The journey begins - Interactive elements - scene 7 & 14

Early in the planning I've mentioned I wanted to have as many places where the reveal would be parts of the actual nativity story. There aren't enough individual scenes to depict and at one stage I decided that perhaps I could have Joseph and pregnant Mary stopping several times along the way. I can't remember how many stops there were originally but in the end I only did two. This also gave a sort of structure to the design with a winding road going across the whole thing.

So scene 7 is a backdrop of the start of the journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth. I made use of some map fabric I had been given to add to the emphasis on journey and added some simple houses.
For the second rest stop I wanted it to link to the scene that would be next to it, where there would be a feature of a palm tree. It was meant to feel like a small oasis of green on a dusty road. In the photo below, the lady in red is from the scene 13 which we will come to later

The interactive element came from the figure of pregnant Mary on a donkey with Joseph.
This image also reflected back to a Hispanic (possibly just Mexican) advent tradition I really like: to have a statue of the pregnant Mary and Joseph is called "La Posada" - meaning the inn (ie the journey to the inn) in the house in the run up to Christmas.
Alongside that (google tells me) there is tradition of re-enactment when two people dress as Joseph and Mary visiting various houses over 9 nights(1 for each month of pregnancy), singing songs until they are allowed in. This represents the way Mary and Joseph were forbidden room at the inn.

As I needed them to face two different ways they needed to be double sided.
Each side is not quite the same.
On one side, we see Mary's leg and foot and Joseph with a stick. And Mary holds the donkey's ear.

On the other side, we see Joseph carrying a bag and Mary sitting side saddle, with just her bottom visible. Her hand on her stomach. Inside the figures is two layers of cardboard to make them stronger and hold their shape better.

But for both, I wanted Mary's hair to be covered. I felt this would be both practical and likely on a journey encountering others.
I then had to decide if I would cover the scene in a leaf, technically Joseph and Mary should be placed on the scene and then moved to the next spot. But I thought for consistency and ease, they should be in place at the start and then move, and so I made a leaf to cover them

There weren't a lot of interactive elements in the whole project but I built on this later with the nativity scene. More on that later.