When it’s time for those NPCs to blow out their candles for the night, they’ll need someplace to lay down and rest! It’s time to make beds.

Because even goblins need to sleep

This part of the project was born more out of a desire to play with some dollar-store coconut husk baskets I’d picked up a while back with no plans other than “I’ll make something with ’em eventually”. It occurred to me that sleeping pallets made with straw or hay – the sort that would be slept on by stablehands and slaves in human communities, or bottom-of-the-totem-pole creatures among many species – would be a good use of this material.

This stuff turned out to be a royal pain to work with. As soon as I cut into it or tried to break it into thinner strips, it would start to fall apart. Even multiple applications of PVA-and-water spray allowed to dry overnight didn’t do much to make them more coherent, so the shapes I ended up with were not necessarily where I’d started out.

I cut out a bunch of rough rectangles from the husk material in an assortment of sizes ranging from someplace where a gnome might nap up to something more appropriate for, say, a bugbear or even an uncomfortable ogre.

Having watched DM Scotty make bedrolls using toilet paper, I decided to try that method to add blankets to keep my monsters warm at night. I wanted them to be kind of unkempt and sloppy looking, which is good, because it seems my TP sculpting skills need some work.

I wet folded strips of TP with water and PVA and laid them out on top of the husk pieces, then let them dry overnight. After which they were still very wet, so I let them dry overnight. After which they were still wet, so they spent most of a Saturday sitting in a hot car in the sunlight.

When they were finally dry, I painted the blankets in a few different shades.

I played around with a few different dry-brushing applications and washes (which seemed to run right through the husk material without coloring it) and ended up with the sorts of jumbled messes of stained, coarse cloth I was going for.

Don’t let the bedbugs bite!

There are lots of videos showing different ways to make miniature beds. I borrowed bits and pieces from several of them.

Mattresses were cut from foamcore and XPS in several sizes. The thin foamcore ones would be used to make cots with frames that could be stackable, as in military bunks. I started on those first, using some wood squares and sticks to make the frames. Blankets and pillows were made from glue-soaked paper towels, then the blankets painted golden brown and pillow and mattress in a parchment color.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the blanket and pillow textures created by the paper towels used on the cots. So for the larger beds I cut little pieces of foamcore to serve as the pillows, and for the blankets I used an old scrap of fabric. At first I tried to soak the fabric in watered-down paint, but it refused to absorb much color and I ended up just painting it once it was glued on. I used an assortment of different wood rectangles as head- and foot-boards.

I thought about trying some dry brushing or washes to try to bring out some more texture on the fabric beds, but I wasn’t really satisfied with the results on a test strip of the fabric I’d used. I ended up leaving them as is, which is not too shabby given the relatively small time, effort, and materials involved.