How To Make These Long Stem Flowers This is some photos of how I used my long stemmed flowers. Sometimes I glued them in the exact size that I made them to be, but a lot of time I cut them up to give me smaller stems and varying sizes, for larger parts of them plants in the middle and back, leading down to smaller parts of the plant at the front. As you can see the varying sizes really help to give you the true effect of the plants and a really good 3D effect.  The things you are going to need to make your own long stem flowers are as follows:   -Bristles from a light scrubbing brush. (This is pictured in the above photo and I found mine in Daiso a Japanese shop in the laundry isle. I found this one to be not to think and the bristles all differ in size and they are a natural product, and what’s even better is that they only cost $2:80 and you get 2 in a packet. You will need to pull them all apart and put th...

                                          How To Make These Flowers The items you will need are: -String -Flocking (I have demonstrated how to make this in my blog called ‘making the foliage for the train layout’) -Liquid hair spray glue (which I demonstrated how to make in last week’s blog called ‘making hair spray liquid glue) -Green paint (or a can of dark green paint) -Spray gun -Scissors -Glad bake String Liquid Hair Spray Glue For the foliage you might first like to mix up some mixtures of coloured flocking. Some of the variations I have mixed up for our flowers are: Purple and mauve with some light olive green flocking. Dark pink, medium pink, pale pink and white flocking. Dark pink, medium pink, pale pink, white, and light olive green flocking. Deep red, medium red, and dark green flocking. Dark yellow, medium yellow and pale yellow...

                               Making Hair Spray Liquid glue To make your hair spray liquid glue you will need the following items: -Some very cheap hair spray with the strongest rating of hold and make sure it doesn’t have any softener in it. (Here in Australia when I first got some cheap hair spray I managed to get it cheaper from the reject shop but they haven’t had any since the Covid isolation. I have picked up my cans of hair spray from the supermarkets when they come up on sale). -A can of WD-40 spray. You will need the small plastic straw that comes with the spray can. You will not be using the WD-40 at all, only the straw. -A can of compressed air. You will need the nozzle of the top of this can. You will not be using the can of compressed air spray at all only the nozzle. -A disposable plastic contain. -Glad Wrap. First you will to take the nozzle of your ca...

                                                                      DIY Grass Weed Tufts To make these grass weeds tufts you will need the following: -Woodland Scenics Field Grass (Light green, medium green and natural straw. You can purchase packets of these from any stockiest of Woodland Scenics products either from a hobby shop or online, for around $10-$15 and of course if you purchase them of the internet then there is postage handling. For the straw colour I have seen that some people used a fake blond wig. I didn’t use this only because way back in 2004 when we started collecting stuff for our train layout we had already purchased our grasses). -A craft cutting mat. -A small pair of very sharp scissors. -PVA Tacky glue. (You can use just normal PVA ...

          Making The Flocking For The Train                                            Layout To make your own foam foliage you will need the following items: ·      An electric blender ·      Foam ·      A large mixing bowel ·      A mixing spoon ·      A 250ml measuring cup ·      1 Tablespoon to measure with ·      Acrylic paint (whatever colours you need your foliage to be). ·      PVA glue ·      Water ·      Paper towel ·      Plastic sheets (or plastic tarp, I used plastic garbage bags) ·      Plastic disposable storage containers ·      Rub...

  So Many Different Types Of  Foliage Trees and Shrubs           Over the years we collected some trees and some flocking and when it came time to place the foliage on the mountain I realized that I didn’t have enough. I didn’t have enough to cover even a third of the top of the mountain, nor did I have enough variety for what I wanted to do. And when I looked online at the prices of everything and knowing how much I might need I decided I would have to make all the foliage. And it really wasn’t to expensive at all. It did take a little time to make though. I would find that I would make approximately 20 trees and shrubs and that would take about 3 to 4 days to make and then I would place them and then it would be making another lot the next week. For a while there it was all I seemed to be doing. But it did pay off and we think it made it look so much better and more original. Here are some of the types of foliage I had to make. I will be expla...

       How I Made Spanish Steps For Our Train Layout The people in Glennanburg enjoy going up and down 160 steps in this mountain, they are very fit. The steps lead up to the town wall and up again to the wine festival area, there is another set of steps leading up to the war memorial, another set leads up to the farms, and yet another set of step leading down to the underground train station.           This is a photo of the set of steps that lead up to the Aussie                farms. Our train layout is very much influenced by our trips to and wonderful memories of Europe, England and some of our favorite places in Australia. Our steps are a reminder of the Spanish Steps in Rome. Although, our steps are not as wide as theirs. Theirs have 135 steps. Our first set of steps leading up to the town wall and the wine festival have 135 steps. For creating our steps I used some 3mm foam board. ...