Not bad, just rusty




HO Curtains & Shades — The Easy Way!

It’s no secret that doing windows can be more than a little repetitive — especially if you have a large building with many, many of them.

I always like to add curtains and shades to my windows to give depth and realism, but it can be a very time consuming part of any given build. I set out to re-balance the scales yesterday and the results are definitely worth sharing! So here we go…

First, I cut out strips of paper/card stock of the color shades I wanted. I then weathered them with pastel chalks.

For the curtains, I use the ultra thin, tissue-like paper you get in packs of acetate (window glass) that separate the sheets to keep them blemish free. I age this paper with light alcohol stain (Driftwood) and then cut it into strips that I concertina fold and roll between my fingers. This is the result:

Then, I scanned them all together on my flatbed scanner.

I use an Apple MacBook, so I also use “Pages” – Apple’s included, Microsoft Word alternative. It’s powerful and very intuitive, so I recommend it fully if you also own a Mac. In the following video, I demonstrate how I handle these scans once I import them. I have already imported the images and cropped them for convenience sake before the video starts:

Here are a bunch I printed at slight different scales for my larger and smaller windows:

And finally, here is the finished effect on my Swee’Peas build:

A good idea, as I have done on the front of the building, is to add windows that have curtains blowing through an open window. This helps sell the illusion that all the windows are fully rendered!

by Craig on December 30, 2020