Miniature Worlds- Cemetery Edition

One of the things I enjoy making are miniature worlds. It's kind of like the real world, but in a much tinier form. 1:87 scale ratio to be exact. I like to use HO scale railroad miniatures in my creations, but there are quite a few different sizes out there. Feel free to check out this Wikipedia page which outlines the various railroad scales available. For me, anything smaller than HO scale is just too tiny to work with. You can buy painted figures, but I do prefer to buy the unpainted figures and hand paint them myself. That way I can customize them to my liking. They usually come in a pack like this:

There are several brands out there, but Preiser is my personal favorite. Since the figures are plastic, they are easy to clean up using an x-acto knife or something similar. And then I paint them. 

So I was asked to do a custom piece for someone, as a wedding gift, who loved all things creepy (ie. Halloween, cemeteries, etc) and they also happened to be getting married on Halloween. My husband used his woodworking skills and made me a coffin shaped base out of old wood. 

I made the little pumpkins out of polymer clay and painted them. It added just a touch of color to the front of the piece. The fence I bought, but cut accordingly so it would fit on the base. 

Like I said before, I prefer to hand paint my figures, but I had zero luck finding a bride/groom unpainted (seriously if anyone can find one, please let me know). But the zombies in the background were completely hand painted. A few limbs were even removed. Also, I made the headstones out of polymer clay and then painted them. 

The tree was also handmade. I've purchased railroad model trees before and they are ok. You can get some really nice ones if you want to spend more money. But I decided to go DIY and I'm really glad I did. Anytime I can make something myself vs buying it already done, I will. Especially if I can save some money that way. 

This was a really fun project to work on and I did learn new techniques and tricks during the process. I plan to make more of these, or at least something similar. And something with more zombies! Because who can't use more zombies in their life? 

Stay awesome and have a great day!
Stephanie