Upcycling My Nativity Scene - Diorama Style

For years now i have a nativity scene, which I got pretty cheap and year by year I tried to upcycle it by replacing step by step something (lights, moss, hay, ...). But i was still not satisfied with the results. And since I saw a lot of videos with wonderful dioramas and skilled people doing it, I wanted to try some techniques myself. And I said "enough with the patches, lets do a complete makeover"

1. old nativity scene
2. acrylic paints
3. wood glue, hot glue
4. old Christmas lights
5. styrofoam scraps
6. salt dough

I already had in mind a few ideas for what i want to do with the stall: side walls, some stones, some bushes, perfecting the hay and glueing it better on the surface...

So starting with salt dough (the cheap alternative for clay which children use, basically only a mix of flour, water and salt) I made some bricks, then glued them together to form a wall.

For bushes I had some leftovers from other projects which i had to dye first with acrylic paint water, since they had this "poison"-green color :-)

Next I started to shape some Styrofoam into smaller rocks and then pushing some texture with wrapped tin foil like in the picture. Then i coated them first in darker color, then light brown and light gray, giving it the stone look.

Next was to install the walls, and also place some more bricks to look like an old wall. That was no problem since my bricks didn't have all the same size anyway :-)

Painting: I used some acrylic paints I had, nothing fancy, but I really needed to paint the whole stall again, because over the years it got really bad looking. Finding the right color and finish for everything is a little experiment. I had to paint some parts more than once, and drybrushing over it. Brown for tha stall, yellow for the straw and red for the walls.

Then I installed the lights all around the stall with hot glue. A nice touch i found was to install them also on the back wall like in the picture. Not sure if it helps with the lighting of the statues, but it gives a nice effect.

On the roof i also placed some wood glue around the wood and scattered some painted grass i had.

Now this is usually by far the most satisfying part, when you see how everything works together. I used hot glue, wood glue and some uv resin glue to be sure everything sticks: the bushes, the rocks, the grass, the lights, ... etc.

And that's it. I hope you like it.