Cheap Chinese Trees

Hello again.

A sort while ago I was browsing Ebay (as you do!) and stumbled upon a couple of listings which caught my attention.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/351506263843?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291560823046?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
Now one of the things which has been annoying my about the layout is the lack of trees so I hatched a plan to 'bulk out' the layout in a few places with some more generic trees. The thought was that maybe these cheap trees could provide a good armature to use some more 'realistic' methods upon.
Once the trees arrived the first thing I did was to remove the existing foliage, fortunately it was possible to pull the foliage off the armatures by hand, it seemed to be glued in place using a hot melt glue gun or similar.

 This left me with a plain plastic armature which I could then start on. The next step was to add some more realistic bark and being a fan of the Bark powder by Treemendus (http://www.treemendus-scenics.co.uk/tree-kit-order/) I needed a way to glue this onto the armature.

The method I ended up using was to buy some cheap varnish in a big enough tin so I could dunk the whole armature into the tin. Once the majority of varnish had dripped back into the tin the next step was to  apply the bark powder. I did this by using a small sieve (a bit messy).

It was then onto the foliage. The tree needed bulking out so I decided to use some Woodland Scenics Polyfibre (http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/category/GCPolyFiber) which was dotted all over the armature. I found it wasn't necessary to glue it in place as the texture on the armature held it in place.

This was then given a spray of some Peco scenic spray adhesive (http://www.osbornsmodels.com/psg-11-peco-scene--layering-spray-400ml-39767-p.asp) and covered in various ground scatters.

Once the glue had dried all the trees were then given a final trim and then added to the layout. The main bit of the layout I wanted to cover up with trees was the area to the left to cover the hole in the backscene.

So there you have it. Total cost for about 20 trees from China is about £5.00.

Please, let me know what you think...

Julia.

Whats brown and sticky?

Hello.

Its been a while hasnt it! Like many things, hobbies come and go as interests change. This time its been a result of the change in weather and my attention has turned towards the continuing conversion of my van into some sort of camper type thing. Its been ongoing for a number of years now and its really time it was finished off. The warm weather has once again given me the ability ot get outside and do some more bits and pieces to it. Anyway I digress....

Work hasn't stopped on the layout. The previous post showed a small forest which had appeared towards the front of the layout, the following problem was an appropriate floor around the area of the trees. After quite a bit of thinking I made a plan to use some chopped up plumbers hemp purchased from Pendon museum on one of my sporadic trips to the place. This was PVA'd in place and coloured with a small selection of acrylics to give a more realistic tone to it. Once I was happy with the overall colour the whole lot was blended in with the adjacent field bit with a collection of various static grasses.

I am very happy with how its turned out, especially as I kind of made up how to do it on the layout and tweaked it throughout until I was happy with the result. Sometimes you just need to experiment and have a play to get a feel for colours and textures. Please let me know what you think....

Julia :o)

Can't see the wood for the trees

Hello :o)

This is the result of this weekends work. I have been back working on the layout and I took the opportunity to finish off the trees that I started before work was interrupted by the narrow gauge engine.

Following on from the trees that I made for the front of the layout I had another four to complete and place. I really wanted something that would obscure the public's view to make them either look around the trees or even better look through them towards the railway. These trees seemed to work well as at ground level there isnt much in the way or greenery to obstruct the view. There are now eight trees planted which makes for a nice little wooded area...

The good bit to me though is when you get down to ground level...

It was just what I was trying to achieve.




I also experimented with another type of tree using the same sort of technique once again inspired by the German blog...

I would be interested to hear opinions on it. Close-up I think it definitely has the feel of an evergreen to me but I am not sure about the shape of it.

Julia :o)

Trees!

Hello :o)

The trees for the layout have been one of those things that I have dabbled with in the past but never seriously sat down and tried to get any number of them done. Highclere being a quite large layout for its scale needs quite a few of them of differing flavours to fill out the countryside. This weekend was spent producing a few more...

Now I know this guy Stefan has been posting pictures on a German forum for a while and there have been links to his work posted in various places in the past but for some reason last week I switched on Google Translate and sat down to read it.

http://stummiforum.de/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=50628&start=825

His work is amazing, it might be all purely for photographic reasons but there is no doubt he knows how to model, and model things extremely realistically. This has been an inspiration to me and after reading a few how-tos he has posted within his thread I wanted to give it a go.

The picture above was my first attempt. Now me being me I decided I knew a better way of making them and deviated a bit from Stefans methods using my static grass applicator. As you can see the results werent upto much.

So it was back to the beginning and I tried again. I will not go into too much detail as its described on Stefans thread but as you can see from the above photo the assembly of a tree is really easy. The green wire is simply wrapped around a central wire and looped out in regular intervals, there loops become the tree branches later on. So by this evening I ended up with these...

I am really pleased with how they have come out. The differences I did were I used some Brass multistranded picture hanging wire as the main trunk wire instead of a single stranded one, and I used some PVA glue covered in some Treemendus Bark Powder (http://www.treemendus-scenics.co.uk/tree-kit-order/) which gives a very good representation of Bark.

I have still got loads more to make though but at least I have the confidence I can do them now. It has also taught me that sometimes it is worth following other peoples instructions as well!

Julia :o)