Simplicity Sidings

[Steve Bennett]

Ferns look like they could be very useful Bill. Not so sure about the mushrooms though, I find Peco track pins work very well after a coat of paint.

[Gerry Bullock]

Yes Bill the Fly Agaric is considered poisonous, however the Celts and Druids used it to achieve highs.
As Busch are promoting this fungi maybe they have Druid connections.

Mushrooms are also quite easy to make using Fimo and for a "waste not want not" solution I have one on Gneiss Farm that is the stalk end of a date.

[Steve Bennett]

Oh dear, a major distraction just arrived, think I might be having a play with these this evening

[rue_d_etropal]

just received some mini punches from eBay. Advertised as from Australia but packet of 3 treee leaf punches actually came from Hong Kong(probably quicker post as well) .
Cost was just over a £5 for the 3, including post, so they are cheap enough to play with.
I think these are the smallest punches available, and I think are probably about right size for 1/12th.
Just wondering how to fix down heaps of leaves now

[Steve Bennett]

Just wondering how to fix down heaps of leaves now

As they are paper, an ordinary white glue should do the job, maybe even hairspray. To keep the loose look of piles of leaves, spraying with a dilute solution of white glue might be the best way to go. Not tried it, so I could be completely wrong but worth a play.

[Steve Bennett]

The paper saga continues well, I couldnt resist a play with the new punches shown above

All the punches I got were from the "Xcut" range which seem quite popular here in the UK, but I'm sure there must be others which are similar. Mine came from http://www.bgpayne.com and took about a week incl the holiday weekend. They didn't have one of the punches I ordered and refunded the amount for that directly back to my Paypal account, no problems.

Here is a pic of the 5 punches, along with the bits they produce to give an idea of the relative sies.



To help anybody who might be tempted along a similar path, here are the product # from left to right.

XCU-970 - Border Punch - Stars
XCU-9834 - Mini Punch - Four Stars
XCU-2611019 - Punch - Daisy Pattern
XCU-2581006 - Mini Punch - Daisy Pattern
XCU-969 - Punch - Holly

So thats the technical bit, time to play . Here are a few examples, I will give a few more details after the pic.



Working from the left front, this is made with the Holly punch, another is just left of the purple flower. I found this one of the more difficult to use, but the effect is good. As the size of the leaves are quite big, it is possible to curve the leaves around a round former, I used the handle of a small paintbrush. With card, this does make them more difficult to fit the layers (3) together, paper might have been a better option.

Next the 3 large plants at the front, these are some of my favourites. They are made up of the 2 sizes of Daisy pattens. again it was possible to curve the leaves of the larger one, I was too lazy to try the smaller, but it doesnt really show. If I remember rightly, 3 large Daisies, and 3 smaller ones went into each plant.

OK, lets turn the display around for the next few.



Starting in the centre with the one with the purple flower and the one on it's right. These were made up with the smaller Daisy punch, as were the dark ones to the right of the tree stump.
Moving further right, the Star shaped punches were used, the small punch for the 2 at the front, with the larger one made from the larger Star punch. The larger has 5 layers and the smaller are made up of 3.
Also showing up fairly well here, is the Holly leaved plant in the centre.

I hope it is obvious how much bigger these are than the original tiny plants I started with, which can be seen at the back right of the pic. These larger ones wont be suitable for too close to the rails, but intended more for general weeds away from the track.

I think I have probably posted enough on this subject (dont all agree ), but if anyone has any questions, just ask. I do hope that it will be useful and has provided a few ideas to experiment with.

[Steve Bennett]

Just briefly revisting the paper plant subject sorry .
A bit of info (UK only) for anybody who might be looking for coloured paper. Popped into the local Lidl store yesterday, to find they have packs of 250 A4 sheets of 80 gsm coloured paper at £2.49. At a penny a sheet, thats the cheapest I have found, so if anybody needs a lifetime supply
There are 10 different colours and 25 sheets of each. Laid out below, a swatch of each colour and I just had to try a flower in each to see how they looked



Hopefully of use to some here, it fell just right for me, as following my demo at the weekend on making paper plants, I'm already getting bookings to give the demo at other shows next year

[Hans H]

..gotta get me some of those...very useful
I bought a box of H0 flowers...so tiny...but this..now where talkin'

Very nice!!!

Cheers
Hans H

[underworld]

Steve

You do amazing work with paper!!!


underworld

[steerngo]

Just briefly revisting the paper plant subject sorry .
A bit of info (UK only) for anybody who might be looking for coloured paper. Popped into the local Lidl store yesterday, to find they have packs of 250 A4 sheets of 80 gsm coloured paper at £2.49. At a penny a sheet, thats the cheapest I have found, so if anybody needs a lifetime supply
There are 10 different colours and 25 sheets of each. Laid out below, a swatch of each colour and I just had to try a flower in each to see how they looked



Hopefully of use to some here, it fell just right for me, as following my demo at the weekend on making paper plants, I'm already getting bookings to give the demo at other shows next year

lthay ook like the flowrers onthe MAGIC ROUNDABOUT

[steerngo]

Just briefly revisting the paper plant subject sorry .
A bit of info (UK only) for anybody who might be looking for coloured paper. Popped into the local Lidl store yesterday, to find they have packs of 250 A4 sheets of 80 gsm coloured paper at £2.49. At a penny a sheet, thats the cheapest I have found, so if anybody needs a lifetime supply
There are 10 different colours and 25 sheets of each. Laid out below, a swatch of each colour and I just had to try a flower in each to see how they looked



opefully of use to some here, it fell just right for me, as following my demo at the weekend on making paper plants, I'm already getting bookings to give the demo at other shows next year

thay ook like the flowrers onthe MAGIC ROUNDABOUT

[chris stockdale]

they look like the flowrers on the MAGIC ROUNDABOUT

Couldn't resist - lots of flowers, one being rolled from side to side in Ermintrude's mouth....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3DcChXNyYQ

(Oh, and there's a train too)

cheers

[Steve Bennett]

Those were the days
A magic roundabout layout No rails to worry about

[Gerry Bullock]

Here's a Foxglove I made whilst out of contact.

I doubt that I'll make another as it's just too time consuming and fiddly.
The photo shows the flower 5x size, I've also made some weeds however as these are 7mm they'll appear on the Dinas Mawddwy thread.
What I can suggest is another natural source and maybe now's the time to collect them - Alder seeds, I've waited a year for the 'bunch' to dry out then cutting the head off gives a good representation of a cabbage - need to paint it though.
GerryB

[dieselwater]

Wow! That's beautiful Gerry!

[chris stockdale]

I think P Bucket's system might have got wise to it but I've managed to grab (no, don't ask me how) some 20 of Steve's Simplicity Sidings photos out of the depths.

[chris stockdale]

Right, found a new way to get at what I want.

Expensive on my time and effort, but hopefully fellow Gnatterboxers will agree it's worth it.

What follows is not every photo by any means and you'll have to perhaps copy and paste Steve's 'words and music' into a separate doc (perhaps print it out so that you can read and look at the screen for the pics as you go) but I hope this will do something to recover what was a seminal piece of Gn15 work.

BUT (billions of blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon - for fans of Tintin) each set of pics seems to have loaded in reverse order, so you need to get a set in view and then go UP, not DOWN for the next pic in the order that work was done.

Bother!

[chris stockdale]

And the next set

[chris stockdale]

And the next set

[chris stockdale]

And the next set

[chris stockdale]

And finally...

[michael]

Chris thanks for doing this. I gnow that Steve used the Brick Printies that I came up with for some early Macton work here they are again

new macton bricks office.jpg (414.14 KiB) Viewed 3335 times

new macton door bricks.jpg (731.9 KiB) Viewed 3335 times

new macton bricks paintshop.jpg (508.85 KiB) Viewed 3335 times

Michael

[chris stockdale]

Chris thanks for doing this. I gnow that Steve used the Brick Printies that I came up with for some early Macton work here they are again

Well, that’s a little snippet I didn’t know.

Thanks for popping them in.

Cheers,