My dad was the kind of guy who could build almost anything.  Although he was a pastor and had very little training in things like building, he had a natural gift for it. His mind just worked that way.  I told my mom once that I thought Dad should have gone to engineering school, but she said no, that it would have ruined his gift. That forcing his mind into a mold of how it should be done instead of allowing him to follow his instincts would have constricted his ability to just look at something and say "How could I do this?" instead of "How is this usually done?"  He did some really brilliant and innovative things.  (Dad's only real problem was the tendency to over do things.  If you owned a cottage on a lake and asked my dad to build you a little pier so you could tie up your rowboat,  when he was done you'd be able to dock the Queen Mary at it!!)

I realize that I have inherited some of this gift from my father.  I have a friend that buys tons of books on everything to see how she should do things.  I tend to plunge fearlessly (and sometimes stupidly) in to my projects with no idea what I'm doing, just making things up and learning as I go. Sometimes I find out later that that there really would have been an easier way to do something, other times I invent some brilliant and bizarre way to do things that maybe no one has done before.  I'm always open to suggestions, but since I'm working in mostly uncharted territory, no one else knows much more about it than I do.

A good case in point of how I did things the "wrong" way is the fountain I recently created for a diorama.  I used styrofoam and tile pieces to form the base, but then I ran up against the problem of grouting.  I thought it would be difficult and messy to grout between the tiles, plus the fountain base would weigh a ton.  I also wasn't too sure how well the grouting would stick to the styrofoam.  So, looking for a better solution, I opted for Play Dough.  I bought a couple of small cans of white Play Dough and filled in the cracks with that.  I loved how it looked, I didn't have to work with anything wet and messy or wait for it to dry to use it, and it is very light weight. I  got some eye-rolling from friends when I told them I was using Play Dough.  They said it would dry and crack, and I said that would make it look even more realistic since it was supposed to be several hundred years old.  Besides, I had fun doing it- I haven't played with Play dough in years!

One of the reasons  I adore reading how-to blogs and posts from other one sixth scale afficianados is because I get to see the innovative ways to do things that they come up with.  Sometimes I use their ideas or adapt them, sometimes I do it my own way instead.   But it's all fascinating.  After all, diorama making of this kind is still a relatively new phenomenon.  We are breaking new ground, going boldly where no man has gone before!  In ten years there will probably be a whole slew of craft book telling everyone the right way to build a diorama.  I'll still be in my basement, gluing my fingers together with the hot glue gun and trying to build something no one else has built before in one sixth scale!