Some more progress today, but not as much as I would have liked.
Remember me saying my 'puter crashed last week? I've spent another two days linked with a Microsoft technician trying to fix it. Really weird, when I first log on, I get asked for my pin and sign in with no problems. The next time I log on I get a screen which tells me my password is wrong, so I click OK which takes me to a second screen and type in the only password they have and I get logged in. But the weird part is, the third time I log in, it's back to entering my pin again! Back to Microsoft tomorrow.
Anyway, here's where I'm at:
Got the fence glued into place. I cut recesses into the back of the foam and glued the posts to the MDF base as well as to the foam with a big dollop of no more nails. That should hold it well enough.
Oh. Added a strand of barbed wire to the top rail. Gotta try to stop the oiks climbing over and getting into farmer Giles' fields - he might get me thrown off the pitch!
Waiting for the glue on the fence to dry before I start adding all the green stuff.
The grass is cut from a mat. I could have used some flock and PVA, but this only took 2 minutes to cut it to size and glue it down. I glued all of the base parts together at the same time and added a few books on top to weight them down for 5 - 6 hours while the PVA dried enough for me to carry on.
I've started putting the grit and dirt I used for the road (disappointed I didn't get my nice tarmac but it's turned out OK) around the joints between the slabs. I'll see how it looks when the glue is dry, but I can already see I need more along the edge of the kerb.
Used some VMA Mahagony (!?) diluted with
airbrush cleaner for the benches (about 2 : 1 thinner : paint). Came out alright and left a bit of the grain showing. There's a couple of white streaks here and there, but that's where little Billy spilled his mayo trying to open the sachet.
I like how these have turned out (the lettering is on all four sides):
I mixed up a thick goopy mix of white powder paint and just brushed it all in and over the recessed letters, left it for 10 minutes then carefully wiped away the excess from the raised part of the surface with a damp tissue and cotton buds. First time I did it, either my paint wasn't thick enough, or I didn't leave it long enough and I wiped most of the paint out of the lettering. No problem, just added thicker paint. Whole job took less than 30 minutes. There's odd smears of the white paint left here and there and you can see some of the lettering appears faded but that just makes them look more weathered and realistic.
Sorted out a nice tree to go in the bench:
Starting to sort out the green stuff. This is about half the contents of one of my two boxes so plenty of choice. Some I got from florists but most of it is the stuff you buy for aquariums and vivariums - dirt cheap if you avoid buying from pet shops and garden centres! - but there is some stuff specifically made for scenery. It's worth looking at model railways on ebay. You can quite often pick up job lots of the stuff fairly cheaply. I'll be adding some of those small grass clumps to the corner joints in the paving.
