How to make snow in a diorama?

"The ingredients"

• White glue (like "PONAL"),
• water,
• a sheet of paper,
• a syringe with thick tube,
• an atomizer with storage device,
• Airbrush and clear lacquer,
• and most important: Food soda (also Natriumcarbonate, available in the pharmacy or in the supermarket)

Preparations

Surfaces which must not be covered should be masked with tape. The syringe is filled with strongly water-diluted white glue mixture. Also with the container of the atomizer one does the same. The diorama surface is sprinkled with white glue by means of the atomizer.

• Tip 1: One should place the diorama on a large cardboard previously to the snowing procedure. Thus one prevents the conversion of his working room into an arctic "desert".


• Tip 2: After sputtering the white glue mixture, immediately clean the atomizer, otherwise was its last mission!

The "Snowfall"

Now carefully sprinkle the food soda onto the surface over the edge of a sheet of paper. (With a shaky hand this works best!) Redundant material is simply blown away. Do not spit thereby because otherwise the beautiful surface would be destroyed! One can make however several work passages in this way. Thus one varies heavily or slight covered areas. One obtains the snow heaps, like in my example with the T34-running gear, by pouring thick drops of white glue directly from the syringe or the glue box onto the Diorama. Subsequently it is filled with food soda again. This time one should use the folded paper like a gutter. At the end one seals the whole with clear lacquer. Nevertheless for obvious reasons one should not have a walk with his snow dio outside, when itīs raining....

© 2002 Georg Schachinger