Tabletop terrain kids play set

[Rainmaker]

My daughter and I have been dreaming up this idea for maybe 3 months now. She loves to play with little toy animals, mostly Schleich and Playmobil, a few cheap Walmart animals thrown in. Her style is that she wants to set up a whole scenario on the floor with scenery and animal families and such, and then wants to be able to leave it setup and never clean up… well mama don’t like messy rooms with toys all over the floor, so we decided to build a large scale kind of diorama thing!

It started with some concept drawings, and me endlessly researching building dioramas with different materials. Decided to use hardware store 1” thick polystyrene insulation, cheap and easy to shape. And the project begins!





I let her layout the general idea; a jungle-ish valley with a cave and a ruined temple. Then the detailed layout and break out the hot wire.

[Rainmaker]

Next I built a wood frame for the base using 1/8” plywood and 1x2s, and we play tested a little before starting to glue stuff down.

Then used a little torch to shape the foam into a little more natural looking contours. Also built the temple on a separate piece of plywood so that it is removable.





Now to start slathering everything in a few generous coats of sand and Elmer’s glue





Then the painting begins!
Also used some fake grass looking stuff from the craft store to make the little meadows.


I’m trying to hurry and finish this up because my wife is sick of all this stuff taking up space in the dining room 😅

[ford]

WHAAAAAT!??!! This is so cool! Got some gears turning in my head, thanks for sharing.

[Rainmaker]

Thanks! Ooooh, i'd love to see what you come up with!

[Memornix]

My kid would play with this for hours on end, now I think we have to make one,

[Rainmaker]

Yesssss! When I get home, i'll take a picture of the ones we started with last year. We made some really simple ones with just a pieve of 1/8" plywood and adhesive-backed felt. They worked well for a time.

[Grendel]

This is really cool! Creating things with children is such a good development and bonding activity. You are doing a great thing!

On top of that the results you and your kids are getting are really nicely performed.

[Rainmaker]

Thanks! Honestly, more than half the fun for me is watching their faces light up while they use the tools and make messes Haha.

[Grendel]

I fully understand, my almost 3 year old [going on 30] granddaughter gets excited to "help PaPaw fix things". She has he own tool box with tools and will get it any time I am working on anything. I make sure she gets to actually be involved in anything I am doing when she shows interest. She loves to come out into my shop and sit on my stool at my bench and watch and participate on anything I am working on. She will even sit there and sort through my "junk tray" and put [or try] to put the correct nuts on bolts.

[Rainmaker]

The three features I need to figure out still are
- Put wheels on it so it can roll under the bed
- Put magnets on the platforms that make the roof of the two caves so they are removable
- Decorate the creek bottom and pour clear resin

And we spent the day hiking this weekend, gathering all manner of sticks and stuff to decorate it a bit more... more pics to follow!

[Rainmaker]

Oooh - i really like that idea! Do you think those would roll well on carpet though? Maybe I can find some that are a little larger diameter.

[Grendel]

Definitely wouldn't go smaller then 1" diameter rollers but I think it should work. You might need to stiffen the foam with luan underneath or use multiple rollers to offer support. I'll poke around and see how big you can get these for at a reasonable price. I know the make much bigger ones but they are for industrial purposes so can get pretty expensive.

[Rainmaker]

These look like they could work:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/233373577918?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=Jrf03paYTJa&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[cellophane]

Looking good! You may have run into them already, but there are a ton of terrain building YouTube channels out there. I like Black Magic Craft quite a bit.

edit: Also lots of kit bashing / scratch bashing videos out there. The ones I'm familiar with tend to lean towards Warhammer 40k, but there are some cool ideas on how to repurpose old junk.

[Rainmaker]

Wow, the Scratch Bashing guy's stuff is awesome! I'm planning to do the same size diorama for my son but with a star wars theme, so that will be super helpful!

[Grendel]

I was watching stuff from Black Magic Craft last night on casting resin tiles. I like his channel.

[cellophane]

Start collecting junk now!

[Nish]

That's awesome! You sir have some lucky kids.

[Chappy]

I hope ya'll get as many smiles from this as its giving me looking at the pics.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Wow, that is simply awesome! I refuse to let me children see this.

[scottieb]

What a fun project! My kids would love doing this.

[Rainmaker]

Getting some roots roughed in

[redsquirrel]

This looks so cool. I would have played with something like this for hours. Probably still would.

[Rainmaker]

Yeah... i'm probably going to play with it for D&D when my brothers are here during the holidays

[Rainmaker]

And some detail paint and rocks going down. I have no idea what I’m doing 😅

[Rainmaker]

Ok, paint is very forgiving when you thin it out a lot. Starting to look better!

[Rainmaker]

Last thing before the reason pour: some moss