Ever since I finished my Little House in the Big Woods cabin a few years ago, I always intended to add a base with landscaping. I wanted to make a wooded scene with outbuildings and a vegetable garden and cows and horses and a chicken coop and a covered wagon and other details from the Laura Ingalls Wilder book. It looked great in my head.
On a recent trip to Michaels, I noticed the basswood rounds in the aisle with the wood plaques. They look like log slices and I thought it would be a neat thing to make a base out of. I didn’t know the house’s dimensions, so I went back a few days later armed with a 40% off coupon. The largest one Michaels had was barely large enough for the cabin to fit. The regular price was $10.99.
I was also looking for Gallery Glass paint and apparently Michaels doesn’t carry that anymore, so I tried the Joann’s in the next strip mall over. They didn’t have Gallery Glass either (I ended up buying it on their website) but they did have an extra large basswood round that was bigger than the one I’d bought at Michaels. It was also $19.99! (As a point of comparison, the cabin house kit itself only cost me $25…)
I didn’t have a Joann’s coupon with me, but I bought it anyway. (And I didn’t bother returning the one from Michaels, I’m sure I can find some other use for it someday…)
So, that was a bit of a splurge, especially since when I got home I found a Joann’s coupon for 60% off, which would have made the price about $7. Bah. But my base turned out so good, I’m over it. :) (I didn’t want to buy one of these things online because the websites don’t give exact dimensions, and I needed to make sure my house would fit on it.)
As you can see, the house fits on this one with room to spare all the way around. Initially I didn’t like how tall it is but after I saw the house on the shorter one from Michaels, I liked the look of this better. It’s more substantial.
I wanted to attach a turntable to the bottom before I started doing anything to the base, but I didn’t have one and the nearby hardware store didn’t either, so I played around with trees while I was waiting for Geoff to pick one up for me at Home Depot. The base isn’t as large as I’d imagined — no space for outbuildings and not much space for the titular Big Woods, but I could at least fit a few pine trees around the house.
When I chatted with Jim Marcus about the Little Belle, he commented that it’s hard to paint a house like this because you have to be a really good painter to do justice to all the small details. He pointed out that when the house is all white, the shadows serve as a sort of accent color. He suggested painting the Little Belle’s shingles, stairs, door, and base in shades of gray, and leaving the rest white. 
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
