Our house

Here's a quick (ha!) model of our house I knocked up for Alicia to use as a Christmas decoration.

I didn't make the house itself; it's a cheap (and I mean cheap, only costing a dollar or two) balsa wood model I bought at work from our astonishing range of tacky Christmas decorations. I spotted it one night while pushing a cart of crap down the Christmas aisle and immediately saw the possibilities if given enough paint, glue, modelling clay and time.

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the unpainted house and I forgot to take WIP pics, so sorry about that. I did check at work to see if we have any more, but the Christmas stuff is being removed to make room for — wait for it — spring seasonal crap and Valentine's Day candy.

After popping the house off its base, I kicked off with the roof, using little squares of cardboard to make the tiles the same way I did for my Warhammer Fantasy Cottage last year. It took a lot of time to glue them all into place, but it was worth it to give the model a lot more realism.

Next up was the chimney. It's just a piece of quarter-inch thick XPS foam with the brick pattern engraved on with a ballpoint pen. I painted it with a mix of black craft paint and Mod Podge and then added a chimney pot made from a short length of plastic tube. The chimney was glued to the roof, and then the house was taken down to the garage and sprayed with white primer. I also sprayed a sheet of clear plastic with matte varnish as I do with my MDF scenery to use as window glass.

Once the primer dried the house was taken back to the kitchen to be painted. I started by painting the inside black, and then I used a few coats of Antique Parchment craft paint, an off-white that worked well to differentiate the house from the snow that was eventually going to be dumped all over it. 

The roof was painted with Deep Grey craft paint and highlighted it with drybrushes of more cheap craft paint, in this case Pewter Grey and Granite Grey. The chimney pot was painted Brick Red and given a highlight with Khaki.

Next up was picking a blue that matches the trim on our house. After checking with Alicia, we both thought that Vallejo Royal Purple would work as the blue we chose for the real house has a touch of purple in it. I painted the door and window frames and it looked spot on, until I realised that Game Colour Ultramarine Blue would have worked even better. Oh well.

Snow time! Instead of just plastering the house with snow effect stuff, I bought a few packs of Crayola Model Magic (described as a "soft, squishy modelling material" on the packet) for a dollar each. I got the idea for using this stuff from Keith's base for his superb Baba Yaga model he did for Monster Mayhem last year.

I started with the roof, painting tacky glue onto the tiles before pressing lumps of the stuff, which has a weird foamy consistency, over the roof, smoothing it down by dipping my fingers into water and blending the different lumps together. I didn't want to entirely cover the roof because that would hide all the hard work I'd done on the tiles, so I left bits bare. I added more clay to the tops of the window frames.

Once the clay dried I sealed it with some matte Mod Podge and then hit it with the Army Painter Battlefields snow effect material. More Mod Podge was painted on and I basically dumped a ton of snow over the glue, tapping the excess off onto a sheet of paper. It didn't take long to cover all the clay and I left the house to dry for a couple of hours.

A coat of matte varnish, applied in chunky daubs, sealed the snow and softened the grainy texture to a more realistic look and feel.

The base was done the same way, using more of the clay (it took about a pack and a half in all for the whole model) and snow effect. As the front looked a bit flat and boring, I made a snowman from three balls of clay and added him. All the base snow was again varnished to smooth it out a bit.

The snowman got a pair of eyes made from tiny balls of clay, a carrot nose made from the pointed end of a toothpick, and arms made from short bits of black wire. The final thing was simply cutting strips of the clear plastic sheet and gluing them to the insides of the windows.

After adding more snow to the windows and door, the model was basically done. I put it back on the base, and the next thing was to add the lighting. The model came with one of those battery-powered tea light things, but I removed it on the grounds it was crap and bought some LEDs.

LEDs are so cheap these days it's ridiculous, and I bought a length of lights of the kind that are normally used to make lamps out of wine bottles for $6. I put them in the house by the simple method of cramming them through the hole for the tealight. Unfortunately, as they use two double-A batteries I couldn't get the battery pack/switch inside so it's hiding behind the house.

Alicia is well happy with the model, which is enough for me. It's not a perfect representation of our place — for starters we have three floors and two decks, and I'm sure the model house's kitchen is a lot tidier than the real thing — but it was a lot of fun to make.

'Needs more zombies'

Alicia is very much into Christmas, especially decorating the house. She put up and decorated the tree one night when I was at work and also put out her nativity display. When she asked me what I thought of it, I — being me — replied, "needs more zombies". Which gave me an idea to add some of my own characters to this classic scene.

An Amazon warrior prepares to lasso a sheep...

...a brain worm, a zombie and a Space Marine head for Baby Jeebus...

...a troll barges through the wise men...

...and a Valkeeri urges a Squealer to attack a zombie, while a succubus hangs out with Joseph. Alicia found my additions to be funny and was also amazed she didn't spot any of them.

I hope all my reader(s) had a good Christmas, and stay tuned for more Space Station Zero and the inevitable Top Ten Eleven Twelve of 2022!