“Hello Al
This occurred to me while I was re-building a badly made-up OO gauge house kit. I love poorly constructed and broken plastic building kits. They’re a bargain on eBay because no one wants them and you can get them for a song. Once you’ve taken them apart and re-assembled them, you’re left with lots of imperfections which are a challenge and fun to disguise. This is one way to do it – requires little or no skill – is very quick – and foolproof because even slip-ups look good. You can cover up glue marks, missing chunks of plastic, dodgy windows, broken guttering – all manner of mess. And it costs nothing.
The photos can’t show the results properly because they’re two dimensional. In reality the plant is proud of the wall, falls way from it in places and has texture – really appears to be growing on it. The pictures make it look ‘painted on’ but should give an impression. Here’s the process: –
(1) – Cut a short length of thread, dip it in the dark brown paint and lay it on the wall from the bottom upwards – vertically – the root branch. If it splatters a little – great – exactly what ivy appears to do. The paint itself glues the thread to the wall. Cut more lengths of thread, dip them and lay them from the main stem outwards – up and over the roof if you like – across windows – the more haphazard the better. Gently dab them down if you wish.
– Make a little paper applicator for the sawdust.
(2) – Once dry, drop blobs of glue on and around the branches, allowing plenty of brown stalk to show through. Use a matchstick to apply the glue. You’ll notice that the glue reacts with paint to give a ‘crazing’ effect and whitens – fantastic – exactly what dead ivy stalks look like.
– QUICKLY – using a the paper applicator – drop patches of sawdust into the glue – gently pat it in if you wish – leave it to dry. Just like kiddies’ glittering! You can re-apply if you want to build up the plant.
(3) – Dab blobs of green paint on and around MOST of the sawdusted areas – not all of them or you spoil the effect.
(4) – Trim off any unpainted thread ends – or dab a little green paint on them. Looks good if they stick up or fall away from the wall.
Bazinga! Tis done!
Of course you can use the same technique with tiny dabs of colour to create wisteria, climbing roses – all sorts of things. And ivy grows absolutely everywhere so it can brighten up the dullest goods yard.
Best wishes to all.
Roger.”
A big thank you to Roger. Don’t forget to leave a comment below!
And to all those still sitting on the side lines, or those just looking for inspiration, this will sort you out.
Best
Al
