The Christmas Street

Hey look, pictures!  Rolling back to an older browser seems to have solved my problem with adding photos to the blog.  Thanks to Casey of Casey's Minis for coming up with the winning suggestion on how to fix this most annoying problem. 

As you can probably tell from the photos, my Victorian Christmas street scene is now finished.  The scene consists of two shops, a bakery and an emporium.

 The bakery windows are filled with Christmas biscuits and a gingerbread house.  These were all made from EVA foam sheets using decorative hole punches to create the different shapes for the biscuits.  These were then 'iced' using glass paints and a little glitter.

 Above the bakery is an apartment, the front room of which has been decorated for Christmas.  With the windows frosted (using more glass paint) it's hard to see the details in the room, so below is a photo from pre-frosting:

Okay, so it's still hard to see the details.  On the left of the room is a table with a red paisley tablecloth and a vase of flowers, in the centre is a fireplace decorated with greenery and on the right is a closed door behind a decorated Christmas tree.  I felt too lazy to make and wrap actual gifts to sit beneath the tree so the gifts are just brightly coloured lego blocks topped with big bows to hide the round connectors.

Across from the bakery is the Emporium which sells pretty much anything and everything.  It's window displays a range of items from vases and mugs to a plastic chicken (though I'm not too sure what the latter is doing in a Victorian scene!).

Four people occupy the street.  All four are around 3" high and were as usual made from polymer clay using a mould.

All three of the ladies were skirts made from wire edged Christmas ribbon.  I simply pulled the wire along one edge to gather the fabric of the ribbon and glued it around the ladies' waists. 

The ladies' upper garments were made from felt, again just glued into place with no sewing involved.  The street's one gent is dressed head to toe in felt.

 A piece of mirror paper on the side of the box in which the scene is built reflects the street and gives the impression that the street continues on.

While a street scene I found on the internet creates the impression of the street continuing on beyond the bakery on the back of the box.

 If you've been wondering why the Emporium's upper windows were shuttered closed rather than having something interesting going on in there, it's because I needed somewhere to hide the battery pack that runs the streetlights.  The top of the Emporium building opens to allow access to the pack and switch the lights on and off.

 And this is how the lights look in the (near) dark.   The street lights were made as Christmas decorations and stand around 3 1/2" high.

The snow covering the ground also covers the wires that connect the lights.  It is made with Fix-All (a thick white glue) and some "transparent flakes" which I think are just clear and white fantasy film cut into small pieces. 

Merry Christmas!