Ok, after yesterday’s slightly heavy, all right heavy, post, I thought that I would do something a little lighter.  Model making!

If you remember, my son and husband are working on a historical model about Vimy Ridge for a contest the local museum is having.  This is a pretty big endeavor but they are enjoying it immensely.

Vimy Ridge, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, is a place where several battles took place in World War I.  it is considered to be the birthplace of my nation, Canada, simply because national pride began at Vimy.  There Canadian soldiers did what no other army had been able to do; they took the Ridge.  Not only that, but Canadian soldiers came up with many new ways to fight an enemy and many of those practices are still used by armies around the world.  A lot of pride is felt when you talk about Vimy Ridge, and it is wonderful to remember the veterans and all the soldiers that died in all the wars.

As I mentioned, I’m not a big fan of war.  I used to be anti-war, no ends justifies the means, but after gaining a very close friend who volunteered in the US Marines during Vietnam (yes he was Canadian), and being bombarded by family that are interested in war history, I have changed my opinion.  Sometimes, no, the end does not justify the means but sometimes it does.  World War I was one of those times. 

So now that I gave you a brief history lesson, sorry about that, let’s get back to model making, or at least parts of it. 

What you will need is a sheet of foam insulation, the pink kind only.  They usually come in big strips so you will need to have something to cut it down.

Cut the insulation to the dimensions that you want it.  Vimy Ridge is a small model since we are going by the dimensions given to us by the museum.  So my husband cut it 16 inches by 22 inches.  He then cut 3 other squares, each one getting smaller to form the hill.

At that point, he cut the hill out of the foam using a sharp knife and then glued them together using the heavy duty foam insulation glue that comes in a container for a caulking gun.  After it dried, my son cut out the trenches, and explosion craters. 

This is all you need to do with the foam, cut it with an exacto blade or some other type of knife and then lift it out with a flat head screwdriver or anything that can be used as a lifter.  You can shape the foam into just about anything and you can even use it to make buildings.

On our model, my son hit the hills with a meat mallet to make it look like churned mud, and then he applied plaster of paris to blend in each layer so it looked like a muddy hill.  After that, it was simple enough to paint it with primer and it is now ready for the next stage. 

So when you make a model, which I’m sure you will have to make at least once with your school age child, all you need for right now is

• Foam Insulation (pink)
• carpet knife or exacto blade
• heavy duty glue
• Plaster of Paris
• Primer

I will have more for you later.

Sirena

Tags: crafting, foam insulation, glue, History, model making, plaster of paris, school age children, Vimy Ridge

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