Building the arena part 3

Well, I must apologise for rushing ahead and not reporting.
You see, I was so excited to have finished my arena that I completely forgot to log what I was doing.

Last time, I only had the outer wall to add.
I had some thin cork sheets that were once IKEA placemats. They're lovely and thin, so I thought I'd use them for the curved outer wall.

The wall was built in situ to get a better fit. First the inner side of the wall, then a few strengthening struts made of the thicker cork floor tiles, followed by the outer wall sections. The tips of the wall were sized up by flipping the whole thing upside down and drawing around the top on a cork tile.

Detailing on the outside was done by adding Depron (RTM, probably) to make the arches and card for the decorative strip. I've had the Depron for many years, just waiting for the right project, and this is certainly it. It's a thin but strong extruded polystyrene as far as I can tell. It bends easily without breaking, is strong and allows you to scribe detail onto it. Lovely stuff. It made the black arches you can see in the photos.

I sprayed the entrance portico part black to get the shadows in place and then gave it all a good covering of textured stone coloured spray paint, after blacking off the bits I wanted to stay black.

The roof tiles are by Warbases, those wonderful strips of card that have you cursing that you ever decided to put tiles on the roof, until you realise that the alternative is cutting out the individual tiles yourself. Wonderful things, those Warbases roofing strips!

All that remains was a bit of paint and the jobs done. I didn't get a shot of the finished arena on its own, so I've add a few shots of it in play at the Hereward show in Peterborough at the start of the month, complete with cricket pitch and pavilion!