Scratchbuilding My Daughter's Names

Making a Very Personalized Christmas Gift.

A few years ago I was wondering what to give my daughters for Christmas. I always have a hard time trying to make that decision as both of them are very independent (they are all grown up now!) and have all they need. I usually try to think of giving them practical things but most of the time I come up with blanks.

I thought at this time I’d just make something more symbolic than practical.

As most of you reading this know I love to build models, and although I don’t get the opportunity as much as I’d like, I especially love to scratch-build. In other words, not from a kit. So I got the idea of doing their names as a kind of stylized miniature detailed like the sci-fi stuff most of us are familiar with. I thought it would be a fun thing to do and something that could quite literally keep them together as “supersisters”, (that’s a different story! Thank you Jamie Hood!) as the design almost demands it. If you haven’t guessed already, the photo above shows just how that works. I designed the model as two separate parts that each of them keeps (they keep their namesakes), but when brought together make them whole. See what I mean?

Anyway, I had fun with it and hoped they would appreciate the fact that they, being two sisters, would appreciate that their being separate entities are still a part of a whole.

It’s called Family.

The photos below show how the model was designed. It’s pretty obvious how it was done and some of the ideas I had. The first and most obvious part was to do the initials of their names. The rest (shown in the first picture below) was written on the model’s baseplate just about ideas and what I was thinking of when I was designing it. Some modifications were done as I went along. Everything was built with the tried and true method of sheet styrene and kitbashing for detail, highly stylized. Painting it was a lot of fun because I didn’t have to copy anything for a change! This was my artistic license using the techniques I liked the best.

Click on the pictures for closeups/higher resolution versions.

Thank you Florence and Adeline for being the most significant part of my life! I love you both and I am very proud of you and your accomplishments!

God bless you both!