My name is Sam, a retired mechanical engineer. Before retired I usually used my spare time to do hand working. To me it was good and healthy variation from my daily job in the project management. After retired, I still do some minor hand working relates to housing maintenance.
I started my first diorama projects incidentally. Indeed I like miniature goods and have collected some, like mini guitar, radio, ancient gramophone and others, but I had never thought of making diorama projects.
One day my daughter brought me a box of bottle shaped chocolates. These chocolates were wrapped by aluminum foil with well known brands. The wrapper was printed to replicate those brands but to me it looked much better than the originals as they were in mini sizes. I immediately fell in love and felt pity to throw them away. I opened the wraps carefully and cut the prints as I planned to put them on miniature bottles.
I searched the internet for miniature bottles, unfortunately the miniature bottles that were available in the market were mostly scaled for 1/ 12, which rather too small for those mini brand printings .What I need was about 1/10 in scale, so I decided to make them myself by turning balsa rods and then sprayed them with glossy paint. Although they were not as good as glass bottles, they still looked nice after I put those brands on them.
Immediately it cross my mind that if these bottles were to be displayed in a miniature cupboard they would looked even better, hence the reason why I decided to make a diorama project of miniature cafe.
A complete cafe, of course must have more than just cupboard with bottles and glasses, they should also be furnished with tables, chairs, lightnings etc.
The first diorama project I did was a country style miniature cafe. As I started to look for all the required items, I found out that most of the miniature items available in the market were 1/ 12 in scale. I could not find the items that were scaled in 1/10 , like all the bottles I already made earlier. It seems that those miniature items were designed to fill a dollhouse. It left me with no other option than to make all the items I need myself.
I started with the cupboard and bar table, made from plywood materials then finished them with mahogany polish. For the chairs I went with rattan looked chairs and made them from tin wires and finished with white paint. I intended the cupboard, table, chairs, bottles, and glasses, to be placed into a wood housing which was designed to imitate a country style cafe. The upper part of the wall was covered by wallpaper, while the lower part was made out of carved styrofoam to mimic stone walls. I used plywood as flooring and layered them with portland cement to enhance the country feel. For the gimmicks I fashioned a horizontal wooden drum complete with its faucet and glasses, as well as two vertical soft drink reservoirs along with its outlet nozzle.
At this point the diorama looked good but still lacking in furnishing like lamps, clock, ceiling fan and a classical modeled radio. I wanted to make these things to mimic the real things, and not just as mere decorations. In other words, the lamps can be turned on, clock shows a real time, fan rotates and radio gives music.
From internet search, I found out that there were many models and varieties of miniature lamps available in the market. Generally they were sold with 12 Volts bulbs. After careful considerations, I decided to use 3 Volts LEDs instead, as lamps for this diorama project. I intended to use two batteries (AA) to power all the Lamps, Ceiling Fan and Radio.
The clock was made from a used, but still working watch, placed in a wooden housing. I added a sign lamp “Welcome” under the clock. On top of cupboard I placed six different color LED lamps to make the miniature cafe more impressive. For the radio, I bought a mini radio and placed the electronics behind the cupboard. I changed the original speaker with smaller ones taken from earphone. This was necessary because size of the radio housing was not big enough to accommodate the original speaker. As I could not find any mini ceiling fan from the market, I made it myself from a mini plastic gear box and a 3 Volts motor. I put it behind the wall of cafe and used a rubber belt to rotate the fan . The ceiling fan was placed above the table, about 10 cm ( 4" ) away from gearbox. I added a magazine rack made of tin wires under the wall lamp.
After all of these items were put together in their best places, a beautiful diorama of miniature cafe was created as shown by the pictures and below.
I started my first diorama projects incidentally. Indeed I like miniature goods and have collected some, like mini guitar, radio, ancient gramophone and others, but I had never thought of making diorama projects.
One day my daughter brought me a box of bottle shaped chocolates. These chocolates were wrapped by aluminum foil with well known brands. The wrapper was printed to replicate those brands but to me it looked much better than the originals as they were in mini sizes. I immediately fell in love and felt pity to throw them away. I opened the wraps carefully and cut the prints as I planned to put them on miniature bottles.
I searched the internet for miniature bottles, unfortunately the miniature bottles that were available in the market were mostly scaled for 1/ 12, which rather too small for those mini brand printings .What I need was about 1/10 in scale, so I decided to make them myself by turning balsa rods and then sprayed them with glossy paint. Although they were not as good as glass bottles, they still looked nice after I put those brands on them.
Immediately it cross my mind that if these bottles were to be displayed in a miniature cupboard they would looked even better, hence the reason why I decided to make a diorama project of miniature cafe.
A complete cafe, of course must have more than just cupboard with bottles and glasses, they should also be furnished with tables, chairs, lightnings etc.
The first diorama project I did was a country style miniature cafe. As I started to look for all the required items, I found out that most of the miniature items available in the market were 1/ 12 in scale. I could not find the items that were scaled in 1/10 , like all the bottles I already made earlier. It seems that those miniature items were designed to fill a dollhouse. It left me with no other option than to make all the items I need myself.
I started with the cupboard and bar table, made from plywood materials then finished them with mahogany polish. For the chairs I went with rattan looked chairs and made them from tin wires and finished with white paint. I intended the cupboard, table, chairs, bottles, and glasses, to be placed into a wood housing which was designed to imitate a country style cafe. The upper part of the wall was covered by wallpaper, while the lower part was made out of carved styrofoam to mimic stone walls. I used plywood as flooring and layered them with portland cement to enhance the country feel. For the gimmicks I fashioned a horizontal wooden drum complete with its faucet and glasses, as well as two vertical soft drink reservoirs along with its outlet nozzle.
At this point the diorama looked good but still lacking in furnishing like lamps, clock, ceiling fan and a classical modeled radio. I wanted to make these things to mimic the real things, and not just as mere decorations. In other words, the lamps can be turned on, clock shows a real time, fan rotates and radio gives music.
From internet search, I found out that there were many models and varieties of miniature lamps available in the market. Generally they were sold with 12 Volts bulbs. After careful considerations, I decided to use 3 Volts LEDs instead, as lamps for this diorama project. I intended to use two batteries (AA) to power all the Lamps, Ceiling Fan and Radio.
The clock was made from a used, but still working watch, placed in a wooden housing. I added a sign lamp “Welcome” under the clock. On top of cupboard I placed six different color LED lamps to make the miniature cafe more impressive. For the radio, I bought a mini radio and placed the electronics behind the cupboard. I changed the original speaker with smaller ones taken from earphone. This was necessary because size of the radio housing was not big enough to accommodate the original speaker. As I could not find any mini ceiling fan from the market, I made it myself from a mini plastic gear box and a 3 Volts motor. I put it behind the wall of cafe and used a rubber belt to rotate the fan . The ceiling fan was placed above the table, about 10 cm ( 4" ) away from gearbox. I added a magazine rack made of tin wires under the wall lamp.
After all of these items were put together in their best places, a beautiful diorama of miniature cafe was created as shown by the pictures and below.
What makes it very impressive was that all the lightning work, the Fan rotates, the clock is real and the radio gives a life music. It is like a real cafe but it in mini in size . You may agree after watching the video below.
I was very satisfied by the result of my first diorama project. All of my efforts, patience and the time spent in building it were well paid off.
Making diorama projects is really a passionate hobby and could fill the time for retired person like me or for the people who like to do hand working. You would only need ordinary hand tools and many, if not all, of the required materials are available in the market. You could also make use of used items or materials that are available around you. You could create objects or models as you like, limited only by your own imagination and improvisation.
From my first diorama projects, I learn that you do not have to think and design all the items since the beginning. All we need to do is to select or design the major items. After these are done and visualize the diorama project, then we can easily go further by deciding on what else to add in order to make it more beautiful and impressive.
Next is the importance of detail on each item, maintaining the specified scale consistently and have a good feeling on the colors harmonization .Violation in one of these will result in disharmony and give negative effects in the end.
A good diorama projects are a representation of efforts, patience, creativity , imagination and improvisation of the maker, like any other art works.
However if you do not want to be bothered with the handcrafts aspect by producing the small items yourself, you could just buy from the miniature market. There are plenty items available in the market, from lamps, furniture. household staff, clocks etc. The only thing is that their size and scale already determined by the manufacturers and if for some reason we want to have different scale, we have to prepare it by our selves.
I decided to continue my another diorama projects shortly after this one.
