Terrain tutorial: The cheapest bushes

 

My new cheap bushes and Relicblade Lone guard for scale

It's tutorial time! 

Sellswords and Spellslingers has a lot of scenarios with "bushes" in it. The author suggests dropping clumps of lichen. This is a nice cost-effective way to create bushes, but it's not for me. Lichen tends to fall apart, is light and can easily move and doesn't have a base.

I also have developed over the years a dislike of flocked trees. They are fragile and shed everywhere. So I have been moving toward plastic model vegetation since a few years ago. I'm especially fond of repainting Toobz trees. Which I just remembered can be bought at Michael's art stores here in Canada for good prices... I must remember to pick some up soon.

But you want the CHEAPEST durable shrubs, right? Here is a list of materials:

• Dollar store plastic plant ball ($1.25)
• Dollar store plastic toothpicks ($1)
• Dollar store pebbles ($4)
• Dollar store Hot glue gun ($4)
• Dollar store Hot glue ($1)
• Foamcore board (leftover)
• Acrylic texture medium or PVA/sand mix (leftover)

I made 6 shrubs, but I have enough materials to make at least 20.

Step 1 is pulling the little clumps of foliage off the plastic frame they are attached to. Then take a plastic toothpick and superglue 4 of them in a stack to make a shrub. Put aside your shrubs on sticks and build the bases:

Cut out bases from foam core board (MDF would be even better, but I hate cutting it and I also don't have any) and slice up the edges to look a bit rocky. You could smooth them out if you want, but my table is a muddy rocky wasteland, so bases can just look like muddy rock.

Use hot glue to stick pebbles and whatever else you like to the bases. Tip- wash the pebbles first. If they are dusty the hot glue won't hold them. Also slather in some superglue if they fall off.

Finish the bases with acrylic texture medium or PVA with sand sprinkled on. Once dry, paint black and then sloppy drybrush (I call it wet-brushing and don't wipe too much off the brush) on brown. When that's dry drybrush grey onto the areas you want to be stony. You don't have to be precise in any way, so this is pretty easy and fun.

I went a little overboard with the grey here. But fixed that later.

Next, poke a hole in the hot glue between pebbles in the vague center of the base, squirt in some superglue and then jam the shrub-on-a-stick you made into the hole.

Once all these were completed, there was a bit too much of the "stacks" visible at the bottom of each shrub. I mixed up some of the acrylic texture medium with green paint and slopped it over the offending areas.

While doing that I also wet-brushed a little green onto some of the texture on the pebbles because it coincidentally looked like lichen. The extra dab of color really helped these look less grey and drab. It also made some of the stray hot glue look like creeper, which was a bonus.

Finally I mixed some tan paint and PVA and wet-brushed it over the foliage , concentrating on the tops. This helps temper the bright artificial green of the plastic a little bit. Not much, but it helps. (The PVA helps keep it from flaking off).

There you go, cheap, durable shrubs that won't fly off the table, break unless under extreme duress or drop flock everywhere.

I have one task left before I start playing some solo games. Treasure/objective tokens. On one hand, I could go buy some... But I think I'll try to gin some up with spare parts and dollar store junk instead.