Woodland Scenics Diorama Kit, Mountain

These kits are really great places top start if you are interested in making terrain for wargaming or fantasy games using miniatures, railroad landscape &terrain or for dioramas. Each box is a "stand-alone" project, but I bought a number of these to get comfortable with concepts and to identify the materials I would need for larger scale terrain construction for wargaming. I built a practice river, to get the hang of it, then used the mountain-making kit to wrap my arms around building "shells" out of plaster cloth (mountains or hills), modeling rocks or outcroppings in those hills and adding water features (I now have a ten-foot mudular river in five 2' X 2' sections so I can change them around). I am not done, and have bought many of the products Woodland Scenics makes so I can keep making two-foot square modules to use on a "battlefield." I learned the techniques from the scene-a-rama kits. They teach you anything you need to use: Water features, hills, outcroppings, making & coloring rocks, detailing terrain with grasses or "flockings," trees and everything about them, bushes, undergrowth, vines and more. You will not stop with these kits unless you are doing a "one-off" school project. They are perfect for those, but it strikes me as such a pity to develop a skill and use it just once. I wish I had kids just to build stuff with regularly. If you do, my one parting piece of advice is to be aware that everything seems to have a drying time. From working with plaster cloth, to rock-making, to making rivers and ponds or painting under-coating, cementing grass in place or making trees, everything requires time to dry. If a child will be involved, line up three or four aspects of a project to take use of the full time dedicated to this. Actually, that's true if another adult is going to be involved in helping or working with you just for the joy of creation. I tried almost all of the kits Woodland Scenics makes and I recommend them all. They will teach you skills that will let you build a miniature world for toy soldiers, model trains or fantasy figures ... or any number of dioramas or school projects. Oh, I almost forgot. Their mountain dioramas can all be used to make volcanoes, for those looking to replicate that timeless school science project. Their website has instructions on how to build it and make it work.

It came out nice! Once you get the idea of what you want the mountain to look like it’s fun to put together with your child.

Pros: realistic appearance, provides several grass to choose from, creative design and allows for custom design, decent instructions (but make sure to read all the way through first rather than follow step by step), and very sturdy Cons: time consuming, messy, you will need to make your own enclosed base (we used cardboard), and you will need to get your own newspaper. I thought it would have came with everything it needed, but it does not. Tips: while placing the strips of plaster over the newspaper, make sure to zoom the out all the holes (so the mountain will have a smooth texture) because the plaster dries fast and you can see the holes even covered with paint. Use enough water for the paint so that it runs down the mountain, that will create a more realistic color. I also included a picture of the instructions so that you can see the required time needed for this project.

Fun summer project to do with my kid.

These kits are great when your child is assigned to do a diorama. We have used 3 of these kits over the last two years for various projects like a state diorama and a civil war diorama. It's not too complicated and the mountain diorama kit makes for a more interesting display than the usual flat shoe box. The kit contains everything you need to make a neat display, the best part being this flexible casting plaster that you dip in water and can drape to any shape. It's very realistic when it's all dried and painted. The spray glue it comes with is great- you can spray whatever parts you want and then sprinkle the mossy 'grass' stuff and it looks very realistic, much better than just paint. We have never purchased a special base, we've always just used a large box to build our dioramas on and painted the box brown or black. I recommend the mountain kit even if you aren't making mountains, because the flexible plaster will allow you more creativity- you can make little ditches, roads, hills, etc., and it doesn't come in the other kits.

My forth time buying this kit. Im sure there are some who can knock this kit. There are pros and cons to everything. For the money this is a great starter kit. As a base for building a diorama, it can't be beat. As your building skill improves, the end results are limitless. Easy to use and versatile. Update; 12-31-23: Well my forth kit arrived missing parts. I contacted Amazon and for some reason their system will not allow them to act on fixing this issue. Each time I called, I am instructed to call back in a few days. No refund or replacement was provided. Update 01-02-04: Well, no results except more runaround from Amazon. Not only did this item arrived late, it was also missing pieces. Evidently the item was never scanned as received. But my Amazon phone app and the online site clearly show that he item was delivered. Every other time I ordered this item it arrived in an Amazon box. This one arrived unboxed and tape closed. Now I'm being told to wait another 48 to 72 hours to request support.

I loved that this kit came with everything that we needed for designing and creating the landscape we envisioned for my sons school project, including the paper mache and castings. The only thing that was missing was a hard copy of the instructions in the kit. We had to scan the QR code and go online to find the kit and then print out the instructions. I felt like that would have been a big inconvenience for someone without the capability to print off the instructions themselves and it is advertised that the instructions are included in the kit. I liked that we didn’t have to follow a specific outline or grid for the landscape, so we had the freedom to mark out what we wanted it to look like and the placement of everything so that made it very versatile. It came with an abundance of materials we didn’t use but half (if even that) of the materials provided so we were able to save everything for a future project.

I've used Woodland Scenics products for model railroading for many years. This kit follows a long history of well thought out, detailed oriented, realistic scenery materials. It has a little of everything and it includes things like small spray bottles and the means for actually building the product shown. I love the scale of this, it allows you to focus your efforts on a small area which builds confidence and reduces the time it takes to actually see results. Great kit to get kids interested in scenery techniques, great for wargaming scenes and small dioramas. This opens the door to performing these techniques on a larger scale train layout. The Woodland Scenics website also has a number of video clinics which walk you through the steps necessary to achieve realistic scenery in a short period of time. Colors of all of these materials are spot on, muted and convincing.

Utile per fare i progetti di scuola .

Great product that my son loved making. It gives you the opportunity to be creative and do whatever design you want

Algo complicado de leer el manual pero hay un video en Youtube y con eso sales.

Nicht alle Materialien vorhanden. Qualität mangelhaft.

Item arrived exactly as described. Thankyou very much! :)