In the winter of 2007 I was Duchy of Phoenix Tears, a park in Springfield, IL. I decided to give the former Duke the title of Baron. He played a pirate persona, and I felt that it would be cool to make him an Admiral instead of Baron, as an equivalent. I also decided a pirate theme title would be cool, and what would a Admiral need but at least one ship? So I found a wooden pirate ship kit at the local Target and decided that he needed that. Unfortunately I can no longer find the exact ship that I made, but you can find many kits like the one I made for about $10.00 on up online.

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Step One

For the title, I wanted a weathered look. I first took some large white paper, 11 x 17 card stock and laid it out on my workspace. Then, I took tea bags that I had in my kitchen, put several into a glass, and added a small amount of hot water. I waited for a bit, then squeezed the tea bags, making the water very brown. Laid out on a bit of garbage bag to keep my workspace dry, I dripped the tea over the paper, layering the tea multiple times to create blotchy effects. In order to create darker areas, I took the tea bags out and painted onto the surface with them, waiting for it to dry between layers.

Step Two
When the layering wasn't giving me the deeper saturation of color I wanted, I tore open the tea bags and scattered and pressed the contents of them onto the paper, then waited for it to dry, and brushed the tea off. This gave some splotching.
Step Three
After drying, I took a lighter and selectively burned the edges. With this step I had to be careful not to burn too much of the paper. This also created the scorch marks along the edges. Then I began to sketch out lightly in pencil what I wanted to incorporate into the title, in terms of images. I decided that I would include the heraldic elements to the various companies and households as well as the heraldry of the Duchy itself. Here is a light pencil drawing of the heraldry of the Duchy.
Step Four
More detail of the images. Here is the top pennant, which has the former Duke's heraldry on it, and a ribbon that twines itself down to the heraldry of the household he belongs to , which later becomes part of the heraldry of the Tribe of Saracens he belongs to. Yes, it is hard to see, I needed it to be lightly penciled in.
Step Five
Here is a detail of the upper right corner which is of a compass.
Step Six
Here you can see I began to outline in black pen, and then painted in small bits, in red and blue. The title would be dominated by the colors black and red, because he belonged to the Saracens, and that is their colors, as well as his in his heraldry. I used pen and ink wherever possible, switching to colored watercolor pencil or watered down acrylic only when I did not have that color.
Step Seven

More color. I used some silver ink that I had used on one other of my hand drawn awards. Unfortunately I do not have any more pictures of the title, I did not do the text on it, Callandra did that. I think it turned out really well. I'm hoping to find pictures of the finished piece shortly.

Step Eight
Next I started working on the pirate ship model. This is the mess that the thing made on my floor after it was done.
Step Nine
This is the constructed piece, unpainted. The set that I used required no tools or glue (until you got to the sails) and came with a bit of string for the rigging. I recommend using wood glue, white glue or hot glue once you figure out how all the pieces go if you are trying something along these lines.
Step Ten
A detail of the ship.
Step Eleven

Here I had spray painted the whole thing a flat black matte, as a base for the rest of the color.

Step Twelve
I decided to glue the base of the ship, that held it upright, to a base itself, to mount it, and then realized that the image would be very similar to his household, the Free Merchants heraldry, which is a silhouette of a ship with a full moon behind. So why not use a round piece of wood, and paint it to look like the moon, with no shit, glow in the dark paint. Yes, I am a dork. So I mounted that to the back of the base, and set it so the ship would be in front of it. And when the lights were off, it would be the Household's heraldry.
Step Thirteen
Here is the completed piece. Luckily it did actually make it all the way to Miderign without being destroyed, by some miracle.
Step Fourteen
Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the new Baron accepting his award, When I will post them. He liked it though.