"Aston, Airborne" (2019) – 1:64 scale jewelry box diorama
100% hand-constructed in a balsa wood Dollarama jewelry box | Build time: 3 months
My college friend Gina hailed from Portugal and had a vintage car collector and rally enthusiast for a father. I was inspired to combine these facts into her dream scenario: A flat-out run though the countryside in her dad's prized DB5 back home.
ELEMENTS OF NOTE:
Uncarted sheep's wool for the dust cloud, lightly misted with camo-coloured spray paint. The wool was generously donated by a dear friend from an older generation than me.
Gina is represented by a repainted H0-scale male basketball player blocking a dunk. I snipped off the unfortunate baller's shoe, painted it brown, and Scenic Tack'd it to the back of her head for her signature ponytail.
The dust cloud obscures 2 brass rods superglued to the chassis of the Hot Wheels Aston Martin. The rods penetrate the dirt hill and merge with the inner structure of the scenery to support the weight. Getting the angle such that the box was still closeable was a nightmare.
The scenery is built upon plastercloth draped over newspaper wads, then smoothed by hand. It is constructed primarily from Woodland Scenics products—though expensive, they produce reliable, repeatable results and have clear directions.
The realistic "rock face" is a white plaster mould casting, poured and hand painted by me using a "leopard spotting" technique as I learned from Boulder Creek Railroad on YouTube.
The caution sign is on the wrong side of the road...whoops.
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"Dream Outside the Box" (2022) – 1:87 scale lighted diorama w/ custom wiring
Constructed by hand + power tools in a Michaels trinket shelf | Build time: Over 4 months
Signalling over to the shoulder for some fresh air on the way to Vegas...
A night chat on a bioluminescent Cali beach...
How it's made:
The electronics are hidden inside the Grand Canyon scene. The box forms the inner structure of the cliff.
A Woodland Scenics Just Plug LED will be all of our stars,
with the magic of fibre optics.
This technique was used to illuminate the pinpoint windows of the practical model ships in Star Wars.
The night scene is a false rear wall. The fibre optics have about 3/4 of an inch of space, squished behind the black facade.
My best friend Victoria Hutchinson lent her colour theory knowledge to help me match the reference. It's painted on canvas, then glued inside around the corners.
Plaster is messy but fun. It's the easiest way to make all kinds of terrain, and to make me feel like a child again.
Woodland Scenics makes pricey but reusable rock molds. They look huge, but the key is to break them down smaller by hand. The jagged breaks look completely natural in context.
Wet on wet application of plaster on plaster works just as well or better than waiting for it to dry and messing with glues.
The road was painted in Vallejo Asphalt Texture, then further weathered with powders and a Sharpie pen.
This female hiker will become me with some darker skin pgment and a slice taken out of the long hair moulding.
