"It began quite well as you can imagine: in a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit" Arguably the most iconic and instantly recognizable location in Tolkien's novels and fully realized in the Lord of the Ring and Hobbit film series. In the major books and in both film series it's where our story starts and ends literally welcoming you to Middle-Earth. This was truly a labour of love. I wanted a diorama of bag end in scale with the 6" figure line that looked right but I didn't want to crazy making a gigantic Bag End, so I made it in a film set style. You have the exterior of course and then inside you have the pantry, hallway and the dining room which also represents the study, kitchen and living room. I spent months getting the right look and even incorporating working lights to represent candles then went wild with accessories/ details including a new Bilbo custom furniture and my favorite the Erebor secret door key. Much like a custom figure, the base I used was the door frame backdrop from the Traveling Bilbo and I reshaped parts and built around it. I carved the door out then made it functional. I used foam boards, fake grass meant for minitures/ model trains, skewers, twine, epoxy, plastic and wires. The most time consuming parts were the windows specifically the little windows next to the door and the main large window as I spent s good few weeks sculpting tthem. Epoxy takes roughly 4 1/2 to 5 hours to dry so I had to make needle thin lengths of clay and carefully apply it to a plastic sheet then go over with glue to reinforce. I really enjoy the details like the crossed swords, which I made from scratch out of miliput as well as the portraits of Belledona and Bungo Baggins (Bilbo's parents based on the likenesses of Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh). It took several months to get it right but as Frodo put it: "there's room for a little more" so I am sure I will revisit it.

This set includes: working lights, an opening window, a chimney connected to the fire place, the tree, the garden, benches, the study desk, the main door, gate and details from the book and film including plates and food (lots of it). Everything was hand made including the table which I took a wooden beam sanded it and reshaped it then made legs for, the carpet was some red material I sewed the ends onto to give it that carpet effect and the tiles were individually placed as well as the wooden panels ceiling beams and the walls. I will get a making of picture uploaded at some point because so much work went into it and I have over 60 photos of the making of which show how I used strong foam boards for the structure with wooden skewers to strengthen and then used soft foam for the wallpaper and wooden skirting boards to give it a realistic look. Fun fact there's 294 individual tiles in the hallway I made as looking st the pictures online of bag end I counted 14 tiles across and made them out of plastic sheets. The food of course was carved out from its original backdrop and then I sculpted the back so it would match the front wooden panel positions then sketched out the metal stylised door frame work and then traced my work to get two identical metal works and then applied to the door and it looks perfect. I love the fire place it's just epoxy that less up to the chimney above outside with a fire guard made from cocktail sticks whittled. Just for fun a Scouring of the Shire shot is included, but I've broken the photos into 3 segments: (1: Bilbo's tale as the Narrator in The Hobbit films/ the Fellowship of the Ring ) (2: Frodo's Bag End scenes from Keep its secret keep it safe to a Shadow of the past and finally: How do you pick up the threads of an old life) (3: The Dwarves at Bag End)

And finally I've added the making of, so you can see the humble beginnings of this task and get idea's for your own custom if you want a Bag End. One of the main ones is the flat board (its a foam board) with the Dwarves and Gandalf placed around so I could work out the rooms and table position. You can see that this (back in October) is before I finished the company of Thorin Oakenshield so I had to do some guessing work, but thank goodness I did Bombur so early!

Thanks for having a look