A real beast of a project this time (and split into the next post too!)
I don't think the editor was expecting me to turn in quite so much material for this article, and to be fair, I probably did get a wee bit carried away. But bear in mind that despite my dour Midlander background and personality, I do have a bit of a guilty pleasure for kitsch and colourful tat, and anyway I needed a counterpoint to the grim, depressing winter...
When the editor was dishing out the projects, she mentioned a village summer fair; having done a few summer-themed projects relatively recently, I figured I had enough in stock to do this one. Getting into the build though, I quickly realised just how much this scene was going to need, to look convincing...
A pack of Gaugemaster tents formed a big part of the project; they're nice mouldings, and respond well to weathering to bring out some nicely moulded crease-lines and similar. Less fun was doing the guy-ropes, which proved to be a fiddly exercise in sewing.
I decided to see how many "Hot Fuzz" references I could sneak into the scenes too.
Another useful space-filler were the game stalls; we've done plenty of these with Scouts over the years whilst fundraising at actual village galas and fairs, so I had an idea in my head how I wanted it to look. The Wills market barrows would provide the starting point.
Cutting down plastic rod for the 'tin can alley'. Each stall had a different themed game, like tombola's and bottle-pulls.
I was a little stumped how to do giant soft toys for the prizes, then turned to Langley Miniature Models n scale animals.
Paper and marker pens for the canvas canopy, and map-pins for the balloons.
A colourful little jumble of stalls.
The bottle-pull stall, run by the local Scouts, very much based on our own activities (though the logo is the old one, as nominally the scene is set around mid 90's to mid 2000's... the eventual plan is to incorporate a lot of this stuff into my planned St.Morvyth's layout, if I ever get around to building it).
The Scouts in particular need a mention; you can get Scout figures commercially, but they tend to be 1950's-era (so old uniforms with caps), and all boys. As even in the 1990's we were a modern mixed-gender outfit, I ended up having to paint up some of the other figures instead with representations of the uniform (the black and white 'necker colours are those of our current group).
There needed to be an eating area, so the trusty Metcalfe picnic tables were used for this.
Testing out the scene; I'd built everything as separate elements to blend together, which would allow me to awkwardly work on them without having them stuck on the board, and try and arrange some nicer compositions.
This is how it all looked when bought together, and everything blended in (and combined with the Port Eden Tramway board to hint at the village of St.Morvyth just off the board).
On the cover! Very nice.
Anyway, more on some of the other details like the bouncy castles in the next part, tomorrow.
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