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How Do I Display Toy Soldiers?

Displaying toy soldiers need not be a complicated or expensive undertaking. According to The Toy Soldier Museum, using a two-dimensional background placed behind your toy soldiers behaves in the same way that a frame adds details to a painting. The background should enhance, not detract from, your toy soldier collection. Make a background display to showcase your toy soldiers with a paper print, photograph or illustration mounted on cardboard. Choose from many paper backgrounds that you can make that add realism and wow-appeal to your toy soldier collection.

Things You'll Need

Tape measure
Computer with Internet
Computer scanner
Computer printer with color ink
Battleground photograph or illustration
Battle map print
Photograph of flag
Uniform fabric or tartan paper or photograph
Reproduction or scanned historical documents
Pen
Scissors
Cardboard
Rubber cement
Clay

Instructions

- 1
  Measure for the background size you need for your toy soldier display. Use the dimensions of the shelf or table that you will display the soldiers on to determine the measurement length. Determine the height of the background by your personal preference.
- 2
  Find a color or black and white photograph of a battleground or battle scene appropriate to the time period that your toy soldiers represent--for example, a civil war battleground for civil war toy soldiers. Use a print of a battle map or a photograph of a close-up of the flag appropriate to the soldier's nationality. Find a historical document such as a document of surrender, or according to The Toy Soldier Museum, Scottish tartan gift wrapping paper. If necessary, scan and enlarge or shrink the images to the correct dimensions. If the image isn't wide or long enough, tape multiple copies of the same image together to achieve the desired dimensions. According to The Toy Soldier Museum, you can find images online; look for background images on historical, nature or battle-themed color calendars and books and magazines.
- 3
  Cut a piece of cardboard to match the dimensions of your paper background. Recycle cardboard from boxes or purchased cut to your requested dimensions at craft and hobby stores.
- 4
  Glue the paper background onto the cardboard with rubber cement, paying careful attention to the edges and corners so that the paper doesn't curl away from the cardboard beneath. Scan fabric flags to create paper images.
- 5
  Roll two balls of clay about the size of a golf ball in the palm of your hand. Any clay color will work, but an earth tone that blends well with your background image is less noticeable.
- 6
  Position the background behind the toy soldiers. Press a ball of clay beneath the bottom right and left corner of the cardboard display. Press the ball of clay down onto the flat display surface to flatten the clay so that it holds the display background upright. According to The Toy Soldier Museum, you can also make the same cardboard-mounted displays to display toy soldiers on top of as well as positioned behind.

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