| The method of making the bricks
look old and fire worn was accomplished by Eve who, after
painting the bricks with black and gray water based paint, took a
very small amount of the grout between the stones in our house's
foundation and ground it into a fine powder using a marble mortar and
pistil usually used for grinding spices for cooking. The fine powder
was then carefully glued into place using ordinary household glue. The
overall
effect worked quite well and was then repeated in all three fireboxes. |
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The "burn pattern" was copied from the fireplace we use most frequently. |
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Only two of the three fireplaces have been equipped with a small light allowing us to imitate burning coals. The fireplace in the east living room is on a panel that opens, disallowing it to be equipped with the necessary wiring to create this illusion. Here you can see the kitchen fireplace in the very early stages of assembly. The mantle is not yet in place. But the picture shows the light socket in the firebox and also the stone hearth in place. In this case, the stone hearth is actually made from wood and painted to resemble stone. The interior has not as yet been painted to look fire worn. |
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| Here is the same unit a little further along. Now the mantle is in place and the firebox walls have been painted to look used. As you can see, looking through the door frames into other rooms, the miniature very closely resembled a real house being built as the process proceeded. |
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| A better view shows the fireplace
completed awaiting the actual "fire" illusion. This is created by
breaking glass beads of orange and red color and painting their rough
edges with
black acrylic paint, then gluing them together into a clump and
setting
that over a very small seed bulb set into the socket in the floor of
the firebox. |
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| Here is the fire illusion at work.
It manages to look remarkably real, especially when twigs from real
bushes are added, looking like 1/12 th scale logs. |
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