Lighting Up

Lighting Up For Christmas

At the weekend I was in a few of the various Pound (and just under the Pound) Stores in Romford, when I came across some battery operated LED Christmas lights. 

They came in two colours, white and red. The white takes 3xAAA batteries where as the red works from 2xAA batteries. I thought these would be ideal to give the occasional lighting effect on some models, as you can easily hide the control boxes and wires.

This was just a quick test run using one of the wooden huts with one previously blacked out window replaced with an opaque plastic window. Here is the house with the white, red and no lights...

... plus a quick video switching between them as I ran the wires out of the open door.

The red certainly suggests a warm fire glow.

Final Fog Feature

Just when you thought Halloween was gone from the shelves, see last posting where I substituted Christmas snow blanket for Halloween Spider’s Web, I was visiting Basildon when I spotted a sale on Halloween decorations. Although at first I never found any spider web I did find some interesting bits and pieces. 

When I mentioned to the young lady tidying the sale items that I was looking for spider web the reply I got was, “Yes, we’ve got some, what colour?” Not what I expected, but I was told they had black and white. I said I’d take some of each and she came back with black, white and a packet of green. 

My eyes lit up, that will produce some real ghostly mist and fog. Many thanks to the girls working in Birthday’s Party Shop at Westgate Basildon, for their helpful and friendly service.

 

Here, especially then for Luckyjoe, are some extra foggy photos with the snow blanket, and the three colours of spider web around the gravestones.

Green Spider Webbing as Spooky, Ghostly Fog.

White Spider's Webbing as Creeping Fog

Black Spider Webbing. More like smoke.
Would be good also for 'Supernatural' style Demon activity.

Snow Blanket as Ground Cover Fog

Fog, Snow and Fireworks

According to my records this is blog number 50, time for a party? Fireworks anyone? It is that time of year again, Guy Fawkes, gunpowder, treason and plot.

Following on from last week’s post about using Halloween Spider Web material as fog on terrain, I went in search of some extra in the post Halloween clearance sales, and there wasn’t any. 

Not just no fog, but no sales this year, usually you get this stuff by the sin-bin bucket load in many shops, but not this year. 

However, I have found an alternative and one I actually like even better. Snow. Yes, snow joke, (well that was and it wasn’t even funny). 

Whilst wandering round Hobbycraft with their Christmas ideas on display I notice ‘Snow Blankets’ on offer at half price. They looked remarkably similar to the spider web material but flatter, thicker and more woven.

You could really cut rounds out this quite easily and glue them to a base to mount figures on a crisp undisturbed snowy base. 

But if you pull it apart then you can create a more whispy, floaty carpet, not so much like fallen snow but more like the rolling fog. 

Here’s Karl and Tomkin again exploring part of the old church yard this time using the pulled apart snow blanket as the fog covering.

I did mention fireworks earlier; yes I’ve just had another 10.5 mile wander around the streets of Dagenham collecting up fallen rockets for the third year running. 

I did get some funny looks, no one asked why. Maybe next year I should do it in fancy dress and get sponsored. Ok, maybe not.

Here’s a photo of this year’s haul. At first I didn’t think I would not collect as much as last year, the recession having taken a bite out of people’s budgets, but actually by the time I had finished I think it’s about the same.

So more house and cottage building for me next year then. I also found a couple of pieces of polystyrene, a nice flat piece and another archway.

Before I went out I got the slow cooker on and the stew set to bubble away so that a nice rich dinner smell welcomed me home. Just the thing for an adventurer in the wilderness with a lump of crusty bread to eat by the camp fire, time to dish up, turn the lights down and maybe set some suitable forest music on.