Making Gold Town

 Whitewash City: Gold Town – The Mining Town game is based in the old West but it is more about the experience of a miner visiting the local town than about shoot outs. 

 

I have had the Gold Town CD for over a decade and haven’t got around to making a playable copy.  This changed recently.

 

I printed out everything with my ink tank printer, and glued many of the sheets of pieces to medium weight chipboard and cut them apart with an Olfa knife. 

 

The Task Cards were printed onto 100 lb cardstock with the backs printed on the reverse.  The Gold Cards were printed on 100 lb cardstock and the backs were printed on a separate sheets and the two parts were glued together and then cut apart. 

The money was printed out on pastel printer paper and cut with a paper cutter as was the Gold Cards and Task Cards.

 

New printer and papercraft

When our printer needed more ink back in July, we looked at the cost of replacing ink, and the cost of buying a new printer with ink.  We finally took the plunge, spent a bit more, and upgraded to an ink tank printer. 

Not being so concerned about saving precious ink, I printed some things from a few papercraft sites.

 

I started with the sample saloon from Hotz ArtWorks.  It looked too small against the Reaper and Knight Model figures so I didn’t assemble it.  I have since gotten some Dracula’s America figures that seem closer in scale so I probably will put it together.

 

Disney Parks Blog had just come out with Paper Disney Parks.  They have four so far in the series.  The first two were both for Main Street and the Magic Happens parade, the third was for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and the fourth was for King Arthur’s Carrousel. 

I printed off all of them at 25% to save space once done and have finished the first set.

 

They haven’t printed any more in the series yet, so looking for a Haunted Mansion led me back to Haunted Dimensions.  They have papercraft for three versions of the Haunted Mansions from the different parks. 

They also have the houses from Amityville Horror, Psycho, and Adams Family as well as facades from the movie theatre from The Blob and some others.  I have printed off the three houses and the movie façade and am mostly finished the Amityville house.

 

For more hyper detailed versions of papercraft about the Disneyland signs, train station, and castles there is also The Disney Experience.  I haven’t started on any of these yet as I am not sure if they will be too large once finished as well as too complex if shrunk. 

 

Some of the buildings will be used to fill up a table for wargaming, and some will be used for our Halloween display table in our new spare bedroom.

foam figure trays

With the figures finally being painted, I made some trays for the cases I had bought. I found these cases at the local surplus store, Princess Auto, and bought them on sale. The foam is from Canadian Tire, and the foam core is from the dollar store.

I cut the foam core to fit inside the cases. The foam is thick enough for three layers. I pinned the pieces together while they dried. I started with 5 trays.



The pluck foam allows me to adjust to the size of the figures. I used contact cement to fix the foam in the foam core trays and I glued ribbons from the dollar store to the trays to make it easier to lift out.



I started with one tray for each for regular figures for the Marvel Universe game, one for DC Universe/Batman Miniature game, and one for other figures. I need to pluck the foam for the other two trays for the larger figures, and make another two trays for regular sized figures. Then I need to make some trays for Blood Bowl figures.

Stairway!

At my wife’s work, each department is decorating there area in different themes for Christmas. Her department was originally going to do a Die Hard theme, but decided to change it to Home Alone theme instead. She said that I could make the staircase – five feet tall, out of cardboard.

I mean, of course I can. But I didn’t have enough large cardboard, so I asked if I could make it out of foam core, which she was okay with. The key requirements would be that it had to be at least 5 feet tall, and it had to be transportable.
I worked out the dimensions and told her it would cost about $20 - $40, which she was again okay with. I would not add a railing, would have very fiddly to make in sections, and have added another $10 - $40 depending on what I made the rails out of.


It had worked out to 12 sheets of 20” x 30” foam core, which I got at Dollarama for $1.50 each. I picked up 14 sheets, in case I needed more or messed up, so $21 for that. I ended up mis-cutting the second sheet I worked on the other side of the first set of stairs. I used a lot of the scraps for reinforcing seams and adding supports.
I picked up 2 rolls of wood grain flooring stickers, which I also got at Dollarama for $4 each, so another $8. I only used it on the stairs for the part that shows on the sides of the runner, so only ended up using a bit more than 1 sheet. I have plans for the rest of the second sheet.
I found 36” square pieces of red felt for the runner at Oomoomoo, a Japanese dollar store. They were $4 each and I picked up 4 of them. I only ended up using 3 of the squares but I bought the extra so as to not have to worry about matching the color if I needed more.


Using the plans, I cut out the sides of the base. I had to glue a second piece of the foam core behind the first three steps to give them the proper depth. These first three steps are normal size. The first two steps have a rise of 6 ¾” and the third has a rise of 6 ½”. This way the first three steps fits nicely on a single with of foam core. The steps have a run of 10 ½” which leaves a ½” overhang and allows these three steps to fit together on one length of foam core. The steps themselves are 20” wide, the same as the width of a sheet of foam core.

The upper piece is 30” deep, but 50” high. The upper section has 7 steps using forced perspective. The rise of the next three steps remains the same as the first three, but the next four on the next sheet are 6 ½” high. The steps get progressively smaller – 8 ½”, two at 6 ½”, 4 ½”, and the last three are all 2 ½” deep.
I cut out all the steps and risers. Using white wood glue, I glued the risers on first to allow some time for them to dry. I put some braces across the backs to help support the sides.
Then I cut the wood grain into 4 sections – 3 at 5” wide and the remaining one at 4.75” wide. I cut each piece an inch longer than the step it was going on so I could fold it over the exposed end. I put them on 4 ½” inches from the sides, again allowing overlap. The narrower ones I put on the left side of the steps as that would be against the wall.
I glued the steps on next, pinning through to the foam below to help hold it while drying. I later went in and taped all the steps from behind.

I switched to tacky glue and glued on the felt runner. I was careful to line up the pieces under the overhang of the lower steps, and at the back of the steps on the upper ones.
I then went back and used hot glue from the inside to tack the corners of the steps as well as to strengthen the supports. The finished stairs are 20” wide, 60” deep, and 70 1/8” tall.

Craft - Advent Wreath

Every year the kids would make Advent Wreaths in Catechism. They were usually made using birthday candles. Back when I was teaching grade four level, I didn’t want to do the same. I was going to make a flat picture with construction paper but could not find any pink paper in Dollarama.
Since I had waited until the last minute to get supplies, I had to change plans in a hurry. I ended up buying foam board, colored craft sticks, wreaths, hot glue guns, and chenille stems. (Side rant - Back in my day, chenille stems were still called pipe cleaners, and craft sticks were called popsicle sticks.)
It went over well, and in later years I bought crafts sticks in advance and painted them beforehand. This brought the cost down even more as the colored craft sticks I bought only had a few pink and purple sticks in every package.

Supplies:
Foam board – each 20"x30" board will make 15 bases.
Craft sticks – you will need 4 for each wreath.
Garlands – each 8' garland will make 10-12 wreaths
Chenille stems – the ones with the 4 wider sections - you will need 1 per wreath. Red and yellow are preferred but some kids preferred white, and even blue flames.
Purple paint
Pink paint

Tools:
Pencil
Ruler (preferably metal)
Knife – to cut the foam board
Paintbrush
Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
Craft scissors or wire cutters (optional) – to cut the chenille stems

If you do some of the preparation beforehand, you can have your entire class make these in an hour. If you have more helpers with the glue guns, you can do it in less time.

Cut the foam board into smaller squares. I used 6” x 6” (15cm x 15cm) but you can adjust as needed. This does leave a small amount of scrap foam board left. I was able to get 15 squares from each sheet.

Paint the craft sticks. You need to paint three sticks purple and one stick pink for each wreath. I painted them in batches using closes pins to hold one side of the stick to a box while it dries.
Once dry, I separated each set of 4 painted sticks into snack bags.

On the day, I had the kids draw a circle on the board. You want a fairly big circle but still leave about 2 fingers of room between the edges. Get them to write their name on the back of the board at this time.

Then they need to mark 4 spots around the circle where the craft sticks will go. I prefer to put them in the corners as it leaves more room. Then they have to decide whether they want the sticks parallel to the circle or perpendicular to the circle.

Once they have the spots marked, get them to take a craft stick and push it through the top layer of paper into the foam at each of the marks. This works best if the board is on a table so it doesn’t push through the bottom sheet of paper.

Four quick dabs of hot glue in the holes holds the craft sticks. A quick line of glue on the circle holds down the garland to simulate the wreath. Get them to hold the sticks up while the glue cools. I usually burn myself a bit sticking the garland down.

For the flames, take the chenille stems and cut them into 4 sections with a thick part in the middle and thin parts at the ends. Depending on the age of your crafters, you can use wire cutters, craft scissors, or even cut them by hand. If you pinch the stems tight between your fingernails, you can wiggle the stem up and down until the wire breaks due to overstressing. By curling one end of the chenille flames around the craft stick candles, you can ‘light’ them each week. If you want them more permanent, you can hot glue the flames instead.

Make a 3D layered photo

I remember old photos and pictures where they used to take multiple copies of the same image and cut out parts of the image and layer them up so that it gives depth to the picture. We had done one of these back in art class in school.
I cannot remember what this is called. Searches for stacking and layering photos give much more results for manipulating digital pictures rather than working with physical images. I was able to find a few sites which gave enough of an overview to follow. It seems it might be 3D decoupage.

I was trying to see what was used between the layers. Using foam seems like it would be too thick for more than 4 layers so I was thinking about gluing the images to cardboard. This would also allow you to work with as low as two pictures (or even a single image but your cuts would have to be super precise).
When it came time to do it, I ended up using foam after all. I had concern about whether the multiple layers would still fit in the frame but when I put it on the first layer it was less puffy than it was on the roll.

You will need as many copies of the picture as you will have layers. I took a photo from our trip to Universal and got mine printed up at Walmart. You will also need something to give the layers depth. I went with the foam tape from Dollarama. I also got a deep frame from Dollarama.

In addition, you will some thing to cut the pictures into the layers. You can use small scissors but I used a craft knife and a cutting board.

You need to decide which parts of the image will be on which layers. It helps to write these out to help you decide how many prints you need to make for the layers. It also helps to keep track of what to cut off of each layer.

I was going to do five layers. I had a sixth layer that I was going to do using regular double sided tape but ended up using the foam tape for that as well. Starting with the full image, I stuck the next layer down on top of it. The I kept sticking down the smaller layers until I was done.

I used the double sided tape to stick it to a card for the backing to help keep it centered. I ended up using a comic backing board. I had picked up a couple of extra boards to use for the layers in case the tape was too thick.

Goonies birthday

For my wife’s fiftieth birthday a few year ago, we did a Goonies-themed party. She was a big Goonies fan, so we made invitations based on the map, had a table piled up with treasure, and I gave her a replica metal coin like the one used in the movie as well as some newspapers from the Goonies reunions in Aurora, and I have since gotten her a replica metal skull key.

Using pictures of the map, I did the Mad-magazine fold first and drew the two sides of the coin.

Then I opened the paper and drew the rest of the map. I modified the wording with our address and date of the party. I weathered it using some tea. This I sent out as the invitations.

On the back of the map, I replaced the musical notes with the notes for Happy Birthday. I’m not sure anyone noticed, but I thought it was a nice touch.

For One-Eyed Willy’s treasure pile, we bought a bunch of plastic coins, as well as some actual Chinese coins for the stacks. We bought a bunch of gems from Dollarama, and used some pirate weapons from the kid’s Tickle Trunk.