Pumpkin Patch ~ Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A few months ago, I ordered some vehicle kits from an online source. Gotta fill up those streets! One of them, a Lineside Models pickup truck, was a kind of borderline casting--one of the rear wheel fenders was only half present, and the front was kind of askew. The best way of salvaging it seemed like some kind of kitbash. If I made it into a flatbed truck, I could get rid of the rear fenders entirely.



This idea didn't lead to any action immediately. Then a few things began to converge. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am planing the urban end of my layout around standardized-sized (30x20') lots with interchangeable structures and other scenic "mini-modules". As the year rolled around to fall, it occurred to me--how about a pumpkin patch... with a truck full of pumpkins?

I cut away the rear fenders, re-bent the front end into something passably even, and held it in place by gluing a piece of styrene underneath. Then I built up a frame for the flatbed from styrene strip.



After covering the flatbed frame with wood, painting the truck, and adding a pumpkin--I decided to put one really big prize-winner in there instead of a bunch of little ones--here's what I got.



The pumpkin is made out of Sculpey III, a modeling clay. Actually I made a lot of pumpkins, most of them tiny. Here's about half of them:



The booth is scratchbuilt; the fence is Plastruct railing.

I still need to add some straw, some weeds, maybe a little corral/petting zoo with goats, and a bunch of figures--especially kids!

Turning to 1:1 scale... a local pumpkin patch had this cool green pumpkin. Actually I think it just wasn't ripe yet. When I bought it, it was green all over. The side that got more sun turned orange.



I carved out a spider, and "etched" a web. With a candle inside it looks like this:



For another Halloween decoration, I painted a wooden cat silhouette black, drilled holes for eyes, put two low-voltage lightbulbs in them, and wired them to a 9v battery.



Happy Halloween, everybody!