It's a Full House!

Started assembling the separate set pieces into their new configuration by using sawhorses, tripods,  and crates at different levels, stuffing the undersides with big crumples of thick brown paper for support. 

Since the shot above was taken, the foreground piece is set-up, the full picket fence and gate is installed and the bug party mushroom ring and cottage pathway repaired and finessed.







The set takes up the whole bedroom where I work, you walk right into the Answer Tree's tiny Writing Mouse house as soon as you walk through the door.







With the landscape in position in it's new configuration, it's nearly impassable to my desk back there. I mostly walk around through the bathroom while the full set is set up. Once the cottage interior scenes are being shot, the landscape can stack and stow to clear up space.

The picket fence (seen above midway during installation process) is now fully incorporated into the foreground set piece, painted with whitewash, and the ground around the base patched and repainted to look like ground.

The fence makes the smaller scale of the Bug Party set look even more diminutive. And you know what that means... intensely more appealing results. It's the one thing against the other that makes the illusion work. The bug party glimpsed from a distance (at first) through the fence in the same frame will enhance the magic of the scale differences.

The next post will give the idea a bit.