Silver birch

Scratch built silver birch tree.

Scratch built tree

I'm trying to work on better terrain than I have been gaming with in the past and the latest project is trees. When I was at York this past weekend, I bought a large tree kit from http://www.treemendus-scenics.co.uk/. Before attempting this, I decided to have a go with a similar method with things I already had in the house. I began with making a basic construction made from the inner part of basic flex which you can find about the house. No, I didn't rob it from a light fitting, it was spare. Don't know what you people take me for...
The wires were twisted to form the trunk then this was split up to start making larger branches. These were then spli to form smaller branches etc. After that I coated the structure in kitchen towel with pva glue. I like the way this method comes out but it is very time consuming and future builds will use a painted on material instead. After that, the structure pas painted and sea foam was applied to the branches with pva. I think future builds will be with rubberised horse hair. Flock was then applied using non scented hair spray followed by another spray to fix it. The final step was to finish the base with paint and sand with a dry brush and flock applied.
I'm very pleased with this first effort and can't wait to get out with a camera for reference to build some more.

Indian tree burial

This is something which I built a little while ago and has finally made it to the blog. The trees were made from twigs picked up whilst out walking and the foliage is horse hair with model railway scatter applied with spray glue. The platform was also made from twigs and bound together with cotton. I made a dummy from balsa to make the body shape and then covered it in tissue paper with a PVA glue solution carefully applied. The base is made from another useful, recycled CD.

fallen trees

Here are a couple fallen trees that I've been working on.
I started by gluing polystyrene tiles to old CDs and when dry, I trimmed away unwanted material and roughened up the surface a bit.

The central part was cut out to form the root ball and then large twigs were pushed into the top to form the dead tree and smaller twigs were pushed in the bottom to make the roots. A few smaller twigs were also pushed in the base section.

I then glued the root ball in place onto the base section. It helps to push a couple twigs into the base section to act as pegs for the root ball to make the structure more secure.

Basing material is then applied and left to dry.

All that is then required is to paint the basing material and add flock to taste.

I then went on to use the same method to make a larger, completely fallen tree.

15mm trees

I have been unhappy with K&M trees for some time but they have served their purpose. I wanted to make some more realistic looking trees but didn't want to spend a fortune. Having looked around, I discovered some tree armatures at the local model railway shop which weren't too expensive and it wasn't too difficult to throw them together to make some nice (I think so any way) trees and you can make loads from the pack. I also bought some additional flock to beef them up a bit but per unit, they still come in cheaper than K&M and I am much happier with them.