A Small Summer Refreshment

So, I found myself facing a day I knew I would be running around a lot but still wanted to get something "accomplished".  That was when my eye caught the fifth item I had ordered from TTCombat above and beyond the Building I recently posted about. 

Even before I opened the package I knew that this would not be a project that required a lot of time at any one point so figured it would be a good thing for a day such as the one I just finished. 


Rome was, and still is, VERY proud of its public fountains.  They were in Imperial times the way most citizens obtained water for everyday purposes.  The Trevi Fountain, while beautiful,

was not the standard sort of thing the Romans built.  All I knew about this kit was that it cost 3 pounds sterling (normally 7 but on sale at that time, had two ponds in it, and did not add anything to my order postage so I gave it a whirl. 

Out of the shrink wrap it is two copies of the same pool and includes an acrylic insert for a water effect.  Once again there are no directions.  Each pond consists of four pieces plus the acrylic insert.  Pretty basic stuff.  Once again really 3mm mdf laser cut to the appropriate pieces. 

Step one after getting the parts off the sheets (once again this is harder than it needs to be as TTCombat leaves a couple of significant (by comparison to their competitors) uncut bits to hold the actual piece in the mdf sheet until you want it out.  This is a STRONG connection, and in some of their kits I have damaged pieces trying to separate them from the sheet so in all their kits do be careful when working.  Here I am realizing that there are rather tight tolerances between the edge of the piece, and the walls of the pond so I am using the acrylic piece to ensure proper spacing. 

The second blank piece is in place.  As you can see here they do not go together tightly.  I removed the acrylic to avoid getting it accidentally glued down immediately after getting both halves of the first tier of the pond/fountain in place and the glue set. 

This is what the final piece, the finished piece with blocks etched on its surface, a very nice pond, or for my purposes fountain look in my opinion. 

After running a couple more errands (there were some short errands between the first and second tiers of the fountains) I fetched my trusty Uber Matte white paint and gave each fountain two quick coats of white to get a marble look started.  The Acrylic pieces are visible in the background. 

After three pretty heavy coats of a gray wash here we have a close up of the fountain with the acrylic piece in place for the full effect.  plants are probably not appropriate, but leaves would certainly accumulate.  I think I will leave them as they are as this is just eye candy in a game anyway. 

From there I decided to play around with the two separate fountains and see if I could somehow pattern them together and dress them up to make a more ornate looking fountain in case that was desired.  I have a selection of God statues and had never determined a plan for this one of Neptune (I also have Mars, Bellona the war goddess, and a 'nice' statue commemorating the rape of the Sabine women all of which I do have plans for).  The two fountains are exactly the same and if I had flipped one of them over to get the mirror image I would have lost the stone etching, so elected not to go that way in construction.  That said, I think this arrangement looks very good and close enough to what a more ornate fountain would have looked like for eye candy purposes. 

Here is a close up of Neptune as while the statues are not very well proportioned, I think it does look pretty good.  He has two dolphins at his feet, my painting skills may have them looking a bit more like Orcas than dolphins, but otherwise I like the look.  The pedestal the statue sits on came with the figure and is pottery (which was weird to receive) the base the whole thing sits on is three pieces of mdf from the building kits, the window cut outs to be precise, two glued one on top of the other, and then the third glued in front.  This gives the statue a bit of space from where the offerings and tired passer-bys would be set.

The kit is dirt simple make, came out looking good in my opinion and is pretty in expensive over all (Sarissa's fountain kit is 7.50 pounds, but has very in historic looking fountains).   If you need a pond or a pool ... or a fountain!  These work out quite well.  And much better than the silliness that Sarissa sells in the Streets of Rome range. 

Salve!