Glitter House Village

I planned to use one shelf in the market stall for a glitter house village. I used kits purchased from True2Scale. I love how these turned out. Here are some hints for doing these kits:

• If you want trees next to your little house there won’t be room on the small bases unless you remove some sections of fence.
• If you shorten the wires on the tiny LEDs you can use sandpaper to remove the red or green coating. She says this in her blog tutorial but I didn’t find it in any of the kit instructions.
• To color the trees (white chenille stems) I used diluted paint and after painting the stem I wiped it up and down the length with paper towel to remove excess paint so it looked tinted
• I unintentionally painted the inside of the green house with green also and it kind of gives it a greenish glow – I think that could be used to make each little house glow with color.

 I wanted my village to look hilly so I put some blocks of scrap wood (above) on the shelf before covering it with white fleece for ‘snow’. I painted the blocks (below) so they wouldn't show through the fleece.

 I thought the red and green wires might show on the white ‘snow’ so I painted the wires a little.

After finishing my village I decided it would be helpful to have a trap door in the back wall big enough to fit the coin size 3V battery holder so the entire village shelf could be removed if one of the lights went out. I wish I had thought about this before I had assembled and painted the stall (I didn’t think THAT far ahead!).

It was very difficult to cut an opening through the 1/8 inch plywood covered with wallpaper paste and a Christmas card. I use my dremel with cutting wheels and even that took a long time. I had to finish using an X-acto and sawing/rocking motion but finally cut a very messy opening. It will be hidden under the shelf so it won’t be noticeable.

 Trap door to hide coin battery and allow removal of entire village (closed).

 Trap door open (see interior wall covering).

 Finished with the village shelf! The entire shelf can be removed and coin battery is hidden in the false back wall. You can't see the trap door because it is way up under the shelf.

Here is how the false back looks from the back of the stall.  All wires are enclosed in the little 'shed' and false ceiling of the roof.  The two battery packs (one for the shelf and ceiling light string and one for the glitter house village shelf) are accessible through the little door with the hand made latch:

 Next blog - some of the decorations!

Vintage Christmas Market Stall – Electrical Pt 2

Finishing the false wall and hinged battery door.

Battery Door - in the last blog I mentioned a door I made in the back wall extension to provide access to the battery pack for the lights.  Here is how I finished it.   I cut the door opening in the flat back wall BEFORE assembling the box.  After painting the false wall section to match the rest of the structure, I added hinges.

I made a sliding latch from scraps of trim wood to keep the door closed.

After trial fitting the wiring cover with the door closed I realized it needed to be reinforced around the opening to prevent the door from pushing in too far.  I cut scrap wood and glued around the back side of the door opening then painted it to match.

For the top of the roof, I cut a piece of white shirt cardboard to cover the balsa and be the outer roof.  I decided on cardboard because the wires still poked up a little past the balsa spacers so I needed something more flexible than wood.  Photo below shows clamping the shirt cardboard after gluing over the spacers to enclose the ceiling wiring.

On to the Glitter House Village! (see next blog on village!).