Snow Diorama - fantasy forest

Inspired by my 1:6 castle attempt, which remains a furnishing work-in-progress, I have spent the last few months slowly attempting a snow diorama, to be a companion to the external castle wall.

Just about finished - this is intended to be a nod to a fantasy forest where Mr Witcher will hang out, if Buzztoys ever finish him! Meanwhile, my lady viking was happy to test it out first. Photo shots below, and I will add a ‘making of’ post below for anyone interested.

Please put on warm clothing and venture in…….. (in stages, as it won’t load all)

Main materials:
Base - MDF board with thin foamboard on top.
Structure - scrunched up paper and bits of packing foam, covered in plaster cloth. To seal and keep it flexible, I covered in a thin layer of spackle (lightweight plaster) and then covered with a layer of fabric glue (I had an old bottle and it remains flexible when dry, so it seemed a good idea…)
Snow - ridiculous amounts of Tamiya Snow Texture paint on the throne/hill part; deluxe materials snowflakes on the flat ground.
Waterfall - woodland scenics realistic water on polystyrene & plastercloth (3 thin layers of water) & water effects for the waterfall bits; real crystal chips.
Details: real crystals and hot glue; model trees and more snow, woodland scenics water effects for icicles on trees and the two frozen pools on the ground. Bit of blue/white/turquoise acrylic paints under the pools, in the waterfall base and undercoat on the tall part of the base.

Lessons learned:
Plaster cloth is amazing, easy and quick to use, dries quickly, strong yet light. Fantastic stuff.
White is not white and snow is not snow. I went through several different types of snow before finding the ones I liked, and learned that similar snow products made by the same company are not the same colour white at all. So I had to get more snow to cover up the wrong colour snow.
You can spend months faffing about with waterfalls.

Some various photos of progress along the way:

Amazing work !
I especially like the water effects you've applied to the dio..that blue in the sea of white really pops !
Thanks for sharing the WIPs too!!

I agree, gorgeous work! For all the effort, it definitely paid off in the end.

Nice work on the diorama piece. Great water effect! Is that a little, partly frozen creek?

Beautiful work!! Thank you for documenting and sharing your process! I'm looking forward to seeing the Witcher in there, too!

Impressive sculpting using bits of foam and tape! You achieve remarkable results starting with very basic materials! I appreciate your sharing the "making of" photos and explanation.

That’s excellent. Wonderful work all around.

Amazing dio work!

Great work on the dio and on the figure too. I've never worked with snow but I've always heard it can be challenging to get it right, so I applaud your work on making it look so good.

Randam Hajile wrote:Nice work on the diorama piece. Great water effect! Is that a little, partly frozen creek?

Yes it was downscaled from my initial idea to have a frozen lady of the lake arm/torso emerging from ice. So I kept various bits of frozen water, which may yield the odd beast yet……

Thanks all for your kind comments and it’s useful to know others appreciate a few pictures of the process.

I’d forgotten to mention the backdrop - it’s a cheap eBay buy listed as a ‘printed tapestry’, 1 x 1.5m. I was hoping for a matte soft fabric but it’s more like a polyester photo backdrop material, although much thinner and it did successfully take a cool steam iron to get smooth without any melting or ink transfer. I prefer it to the backdrops, as these ‘tapestries’ come in smaller sizes and are much easier to iron flat.

Nice one Tanzenwolfe. I like how you put so much passion into that figure. Already liked your castle dio and now this one. Thanks for showing - I think crafting stuff and showing the process is the thing that keeps boards like this alive.