A Return to the Sudan

I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's Eve, in whichever manner you like to celebrate it. My wife and I saw the New Year in with friends, with plenty of good food. Today is a day off, I'm quite tired, so I'm taking it easy by sorting through my 6mm Sudan 1885 collection and tailoring a new set of Mahdist encounter cards to suit. Jings, I forgot how many Hadendowah I have! I also made a few Arab buildings.

First of all I cut out some basic shapes from half-inch foam core, along with sections of corrugated card to make the walls. I aimed to make two simple houses and a courtyard house.

Next up, some assembly required. Hot glue to the fore!

Once the card was secure, I applied about a spoonful of spackle, smearing it over all visible surfaces.

It's rough stuff at this stage. Once the spackle had dried, I applied another layer, mixing spackle with white craft paint to smooth out any gaps and to cover the corrugation a bit more.

The next stage will be to give them an ink wash to dirty them up a bit then draw on some doors and windows. Allowing for drying time the whole lot took less than an hour to make. I plan on building a few more basic houses, a mosque, and a generic desert fort next. I'm roughing out an idea for rocky patches of desert, perhaps using old CDs. Watch this space...