Add some green....

In this economy, green is hard to come by, money green that is. And because I don't have a ton of money to shove into this project, I have to make as much as I can. My tree's for example. So, I decited to make some ground cover out of foam cubes that I put in a blender, and then mixed with green paint, and left in the sun to dry. Looks like it came out okay.

Getting a little grove going....

My trees looked better and better each time I made one. Again, I put my little hiker mom, and her son, in front of my grove to compare them to scale. But, they still look a little bland.

Time for some trees....

I made some trees out of some pliars, wire, and fibers from some sisel twine, untreated. Took a little time to get the technique down, but after awhile, my trees started looking better and better.

Mountain making progress....

Now the plaster is complete, the track is complete, and I added a little spray paint. I purchased the special kind of brown earth tone spray paint from Home Depot that had the special texture to it. Sprayed it on inconsistantly, so some areas were darker than others.

If you do this at home, make sure it's a well ventalated area. Have a fan or something. I only had the outside door open and the house smelled of fumes for about 3 hours. I had an awful headach. Yeah, this is a first attempt, learn as I go project. :)

Plaster on the mountain...

I opened up a little case of the people that I purchased and stuck a hicker woman and her son at the top of my mountain, just to get a feel. The plastering process has begun, and I carded the dried plaster a little bit so that it wouldn't look so much like plaster. But, only covered about 20% of the mountain. So, down to Home Depot to get some more plaster.

Time to get messy....

Some paper mache on the mountain for starters to give it a little bit of surface. Some people like playing in paper mache, but not me. It's messy and smelly, but it is part of the fun.

Also you can see I started laying my track. Not a perfect circle because I had flex track, but still it works. Not bad for my first try.

I also learned not to use a nice surfaced table. Because the surface is so hard, most nails will not go through it. So I had to drill a hole thorugh the hard surface everywhere I wanted to place a nail and cause a lot of extra work and headaches. Yes, the surface is nice and smooth to work with, but hardly worth it.

Also, you can see in the far left, the track is not complete yet. I ran out of track and needed to run to the hobby shop to pick up another one, which I did a few days later. I got excited and wanted to work on my mountain. So, now I have to lay the rest of the track with the mountain up. And with the hard surface, it was difficult to get into that moutnain.

And now, start with the mountain....

Okay, so now I have the roadbed laid down. I got some old wire that is used for growing tomato plants and stuff, kind of like chicken wire, but a little stronger, and I nailed it to the table using some U nails. Then I conformed it as I thought looked natural and cool look'n.

Starting my model train....

I brought home an old table that my dad wanted to throw away after a garage sale. Thought it might be kind of nice to start small. Besides, you can do a lot, with this little amount of space. Thougth I would start with just a round track. I used a flexible track, because I wanted the circle a little bit larger than usual. So, clearly, I started with some roadbed.