Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Grail Diary Part I

I've had the materials for this for months, but never got around to starting it because it's new crafting territory and I'm chicken.  With a few other prop projects on hold and not in the mood to sew, last weekend was a good time to finally get to it.

The plan is to do one “batch” of more or less the correct pages, and then instead of repeating those pages, create my own in the same style using other medieval history and Grail lore to fill up the rest of the book.

I started with a hardcover unlined sketchbook, about 4x6”, 220 pages, so a pretty close match for size (or close enough for my purposes).

I sanded the cover, then peeled off the endpapers and removed the pages from the inside.

From there I followed this Instructable for the new leather cover, jumping ahead to step 7. I was surprised how fun and easy it was, and I wish I hadn't put it off for so long.




Once the cover was on and everything was reassembled, I took a little leather polish to the cover to bring some of the color back. (The weird stripes are from the light coming through blinds, not part of the leather.)

Now just waiting on endpaper which hopefully will be here in a week or so. 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Holy Grail Replica Version 1.5

In typical fashion, I decided I wasn't content with the Grail replica I made this spring.  The more this sat around and the more I looked at it, the more I didn't like it.  It wasn't terrible, but not what I wanted and I never came around to it. So I scraped the paint and started over from the gold step.

I broke down and got the Gold Leaf Rub 'n Buff. It still doesn't compare to real gold leaf, but it's definitely a step up from the old color.

For the paint, I mixed the color better - started with the same red again, but only did one drop of black and added a lot of brown - and only did one streaked coat. The bits of gold showing through made the worn spots more natural this time, and matched the reference photos better. I also did fewer worn spots, same reason.

Aaaaand done (almost). I just have to figure out the dusty weathering. I'll probably try some Plains Dust. For now, I'm so much happier with how it turned out, and locking down a good technique makes me more hopeful for the eventual Version 2.0.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Holy Grail Replica Verson 1

This is actually a few days of work spread out over a month, and it's been done for a while, but I just got the notion to post it here so it's all condensed.  

A friend and I got to talking about history and archaeology a few months ago, and naturally an Indiana Jones joke came up. I'd been antsy to work on something fresh and get a break from the school grind, so I decided to sort of plot out an Indy project just for kicks. Eventually research alone wasn't enough, so the easy answer of course was to do a smaller/cheaper/faster accessory or prop piece. I bought a ceramic goblet at a thrift store a few years ago because it was too cool to pass up, but it had been mostly gathering dust ever since. I realized it's a pretty close (or close enough) match to the Grail. Seemed simple enough to paint it up.

This is the base I started with. The shape isn't perfect, but it's decently close and I already had it so it made things cheap and easy.

I did a sandable spray primer to cover the glaze and prep for Bondo, which I used for the little bubble pits in the original glaze. I liked the texture of the Bondo so I ended up spreading a rough single layer over the whole cup to make it more like an unfinished plaster/ceramic again. I didn't take a photo of the all-over Bondo on its own, but you can still kind of see it under the first coat of paint on the right.

Base paint was Ceramcoat Old Gold, and the second color was Ceramcoat Metallic Gold. The "Old Gold" is really more of a weird rotten pea soup or mustard color, but it worked well as a base to cover up the Bondo and make the second paint go on easier.

After paint I did a coat of Rub 'n Buff in Antique Gold. In retrospect I should have used Gold Leaf or Grecian Gold instead, but my local craft store was out of both of those (naturally) so I went with what I could get. (I really should have used actual gold leaf, but I didn't want to spend that kind of money on a cup that doesn't have quite the right shape. ~*STANDARDS*~) For anyone who hasn't used it, I highly recommend wearing gloves when you apply it. The package says you can just use your fingers, and some people say bare fingers work better, but I didn't notice any problems with gloves and it made the whole thing a lot less messy.

I dithered for a while over whether to continue with the coppery gold color, or wait until the craft store had another gold in stock and switch to that.  But I ultimately stuck with the Antique Gold. I was too impatient to wait for the store to get other colors in stock, and this is just a first draft, so I figured what the heck, might as well keep going. 

I mixed matte red and black acrylic and painted that roughly over the whole outside in a solid coat. It turned out what seemed like too red, so I went back with another darker coat that later ended up being too dark. Live and learn. Then I rubbed and scratched off sections of the paint to let the gold come through. I started with just a little, then progressively worked more off. The paint and scuffing had dulled the gold some, so I also touched up the visible spots to brighten them again.

I don't have photos of the process beyond that, but I mixed some white and black acrylic for a very particular light grey, watered that down, and did a wash over the cup. It ended up a bit too heavy so I sanded it. It also ended up too glossy, which is a whole other thing and my own fault for assuming the matte black paint would tone down the glossy white.  But again I didn't want to bother getting new supplies and I felt okay with taking a chance on it. After being sanded it looked a little better, so I sprayed it with a few heavy coats of matte sealant.
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It's technically done now, and while it's not really ideal and definitely not close to screen accurate, I'm satisfied with it as an experiment. With some ashy Plains Dust and a grain of salt, it'll be pretty decent for a cosplay prop or casual display piece.