With the current CoronaVirus Lockdown in full swing, we’ve been busy creating fun things at home that are either super cheap of virtually free.

In our house there are an absolute ton of Hotwheels and Matchbox cars, and dinosaurs are never far away… So naturally this happened:

Here we have a Jurassic Park style scene that’s super fun the play with, great as a photo backdrop for cars and super satisfying to make.

How to make a Jurassic Park HotWheels Scene out of Paper Mache:

This is how you do it:

Get a nice, large, flat box. Mine was from Aldi, a fruit crate. Perfect.

Draw out your design and the way you want the land to lie

Find some recycling junk and stick it down to form the rock islands (we used packaging from a laptop!)

Mix up some Paper Mache! 4 parts PVA glue to 1 part water.

Crunch up some newspaper into balls, cover it in the PVA mixture and start to stick it in place

Cover everything with a good solid layer of PVA mixture

Let it dry, really, really well

Paint the rock areas in a dark grey

Paint the road / grass / track areas in green

Mix up some light brown, and dip some HotWheels (or Matchbox or other) cars in it.

Drive them all around your imaginary routes until you’ve got a nice sandy looking dirt track

Finally I added a waterfall and a pool… Paint the area you want the water the flow with white paint

When that’s dry, add a blue top coat. Ours has sparkles in it, so the water shimmers

Hum the Jurassic Park theme tune and play with your favourite toy T Rex

Enjoy!