I reorganized my hobby storage last year, to make things more storage efficient, so I could fit more stuff in my storage room (yes, I have a problem..). While doing that, I found that I had a small box full of 15mm tree bases. They were from a company that no longer exists (the manufactuer name escapes me). I had thought that I had finished these all some time ago. So, this was a nice find, as I found my existing box of painted tree section turned out to be wanting, the last time I did a forest board.
I pulled these out at that time and re-drilled out the holes, to make enough space to fit in market trees. I then went online and ordered some different JTT trees, to give some variation. I had some dark green ones in a bag already, so just needed to build these out to do all the bases. Ironically, I found that the different packs had different shades of green. This is something I wanted, but I found odd none the less. I sprayed the tree bases Krylon camo brown before it got cold. I only spray paint outside, as I do not want the smell in my house! I do a lot of priming before it gets cold every year. This gives me plenty of little projects to work on during the winter. These were part of that big spray!
One night, I pulled out some craft paints and drybrushed up these bases. I basically it them with a medium brown and then a tan. I sent back with some thinned grey and hit all the rocks and then hit them again with a medium gray paint. I finished up with some dark brown contrast and hit some fallen branches on each of the bases.
Next came attacking all the trees. I pulled out all the trees that I bought. These are made with twisted metal stalks, covered at the bottom with some type of putty. They also come with small plastic bases you can glue to the stalks. I did not need the latter, but also had to cut down the stalks to shorten them. Out came out the tin snips and I went to work one evening.
I actually found out that I did not have enough trees…. Instead of buying more, I just went into another bag of larger trees I had from JTT (another future project) and cut these down to size. That gave me enough to fill all the bases.
The final step the next evening was to get out the white glue! I laid down some wax paper on a tray and set all the bases on the tray. I put white glue in all the holes and just started to insert the tree stalks into each hole. I had drilled these out to ensure it was a tight fit, so they would be self supporting.
I left these over night to dry and collected them all together to add to my existing storage box (which these filled up). With that, these are ready to go and will make sure I do not run out of trees when I set up my next large forest game!
- Manteuffel