Stone Dice Tower with Arches

Just finished this dice tower! Trying to be more deliberate in the planning of models like these, and this time I spent a few minutes online reading about early medieval European architecture, the Romanesque style. Lots of round arches, symmetry and light stone work. There's only so much you can include in a little structure five inches high, but I got the arches into the design on front and back, and added some molding on the edges. For the cobblestone pattern, I used the Green Stuff World Textured Rollers on Sculpey. More pics about how it was made to come.

How I Made It

Started by making the frame / dice chute out of Palight PVC (as usual; see my other blog posts), and joining with Superglue.

Picture below shows the ramp at the bottom. I carved the texture with a gouge. The Ramp is propped up with blue foam. The picture also shows the guide marks I used for the "bumpers" inside the dice chute. 

For the brick texture on the outside walls of the chute: 

I peeled the paper off both sides of foam board, attached the foam to the walls with PVA glue, scored the grooves with a hobby knife, then used a ballpoint pen over the scores to widen them. 

In medieval architecture, the door and window jams often have receding planes (as Wikipedia describes it). The pic below shows how I tried to incorporate that into this design.

I made window sills out of Palight PVC board.

Here are the Vallejo paints used. Stone grey was mixed in with most colors and used as the base of the bricks. 

For the base, I used the paints shown below and made a slight texture by stippling it. 

I red/rust color on top, sills and bottom railing were sponged on to give it a texture. And I added some of that glitter paint, which I think helps make the flat surface of the top more interesting.

I finished it with a spray of Testor's Dullcote varnish, except for the top and cobblestone area, which I gave a gloss varnish.