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In the United States, today is National Chocolate Candy Day & National Card Playing Day! Do you agree: best way to celebrate is to eat some chocolate candy while playing cards?

Monday’s Leadoff Drive:
2nd behind-the-scenes “set prep”

Scale Model Christmas Cards (set design by OC,SHer TOM G & photography by BILL R) were presented in this theme, 12/21-26/2015. Now in the midst of a few days of info-history of this series, the “keys” of the 6 cards will be revealed 01/04-09/2016. This image shows the board layout used to place the cars & buildings. Tom G (previously written for “Old Cars Weekly”) started building scale model scenes in the mid-late 1980s. In early 1990, he met photographer Bill, who encouraged Tom to combine realism, fantasy & a “painterly effect” to create even better scenes. The pair teamed to create the line of 6 Christmas Cards, using car models & Dept 56 Snow Village buildings on a set built in-studio & shot with a large format camera (Bill’s Mamiya RB-67) to capture depth of field. Prints were done on a huge 4-color Heidelberg press & then sold in magazines.