Tweedale - Cardboard Trees (Forest from a Box)
Here is the July progress report for Tweedale, which includes a method for creating dense woodland from corrugated cardboard shapes.
Firstly, the Poshington-Upon-Twee scene is now declared to be finished. The station has acquired a canopy (as befits a town of such importance), plus a coal yard, some fencing and other details. Nothing special about construction, the canopy is from card and balsa, and the coal heap from a piece of 'oasis' flower-arranging foam shaped with sandpaper.
The other main progress this month is at The Pits, where extra trees have been added. The sequence of photos below shows the method I use for creating dense masses of trees. The individual trees are quite low-relief so the method works best where there is a restricted viewpoint (as on Tweedale), or towards the rear of a layout near the backscene.
For those who don't know, the Tweedale layout is divided into a number of micro-sized scenes viewed through windows at the front of the layout. In the scene below, a lane winds its way in from the front towards the station. I wanted some woods in the foreground at the left and right of the lane to act as view-blockers for separating this scene from those adjacent...
Tree and foliage shaped pieces were cut from a corrugated cardboard box...
3d shapes were created by gluing the pieces in layers, with corrugated card seperators (about 1cm) between the layers. They were then given a base colour of dark green poster paint...
The exposed corrugations at the edges of the card were filled with a paste made up from used tea leaves and dark green scatter material mixed with dilute PVA glue...
Pieces of Woodland Scenic Foliage Net were used for the foliage, but they were treated first to make them less fragile. More of the green paste (as above) was made, and pieces of foliage net were dunked into the mixture, which then was worked into the net. The pieces were laid out on a plastic bag to dry...
When dry, the pieces were quite stiff, and were glued to the visible side of the tree shapes, overlapping the edges of the card slightly to break up the outline...
The trees were then installed on the layout. Suitable looking twigs from shrubs were added here and there between the layers to represent trunks and branches...
There's not much more needs doing at The Pits. Road signs approaching the crossings would probably be a good idea! The miners' houses still need constructing, but as they will also be visible from the adjacent industrial scene, I'm waiting until I've finally decided what I'm doing with that area first... there seems little point adding details to the back of the houses if they end up hidden behind a factory.
Cheers, Alan.
- 9
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