Cardboard Condos

   So here we go, a quick explanation into how the cardboard buildings go together. This time i decided to make a pair of shops to give the building set some more flavour. I also managed to get some green and red paint to I was freed from my monochrome palette.
 
   To begin, the first step was to plan out the basic geometry of the building and get a picture of it in my head. This is quite important as it allows for scaling to be sorted out before anything permanent is done.

    Following this I marked up most of the pieces to be cut from the cardboard. There are actually very few pieces to cut out, mainly the lain walls (which I did in one piece), the roof, any additional bits and some long strips for window/door frames.

The main pieces marked out, with windows doors and shop front on the main wall section, for scale I assumed about
2.5cm per floor

Mid-cutting, with the rear section wall in the foreground and a holey main wall in the background.

    Now for the secret weapon, extra detail for little effort. By this of course I mean the windows with their frames which are dead easy to put together and really give the building some realism. To add them I simple cut a little further than needed on the two horizontal window holes and at the top of the door holes. I then glued a small rectangle of cardboard into each slot.

The rectangles

The frames in place, looking pro.

    For the window shutters and doors I simple took the cardboard cut from the  hole and reused it, creased to look like wood for the doors and cut in half for the windows. having done all the fiddly work I now glued the building a cardboard base to give it some rigidity:

Windows in base on, by this point I had also done the shop windows which were a bit experimental so I won't really look at them...

   Next was painting which works really well on the cardboard as you tend to get mini clumps of cardboard forming and adding some really nice texture.

All painted up, with the shop windows - the red one indicated that my method wasn't really right as it fell apart under the paint.

   For the walls I used a 1:1 mix of tan and white, followed by a quick drybrush of white followed by some splodges of tan at the base of the wall. The frames were all done in a very basic manner by directly painting on the colours wanted.

   The next item, the roof was really easy, I simple scored in a rough grid to indicate roof tiles and mate sure the borders of the grid squares were obvious. I drowned it all in a coat of black paint which I followed up with a quick dab of paint in the middle of each tile. When that was dry I gave it all a quick overbrush of grey and then a very faint one of white.

The roof, the chimney was painted in the same way as the main walls with a black line painted around the top like soot.

All done! - actually I quickly painted any bits of the base that were showing brown.

The shop front about to be ruined by an exploding tank

Column heading through the Cardboard village

       So there we go. All in all I think this has been a cool thing to do, and it has certainly given me some good terrain to use!