Man, this amlwch town thing started off simple enough. I saw some photos online – looked like a pretty seaside place near Wales, right? Old stone buildings, nice coastline. Thought, cool, maybe build a little model village like it, practice some basic scenery making. Ordered some cheap materials: balsa wood blocks, coarse sand, blue poster paint, green flocking for grass. Easy start.
Then The Mess Started
First problem: ain’t got no proper photo of the town layout. Just random snaps people took, angles all over the shop. So my model town plan? Pure guesswork. Grabbed a thick piece of cardboard for the base. Drew a wiggly line where the coast might be. Stuck some balsa blocks down roughly where buildings looked crammed together near the water in them pictures. Looked like a toddler dropped building blocks. Ugh.
Time for texture. Slapped glue all over the base where the land should be. Dumped green flocking on it. Way too thick. Fluff everywhere – kitchen counter covered, sticky glue patches… my shirt too! Left it overnight hoping for the best. Woke up, half the flocking peeled off when I touched it. Pathetic weak glue I bought. Had to re-glue patches, messy like.
Sand for the beach next. Figured, slap glue on the cardboard coast, dump real sand. Easy peasy. Wrong. Sand stuck in some patches, fell off everywhere else. Looked patchy like mange. Took me forever spreading thin glue layers, sprinkling sand tiny bit by bit, blowing off excess – got sand in my eye! Bad time.
Worst bit? The water. Used the blue poster paint straight from the bottle on the sea area. Bright blue puddle. Looked awful, fake like a cartoon. Tried layering different blues, made streaks. Tried swirling it wet, made muddy patterns. Ended up dipping an old sponge, dabbing different blues to look kinda like waves. Still not great, but less awful.
Buildings Were Just Sad
Them little balsa wood houses. I tried carving basic shapes to look like stone cottages? Please. My carving looked like angry badger chewed them. Paint didn’t stick well either, kept soaking into the wood and looking blotchy. Grey for stone walls, darker grey for “slate” roofs – looked flat and dull. Put them down on the messy green flocking. Whole thing looked like a derelict building site after a hurricane.
Almost threw it out. Seriously. But I kept thinking, stubborn like, nah man, gotta finish what I started. Even if it’s bad, gotta see it through. Focused tiny details: broke some tiny twigs into “fence posts”, glued tiny dark green flock patches as “bushes”. Used a needle to scratch woodgrain on bigger structures – impossible to see unless you sniffed the model. Pointless effort? Probably.
Where It Stands Now
Right now, it sits on a shelf in the garage. Looks like… some vague seaside town hit by mild disaster. Buildings wonky, beach patchy, water unconvincing, grass lumpy. Far from the tidy pictures online. Learned a truckload though:
- Planning ain’t optional: Need good source photos, real plan first.
- Cheap materials bite you: Bad glue, bad wood, bad paint waste time and anger.
- Scale is everything:
- Patience is essential: Rushing gets you patchy sand and messy grass.
Sand too coarse? Looks wrong.
Total mess? Yeah. But I made something, even if it’s ugly. Next time? Better planning. Better photos. Maybe spend more than two dollars on materials. Won’t give up on the tiny towns just yet.
