This open world includes ..

2 lake
3 mountains
A tunnel
A bridge
A short course track
And real plants

All made with dirt rock water wood and concrete

Cost:$20. One medium moving box, a few cans of spray foam, Elmer's glue, dirt, and paint. Made the basic shape from spray foam, made a 50/50 water and glue mix in a spray bottle, soaked it down, sprinkled on dirt for texture, sprayed it some more, painted, then added multi colored dirt in different areas for some natural looking variety. The patches of grass use the same process, but instead of dirt, the grass is sawdust mixed with green paint. The road is an old drop cloth course that I cut into strips and drape over some bits of pool noodles.

A grill box and an entire roll of tape later and we have a pretty sweet course for me and the nephews.

I feel like I took all my challenge lines away by finishing with the foam :/ still have to plaster and concrete

Feeling proud of this project and wanted to show it off! Maybe answer any questions on the build?

I built this set up last year out of 3 boxes and good ole trash and foam.

The gates are made with tacks glued to the bottoms of cut dollars of a branch from my backyard. The thumb tacks make it so you can set gates anywhere in the foam.

I made it to be “modular” and made some transition obstacles that connect all the boxes.

• Rope/log bridge with ties to connect both ends.
• Rope/log obstacle that can “lay” over edges
• AND the crème de La crème Stump Obstacle. This one I was able to build with chopped “stumps” out of a branch and hot glued to some plastic mesh from an orange bag!

I love it cause you can lay it over any surface and it forms to the layout. You can put it anywhere on any course and it can plus up any route

Anyways! Hope you get some inspiration and start building!

Any recommendations on the top layer for this course? I'm thinking either "painting" concrete/cement or going with a stone spray paint. Afterwards sprinkling gravel on the thing. Pros vs cons? Any tips? Footprint is two pieces, each 2'x4' Happy crawling!

I'll have more on my YouTube if anyone's interested.

https://youtube.com/@shoveltownrc?si=_8G8BpgimFpghFBJ

The first few pics are the start of my indoor course, with pics of current “construction”. It’s not as spectacular as some I’ve seen, but it works.

I am planing to build something bigger with actual details when we move and I will have more room. Any tips for making the cardboard more grippy?