Sylvanian Families Message Board R:2 :: The Plaza :: Making a Sylvanian Village ~ Runboard

Sylvanian Families Message Board R:2
The Plaza
Making a Sylvanian Village

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Twilightlover
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Woot! the last time I saw this thread was in March! And look at it now. It's stunning and I can't wait to see more!

7/30/2009, 3:22 am

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lostmymarblz
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Shauna and Twilightlover,

Thank you for the kind words emoticon

After more work on the clouds and time to reflect on their appearance, I decided to paint over them. They didn't quite looked liked they fit. If I change my mind later when the deciduous tress have been completed, I can always give the clouds another try.

The evergreen trees received coats of paint yesterday and are now darker shades of green. They look better on the painted "grass" of the Village than on the fabric, so there is a good chance the fabric will not be used.

Here is the same scene dressed up with landscaping materials I have on hand.

Last week, I also took some time to remove the Ivy Points tokens from all of my PJ boxes, which meant taking my boxes full of boxes off the top of my walk-in closet shelf. One at a time, each box of boxes was unpacked, tokens carefully clipped off the top flap, and the boxes repacked. I was afraid that once the smaller boxes were out of the larger ones, I'd never get them back in again, but somehow it all worked out emoticon

Empty shelf.

Boxes repacked and ready for the closet.

Boxes back in closet.

There are so many things that need to be done next, but I think I will finish repairing the deciduous tree trunks and get the foam foliage on them. I also have more flowers and shrub materials to make more borders. The rest of my week is free to do what I want, but lately it seems I've been making a lot of time lapse videos of our fabulous skies and clouds. Darn, but I like cloud watching, but it's taking away from my Village emoticon

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8/4/2009, 10:19 am

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lostmymarblz
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

After looking at the above photos of the evergreen trees, I can safely say that they fail the "looks good" test. That is the nature of experimenting - some things don't work. In the spirit of learning from failure, I hit the dollar stores last night and this morning and bought a whack of foliage. Here's another test photo of what the Village looks like with the new foliage...

The tree on the far left of the photo is one of the sculpted tree trunk trees. It still needs brown paint, but at least you have a bit of an idea of how it looks at this stage. Foliage in that tree is temporary to see how it looks.

I've included a couple of evergreens to see if they can still be used, but sparingly. From looking at the photo, they still don't do much for me. Perhpaps if they can be altered in some way, they will look better.

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8/5/2009, 9:28 am

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millienorwood
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Hi Beverly,

I love the pics with all the new foliage.The buildings really seem to come to life.

As for the evergreens, maybe you could try coating them with wood shavings or sawdust to give them some more texture and then painting? Also, i have previously used a product called 'Papier' which is like recycled paper pulp in a bottle.You could try making a paper pulp (just blend lots of newspaper with a little PVA glue and water to a thick paste, similar to how you made your drywall mix i guess) and then adding some more textural elements like real leaves or wood shavings into it before moulding it on to your evergreens.You can even scratch it with a fork when it starts to harden for an interesting effect.Another option could be to go to a local florist or garden centre and source some spagnum moss which you could then spray paint.

Good Luck with your experimenting emoticon

Charissa

8/6/2009, 4:28 am

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lostmymarblz
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Charissa,

Thank you for the ideas emoticon

I don't know if I'll be using the evergreens, but I'll see what I can do to one of them using your ideas.

I decided to remove the buildings and get down to work building up the foliage in the large tree trunks as well as in front of and behind the fences. I bought out all of the bright green tree foliage from two dollar stores nearby the other night. There is one store that I haven't been to yet, and I'm hoping to go there this morning, then go to the one that still has a lot of other foliage that can be used behind the fences as well as between buildings once they are set up.

Long view of the bottom part of the "T". A lot more foliage will be needed to fill in the blanks.

A close up of the very bottom of the "T". This area is beginning to look pretty good,
though this is just a test to see what materials are still needed.

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8/6/2009, 5:32 am

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duckpuddle
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

That looks fantastic! The pink flowers on the tree do look a little big for Sylvanians though.

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8/6/2009, 6:00 am

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SnowmanF
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Must say I'm really liking it!
Your nicely made trees show just how poor the other ones look, lol.
Good luck with the rest of this gargantuan task.

8/6/2009, 8:09 am

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lostmymarblz
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

duckpuddle,

All the flowers in borders and trees are the same size and all are larger than Sylvanian scale. Same goes for the foliage - all slightly larger than scale. I've shopped at both Michael's and the dollar store and that's all that is available, so I buy everything at the dollar store and save a load of money.

Snowman,

Thank you for the kind words. Yes, the task is huge emoticon

And I haven't even gotten to the complex part at the top of the "T" of the Village. There are so many things that have to be done. It's good that I have lots of time to figure out what comes next and how it might be done.

Just got back from a quick trip to the west end dollar store and picked up 65 more pieces of foliage materials. Yes, I have three bags full

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8/6/2009, 10:08 am

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lostmymarblz
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Last night I realized I had to make two more tree trunks where the bottom and top parts of the "T" join. But before I can do that, I had to begin work on the top part of the "T". This morning I was up and cutting foam insulation board at 6 a.m. Here is what it looks like as of this morning....

A box cutter works well for cutting insulation foam - that's all the blue stuff piled up at the top of the Village "T".
I used the foam to create elevation as well as mountain shapes.

This is the far left side that cannot be seen in the photo above.
If I am happy with the way the shapes look, the next step is to carve them a bit to refine the shapes,
after which they must all be glued to the painted plywood base and back and to each other.
Weight must be put on top of and against the foam so there is a solid bond.

After the glue dries, I'll carve them a bit more, then apply drywall mud mixed with a bit of latex paint,
sculpting the mud to make it look more like mountain rock.

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8/7/2009, 9:15 am

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SnowmanF
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Re: Making a Sylvanian Village

Now that's a technique I favour!

Pretty soon you will really start to 'see' your village.

8/7/2009, 10:41 am

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