The Village Connection

Hey bales and rolls are common sights in farmlands, and if you want to create a little farm outside of your village you will need the right accessories to make it look real. Hay will be difficult to bale at small scale so an easy way of faking it is with pieces of wood cut to size, rectangles for bales and sections of dowel for rolls. After you have your wood cut to size coat it in glue and roll in dried grass or hay chaff. To fully coat the bale you may have to roll more than once. Make sure you use a glue that dries clear, otherwise your bale will just look like a ball of glue with grass stuck in it. This may sound morbid, which I don’t want to do, but cows seem to enjoy eating the insides of rolls of hay by sticking their heads completely inside of them. To simulate this, cut the head off of one of your model cows and attach the neck to the dowel. If you aren’t willing to sacrifice your cows, you can also carefully drill out a hole in the center of the dowel large enough to insert the cow’s head. The cow eating will add a little humorous dose of realism to your farm scene.

As a simple foundation for mountains mold chicken wire or a similar wire mesh into shape. The finer the mesh the better, because you will be covering the wire eventually. The finer the mesh the more detail you can add such as streams, crevasses, etc. There are many ways of building up the actual form of the mountains, the most popular being Papier-mâché, but a method that can create even more realism and detail is spray foam insulation. After forming the mountains spray a thick coating of insulation and carve out peaks and valleys. Decide which type of mountains you want, sharp peaks and angles like the Himalayas or Rockies or softer rolling mountains such as the Appalachians; carve out your mountains accordingly. Afterwards paint the mountains as you see fit. Because of proportions you will probably want to have little detail in your decorations of the mountains, and definitely make any accessories on them much smaller to fit the scale. It doesn’t make sense for a mountain to be only a few stories tall, so for example if you have a treeline make it more on the scale of ground cover on the rest of your display. Also be careful if you intend to use spray paint, some spray foam insulation is similar to styrofoam and melts. To fill out what I promised in the title, molehills can be made out of small piles of brown groundcover on a field of green or white for grass or snow.

Twinkling Christmas lights create a night scene for your village that can be absolutely beautiful, but how do you cover the cords? To create a starry night backdrop staple the twinkling lights to a sheet of plywood spaced out to resemble a night sky. I recommend LEDs partially because of the lower power consumption, much more eco-friendly, but mainly because they don’t get nearly as hot which will be important. To create the sky look you need to cover the lights, bare plywood isn’t quite a night sky. There are two methods that work excellently. The first is a bit heavy and can be expensive, but looks amazing. Acquire a sheet of plexiglass and paint it with varying shades of blue, making sure the paint is thin enough for the lights to shine through. With this method you can paint shadows, clouds, etc. right into your night sky. For a simpler backdrop simply cover the plywood with a dark blue sheet of fabric, once again something thin enough for the lights to shine through. This is why I suggest LEDs, but using a flame retardant fabric wouldn’t hurt. Attaching the fabric to the board is a simple job for staples, make sure to wrap the fabric around and staple to the back of the board for a more polished clean look.

Another option that is slightly more time consuming for cobblestone roads is to simply use actual stones. Gravel of any kind works well, it is sold in large amount at hardware stores in the garden section or in smaller more useful amounts at pet stores for aquariums. To lay your roads start with a thick base that the gravel can stick into; modeling clay provides excellent grip and can resembles grout and mud between the stones. Affix your modeling clay to your display base, I recommend something disposable or at least removable like plywood or luan,  and trim the clay to the shape of your streets. A box cutter works great for this, which is another reason for the wood backing layer; Don’t want to cut up your mantles or tables! After your streets are spread sprinkle on the gravel and press it into the clay, a block of wood helps to keep it all level. Once the gravel is attached shake off the excess and your road is complete. This setup should last more than one year, but with the right type of modeling clay any gravel lost in storage can be pressed back in at a later date for quick repairs.

In a similar vein to last week’s post on cobblestone roads, for a freshly paved asphalt look cut gray sandpaper into the shape of the road you want.Once again, alternate colors such as brown, tan, and blue can be used for dirt paths, beaches, or riverbeds. Make sure to use a thick paint if you want to add stripes to your roads, make sure it covers the grit of the paper to really look like road lines.

Pave your streets with cobblestones simply by using roofing shingles. Their pebbled appearance resembles cobblestones or dirt paths depending on the color; Blue shingles can even form a riverbed if coated with clear varnish or glue as described in an earlier post. Just cut the shingles into the shape of your road, a decent pair of scissors will do for straight lines and box cutters can work well. Whatever cutting tool you use, make sure to clean the tar off of the blade regularly or you won’t be cutting for long, not to mention the risk of injury if you aren’t careful. To really create the image of a road, have your ground covering lap over the edges to hide the sharp corners of the shingle, and make sure to pile up snow along the road for that just-plowed look. Quick and easy roads, and cheap too. Shingles are relatively easy to find at construction sites; you really don’t need to buy a whole pack unless your display is absolutely massive, but if you do make sure to ask permission! Just because it looks like trash on a construction site does not mean it is! Be safe and use common sense, construction site theft is taken very seriously.

For those of you less craft-oriented and turned off by my last post, rather than struggling with modeling clay or balsa trying to make cemetery pieces such as tombstones, crosses, and crypts, try checking out a model train store. Though your cemetery will not be official Snow Village pieces, the result will fit into the aesthetic and be about the appropriate size. Plus, for any of you with less than stellar crafting abilities (myself included) these will look much better.

Tombstones in a cemetery bring an interesting touch of realism to your Snow Village and adds Halloween to the holidays you can decorate for using your village. To simply construct tombstones cut Balsa wood into small rectangles. Take care if you try to curve the tops; Balsa splits very easily. To make the pieces really look like stone use gray paint, and though your mind might jump to stone textured spray paint, the texture is designed for human scale, and looks out of place on the small scale of the village. An even better but more significantly more expensive option is a material called Flexstone, a modeling clay like substance used for showers. Just wrap the balsa frames in Flexstone and they will be ready to go into your village.

If your hand doesn’t always have the precision of a surgeon there’s a good chance you own at least one cracked building. Don’t toss it away with the trash; why not turn it into a fire for your village firemen to save? This works best for only slightly broken pieces; a pile of porcelain dust breaks the illusion, this works best when the cracks are on the roof or at least the top half of the building. To create your fiery remains simply darken the edges of the cracked pieces to simulate smoke damage. Glue cotton balls around the cracks and in windows, and once the paint dries pull the cotton upwards and you have created smoke. Sprinkle some black powder ground covering around the building for ash, and push your snow back a little for the melted effect. Now just install a flickering bulb and the transformation from potential tragedy to new level of realism is complete.

Continuing my post from Wednesday, another possible ground covering with many different varieties and possibilities is tea. Tea comes in many different shades and colors, primarily browns and reds, and differences in processing can create a variety of shapes from small flakes to large stems that are almost able to be used as logs. Experiment with different types of teas to see what types you prefer. You will find loose tea, as opposed to tea bags, is a much cheaper option and offers greater variety.