Petite Guerre Toy Soldiers: My Flemish farmstead model - Part 4 - Ancillary structures and other terrain elements

The privy

To make the privy or outhouse, I first built a simple base structure in 2mm-thick corrugated cardboard (front wall 35mm wide x 60mm high; back wall 35mm wide x 45 mm high; side walls 35mm wide). I then cut the 5mm-wide planks from thinner card and glued them to the base structure.

I made the privy’s roof gluing thin card shingles to a 2-mm thick corrugated cardboard base.

As usual, prior to painting the planks and shingles with very diluted washes of acrylics, I applied an irregular spread of neoprene glue, textured it with a small stick, and sealed with white glue.

In order to add a touch of color to this rather simple structure, I embellished it with a few sunflowers and hollyhocks, which I built from scratch as described later in this post.

The bee-skep shed

I made the wooden post frames of the bee-skep shed with 4mm-thick card strips, the wooden planks and the roof shingles with thinner card.

As to the old-style, woven-straw bee skeps, I made them gluing thin cord all around small corks of various shape and size.

The well sweep

The well cage is built much in the same way as the privy and bee-skep shed.

The swinging arm and fork post are made with stretches of household twine stiffened with white glue. The pole is a bamboo skewer cut to the required size and fitted with wire hooks.

The vegetable garden

The vegetable garden is a piece of 2mm-thick cardboard cut to a roughly rectangular shape and covered with layers of home-made papier-mâché.

Initially I wanted to characterize the garden with detailed miniature vegetables (onions, carrots, lettuce, cabbage…), but in the event I found the result a bit too cartoonish, and opted for simpler, undefined plants made with tufts of green ground foam, adding a colorful row of sunflowers.

I made the wattle fence enclosure with coarse household twine, using the same technique I had employed for the exposed wicker netting of the wattle-and-daub infill of the half-timbered buildings (see previous posts), however on a grander scale…

First, I cut the vertical posts of the fence from stretches of household twine and stiffened them with white glue. I then secured them to an old cutting mat with masking tape.

This done, I inserted lengths of slightly thinner twine through the vertical posts, with the help of tweezers.

Finally, I secured the ends of the horizontal twine lengths with more masking tape, and applied diluted white glue all over the netting to stiffen the whole thing.

The manure heaps

To make the manure heaps, I first created simple corrugated cardboard base structures.

I then covered the base structures with coarse, home-made papier-mâché (ground newspaper or kitchen paper mixed with white glue), masking the steps between the level planes and modeling the heaps to natural-looking shapes.

Once the papier-mâché had dried out, I plastered it with rough-finish, exterior crack-filling compound, which I textured with an old paintbrush. Finally, I gave the manure heap a very light coat of diluted, fine papier-mâché, and sealed the whole thing with white glue.

I painted the heaps with light washes of yellow ocher and raw umber acrylic paints, and as a final touch I sprinkled them with a bit of saw dust and minced pipe tobacco leaves.

Sunflowers

The common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a native North American plant. It was brought to Europe by the Spaniards in the 16th Century, and by the 18th Century had become a common garden plant throughout the Continent.

Sunflowers normally grow to an height of about 1-2m. The diameter of the head does not normally exceed 30cm, and the length of the heart-shaped leaves ranges from 10 to 30cm.

Although wild sunflowers may have more than one head, domesticated plants normally have just one.

I cut the leaves from craft paper and glued them to thin wire stems.

The flowers are obtained glueing together two slightly off-set discs of craft paper (diameter 9-11mm).

The sequence of construction is shown below:

I cut the stalks from 1mm-thick paper clips, about 40 to 70mm high. I bent one end of the stalks to an angle of about 120°.
I modeled the core of the flower heads with epoxy putty.
I glued the leaves in place (the ones in the lower portion of the stalks tend to be larger and opposite; those in the upper portion smaller and alternate).
I reinforced the stalks with putty, and slightly twisted the leaves in position.
I glued the flowers.
I modeled the seed clusters with epoxy putty.

Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks (Alcea rosea) are tall, decorative plants native of southern China, documented in Europe at least from the 15th Century.

I scratch-built my hollyhocks using the same technique employed for the sunflowers.

The flowers and the leaves are cut from craft paper, glued to thin wire stems and then to the putty-covered clip stalks. For lack of a better candidate, I used sesame seeds for the buds...

Hedges

I cut pieces of stiffened household twine about 4-5cm long. This done, I un-twisted the two main strands of each piece of twine for about half their length, shaping each piece roughly to a Y-shape to represent the basic trunks of the shrubs forming the hedge. I then glued the Y-shaped pieces to a narrow strip of card, coated with papier-mâché, and sealed with white glue.