My Jungle Girls Diorama
By Sean Farrell
This started when I discovered through an online site that you could make a
grass hut using twine rope that you get from the hardware store. I had bookmarked
the webpage where I got this idea, with the intention of providing a link (as well
as the proper credit) here, but the page has since been taken down.
I was eager to try this idea on my own. So I bought a roll of jute twine string
and got to work. For the framework, I used those thin wooden shish-ka-bob sticks that you'd
find at the supermarket. I stuck these into a base that was cut out from trusty
foam core. I glued them together using Elmer's White Glue. Once the frame was finished,
I wrapped little strings of Aves Apoxie putty around the joints, and painted them
brown (once they had dried). This gave the impression that the framework was
held together with ropes.
For the grass walls, I cut a lenght of twine, then pulled it apart, which gave me
a band of "grass". Using Elmer's, I glued these little bands of "grass" onto the
framework, until I had covered it completely.
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Ok, so now I had a grass hut. What was I going to do with it? It would have been
nice to use something like this as the command post for a WW2, or Vietnam era,
jungle headquarters, but the hut was too big for use with my 1/35 scale military
models. So I decided to make this as the basis for a Jungle Girl scene. I re-worked a pair
of 1/24 scale resin "Beach Girl" females into the diorama you see here. Sheena the Jungle
Girl has come to the rescue of a tourist who had strayed a little too far in her search
for the perfect beach. I made an opening in the wall to suggest where Sheena had
broken through.
After I re-worked and painted the figures, I made the little "Knick-Knacks" from
scratch. The spears and shield are made from plastic sheets and tubes. All of the
pottery is made from Apoxie putty. The table is a combination of wooden sticks
supporting a plastic sheet. I also used Apoxie here to suggest it was held together
by ropes.
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