You know, it really doesn't take this long to make trees. Not in total anyway. But recall that I'm a 40k gamer with 3 small kids and a 60 hour a week job. Trees don't take this much time, life does. =) Anyway, on with part 3.
This time around, we're skipping over painting and basing the trees (we'll come back to that later), and are instead looking at cheap scenery bases to put all my cheap trees on. Recall that I put a rare earth magnet in the base of each of the large trees? Well that's because I'm basing them on steel terrain bases. Really CHEAP steel, in the form of a used whiteboard that a friend got out of a dumpster for me.
You can see that I've marked the whiteboard up with a sharpie and laid out the shapes of the terrain bases before I make the first cut. Metal this thin can be cut with a hand saw, tin snips, or a jig saw. I prefer a jig saw, partly because I already own one and because it's much faster and neater.
The back of the whiteboard is darker and has a thin layer of rubber. That means this is the side that things will stick to better and will cover in one coat. (The white might have to be painted first, and the paint might not stick.) For this portion, get yourself some PVA glue, a disposable paintbrush, and some box lids. Don't forget to cover your workspace in paper, as this is gonna be messy!
Use the brush to coat the base in glue. Make sure you lay the glue on thick, that there are no gaps, and that it goes all the way to the edge. This may be old news to some of you modellers out there, but it bears repeating. Your flock and gravel won't stick well if the glue is too thin, and your terrain will start going bald early in life. Nobody wants that. =)
I'm using two kinds of material on these bases; brown sand and green flock. The heavier of the two should go on first. Pour the sand out in a pattern on the base, and be generous with it. You'll end up with a mound of extra sand that isn't stuck down, and that's fine. You can quickly flip the base over and catch the excess in the box lid to be reused.
Now on to the other box lid to pour the lighter green flock over it. Again, heap it on. If you have enough, you can even swish the terrain base around in the box to cover it more easily. Then turn the base on it's edge and shake and tap the excess off into the box lid.
Voila. 18 terrain bases. Spray them with acryllic sealer once the glue is dry to extend their lifespan under your miniatures' feet.
Note that the bases on the left look different than the ones on the right. One base was a failed experiment in static grass, and I switched to using finer flock. But the difference in shading on the rest is the glue. The ones on the left were done using PVA glue, and there was enough extra stickiness to trap some green flock in amongst the sand. The ones on the right were after I ran out of PVA glue and switched to a spray adhesive instead. It makes for a thinner layer of stickiness, and there's no extra to trap the second color of flock. I think I prefer the PVA glue ones better.
Stay tuned for Part IV, where I finally get around to painting all these dang trees. =P
Okay, here's the down and dirty of it. For those of you tuning in late, the goal here is to make 18 woods sections complete with flocked bases, 36 trees and 36 bushes... all for 39 $US. Today I cover the construction of the trees themselves.
Start by drilling 6 small holes in a GW round base, cutting 3 lengths of floral wire, and pulling 3 sprigs of greenery off the bunch you grabbed at a discount craft store. Take care to leave a section on the underside of the round base large enough to hold one of the magnets. (More on that later.)
Use floral tape to bind the 3 sprigs into a bunch as shown, and loop the 3 wires through the GW round base like so. The wires will hold the tree firmly onto the base so that even rough handling and ill placed tanks cannot damage the tree.
Place the bundle of greenery on the base and wind the three wires around it. I find that making one of the wires go the opposite direction from the other two adds stability to your tree, as well as forcing the smaller branches out and away from each other. Finish the top of the tree off by wrapping 1 wire around each of the sprigs of greenery, so that you get 3 large branches at the top of the tree going out in different directions.
Now take a bit of floral tape and wrap the tree trunk. It'll take a little practice to get the tape to go around the branches, but this too helps spread them out to make it look more tree-ish.
Tear off a bit of floral clay and cover the tree trunk. You can leave this step off if you're pressed for time or otherwise like the look of the floral tape tree trunk, but the clay allows you to texture the trunk a bit and allows you to create "roots" to cover up the wire and the slot in the GW round base. Give it a few days to dry so it's not sticky before you work with it further. It will never be as hard as sculpy or Green Stuff miniature clay, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper.
Fill the bottom of the GW round base (or the large half of the bottom if it has a slot bisecting it like mine) with more clay. Be sure to mush it in there real well, so that it flows around the wire in the base. once it dries, the wire will hold the clay in place. (if you find this isn't the case and your clay keeps coming out... superglue it.) BEFORE it dries, make an indent in the clay for your rare earth magnet, then glue the magnet in place once the clay is hardened.
Behold, one tree. And a very excited Kroot Mercenary for scale comparison.
Coming up in Part III... painting and flocking trees.
For the upcoming RTT at Origins, one of my tasks is coming up with enough woods sections to equip three 4x6 tables. Since we have no trees, I need to make or buy them. I could buy them, but each terrain base of trees would cost roughly 8 bucks if I use GW trees or a decent competitor, and that doesn't count the cost of prepping the base itself. Since I need roughly 18 sections of woods, that's over 130 $US... and that's unacceptable.
No, for this project, I'll be doing 18 woods sections, including 36 trees and 36 bushes, for a total cost of 39 $US.
Here's what we need for the project.
- 1 pack GW Round bases (37 count) - $8
- 1 spool Floral Wire - $2
- 2 spools Floral Tape - $3
- 2 spools Floral Clay - $4
- 2 bunches of small-leaf fake greenery, on sale 50% off - $6
- 2 buckets modelling flock, on sale 50% off - $7
- 1 pack 40 rare earth magnets - $5
- 1 tube PVA glue - $4
- assorted scrap sheet metal - free
The idea is that we cut the sheet metal and cover it in flock to provide the base of the terrain. Then I build up trees and shrubs on the round bases, and put a magnet on the bottom of the taller trees so they won't fall over.
Stay tuned for Part 2, the basic assembly.
Here is my latest room for 40K Space Hulk -- the Cannon Chamber. The idea is that this is where one of the guns in the hulk is located.
