This was my first time working with a Greenleaf kit. The 1/8″ plywood walls gave me some fits with the warping, but the laser cut pieces were great to work with. Overall, I loved this kit!
The overall feel I went for with this project was that of a late 1880s building that had been updated over time with electricity and other “modern” features of the passing times. It now sits as an open air, living museum to remind us how people lived and worked. I relied heavily on my trip to Bodie, CA – an open ghost town where you can walk around and explore – as well as other living museums I have visited.
I’ve named the Spring Fling structure Baslow Ranch, established in 1888. The name is in honor of several of my recent pets: Basil (pronounced bazzill), my beloved cat who passed away in September 2009; Clover, a sleek and beautiful Chinese dwarf hamster; and Willow, a Russian dwarf hamster who went through a lot in his long life and held on tenaciously until the very end.
And, the back:
A close up of the sign and light over the barn doors.
Attached to the main barn is a room for rent. Both the above sign and this one were created in Word and printed on paper. I glued the paper to a wood backing and aged with paint washes.
The backdrop I used in some of the shots is a photograph I took in Bodie, CA. This was a great place to visit – a bit of a chore to get there but more than worth the effort (bring a hat and sunscreen!). I took over a hundred photos walking around this open museum ghost town.
I tried to make as much as possible for this project, not only to stay on budget but to see what I could accomplish on my own. The things I didn’t make include: lights, buckets, barrels, as well as the glass, ceramic and metal minis. Of the minis I bought, however, I still changed most in some way by either painting or weathering or both. The blog entries for this build might jump around a bit in the actual chronology of assembly, but I’ve tried to group portions together in a way that makes sense.
Even though I mostly relied on my own photos from my Bodie, CA ghost town visit, I did do some minor research through the library on wagons and rural life of the late 1800s/early 1900s. I highly recommend the book I See by Your Outfit: Historic Cowboy Gear of the Northern Plains by Tom Lindmier and Steve Mount. It has an amazing collection of old photographs that are an excellent source of study as well as being just plain interesting to look at. Some of the photographs are so clear you can see the texture of the fabrics and the individual hairs of the horses.
Some other notable books I looked at had schematic drawings of wagons and carts. I reduced a couple of the vintage advertisements in one of the books and printed them for inclusion in the barn. I don’t recall which book exactly, but all of the ones I viewed were by John Thompson.
