Hello Kitty Ruined House

I recycled a second-hand Hello Kitty toy into this ruined house, ready for Mordheim.

This is the toy as I originally found it. Very pink.

The interior is split on two levels. The fact that it's open on the back make me think that I could make it into a ruined house, where the back wall has collapsed (and because it also make accessing the miniatures inside easier).

I started by removing the roof. I will add my own destroyed roof to it.

The lighting system inside still worked. I will try to incorporate it into my final design.

So much pink.

I then removed the moving parts. I thought it would make painting it easier.

I added some wood plank on the first floor from ice cream sticks, and stone tiles on the ground floor. Left part are made of foam, right from tiles of an old board game.

I also cut the window rail and glued it back, to make it slightly less tall, and better fit with the miniature scale.

Green zombie monster in the Hello Kitty room.

Next stop was adding bricks on the walls.

More and more bricks, and covering the floors with black mod podge. This was a long process I had to split on several evenings as I couldn't paint/glue all sides at once because I still needed to hold the structure in my hands.

I also added some wood around the windows, and textured the inner walls with filling paste.

The view from the front. I kept most of the original facade, I only added a stone contour to it.

The same, after the initial coat.

Now the painting can start!

Whoops, actually nope, I forgot to add more stones at the bottom, to hide the plastic base.

Blocking the wood colors first.

Then the floors and walls.

And now the stones.

This is a very rough overbrush, I use makeup brushes for that (as you can see on the right), and sloppily apply gray paint on the stones. I purposefully don't go into all recesses, to keep them dark, but I still try to cover most surfaces.

Painted some stones in different colors for more variation: dark orange, dark red, and lighter gray.

Same for the interior.

Now adding a light gray drybrush on all the stones to tone down the colors.

I also started working on the roof. I glued some wooden sticks together to give the illusion of a broken roof skeleton.

I added another drybrush on the stone, and washed some stones with highly diluted paints. I must say that the final effect from the wash is much better than the one with the stones painted individually. The more I build houses like this, the more I improve my techniques.

So, as the time of writing, my favorite way is:

• Black undercoat
• Dark gray overbrush
• Light gray drybrush
• Individual stones with highly diluted paint
• One last tan drybrush

With everything painted, I started adding some flocking here and there to double down on the disheveled look.

Same on the inside. I like the small tufts lodged between cracks of the tiles.

And the final shots.

Ready to be dropped into any Mordheim game.

Family shot, with the little Sour Cream Hut.