Monday 2nd – Thursday 5th August, 2010

It’s that time of the month again....

Town Square time, that is! This is the third in the Town Square Series and it arrived a little late this month due to shipping delays from the US to England. However it arrived last Thursday and I was able to start it tonight. I usually do these little Town Square buildings over two or even three days. They could be done in one long day if you started early and finished late, but I like to take my time and spread it out a bit. This time I have spread it out over a week.


I haven’t taken step-by-step photos for the Village Toyshop; I was too pleased to be getting on with constructing the shop after a migraine over the weekend and then a busy day on Monday. And every day since.


Everything in these kits is so well cut and prepared it is a pleasure to work with each kit. And Judith has even included a tiny little toy to start us off in populating the shop once finished – don’t know if they are all the same, but mine is a lovely little clown toy. Really sweet. I bought a QS teddy bear ages ago too, and somewhere have a white metal bicycle and some kits to make up for other toys. Not many but a start.

Here it is with the shell assembled, ready to start papering the outside. As usual it went together beautifully and I discovered that if I did two stacks of Lego blocks they were just the perfect height to sit the ceiling on so that it was level with the top of the front wall as it was supposed to be.


And the second photo shows the brick paper on the outside. I brought it around ready to wrap around and glue to the sides. The instructions say to add strips later on, but I am not very clever at doing that neatly so I decided to do it before papering the floors and walls. That way I can get a neater finish.

The wallpapers are really sweet. There is an extra border supplied which I pasted over the Teddy Bears that is on the ground floor paper. It matches the border on the first floor paper and is really pretty. A hint here if you are doing it – don’t cut off the white above the border or it won’t cover the teddy bears properly. It would be better to cut the paper from the bottom and not use the teddy border at all; that way you wouldn’t have to worry about it. And as a bonus you would have the teddy border to use on another project.

I found here that wrapping the brick paper around had one
drawback – I should have fitted the wallpaper first, perhaps even glued it in except for the very last half inch or so and trimmed it precisely, then wrapped the brick paper around, glued it in, and covered it with the wallpaper. As it was I found it very difficult to trim the wallpaper as precisely as I like to without damaging the brick paper. But it is still neater than when I try to add a strip of paper to the edge. The photo was taken before it was properly trimmed – after this I found my small sharp scissors and it did make a difference lol!

The dormers were easy to cover with the brick paper.And while the wallpapers and brick paper on the dormers were drying I used the time to paint the shingles, putting them over our column oil heater to dry. This time I added the dormers before I shingled the roof, remembering the way the bell tower in the Wedding Chapel didn’t sit as well on top of the shingles. I took the roof off each one though, to allow room to shingle around them, then added them again later.


I sprayed the plastic doors and windows early in the morning, letting them dry while I went on with housework and the never-ending effort of trying to fit two rooms’ worth of miniatures into my one room! I really am getting desperate there. I have pruned down all the ‘extras’ – and haven’t even unpacked all my minis from storage.


The kit comes with two shelves on which to display toys, along with the sales counter and the ‘cash register’. This time I’ve done the sales counter white, and I’m trying to decide on some graphics to put on the front – something that goes with the border on the wallpaper but isn’t too fiddly to cut out. Probably a bit too much to ask for in quarter scale lol!

Except for the dormer windows, I had to do the rest of the doors
and window pieces again the next day with a second top coat. I was surprised that they needed the second coat, but was probably too lighthanded with the first one. It is too cold to spray outside at the moment until about lunchtime (going by the directions on the can) and after an hour or so I had to bring the pieces inside again to dry near the heater. Interesting ‘air freshener’ but the worst of the smell had gone by then. That night I could do the rust-coloured contrast pieces, and they didn’t take long to dry being done in craft paint. What a difference once the door and windows are in!


Debbie Young provides a double set of both windows and doors in her kits. She says it is because she doesn’t like doing interior trim. It’s really a great idea too, because the thickness of the ply would leave some of the openings uncovered if there was just one single set. As it is everything is nice and neat. The door frame does need sanding down a bit but that’s all. Here’s the interior view:

Now it was truly on the home straight so to speak, and the last bit to do after gluing the shop to the base was the landscaping and adding the shelves and shop counter. And of course putting the sweet little clown on the shelf in the place of honour!

So here is the end result, first from the inside. The cash register is there, ready to cater to happy customers, and the clown is on the shelf – all it needs now is some more stock! I was going to wait until I made up the toy kits I have before I posted this but I have had several comments from friends that I haven’t posted for so long, so I am putting it up after all. It is nice to know that someone noticed. When there are no comments I sometimes wonder vbg.

And here is the exterior view: