The various cardboard backdrops and sets produced by Extreme-Sets have been a real boon to toy photographers. I’ve really enjoyed rotating the sets into the mix. One of those sets plays the part of a dock, complete with shipping containers and crates. Once I saw the advanced photos of the set, I knew it needed a little something extra. That turned out to be the exterior of the Stacked Deck club!

I could have approached this project many different ways. I could have made a very detailed playset, with working doors and lights. I might still do that someday. But in this case, given the inspiration, I challenged myself to craft the piece as Extreme-Sets might. So I designed the the four walls to interconnect in the same fashion, using only cardboard. The plus side is the whole thing separates and folds flat for easy storage.

The bulk of the work was simply measuring and building the files in Illustrator. Once printed, I applied to cardboard and carefully cut out each side. (I briefly considered building extras to sell. Given the time and effort the first one required…. No. Not gonna happen.)

Finally, the original dock set featured a tri-fold backdrop. Sadly, the folds kill the illusion, and it was a sunset scene. I wanted a night scene. So I enlarged a screen grab from “Crisis on Two Earths” and built a new, flat backdrop.

The photos above include images of all four sides of the Stacked Deck. I can’t wait to get some real use out of this thing!

Created September 2017