My Other Hobby (lots of photos)

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

What better way to celebrate the Holidays than to share the hobby I started Christmas 2006. What began with seeing a Christmas advertisement for some unusual girlie girl toys turned into a full scale Village.....

My Sylvanian Village began as a table display with a few buildings, accessories and figures in mid-2007...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-march-29-2008-1.jpg[/img]


We moved to our northside townhouse with basement in September 2007. By April 2008 the "real" Village began to take shape. Ikea cabinets are used for the base of the structure as well as to store my ever-expanding collection...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-april-5-2008-1.jpg[/img]



To have a better idea of the size of the project, here's the room layout...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-april-5-2008-2.jpg[/img]


The framing process, May 2008...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-may-5-2008-4.jpg[/img]


Lights were installed, July 2008...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-july-6-2008-3.jpg[/img]


A first pass at setting up the Sylvanian Village to see how the buildings would look, July 2008...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-july-23-2008-5.jpg[/img]


Work on the Village was suspended until May 2009 so I could figure out how to landscape the huge area. During the hiatus from working on the Village, I created the Z scale micro diorama and learned all about landscaping - on a much smaller scale - that eventually helped me landscape my Village...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/z-blog-mar-30-2009-3.jpg[/img]


By the end of June 2009, the plywood backgrounds had been painted and installed...

[img size=(400)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-may-30-2009-1.jpg[/img]


By August 2009, large deciduous trees have begun to take shape and I begin sculpting mountains...

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-august-7-2009-1.jpg[/img]


Deciduous tree construction is complete in October 2009. This Village is large enough for me to comfortably sit in it at this stage...

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-october-9-2009-1.jpg[/img]


By mid-November the Village is now ready to make videos. A friend in Australia who owns an online Sylvanian store sent me free buildings, accessories and figures shown here in exchange for making videos for him...

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-november-15-2009-2.jpg[/img]



Here are a few scenes from the various videos I've produced since November 2009...

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-november-22-2009-1.jpg[/img]

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-november-21-2009-1.jpg[/img]

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-december-19-2009-1.jpg[/img]

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-december-25-2009-2.jpg[/img]

[img size=(800)]www.sylvanianvillage.com/sv-blog-december-25-2009-1.jpg[/img]




You manly men and the women (young and old!) in your families are welcome to view videos of my personal collection . Videos for my client can be seen here .


I sure do miss working on my Z projects, though I don't know when I'll be returning to work on them. I hope it will be sometime in next year. Have a great 2010!

Beverly, Outstanding! My wife and I enjoyed every picture. Such talent. Get back to Z when you can. We miss your contributions. Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

Beverly,

Great pictures, enjoy every aspect of every hobby that you have you are a great contributor to this site.

Very nice collection, and I also like the presentation.

You have an amazing studio Beverly. And that's a really cute village. But they would use a garden railway layout with your Z scale trains!
Beautiful work! Thanks for showing us.
Bill Mock

Thank you all for the very kind words

The Village is set up for me to be able to change buildings when I'm finished producing videos of any given grouping of buildings. For the most part, the Village has been landscaped and landscaping elements change/move with building changes.

Last night I got to thinking about what's holding us back from working on our larger Z layout now that the Village is, for all intents and purposes, finished being landscaped. Yes, I'll have a gazillion more videos to produce for my Australian client if he decides to send the rest of the current stock in his store. And our long, cold winter is preventing work in the garage for the train layout's base. Perhaps we might start making a few plans for the larger layout sooner than I thought.

Thank you all for the encouragement!