Sunday 17 June 2012

Day 333- Junkyard


Finally, it came time to build the junkyard and so we did on our 4th Saturday. I found what I thought was an ideal base, the black plastic tray that came with my Mac laptop. It was a good size and looked like the kind commonly used for diorama. 


Nat and I did a quick study of my Scenery Manual and found a tutorial on creating rocky terrain. It seemed simple enough. Tear up newspapers, crumple them into balls


and then stick them to the places where you want the terrain with masking tape.


It was so easy that even a child could do it but it got boring really quickly and after  a while, even I got impatient and the taping became sloppier and sloppier.


My solution to hide all things sloppy, spray paint brown.


It became obvious that a rocky terrain was out of the question as my work was too messy.So out came my stash of dried moss. Before Nat and I glued on the moss, I cut out a piece of fake fine turf and spray painted it terracotta. This was for the base.

We were barely done before Nat took two of the rusty cars and started playing on the junkyard. He had insisted I made a video of him but I didn't know how to use the video function so I took 26 frame shots, 2 seconds apart, of him and the cars.



I made this video tonight using the 26 shots. Watching it again brought back memories of my anxieties that day, wondering while he crashed the car if the paint would stay. As you can see the hippy flower did not. When his family came to pick him up that day, he made them watch the 26 frame shots of his spectacular rusty crashes on my camera before they could drive off. 


 I continued working after he left.  I trimmed down the tree Nat found on the 1st Saturday and glued it down at a corner of the junkyard.


Nat had brought with him some tires earlier that day and we had decided that one of the tires would be a swing.

And as if I had to compensate for the violent treatment my, I mean, our cars received earlier, I decided the swing should have flowers. It was at that moment that I knew exactly how I was going to build this junkyard and


not surprisingly, it would turn out quite differently from what Nat had in mind..

32 comments:

Remco said...

A realy nice one this is going to be, with the woman touch on it, flowers! Cool video, seems you got a good helping hand ;-)

Greetings,
Remco

rosanna said...

Dearie, Matteo is next to me and he says WOW !!! he thought the cars were real ! tell Nat hat he has a fan in Italy.
Lovely work, truly I love it.
Hugs, Ro

Eliana said...

Nat did not disguise the proud smile for the photo.
I loved the junkyard, the tire swing was the master touch! ;)
Hugs

Ilona said...

Oh Nat, your got friends and fans, you little heartbreaker ;) The junkyard is awesome! Susan, great work with your nephew ;)
Hugs, Ilona

Maria Ireland said...

Fantastic junkyard. I love the tree in the corner. The swing is a wonderful touch. Fantastic work both of you :)
Hugs Maria

The Old Maid said...

Great work you two, dear Sans! Now all you need is... MORE cars!:) Love your swing! It's much better than mine!:D Do you think Nat will like it?
Good to see your both have fun working on this project!:)
Hugs and kisses!!

Sans! said...

Thank you Remco :). Nat has got me back to mini-ing in a big way since the only thing that I was doing was making suitcase gardens since my house completed last year. By the way, I really appreciated your compliment about the car in my last post. I love scale modelling maybe even more than doll houses. Some of my most loved miniaturists (do they even use this term in the scale model world?) are building railway tracks :).

Junkyards are not uncommon with them but I think my version will be..LOL.

Sans! said...

Teehee Ro , a kiss for Matteo, from me not Nat :) . Tell him to come to Singapore one day and see for himself eh? Nathaniel will be thrilled ..he's at this age now when he hero worships male role models . yesterday when he was here, he was pestering to show me some experiment about eggs floating in a bowl of salt water.I refused to let him use my last egg for any kind of experiment even though he claimed I can still eat the egg after . That made me think of Matteo and the microwave experiment. haha

Sans! said...

Eliana, he is very used to posing for the blog now :). Just yesterday, I was taking pictures of the work in progress when he posed pretending to do something to the tree..LOL.

Nathaniel loves the swing too. It's the only thing he can play with now that 2 of the cars are fixed to the junkyard :).

Sans! said...

Thank you Illona :):). I was making the tree and thinking of your Japanese tea house :). Will you be expanding the tea house project by building a roji garden ?:).

Sans! said...

(((((((Maria Ireland :) )))))

Nat has been the motivating force on top of being my inspiration , my elf and the director. :)

Sans! said...

1000 kisses to you, dear Ewa. Yes, we badly need 1 more car. It has to be the right scale and topless and very very broken. After seeing that all his rusted cars are going to be fixed to the junkyard and that he can't play with them , I am finding it a little hard to convince Nat to part with his next car. Although I just saw another mini with the top already gone. He said it still can move !

Anyway, until I find the next car, the project can't be finished. I will try to sweet talk him again :).

I love your swing :):) but it's too feminine for the junkyard ..hahahaha ..kidding of course because the junkyard is already over the top feminine :).

Plushpussycat said...

The flowers are PERFECT! xo Jennifer

Susan@minicrochetmad said...

Aaaah, it's fabulous! I bet Nat loves it and he'll remember his time with you forever!!

Kikka N said...

O`wow, this is a fantastic scene!
The swing took me first, I love that, what a brilliant idea to produce! And the cars.. I am wordless, I just kind of waited to see somebody (tiny) starting to walk around :)
Your helper is the Cool!
Hugs'Kikka

Sans! said...

Thank you Jen!

Sans! said...

Susan :), I know he loves his Saturdays with me :). he's already thinking about our next project :).

Sans! said...

Ohhhh Kikka, my housemate suggested that as well! But I think we won't have dolls for this one... :). At this point, there's not much space left to walk around in :).

carmen said...

siempre me impresionas!

Daydreamer said...

Oh, MY! You have made Poetry of a Junkyard!!!!
This is Gorgeous! And So Realistic! I am in AWE as usual!
(And I can relate to Nat not wanting to Glue EVERYTHING down!!! There needs to be Some room for Improvisation...!!!)
The Tire swing is Pure Genius! I just LOVE what you have created together! Please don't Stop!!!!

Drora's minimundo said...

This team work is bearing wonderful results. Nat looks so pleased. I send him a kiss and hugs to you both.

Norma Soulet (AZArtist) said...

Hi Sans,
That Junkyard turned out AMAZING!
Love how you rusted the cars and the coloring on them...AWESOME!
Tell Nat he did a great job helping out. :)
Hugs and love all the details in the Yunkyard.

BiWuBär said...

This is so stunning - and the pictures and the text tell so much about the fun you two share together... Who would ever believe a laptop-packaging could be so useful and become the foundation of something extraordniary. Love that swing and your landscaping - and the tree is my favourite. But there's only one thing that puzzles me - where is this junkyard you keep on talking about??? I didn't spot anything like that in your post, only a breathtaking art project with the title "Beauty is all around you"... ;O)

Hugs
Birgit

Tere (teviro) said...

Fantastico proyecto, os esta quedando precioso, como me gustan esos coches envejecidos y el lugar que ocuparan. Me encanta.
Felicidades a los dos.
Besitos

Natalia's Fine Needlework said...

Sans! as usually a new project is full of imagination and you have such a wonderful helper! I envy you, :))) Natalia

Sans! said...

Jaja, gracias mucho , Carmen!

Sans! said...

Bets, not only did I not stop , I am afraid I went a bit overboard this week after Nat left :). I am now treading with trepidation. A joint project is so tricky because I can't just junk it if I don't like it. Did I just say junk?! haha

It is difficult not to fix the car down especially with what we have in mind. Nat has forgotten but it was he who wanted the wheels of one of the cars to be stuck in mud. That kid and his short attention span! Sighhh

Ascension said...

Una buena idea lo de la bandeja, el arbol al final se utiliza jejeje.
Las flores crecen en cualquier sitio hasta en una chatarreria, quedan genial en ese neumatico"columpio".
Cuando acabes.....te interesaria hacer algun proyecto conmigo?........me podria pasar por tu casa los fines de semana jejejeje
besitos ascension

Sans! said...

(((((((((Drora)))))))))))

Unknown said...

You know, I like the video because of the two second frames! My brother used to run his cars through dirt forever, I used to wonder why boys couldn't sit still in one place but could sit and roll their cars back and forth for what seemed to me like hours! And just last night I was at a park where grown men were running their remote cars through a dirt track for hours. Hmmm.

The tray from the Mac packaging! Of course! And the tire swing! And the car with its wheel well bursting with purple blossoms! Like a vision of the far off future, when the earth takes everything back, and remakes it in its own way...

Flora said...

Sans dear, there's so much to discover, in your world, every time ... First, know that I love the rusty beetle (it is identical to what my father had when I was a child ...), and I like to guess the color that shines between the rust and moss.
And I love how you are able to engage the child in this project: young laborers, full of initiative :-)
I'm not sure if I fully understood the spirit of this junkyard, but I'm watching with admiration :-)

Eva said...

Wow!! Nat and you are working so hard....it is wonderful how you create together.....This kind of thinh make sense to live ☺

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