In part four of the series, I am scaling back to 15mm. Continuing with my work on putting together trees for my various gaming periods and scales, here is a way to go with flock free trees on a budget. Almost all my trees use some type of flock or foliage glued on to them. This time, I thought I would try some pre-molded trees with paint only. The idea was to have some trees I could through in a box that did not shed and could take a pounding.
I came up with the idea while walking through Micheals craft store. I went to the pre-painted toys section and found a set of trees sold by Safari as part of their Toob line. This is a line of various creatures and artifacts sold in a plastic tube (hence the name). All are made of a semi hard plastic that is very resilient. You can drop them or throw them and they will just bounce off and take no damage (perfect for kids). Since you can always get a 40% discount coupon for items at Micheals, the price ends up being $8 for ten trees (very reasonable). You get diffirent types of trees that range from 1-1/2″ to 3″. You can use them as is, or pimp them up like I chose to do.
Looking at the trees, I thought they needed a little help to give them more contrast and tone down some of the coloring. I also felt that the trunk base was a little too small for wargaming and decided to add some stability.
My first step was to add washers to the bottom of each tree to deal with the standing up issue on terrain. I sprayed these brown and glued them to the bottom of the tree.
Next, I hit every tree with quick washes of the appropriate darker shade. I then went over each tree with a lighter corresponding colored dry brush. I did not like the yellow trees, so I converted them to green with washes and drybrushes. I thought a few red trees would be interesting, so kept that color in the mix.
Once the trees were done, I then added ballast to the bases with white glue (also gives strength the to tree adhesion), painted it brown and drybrushed in up a bit. I finished off by hitting all the trees with a mat varnish from Krylon.
Just to show you can find terrain options in the toy section of your local store and save a little money in the process. A small amount of work and I now have some decent looking kid friendly trees to run games with!
- Manteuffel