Misty Halloween Greetings

It’s that time of year again when the ghosts, ghouls and creeps haunt the streets, including Big Lee apparently with his very own home grown pumpkin head. 

I decorated the porch and dished out some treats, although my first caller was a salesperson for Sky TV. (Probably the scariest costume to be honest.)

Anyway, as I was putting up the fake spider web material bought for Halloween decoration I realised it would be ideal to achieve something I had previously tried with cotton wool but had not been happy with the results. 

I wanted some spooky mist and fog to roll in over the graveyard set and the consistency of this material when stretched out gave the perfect results. Plus, with Halloween now over for another year, there's a good chance you'll be able to pick this stuff up in a sale.

Here’s Karl and his brother Tomkin exploring the graveyard as the Halloween fog rolls in.

Also I’d like to share the response I received from Woodland Scenics following my last post, which raises them even higher in my opinion.

“We appreciate the support of our customers, want them to succeed and are delighted to assist with any issues they may have. We have a great Product Development team, who are dedicated to making modelers successful! Thanks for the support, Derek and for the shout-out on you blog.”

Tree Hugging

Apologies for not blogging sooner, but if I had over the last couple of weeks this blog would have just degenerated into a rant at the general level of apathy so many large companies show to their customers these days. I’m still awaiting satisfactory responses from many, and their general level of indifference is astounding. Companies like Play.com, London Buses and Nation East Anglia Trains to name just three. That was not what I wanted this blog to be about, so instead I’m going to talk trees and a company that does show an interest in their customers.

I decided my layouts needed some special trees and foliage, and so I looked to one of the tree kits from Woodland Scenics. I invested in the full range of glue, scenic cement and spray bottle in order to do the job right.

First stage was to remove the bases from their trunks and fit them, then bend the branches out and twist them to form three dimensional shapes.

To be honest the trees are much stronger than I first thought, initially I was a bit apprehensive about twisting them in case I was too heavy handed, but I had nothing to fear. The next stage was to glue them up and leave the glue to set and go tacky before applying the foliage.  

The foliage comes in a bag, at first glance you think there’s not going to be enough for all the trees in the pack, but providing you break the clumping foliage up before applying it to the branches there is certainly enough material in the pack to complete the project.

Once tacky I applied the foliage, left for 24 hours then started spraying with the scenic cement to secure and protect the trees – disaster, after I sprayed two of the trees the foliage all dropped from the trees, forming a soggy mess like the fallen leaves of autumn.

Now, I follow Woodland Scenics page on Facebook, where many people post images of projects and if you’re on Facebook and haven’t been to their page you should look it up – you’ll see some brilliant work there. Remember to ‘like’ the page for updates in your news feed.

I posted an appeal for help on their page and very quickly a brilliant young man named Joe Hawkins replied with helpful advice and shortly after Woodland Scenics themselves responded.

Their response was a well thought out answer to my situation, instead of just reprinting the instructions they tackled what had gone wrong and advised how I could get good results. 

The good news is that once the foliage had dried out I was able to follow their advice, applying two coats of Hob-e-tac before pressing the foliage on by hand and then building the scenic cement up in light layers.

Now I have the first batch of successful trees ready to be added to the graveyard set, the castle ruin and cottages.

It’s good to see that some companies take pride in their products and services and make the effort to help and provide advice for their customers. Well done Woodland Scenics, I will certainly be buying more trees in the near future. The other thing I like about Woodland Scenics is their website, it contains short video demonstrations which are great for getting you started.

http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/WoodlandScenics

The Old Graveyard

To go with the ruined church piece I decided to start making some tile pieces, that when put together will form an old graveyard. These can be used to make up a diorama of an old churchyard or arranged in different configurations to give different graveyards in different locations, some more run down than others. 

I’m basing the various concepts on some of the older graveyards locally, and the graveyards featured in Vampire Diaries Series 1, and various episodes of Supernatural. 

I started by finishing off the church ruin itself, where some of the filler had formed small lumps I decided to paint these up as mould growing on the ruins. These were painted using Games Workshop’s Bleached Bone and Bubonic Brown, and Americana’s Deep Periwinkle.

With two pieces of card and some small cut up pieces of polystyrene from the washing machine packaging I started to layout the first two tiles of the graveyard. The first has a large double arched entrance way now slightly collapsing and some random external wall pieces. The other is more interior, with mainly graves in various states of disrepair and some at an angle implying subsistence.

These I then covered in wall filler, but this time before plastering it on I mixed it with some PVA glue and black acrylic paint giving a very dark grey initial effect to base material before I started. This will make the stonework look very different to the walls of church itself.

To layout the actual grave areas I’ve added some light stony areas. (Talus by Woodland Scenics, Fine Natural.)

Fire in The Old Church

Following my last posting the new washing machine was delivered and installed, as part of the service the old machine is taken away for re-cycling and so usually is the packaging the new machine is delivered in. This time I asked them to leave the polystyrene, at first there were raised eyebrows but once I explained why and showed them one of the cottages they dug a couple of other choice pieces off their van for me, so here is my new horde of material and I’m already eyeing it up with ideas forming. I’ll let the ideas bubble away for a while before jumping in. 

Besides, there is a lot of other work to finish first.

Mainly this week I’ve been working on the old church ruins, the odd plastic pieces passed over to me by BigLee some (embarrassed cough) years ago. Now, inspired by the set from the first series of The Vampire Diaries I’ve started on this small diorama piece adding a piece of the broken wall originally made for the castle ruin set and some pieces of twig and branches cut down from the garden. 

I based the model onto some thick card and using wall filler made some mounds and fixed down the larger twigs as stumpy trees. The whole effect I was going for was for an area of land around the church where nothing now grows, having compiled my own small legend around the piece as I worked on it.

Three different basing materials have been used, grey stone rock debris (Talus by Woodland Scenics, Fine Natural) a red dusty sand (Javis ‘Countryside Scenics’, Sandstone scatter) plus a brown scatter material which I’ve had in the cupboard so long I no longer know the make or colour scheme I’m afraid.

I mentioned in the previous update that I tried to hide the very straight edge plastic look of the model piece, this I did by mixing a small portion of wall filler in with the second basing coat which I repainted the model with, before adding and blending white to make the stone effect. The same paint scheme as used for the castle ruins, allowing me to utilise one of the pieces from that set.

I found the old handle from a wicker basket down the side of the old washing machine, this I’ve pulled apart and used for some of the wild grasses. The natural brown colour adds to the effect of dead plant life. I also stripped fine strands of stringy bark from the old garden canes; these are the very thin straight strands you can see on the model.

Now for the back story...

Asgar turned to his brother. “So what is this place?”

    His brother glance at him. “An old church, destroyed by fire – or so the legend goes.”

    “Legend?”

   Mendez sighed. “They say devil worship took place here, a hundred virgins were sacrificed to open a gateway to the fiery pits of hell. They succeeded but the fire they unleashed burnt the place down. The land is still stained by their blood.”

    Asgar looked down, the land around his feet was certainly very red in patches.

   “Not quite,” called Dynaclease, the third of the brothers climbing over the old tree stump. “Devil worship was being practiced, but the gods sent a fireball from the heavens to cleanse the ground. It struck the church and brought down the tree over the entrance to the crypt, trapping them all in and so they perished in the fire caused by the lightning strike.”

    “I see,” Asgar said stepping backwards. He cried out as a large area of ground gave way under his feet and he fell crashing through into the darkness below.

To give the effect of the possible lightning strike I actually set fire to the tops of the stumps and charred them. There’s nothing like being authentic.

I have a little more detail more to finish on this piece before it’s finished, I hope to get it completed over the weekend.