1/64 Scale – Driveway & Pavement

Hiya!

Today, I’m showing how I made my 1/64 scale cement driveway and pavement in front of this house.

Let’s start with a cement driveway!

<Driveway>

At first, because this is such a small scale, I thought it would be fine if I just painted the driveway with some matte acrylic paint. But mmmmeh, I didn’t really like it that much, so I decided to make it 3D, using a piece of 5mm thick foam board, if you don’t have an easy access to foam boards, you can be creative and use clay for driveway and/or pavement in this post.

To recreate the slightly rough surface of cement ground, I sanded one side of my foam board.

Then I adjusted the size of the driveway.

It’s time to paint! Now you can see that the sandpaper actually did something here.

After the paint was dry, I glued the driveway on the ground. Easy, right?

<Pavement>

This pavement is pretty tiny, but with the right tools, you can pull it off just like the usual 1/12 scale.

First of all, I sliced my 5mm thick foamboad in half, and turned it into about 2mm thick. (I don’t know where to find foamboards thinner than 5mm, lol)

I made slight slits with the tip of an Exacto knife, and made the side bricks.

To define the brick shapes, I used the tip of a tooth pick, and gently drew along the slits of the bricks.

Using the same toothpick, I then created bunch of lines little by little to create pavement rocks.

Once the pavement shape was done, I painted the whole surface with the light gray acrylic paint.

Then I painted the individual rocks and bricks one by one.

To make it slightly more realistic, I did a light dark wash.

Once the paint was dry, I glued on the pavement onto the ground.

Then I filled the side gaps with some turf powder.

That’s it!

2017-05-052017-12-31

The town outskirts pavement

About a month ago, I talked about how I was going to make a new area in my SF town. Remember this photo? Since I had already done a town center before, this time I decided to do the outskirts of the town. I hope you can tell by the buildings that it’s not quite a suburb yet.

I finally finished making the pavement for this new diorama, and I’m going to show you how I did it in this post. For my other pavement tutorials, please check out the links below.

For the the base, I used 4 shelves from my wardrobe for this set.

After deciding where my buildings would go, I cut the foam boards out in the shape of the pavement. You can choose not to do this, and just have the entire boards covered with pavement. That way you can move around the buildings later. I’m just not usually up for working on so much extra space I may or may not use in the future. I do put a lot of thoughts into the layouts of my diorama before I start after all.

Once I peeled off all the paper on both sides of the foam boards, I marked some dots, 5mm apart, as a guide to carve out the lines of the pavement. It takes much more time and effort to make smaller sized brick pavement, but I think it’s worth it. I really wanted this part of the town to have an old town look – and the small bricks work quite well with it!

Once the lines are done, slide in the 5mm carving knife to make the sides of the bricks. I decided to make each bricks about 1cm long. I just eyeballed the length though, because measuring it out is just way too much work, and the variables give the pavement an aged look anyway.

Because the entire brick road area is larger than a single piece of foam board, I had to connect multiple pieces together. For the parts of the board, where the edges would connect, I cut the boards out along the shape of the bricks and connected them like puzzle pieces. This was done to make the joints between the two boards look as seamless as possible.

The tedious carving is done! It’s time to paint!

First I painted the whole area in a tan color.

Next, I added 4 more colors, randomly in no particular pattern. You can see how the pavement looks improved with each additional color in the pictures below.

At this point, I could have kept going with even more colors, but I was burned out of painting individual bricks, and called this step good.

After the paint had COMPLETELY dried, in order to give the cracks in between the bricks some color, I dabbed on lots of very light grayish color of paint all over the pavement. This step is always scary, but it always turns out fine. 😉 I think of it as the same process as the real brick pavements.

If this is your first time making bricks using my tutorials, I recommend you check out this post for a more detailed explanation as to what we’re doing here. The quick and dirty explanation though is as soon as you’ve dabbed on your gray paint, you are going to want to start wiping this paint off with a damp paper towel, while spreading it into the cracks in-between the bricks. After lots and lots of wiping, my pavement looked like this.

You can compare the before and after results in the photo below. Pretty neat, I think.

After the paint had dried, I glued the foam boards onto the base boards.

To make sure that the the pavement stuck well, I placed bunch of heavy books on top.

After the glue dries, its time for the dark wash! I simply spread water mixed with a small amount of dark brown paint all over the board. This part used to worry me before, but it always turns out awesome. If you don’t like the aged or realistic pavements, you can totally skip this though. I think of dark wash on pavement as the “rain and dust” in real life.

This is what the pavement looks like after the dark wash. See that the “rain and dust” filled in the cracks and tiny dips? I just love how this looks.

I don’t have pictures, but after the dark wash had dried, I did a quick white highlight on top of the bricks. I also cut the pavements along the base boards.

I figured, this way the lines between the boards won’t be so noticeable.

See?

I just put my shelves back in my wardrobe afterwards. See ya later town!

2015-05-022017-12-31

A little trick: curved surfaces

You probably saw these curved walls and flower beds in my other posts. Ever wonder how I did it? If you’ve played around with foam boards before, you can probably guess that very easily.

Yup, the foam boards that I use are cheap dollar store ones that come pretty big (about 51×78cm or 20×30inches.) It’s amazing how much you can get out of just one dollar! They are 5mm thick, and that’s a perfect thickness for most of my Sylvanian diorama projects.

In futures posts, you will see just how versatile these foam boards can be for the many different objects in your diorama.

Today, I will write about one trick you can use with foam boards; bending your board to make curved objects. You can do a lot with this trick, the only limitation is your imagination.

You can probably imagine that 5mm thick foam board will bend very easily. Yes, it does. Just be careful when you bend your board as it breaks very easily. I usually put my fingers on either side of the part I am bending and then bend little by little.

Once your board is bent, you’ll notice that it wants to go back to being straight. To keep your board from doing this, you will need another board of the same shape – this is the trick part of today’s topic.

First, get two identical foam boards ready.

Second, press each sides of your boards with fingers to make them more flexible to bending. Try to make the boards into the shape you want. It doesn’t have to stay bent at the angle you want at this point.

Third, pull out your low heat glue gun, and glue two boards together from the end. Don’t put glue all over at once. You have to do it little by little. As you put the two boards together with your glue, bend them to the exact angle you want, and hold with your hands until the glue is hard. It should only take 10 to 20 seconds for your glue to set, so be quick about putting the boards together.

If you are trying to make a curved brick wall, I highly recommend curving the brick shapes on your boards before you attach them together. It is much easier to draw lines on a flat boards than curved. Don’t forget to draw lines on the thin sides, it makes your bricks look realistic at the end.

With this trick, you can actually make any shape of flowerbed. You might even find this method easier than the clay method. For my bricks, I like 1×0.5×0.5cm size for Sylvanian Families. They are the easiest to create using 5mm foam boards and just the right size for the diorama scale.

2015-05-012017-12-31

Tutorial: large stone pavement

Today, I’m going to do a tutorial on how to make large stone pavement with a foam board. Below is a picture of a patio that I made a while ago for my bed & breakfast in my diorama. The finished patio photo is actually being used as the header of my blog.

Here are the items I used:

acrylic paint
ruler
clay knife
X-acto knife
White color pencil
some aluminum foil
foam board (if yours come with paper on both sides, peel it off. For easy peeling, I recommend cheaply made $1 store foam boards.)

Cut out your foam board into the shape you want, then with a tip of a clay knife, draw a picture of how you want the pavement to look like.

With a white colored pencil, press down the cracks between your stones.

Make a ball with some aluminum foil, and roll it around on the foam board, slightly pressing down with your hand. This will make some dents on the stones to make them look more realistic.

With the color you want for the cracks, paint all over the board.

Next, paint each stone in the color of your choice. Here I painted each rock in different color. You don’t have to paint the rocks very nicely here as you want the natural look.

Add some colors to the rocks to give them a more random look. I used some orange and dark brown.

With some lighter color, highlight the stones. You don’t need very much paint here at all just slightly tint the rocks in different corners.

You can be done at this point, but I wanted to give it some rustic look, so I added some green turf powder on some areas the cracks. You can get this powder at craft stores. Also it is easier to spread the glue using a fine tip paint brush.

Once everything is dry, your pavement is finished!

2015-04-272017-12-31

Tutorial: Pebble stone pavement

Yesterday, I received a request for a tutorial on making the pebble stone pavement I made for my Sylvanian town’s town square.

So I experimented some more on my old method, and this is what I came up with. Of course you can use real material and make your pavement for your diorama, but that sounds like a lot of work. My town is rather large, so I don’t like spending too much time nor money on any one project.

That being said, here is what the finished product looks like. I do have a little extra at the end of this tutorial, so if you are interested, read on.

Just like the basic brick tutorial, what you need is a piece of foam board preferably thicker than 5mm.

What you see along with the foam board in the picture above is the key to this project. It took me a while to finally come up with this tool, but it works great now.

Here is how to make this tool. Gather bunch of straws in your kitchen. I recommend using various sizes. I had 3 different kinds of straws at home that I used to make this. Bundle the straws up, and tightly wrap them with a tape.

Cut the edge of your straw bundle’s end, so it looks like the picture below. Doing this makes your pavement look much better than when you don’t.

Stamp your foam board with the straws trying not to over lap the marks. It is definitely better if you make the indentations deeper.

Paint the base color all over. Here I used dark gray.

Use your hair dryer and blow dry the base color. Don’t do it too close though, or you might melt your foam board!

Paint the color for the cracks all over the board.

Wipe off the surface with some tissues before the paint dries.

If the color isn’t coming off so easily, use wet tissue and swipe lightly on the surface, not wipe. You want to leave the paint in the cracks. (I used baby wipes, which I keep handy on my desk.)

With some darker colors, add some stain here and there by tapping the paint with your fingers. You only need very little paint for this.

How does it look?

Now this is just an extra, but if you like more darker, aged look like the right piece in the picture below, you can try the additional steps below.

Water down and spread thin a darker color over your pavement. This will cause the darker colors to fill in the cracks between the stones; I used dark brown and dark gray here.

Dry the paint. Your pavement will look different depending on how you dry it. In the picture below, I used a blow dryer.

Add some stains if you like, and your pavement is ready for your town.