How To Make A Junkyard ~and~ Losing The Blogging Bug

I'm not that interested in blogs any more. I like you and I'm very satisfied when I think about all the hilarious and/or talented people I've met since I started blogging, and I DO keep reading & visiting, but I find I not only have less and less to originate here but I also have less and less to contribute to your blog. Now when a person cuts down on their contributions to other blogs the natural thing is that suddenly you lose a lot of readers who were nothing more than "I'll post to you only if you post to me" and that kills about 90% of blogland, I think. So I don't know. What's it for again?

So as we ponder what's Real Life and What Isn't there's a kit I found that takes the "Oh goody goody happy day" toy train engineer and turns him into a fanatic. A raiser. It's a junkyard. And I added a few touches of my own.

First, you remember, our story takes place in 1919. A returning soldier comes home just in time for Christmas. Well so OK, this is America so you know all the posters aren't down yet. I went to the web and found World War One posters, copied and shrunk them down to various sizes.

But no when I say shrink I mean SHRINK.

I kind of hate this next picture because I took it one handed. So it's blurry. But what's happening here is I'm taking a soft board nail file and sanding the BACK of the poster. The reason you do this is because - think - the posters have been out there in Midwestern winters and summers and get weathered. If you took full-color fresh-as-a-daisy posters and plastered them all over your town you get shiny new posters everywhere. But, sorry, it just ain't that-a-way.

So you've got the paper sanded down so you can see through it, and holes have even developed. You go to the fence (btw, this is a fence that came with the kit, but the painting is mine - brown, rust, black and an occasional salty white = a weathered corrugated iron fence. You get the idea). Dab some Elmer's down and then smear it flat just like wallpaper paste. Put your pre-tattered poster up and rub it GENTLY with the edge of a hobby paint brush so that the super-thin thing adhears to the contours of the fence.

Comes up like this. Well no, it comes up exactly like this. A period-correct ad for smoking tobacco...

Now pick the ones you want - including the WWI recruitment poster - and wash/rinse/repeat.

Plan what goes where around a piece of balsa-wood, then glue the fences to the wood to form the floor of the junkyard.

Looks like this, before and after you paint the balsa wood...

After the paint dries (which happens in like three seconds on balsa) coat the "floor" with a liquid adhesive (hobby store guys), and sprinkle a granulated "scenic effect" sand to form... well... you know... dirt.

Add junk, weeds, drip paint by turned-over oil cans, throw stuff on top of dead foliage, and release your inner slob...

Don't worry about the part by the gate. Remember, in this scene we're still going to add a covering of snow over everything during the set-up. The exposed balsa by the gate will be covered with a slight snow drift (see, always thinking) and - if you look above - you will notice pegs on the bottom of the fences... which will be used to stick into the white Styrofoam base that everything will be set on to help make it as snowy ground as possible.

A detail...

Depending how you're viewing, you can make these bigger by clicking on them. Perhaps.

Anyway... moving right along!