Building 6mm Bocage Hedgerows with popsicle sticks and clay, Part 2

A quick link to Part 1.

Before I show you the rest of my project, let me say that I love seeing new products, and Shawn Morris at the Terrain Studio has some very cool Youtube tutorials (his latest seems to be this amazing WW2 European field for 15mm; see below).

Skip to 2:30 to see a walkthrough of some items from Scenic Express that look like they might be fun to use.  4:20 is where he talks about the plowed fields - I bought 2 on this recommendation and am looking forward to seeing them in action.

Back to the Hedges!

Here are the Hedgerows with 2 layers of paint: Beastial Brown and Graveyard Earth. The third, lighter color was Country Tan by Apple Barrel - I've never really been happy with the highlight color to go onto the Earth color. Khaki was recommended to me, but this was what I had on hand. I also hit the scouring sponges with a bit of English Ivy color, also from AB.

 

 

As you can see, the sand that I sprinkled on during the clay phase is mostly still there. The primer I painted on was quite thick, and basically glopped it on. The rocks are highlighted with 2 colors of gray.

Finally, the fun part. I mixed up a few different colors of flock, including Woodland Scenic's Green Grass, and some tans, browns, and an Earth mix. A 50/50 water/PVA solution is the usual suspect here:

The English Ivy, once dried, barely showed. I hope to go back with a lighter Leaf color just as an accent.

 

You can clearly see that there was indeed shrinkage with the clay, and it is evident on many of the ends of the hedgerows. This is probably the most frustrating part of the project for me. It is certainly something I can live with, but it is there nonetheless.

The other thing is that I made some of the berms very narrow. This worked artistically, but when it came time to add the clump foliage, didnt give me a lot of room to balance some of the pieces very well. Still, it turned out OK, I think. See for yourself:

 

 

As I ran the Hob-e-Tac along the berms and let it sit, I started sorting the clump foliage. When you pull the pieces out of the package (or the bins I keep them in, in my case), there are all sorts of dingledangles and gribbly bits hanging off them. I pulled a lot of this off and made three piles: bigger pieces (for where the berms were flatter or wider and could accommodate a larger  piece), small bits (for the narrower spots), and the leftovers (for filling in places, or covering left over glue bits).

Here are some 15mm scale shots, with models from Khurasan:

Here are some 6mm scale shots, with bits from my Eldar Epic collection:

Of course, some obligatory storage shots:

There you go. I cannot wait to get them onto the table!

ps another blog of a similar project:

http://shedwars.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-frustration-is-over-28mm-hedges.html 

Building 6mm Bocage Hedgerows with popsicle sticks and clay, Part 1

I've been in a bit of a gaming slump lately - but decided to break out of my cage this weekend by creating some 6mm bocage or hedgerows (I don't play WWII or historical games - this is just to decorate roads to make them more interesting).

The most useful blog I found for how-to-do-it inspiration was this:

http://dereksweetoys.com/2013/02/making-bocage-hedges-for-6mm/comment-page-1/

I also found a tutorial on how to use air-dry clay for the hedgerows, so I went to Michaels and got some. But first...

I decided I wanted to get it "right" if I was going to build some, so I did some research and stumbled upon this excellent PDF:
http://www.cmhweb.org/Files/Terrain/Building_Bocage_Hedgerow_in_25mm.pdf

Ideally, I wanted these to line roads or fields, and so strips made sense. I had a collection of popcicle sticks on hand; a quick application of a grinding stone on the edges gave me this:

I found some bamboo skewers at the local Safeway grocery store for $3.00:

These I trimmed to different lengths. I wanted to use them as anchors for the clay, as seen in one of the links above. You can see the popcicle stick in the upper right for scale. I was making 20 of these lengths:

Then I got out my hot glue gun and put the skewers onto the popsicle sticks. Some I double-layered; the gaps would serve as places to put trees, or just shallower areas:

Here are the 20 stands I prepared, as well as 10 quick "manicured" taller hedges made with skinny pot scrubbers from the dollar store:

The next morning, I gathered my materials and prepared to break out the air-dry clay. I have to admit, I hate doing things that I don't know how to, so I was nervous about using the clay.


http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Air-Drying-Clay


Yea, I looked it up. Yes, I felt like an idiot after reading how simple it was...

This is the clay I bought at Michaels. It was $10 USD for 2.2 lbs (1 kg). I chose it because it was black (which a) was available, and b) would allow me to be more careless with the primer in case I missed some spots...unlikely), and because of the "low shrinkage" claim. Sorry for the blur:

I went to work. It was mid-morning on a Saturday - the kids were upstairs playing Minecraft, the wife was still asleep, and the dogs were curled happily at my feet. I spent about an hour happily slapping clay onto the bases I had created.

By the way: the black clay stained my fingers quickly, but I am happy to report that when I was done, a quick soap-and-water scrub in the sink removed all evidence.

I sprinkled some coarse beach sand on the berms as I finished each. This was because I wanted some texture when I slapped the primer on; we'll find out if this was silly or not soon enough. I also added some small-scale trees I got off Ebay years ago from China.


This is the actual process I used as I put the clay on. I clamped it on over the skewer, allowing it to "grab" onto something.I also pushed some larger rocks in on some sections - these I also got at Michaels.

The process was messy, fun, and really quite simple. Once I had finished my 20 stands, I had only used, what, 20-25% of the clay pack? Needless to say, for this project, 1kg was much overkill, but I have many more ideas of things I can use it for. I put the clay in a ziplock bag and put it inside of  a tupperware-style container.

Here is the finished pre-painting result. I'm pretty excited to get these finished up.