My dioramas (picture heavy)
I have made two so far. Making them was very messy, but I’d never had so much fun before. I’ve always been a tidyish person, but I think that underneath, there was a mess-lover itching to get out.
The first one I made was a fairy diorama. My daughter gave me the fairy house (a friend of hers made it), so all I did was bake (to sterilize it) some dirt for the ground cover and add some figurines, dried moss, twigs and fake plants.
My daughter’s friend made the crooked house too, but this diorama took a long time for me to make just the same. The dirt is a mixture of real dirt and dried coffee grounds. The cliff backdrop is plaster of Paris. I got disgusted with my first try and demolished it with a hammer. I really liked the looks of the debris, so I used it instead and painted the finished cliff with acrylic washes. The tree trunks are wooden dowels (textured with wood filler & drybrushed with acrylic paint) and the tree foliage is furnace filter material sprinkled with craft turf and dried moss. Some of the grass is real dead grass that I picked from the meadow behind my house and painted with acrylic, and some is craft turf. I made the spikey shrubs behind the bunny out of bits of tumbleweed rolled in glue and dried parsley flakes. The waterfall is made out of clear bathroom caulk, which I streaked with white paint. The pond is caulk and a craft product called Realistic Water. I made some of the stones surrounding the pond out of plaster of Paris, and some of the stones are real. I made the wolf’s granny nightcap and bed cape out of an old doily, bits of ribbon, and some embroidered flowers I’d long ago cut from something or another.
I am trying to finish a stone castle I started quite a while ago, but mr. froggy keeps asking me to move my creative endeavor somewhere else so he can eat at the table. 
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took forever to dry. Each 1/8 inch layer of Realistic Water took about 48 hours to set, so I was glad I'd used caulk for the first layers of pond water, since each layer of caulk took only 12 hours or so.
I'm new at this sort of thing, so I've never used hot glue before, but I'll be trying it for sure. 
while making them, so I think that if I ever make one again, it'll go faster.
One thing I learned is that I have more patience than I thought I did - and that mr froggy has less.
thanks for sharing how you made them and for posting the pictures. I meant to reply about it in the dining room thread. So glad you decided to do your own OP. 
charming. to keep finding those little treasures is so much fun for everyone
some clear plastic wrap (I used Glad, but I'm sure any brand would do) to the table, making sure the plastic sheet would be larger than the planned waterfall.
Using DAP crystal clear (not plain clear, because it dries cloudy) bathroom caulk, I made close-together thin vertical strips on the plastic wrap until I had enough of them to match the desired width of the waterfall.
I let the caulk strips set for a few minutes. Then I used a toothpick (or was it a hair roller pick?) and "scribbled" them together to connect them. Then I made some vertical strokes to give the illusion of moving water.
EDIT: I forgot to add here that after letting the waterfall dry for about a day, I pulled it free of the plastic wrap.
I used a smooth liter-size clear plastic bottle to make the backing for the waterfall to stabilize it, and to also allow for a bowed effect at the top of the waterfall where it begins to rush over the cliff. Without the backing, the waterfall would be flimsy, and without a bowed effect it would drop straight down from the cliff top instead of giving the appearance of surging over it.
I cut a piece from the plastic bottle the same size as the waterfall. I held the piece of plastic and the waterfall together with my hand and then held them up against the cliff top to see how much of a bowed effect would look best. I then put the waterfall aside and used a hair dryer to soften the plastic and bow it. After it cooled, I attached the waterfall to it. Any clear-drying glue would have worked, I think, but I stuck them together with a thin layer of caulk.
I didn't attach the waterfall to the cliff top until after I'd made the pond. Then I attached it with some caulk and cut off the bottom right at the pond water line. I used another dab of caulk to stick the bottom of the waterfall to the pond water. I made some splash effects with caulk, and then dabbed some white paint on them and made some white streaks on the waterfall.
It was fun, once I figured out how to use a caulk gun.
I know someone who does great Day of the Dead dioramas but I like your detail and I love a story. VERY cool! 
gave me the dragon on the crystal ball I used in the fairy diorama for my birthday one year, and I found all the other figures, for both dioramas, on Ebay and Etsy. The problem I had was finding figures the right scale. Most of the ones I saw and liked a lot were too large.
Speaking of stories, here's what I wrote to send to my kids along with pictures of the Red Riding Hood diorama when I finally finished it:
⊱✿⊰ In my version of the Little Red Riding Hood story, the Big Bad Wolf isn’t bad, nor is she very big. Her name is Ida, and she’s a dear friend of Red’s and Granny’s. For fun, when Ida visits Granny she often dresses up in Granny’s clothes. This tickles Granny’s funny bone and makes her laugh, but whenever Red goes to visit Granny and sees Ida clowning around in a Grannyesque getup, for a moment Red is taken aback. ⊱✿⊰ I almost forgot to mention that the owl’s name is Edwyna and the bunny’s name is Frank. ⊱✿⊰ Oh, one more thing: Granny is a devoted homebody, but Red, Ida, Edwyna and Frank enjoy sharing adventures together, so I didn’t glue them down.
My kids think I'm a tad strange, but I don't care.
You do great work, frogmarch!!
Love! 
you may have guessed why I didn't lose mine - it was already long gone. 
stare at them a lot, and I often find myself making up stories about them. I guess I'm in my second childhood, but oh, well, that's okay.
I would love to have talent like that.
so sure talent had much to do with it. I think that imagination, determination, patience, and the ability to see messes as just part of the process were what I mainly had going for me.
I love all the intricate details. You did a great job! 
You are so very talented. I love the little worlds you have created here!
I've always been fascinated by the little worlds other people have made, and I'm tickled that now I have two of my own.