I am never been satisfied with my cobbled streets made out of purchased, patterned card and stuck onto MDF. They still look flat and a bit unrealistic. But I refuse to pay any big money for roads when they should be easy to make. So I cut out the usual shapes and strips of 3mm MDF and gave them a 1-2mm coating of ready mixed plaster. I get a big tub of Gyprock Topcoat from Bunnings which will last for ever. Its great for doing texture on buildings too. Make sure the coating is pretty smooth, although it doesn’t need to be a perfect finish, and leave it to dry overnight.

Then comes the entertaining bit…… First of all I draw horizontal guide lines every 5mm across of all the pieces you want to do. Although you can make the distance smaller or wider depending on how big you want to make your cobbles. I invested in a $10 etching tool on eBay from China. What a great machine. It runs on AAA batteries and its shaped like a big pen so you can sit and carve bricks and cobbles all day long. And it does take all day long. Its much easier and quicker than trying to carve with an old scalpel or blade. Jump on eBay and grab one. It still took me ages to engrave a town square, a couple of roads and another little square. Once the cobbles are carved its just a question of painting them grey and throwing some brown and black washes over them. I did add some brown, black and sand coloured chalk powder on them too. Dirty them up a bit.

You can see in the first picture the effect of the cobbled square and street. Also as a comparison I put my old card cobbled square and streets next to them so you can see the difference. It was a good opportunity to get out all my houses and put them together. Here is a mixture of home made, laser cut MDF and cardboard kits. I think they all mix in together quite nicely, and no two houses are ever identical.

Must get cracking on my village church…….