Whitesands Quay - row of cottages

Row of cottages at Whitesands Quay.

Using a Scalescenes card kit

Originally I had intended to construct the buildings for Whitesands Quay. using Pendon. methods but I really don’t have the hundreds of hours required to find, measure, photograph, draw, emboss, watercolour and construct suitable buildings for this layout. That way madness can occur. However I was set on that route until Scalescenes introduced a new kit — Row of cottages which I was immediately inspired by.

The kit is particularly cheap as it is a PDF download. You have to print the PDF sheets out and stick them to suitable weights of card as detailed in the kit instructions. Some of the thicker card components can be hard work to cut out and a good Stanley knife is a must have, else I used my usual scalpels for cutting.

This kit comes with several variations and although I had opted for the flint and brick finish it came with an optional rendered version for two of the four cottages which I have extended for all four as it would be appropriate for cottages next to a quay.

One of the advantages of these kits is that you only pay once for the PDF and then you can print out as many times as you want — so any mistakes and you can start again. Of course cost of a new really good photo printer needs to be considered as well as consumables (but we needed a new printer anyway…).

The key construction method is wrapping the paper layers around card walls — including an ingenuous method of creating drainpipes that also conceal the gap between the end and side walls. Detailed floors and full interiors are included — not that I think anyone will ever see them on Whitesands Quay but I know they are there.

The only think I now have left to do on the cottages is source and put some proper chimney pots on.

I am very pleased with the overall look and finish of the kit. This then left me with a small dilemma. To get the rest of the model to be balanced I really need to construct the remaining buildings using other Scalescenes kits but there are none available that suit the location.

However the methods can be replicated and that exactly what I have done for the large cottage in front of the row of cottages. I used a picture of a cottage at Sennan on the West Cornish coast at White Sands bay, where Whitesands Quay is fictitiously located, as the basis for the plans which I drew up in Adobe Illustrator then added suitable textures and printed the results out on matte photo paper.
To get the thick stone cottage wall effect with deep set windows and doors I used polyboard for the walls instead of card and you can see the resulting effect in the photos.