Home made bushes.

Hello!

I was always wondering why a lot of gaming tables have empty green areas. In real life you will see there a lot of small and big bushes. Of course the big ones can give a nice cover to advancing troops.

Therefore lets make few :)

Idea is simple, have some big bushed on HDF basis (it will be easy to deploy and move them) and put them around table on green areas to make the board more "realistic".

This was first time when I was doing those and the idea how to make them came into my mine accidental during one of my games.

Step 1.

Find HDF board and cut it into small pieces (irregular shapes). I personally used some left overs from making a basis for trees and forest (we will talk about this in next post :) )

HDF leftovers

Then use sand paper to give them more round shape and soft the edges

Step 2.

Use PVA glue and sand to create a "ground" onto the prepared basis. I personally used:
- Battlefield rocks from Army Painter as first layer
- Then I added some stones made from cork
- For top layer I used beach sand - which btw is ideal to finish the ground looking basis

Remember that PVA glue needs some time to dry and it will change it colour from white to "transparent" when it will. Apply small amounts of it using old brush and then add stones/sand into the base. Remove the extra sand by gently taping the bottom of the base (do this above a container so you can use remaining sand in later projects)

Prepare your ingredients!

Small rocks for ground base and big ones as normal rocks :)

Beach sand to fill the gaps and make it more "ground" looking. Without paint it looks really strange but it will be better :)

Step 3

To save flock later one and to make our brushes a little high, I used the sponge from FoW blisters to make a structure for later bushes:

At the end I used a watered down PVA glue in dispenser bottle. Spray the glue arccos the basis it will harden the sand (it will not fall off while painting) and it will harden a little the sponges:

 Step 4

Lets add some paint!

First layer I used Chocolate brown (872) from vallejo and I watered it down - it will help the paint to get inside all gaps and will make the painting of sand much easier! Just remember that watering down a paint will increase time to dry, make sure it will dry before adding next colour (I would recommend to leave it for night).

Still wet, looks strange....

Next I did medium dry brush using Vallejo English uniform (921)

At the end use a little Sand yellow (916) and dry brush is very gently onto the top - it will give it sandy/dirt looking.

 At this moment also paint the big stones, It will give a nice contrast later. For this I used a Vallejo Stone Gray (884) and after it dry I used black wash and later on a little dry brush with Stone Gray again.
 

Feel free to paint the sponges as well, it will make them harder and this will help latter with adding bushes.

Step 5.

Add the bushes :)

 Due to fact that sponge should be already a little hard (with PVA glue and some paint) it will work quite nicely as a base for bushes. For this purpose I used Clumb Foliage Mix in two collors: Summer and Autumn from Hobby Round.

As a glue I used standard cyanoacrylate glue (why not PVA? it will dry much faster and keeps things tighter then PVA, also with hardened sponges it will be just right to get elastic but hard bushes)

As for color of the bushes, use you'r own imagination:

Looks nice, right? :)

 Step 6

Add some static grass or grass flock on the edges to make bushed more real. I used Army Painter products for this. First (using PVA) I applied a little green flock and when it was dried I added static grass.

Hint!

For small bases and static grass you can (after you apply it using PVA glue) just turn over the base and gently knock with your finger into the base few times. It will make the static grass to "stand" like real one (in this case you don't need any special tools to do this :) )

 And example of final product:

I hope that this very first post will enjoy you, dear reader! Because more of them will come!