Beautiful Forest Spirit Diorama - With Waterfall!

Hello and welcome to my little YouTube channel where I make little things. I'm doing a voiceover today to explain my process as I work. To start this project off, I sculpted a stag in Blender, which is the centerpiece of this project. And then I 3D printed that stag on my resin printer. Next, I turned the wooden base in this nice cherry wood. I always like to plot out where things are going to go ahead of time, just so it doesn't turn into chaos. I dug out the base of the river with my Dremel to give it more depth in the front. I drilled some holes for the LEDs to come up through. And I also quickly designed and printed a base cover, because I was out of balsa wood to make one out of wood. I oiled, waxed, and burnished the base to give it a nice satin sheen. Lastly, I had to chisel out a groove for the switch. Perfect fit. I put LEDs in all my pieces because I really feel it brings it to life. Just adds an extra pop. Am I the only one that finds shrink wrap super satisfying? The clear resin glows really well when it's lit from the bottom. I used fiber op to get multiple light points from a single LED. Here I used XPS foam to build up the back. And yes, I need a hot wire cutter. It's a bit snug, so I cleaned out the edges with my micro rotary tool. Much better. Then I dug the river out in an inefficient way, but it got the job done. I learned this method of making wire trees from The Terrain Tutor. I'll link his channel down below. This is a method of coating trees I learned from Nerdforge using hot glue. It shapes really, really well and it's also flexible so you can continue making adjustments to the tree. I absolutely love it. Super trees are a miracle product. They make everything look amazing. I glue them to the ends of the branches and they add lots of volume and texture and fill everything out nicely. Oh hi. I airbrushed the tree in a brownish gray to fit a cherry tree aesthetic. Stay hydrated, friends. Here I used Sculptamold to bulk out the base and add some volume to the land. This stuff isn't great for detail, but it's good for adding a lot of mass quickly. I added detail to the land with air dry clay and little rocks. I glued everything down with thinned out PVA. It's time to get painting the ugliest stage, in my opinion. I attempted to paint the back like the earth had been cut away and you can see the layers of soil and rock, but it didn't exactly work out the way I wanted. So off camera, I made three little pebbles and now I'm sticking tinfoil on them so that the light reflects down onto the riverbed. Next, I gave the tree a dry brush in white and a wash in Agrax Earthshade. It was looking a little flat so it needed some texture. I used a cheap soldering iron on the lowest heat setting to bend the fiber op so they wouldn't all be standing straight up. It worked better than I thought it would. I used the same super trees to make smaller bushes and bramble. I dipped them in watered down PVA and sprinkled them in super leaves. I used a few colors to add variety to the piece. I watered down some matte medium and added just a touch of isopropyl alcohol to hold the flocking down. This is my favorite part of every build. It's really the stage when things come to life. I sculpted some mushroom caps out of a translucent clay that allows the light to pass through to give an amazing effect. I stuck them onto the ends of the fiber op with some UV resin. I added bits of moss that I dried in silica to act as small plants for the piece. I mixed some white paint in with this flocking off camera because it was a little bit too dark to look like cherry blossoms. I'm really glad I did. I love the color. I add some more layers using watered down PVA in a spray bottle. I did the spraying over the sink though because it makes an absolute mess. Now it's time to seal everything in for pouring the resin and in hindsight I did this in the worst way possible but it did the job. I used a standard two-part epoxy for the river. I added one drop of blue and two drops of yellow acrylic ink to give it a nice blue-green color. I swirled in some white pigment and I'm not sure if I like it but I can't go back now. I used the lighter to pop the bubbles at the surface and I sculpted and painted those fish off camera as well. This is why I regret sealing in the river with hot glue. It just destroyed everything. I did my best to fix it. I mixed some gloss gel with acrylic ink to tin some thin acrylic sheet for the waterfall. The edges looked a little too sharp so I melted them to soften things up a bit and I glued them in with some super glue. Here I mixed some baking soda and that same gloss gel. This gives a really cool like foamy texture effect and it's great for the bottoms of waterfalls at the tops of waves. I love using this technique. I added some Mod Podge to the surface of the water to give it some ripples and waves. And it dries clear of course. This is the final step of the build and I'm adding those bushes that I made earlier. And in the words of Boi-Lai Hobby Time, I called it good. If you enjoyed this build, I would super appreciate a like and subscribe. There will be more projects coming up so stay tuned!