by Dezzo Darling

Created on: November 05, 2009   Last Updated: November 07, 2009

Allow me to start my article with an old Chinese tale!

An old "Seefu" (teacher) asked his students what was it that gave a wagon wheel its strength? One student said the hub, another said the spokes and a third said the rim. "You are all wrong - what gives the wheel its strength is the space between the three elements you have mentioned. Too strong a hub or too strong the rim and the wheel would be too heavy. And if the spokes are not evenly spread between the hub and the rim, the wheel would collapse at the first bump in the road. Strength therefore comes from the balance and harmony between the components.

This is the paradigm I follow when I design my villages. In the rush to put every single building and accessory you own into the available area, don't forget to leave room for the small vignettes which lend life to your village. If your "thing" is to show your collection of pieces, then a neatly arranged shelf is much more effective. But if you want to build a village, then you have to allow room for the other elements which contribute to the scene - trees, shrubs, people, animals, cars, lights and the village green. One of Thomas Kinkade's most famous paintings, "Christmas Moonlight" features a single house, a footbridge and the moonlit, snow covered ground. Yet I have never beheld any other work of art which shouts Christmas Eve louder!

The one single mistake to avoid is symmetry! Nature is lumpy! On a macro-scale there is never absolute symmetry in Nature. Add a touch of randomness into your village by placing houses slightly askewed, roads a bit crooked, and using trees of different shapes and sizes. Introduce the element of height with gently undulating hills and vales. Avoid straight lines - our eyes are trained to measure distances in straight lines, not so for curves, so if you make your display table with a curved front and sides, it is hard to judge just how big or small the layout actually is and the mind usually over-compensates.

Personally, my biggest bug-bear with most brands of villages is the way too over-sized figurines, but short of making them yourself, it is something we have to live with. I try to minimize the obvious disparity by raising my buildings a bit off the base board by shimming them with a 1/4 inch board and by trying not to place the figurines too close to the buildings, or without some shrubbery between them to break the connection.

To attract attention to a favorite building I place an accessory with flashing lights to

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