Too embarrassed to post a photo update

Ok so usually when I'm working on a piece of art I go through a phase where I can't stand it/ hate it/ wonder why I even thought it was a good idea to try and make. This is usually when I'm about 2/3 through. I'm sure this happens to lots of people.

Well, I'm about ready to pitch the forest diorama in a bonfire.

I started painting the ground, I had this whole brilliant "fade to the edges" idea, but now it just looks like a bunch of oversaturated mud that blends into a lame attempt to mimic sand (which is not my intention). To make it worse, everytime I apply washes with acrylic on the celluclay, it kind of contracts and shrinks, lifting off the foam base. Sweet. The areas that should be filled in so that the creek can be poured without leaking have cracks all over the place, and it seems like everytime I patch it with celluclay, I just make more cracks.

I may have thought of a solution on the car ride home- for the color fiasco anyways. I think I just need to make the ground cool blues/ purples/ grays, like the staircase. Then I can leave the trees mostly white. I think that color range would serve the thing much better. It'll make the creatures in the scene look more organic as well.

I only have one more work session before I go home for break and too much that I want to do- redo this crappy forest base layer, start laying out diorama#6, making many miniatures doors for diorama 6, making a mould of the archway, posing Balder in Zbrush, doing edge tests with burlap/ cloth....