Scrap Scenery

 I'm currently making buildings (tenements and cottages) and in-between sessions of waiting for things to dry out I've also been making bit and pieces from scrap. The photo on the right shows varying sized palettes made from matchsticks and coffee-stirrers. The latter I actually bought rather than having to collect them; they cost about £1.50 for 1000.  The matchsticks are from a bag  I bought many years ago from a hobby shop but I suspect they'll be about the same price.

The photograph to the left shows the matchsticks in their original form, then two glued together, then two sets of two glued together. These make the central supports for the palettes.
In the photograph above you can see the black plastic ones that came with the fork-lift (from Tesco's). I couldn't really decide which size I preferred so I made  several different sizes, there is after all no standard size for a pallette.
The matchstick bundles of four were glued to the stirrers on one side, left to dry, cut to size then the process was repeated for the other side, making the finished palette.  I haven't actually put any paint on them as yet but I will paint a few eventually; as it is they are perfectly usable in their current state.
The photograph on the right show a Foundry figure on a couple of palettes for scale purpose (he's barely visible in the first photo); the fork-lift seat shows what a close match for scale it is.

This photo shows five piles of "bricks" that I made in about an hour. They are merely four pieces of 5mm foamboard (from the windows of the tenements I'm making), glued together then scored into 1cm x 5mm x 5mm "bricks". - a huge size for actual bricks, but perfectly acceptable for my wargaming purposes. The colour of these appears to be very red, but they are meant to represent new bricks - they will be toned down and matt-varnished

All those scraps of  coffee-stirrers that I have an abundance of were also put to use to make this pile of planks. This was a very simple case of gluing the sticks in a rough stack. The inside  of the stack is actually hollow and would have shown the rounded ends of the sticks facing the insides. I'll probably put a paint wash over this (eventually) but it isn't at the top of my to-do list .The piece, whilst not completely finished, is sufficient to be used in its present state.  
The final photograph shows both of the above pieces for comparison purposes.

All of these pieces can easily be used together in a variety of situations, a builders yard, a demolition site or a building site for example; all of course proving that essential cover for our miniatures.

I'll take this opportunity to welcome my two newest followers Dave VanDam and Captain Richard, I hope that you find something here to interest you.

That's all for this week, thanks for taking the time to look and as always comments are both welcomed and appreciated.