Three Faces of Eaves

OOOooo, pushed some long hours and finished Paul's book, now back to Happy Halfing! I had a brain wave for how to get the stenciled decoration onto the tiny mouse house's roof overhang. I took newspaper to the house and cut out two pretty exact-sized strips, one to fit each side of the overhang, or eaves, let's call it. Yeah, that's it, eaves. Right, I measured these strips pretty exactly and then re-sized and simplified in Photoshop with the photocopy filter, the actual art, off the actual image, of the actual building, onto those pretty exact strip sizes. The results are pretty exact-to-size printed templates that I can cut out of sticky film, such as clear contact paper, and use to paint said ornaments onto my eaves scaled pretty exactly. Cool.

I also stopped into a great old style model train shop yesterday in hopes of finding something small that I could use to make a little wrought iron railing for the Maus' balcony. The fella who knew everything in the shop, looked for quite a while and actually came up with this little N scale hairpin fence out of plastic for $3.50 that I was happy to buy and have been abusing with mangled modifications and paint ever since. It'll work though. Thanks, Sam! (A George Pal fan)

Whilst there, I picked up some fab landscaping materials from the German, Busch Modellspielwaren, a big 'ol roll of their Gelande Teppich Extra hoch grass mat in wildgras meadow, actually. It was pricey, $28 bucks, but I can stretch it far and it will really add a lot of realism to the root area of the tree, where a great deal of story action takes place. Added some Woodland Scenics field grass, course turf in soil, next-size-up stones from what I usually find in floral supply shops, and dark green underbrush to the 1/2L. nature arsenal.

I've also finished paving the chalet's stone chimney. And, in the most inspired misappropriation of objects to date, I found a diamond-shaped square mesh net bag with the precise scale of the upstairs tudor window. I'll paint it rusted/black and adhere it when dry to a piece of clear plastic food tray, cut to size, using clear window paint. Taaa Daaa.