Not really Gaslands, but...

So a family member married this weekend. She asked for some cash as a wedding present. Money to invest in a new VW bus camper. So we decided as the more creative branch of the family: let's at least present the present in a unique way. 

The theme was: Built a diorama with a camper van and maybe a bit of references to marriage.

I built a camper van and a base to stand on. My partner's daugther did some origami on the Euro bills the family collected.

Here is what I built:

The Terrain Piece:

I started with coating a placemat with some Art Podge and paint to seal it.

I coated the rock pieces I tokk from some old Playmobil sets with paper mache. The road is a piece of anti slippery mat. And then I made a texture paste from Glue and various grains of sand and rubble with paint. I pressed some monster truck tires into the soft paste..

Washes, drybrushing on rocks and road. A bit of static grass flocking on the greenery, some paint and grounded chalk pigments on the landscape, and it was finished.

The VW Samba:

The couple won't buy a T1 of course. But the T1 is the most iconic Samba Bus. 

So I got a cheap 1:25 scale model.

The nice thing about this model: The car body is made of two parts. The dark blue one and the ivory white. The base is attached with screws. Very easy to take apart.

I love ratty cars. And knew, I'd totally change the wheels. But the decision had to be made if I was going to lower it or the opposit. Since a camper is an outdoor kind of vehicle, I decided, to take it to the next step. I used two different 1.64 monster truck diecast models as donor for the wheels.

The first thing I had to come up with, was a custom suspension. I never worked in this scale. I had to built everything from scratch. Used some Lego parts and a lot of pieces from my bits boxes. I wanted the wheels to be able to turn. So I put some emphasis on toughness.

Time for working on the interior. Here the cab being two parts came in rather handy. 

At this moment I decided, the camper needed a bed. 

I used a kitchen sponge, and used adhesive tape to fix the cloth in place. Then I painted it red, gave it a wash and after that a warm grey dry brush. Not very dry. It is a sponge. The paint took ages to dry.

The rest came together rather quickly. I painted some doors a different colour, to give the car a Frankstein look. The parts on the roof are mainly playmobil. The scale is a little off, but who cares at this point?

At this point I was told, it looks awesome, but what the hell has it to do with a wedding? So I added some more details. The "cans" are bamboo cut in parts and painted metallic.

I just used dirty weathering, no rust this time. It didn't really fit the theme.

Thoughts:

It is actually the first nature terrain piece I did. The use of a self adhesive floor mat as road was not the best idea. O.k., it obvious looked the thing. But the adhesive glue started to come off, as soon as I put a wash on it. It was sticky as hell, but it just wouldn't stick to the base. I had to use super glue in places.

I also probably wasted a lot of flocking material. But the thing that really got to me, was the breaks I needed to take for letting  stuff dry. 

The bus was basically done in a day and a half. But the terrain piece took several days. The Art Podge needed overnight to dry. The paper mache nearly 24 hours. And all the way it looked really really shitty. 

That's one of the reasons, I hardly finish terrain pieces. Most of the time you think you`ll mess up. It just won't look any good until the last few steps.

I've watched a lot of tutorial videos. And sometimes the drying time is mentioned, but never really shown. Crafters say things like "in the end it all starts to come together." And this is true. But until you haven't tried, you don't really understand, what it means. It can be a frustrating process, up until the very end. And the fun part is much too short, to male the whole project really enjoyable.

Working on this scale of car is somehow really cool. I can get a lot of things done, that I just can't do in 1/64 with my clumsy fingers. Like the suspension. That was a lot of fun to build. 

The downside is, I used a shocking amount of super glue. And mesh. Fortunately I had a lot of old Playmobil parts lying around. Otherwise I'd run out of parts very quickly. I usually collect bits for smaller scale. Pipes, engines, wheels, everything. 

In every other aspect I am happy with the built. Exept for one. I hated to give it away in the end.

The post is not meant to be a tutorial. I didn't take pictues of every step. Rather when other people involved asked about the status of the project.