can adjust the height of the jump however you like by changing the height of the triangles.
4. Hot-glue the log/triangle assembly down onto the cardboard base.
5. Hot glue the small stones/pebbles around the outsides of the triangles to add stability and hide the glue.
6. If you want to add directionality to the jump, paint one wooden bead red and one white. Glue the white bead to the left side of the jump and the red to the right. You can also make little triangular flags from heavy paper or cardstock if you don't want to use beads.
7. Seal any painted areas with the sealant. You can also seal the twigs to keep the bark from crumbling off.
8. If you want your jump to be a Trakehner type, you can stop here. If you'd like a brush-filled jump, glue pieces of preserved moss under the log and between the pebbles.
Double-log Trakehner
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Small sticks and twigs from outside (make sure they are dry)
- Small stones/pebbles from outside (wash and dry them so the glue sticks)
- Red, white, black, and olive green acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
1. Cut or break two thick pieces of twig/stick (about as big around as your pinky finger) to a bit less than 4" (10cm) long (these are the 'logs').
2. Cut two smaller pieces of twig to about 1.1" (3cm). These are the stabilizers.
3. Glue the two stabilizers to your bottom log so it can stand without rolling.
4. Glue the top log onto the bottom log.
5. Glue small stones/pebbles around the outsides of the jump to make it look like they've been piled up, and to fill in the gaps.
6. If you want to add directionality to the jump, hot glue a little stack of pebbles on each side of the top log. Paint the left stack white and the right stack red.
7. Seal any painted areas with the sealant. You can also seal the twigs to keep the bark from crumbling off.
Rustic Fence
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Cardboard scrap
- Small sticks and twigs from outside (make sure they are dry)
- Small stones/pebbles from outside (wash and dry them so the glue sticks)
- Small wooden beads (1/3" / 0.75cm diameter) (optional)
- Red, white, black, and olive green acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Preserved moss
1. For the base, cut a rectangle of cardboard about 4"x 1.25" (10cm x 3cm) and paint it green.
2. Cut four straight, thin twigs to about 4" (10cm) long. This are the rails.
3. Cut two more twigs to about 2.4" (6 cm); you can adjust these to be however tall you want the jump to be. These are the posts.
4. Hot-glue the rails between the posts at even intervals.
5. Hot-glue the bottom ends of the posts to the cardboard base; pile up the glue to make sure they're sturdy.
5. Hot glue the small stones/pebbles around the bottoms of the posts and the base to help keep the jump upright and add some support.
6. If you want to add directionality to the jump, paint one wooden bead red and one white. Glue the white bead to the left side of the jump and the red to the right. As before, you can also make little triangular flags from cardstock. You can use toothpicks for flagpoles, too.
7. Seal any painted areas with the paint sealant. You can also seal the twigs to keep the bark from crumbling off.
8. Glue bits of preserved moss around the base and between the pebbles.
Brush Box Oxer
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Cardboard scrap
- Wooden coffee stir sticks (you can also use popsicle sticks but you'll have to split them in half lengthwise)
- Small wooden beads (1/3" / 0.75cm diameter)
- Toothpicks
- Red, white, black, and olive green acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Preserved moss/fake moss (for this specific project, instead of preserved moss I used the fake foliage that is typically used for making miniature trees. You can find it in the miniature sections of hobby stores).
1. For the base, cut a rectangle of cardboard 4"x 1" (10cm x 3cm) and paint it black.
2. Build the two long sides of the brush box by gluing three 4" (10cm) long pieces of coffee stirrer to two 1.3" (3.3 cm) pieces at each end (see the photo). Do this twice.
3. Glue each of the long sides of the brush box to the long edges of the cardboard base. Glue the edge of the base to the inside edge of the wooden sides so you can't see the cardboard. Do this on both sides. You now have the base of the jump, and the front and back of the box.
4. Cut three 1" (2.5 cm) lengths of coffee stirrer for each of the short sides of the box.
5. On each side, glue the three pieces in between the front and back of the brush box, lining them up with the three horizontal pieces on the front and back, to complete the box.
6. If you want a natural finish on the box, you can move on to the next step. Or, you can paint the wooden sticks white as I've done above.
7. On each side of the jump, glue a toothpick sticking straight up, and glue a wooden bead on top of the toothpick (or a triangular paper pennant).
8. Paint the toothpicks black. Paint one bead red, and the other one white.
9. Seal any painted areas with the paint sealant.
10. Fill the brush box with fake moss. If you'd like to save on moss, you can use a green-painted piece of cardboard to fill up space in the middle of the box, and just cover the outsides with the moss to make the box look full.
Roll Top
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Cardboard scrap
- Small wooden beads (1/3" / 0.75cm diameter)
- Toothpicks
- Red, white, black, and green acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Cardboard or plastic tubes from packaging (or cardstock/heavy paper). You can use toilet paper tubes, but they're a bit big.
1. If you are using tubes that you already have, cut them to 4" (10cm) lengths and then cut them in half the long way to get semicircular curved pieces (like a skateboarding half-pipe). If you don't have tubes, keep reading.
2. For the base, cut a rectangle of cardboard 4" (10cm) long and as wide as your tube pieces. Glue the tube halves to the base.
If you didn't have tubes, cut the base to be as wide as your desired jump. Measure the width and multiply it by 1.6 - this is your roll top's 'flat width'. Cut a piece of heavy paper/cardstock or light cardboard (like from a product package or pasta box) to be 4" (10cm) long, and as wide as the 'flat width'. Glue this piece to the base, curving it in the short direction and gluing the edges of the base so that it holds a semicircular shape.
3. Glue small scraps of cardboard across the ends of the jump to seal them; trim off the excess.
4. Paint the whole jump green.
5. On each side of the jump, glue a toothpick sticking straight up, and glue a wooden bead on top of the toothpick (or a triangular paper pennant).
8. Paint one bead red, and the other one white.
9. Seal any painted areas with the paint sealant.
Tires
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Scissors/shears
- Ruler
- Wooden coffee stirrers
- White, black, and dark brown acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Black permanent marker
- Mentos gum pocket box container (this is what I used) or half of a cardboard tube (The gum container is a bit niche -- I was about to throw it away and then realized it looked just like a stack of half-tires. I suppose you could get a similar shape with air-dry clay).
1. If using a gum container, empty and wash it out. Remove the label and pull off the plastic lid, and spray the plastic container with acrylic paint sealant to matte-ify it.
2. Mix white and black paint to get a dark grey. Paint the gum container (or cardboard half-tube). Add more black paint to get a darker shade and add shading at the ends and in the grooves of the gum container (or at three even intervals on your cardboard tube).
3. Use the permanent marker to add on the grooves to the tires. You can try out a few different patterns to differentiate between the tires.
4. Cut wooden coffee stirrers to uneven lengths and glue them to the ends of the jump to create a fence-like effect as shown. The specific dimensions depend on what you're using for the tires.
6. Use brown paint to add some aging/shading to the wood areas.
7. Seal the jump with the paint sealant.
Brush Fill Vertical
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Scissors/shears
- Ruler
- Cardboard scraps
- Wooden coffee stir sticks (you can also use popsicle sticks but you'll have to split them in half lengthwise)
- Red, white, black, and olive green acrylic paint
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Black permanent marker
- Preserved moss/fake moss
- Your horizontal element - I used a big machine bolt that I literally found in the street outside of my house and washed off. You could use a piece of stick, wooden dowel, paper tube, dried-up pen... literally anything.
1. Use pieces of cardboard to build supports on either side of your horizontal element. The method that you use depends on what your element is. I had to cut holes into the cardboard to hide the head of the machine bolt, and I used several layers since it's quite heavy.
2. Hot-glue wooden coffee stirrers around the outsides of the cardboard supports to create a fence-like effect. For added stability, also add a few coffee stirrers horizontally on the 'floor' of the jump to connect the two sides. This will also give you somewhere to glue the brush later!
3. Paint your jump as desired - I painted the sides white and used black paint to bring out the texture on the bolt cause I thought it looked cool. Also paint the coffee stirrers on the 'floor' of the jump green.
4. If desired, you can use the permanent marker to add some more detail by drawing designs on the outside of the jump supports.
5. Seal any painted areas with the paint sealant.
6. Hot-glue chunks of fake moss to the 'floor' of the jump to create the brush fill.
Puissance/Stone Wall
Materials:
- Hot-glue gun
- Scissors/shears
- Ruler
- Cardboard scraps
- Rectangular piece of scrap wood (what I used) or you can glue together a stack of rectangular pieces of cardboard and cover it in paper to get a similar smooth slab shape. It should be about 4" (10cm) long and as wide and high as you'd like your wall to be.
- Gold, white, black, and green acrylic paint
- Two fancy beads (optional)
- Acrylic paint sealer
- Black permanent marker
- Preserved moss/fake moss
- Pebbles/rocks/bits of gravel from outside
1. For the base, cut a rectangle of cardboard 4.5"x 1.5" (12cm x 4cm) and paint it black.
2. Glue the wall down onto the base.
3. Base-coat the wall with white acrylic paint.
4. Use the permanent marker to draw on the outlines of the stones as desired.
5. Mix white and black acrylic paint to get various shades of grey. Paint in the stones, using darker grey/black around the edges to keep them distinct. Add light grey highlights, keeping them consistent (for instance, always in the top left corner).
6. Paint the two fancy beads gold and glue them to the top of the wall.
7. Paint the base green.
8. Seal the jump with the paint sealant.
9. Hot glue pebbles around the base to help keep the jump upright and hide the cardboard. Fill in the gaps with chunks of fake moss.
Puissance/Brick Wall
This is a variation on the stone wall jump above. Here, I used a stack of cardboard rectangles covered in paper instead of a piece of wood. Then all you do here is paint the wall brick red and use a ruler and a white colored pencil to add the brick texture. Add more trim as desired with white acrylic paint. Here, I also didn't cover the base with moss and rocks, so it looks like it's sitting on grass and is maybe something you'd see on a manicured show-jumping arena.
As always, feel free to comment below or email me at modelhorsemagic@gmail.com. If you like dolls and doll restoration, my other blog is the New Life Doll Hospital and Miniature Workshop. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel, Miniature_Magic, for unboxings, collection tours, DIY tutorials, and more!
Bye Magicians!
~Miniature_Magic
