You have way more patience then me. I could never spend that much time on pretty much anything The forest is looking great. Also reminds me IF I ever did a bigger layout or another small layout, the theme will be Desert How many trees left to do, like 400
I'm kind of the opposite. I run trains frequently but my tree-making progress is a bit more modest than yours. It's been about 50 years since I've made a tree. BTW, your trees look terrific. Doug
I stopped by the grocery store yesterday and bought another container of 250 Count, 2-1/2" toothpicks and hope they take me through the end of puffball tree production. That means I've completed 250. I've also made about 50 "armature" trees with greater realism to be supplemented with another bag of 114, which should take me to completion with armature trees. When I close my eyes at night, all I see is green.
Thinking about scenic ground cover with some dimension, I was inspired by the scenery on @BNSF FAN's JPT Sub. I'd bought three bags of Woodland Scenic's Foliage Clusters™ in different shades of green, but found that they are bagged in rectangular blocks and would be difficult to use in my application. Not wanting to waste money, I asked my wife it would be okay to experiment with dicing some up in her food chopper. "Sure", said she and I received a quick instructional. It worked amazingly well. I'll experiment with some blends, but I'm thinking 1/3 of Light, Medium and Dark Green might be a good place to start. To the left in the photo you can see a Foliage Cluster™ block and what the food chopper produced in the tin.
I’ve never used WS’s foliage clusters before. Are you supposed to break pieces off the block as you need them? That would seem to be quite tedious if you need a bunch of them. It’s nice that your wife let you use her food prep weapon.
Yes it would! Never use just one color, always mix it up. Variety is the spice of life. Mix up all three colors or make different patches with different shades of colors. Don't be afraid of tossing in some small amounts of light browns or yellows for some dead leaves to add contrast. Notice all the different shades of green in this tree line. If they all were the same color, it just wouldn't right. You can do the same with bushes and shrubs.
So you'll be shopping for your own CHEAP food chopper I guess Maybe the dollar store? You are talking about the kind to chop onions and such, right?
Yep, the kind that chops onions and such. My wife usually goes with our old skool manual chopper, so I'm free to use the motorized one for as long as I need it. At the rate I'm working, that'll be into 2027.
I wish I had thought of one of the electric choppers for that brick of ground foam, I broke all mine up by hand. Will be worth it though and I like your planned mix for variety
This is something I've wrestled with on my scenery and have struggled to achieve the look I've envisioned. I'll keep messing around with the blends. Thank you for your suggestions.
If you're using a blend, with a non discernable pattern, you're saying you can't blend that repair? Wait, what?
Numbers, Hardcoaler is talking about mixing foliage shades. I agree that mixing custom paint colors is pretty much impossible to replicate if needed. Allen, I think Numbers thought the discussion was about blending custom paint colors.
I did think it was about paint colors. Just went back into the thread until I found the real topic. Learned quite a bit.
Uh oh. Shortly into my scenery work this afternoon, I noticed the bowl of my wife's kitchen chopper had a seemingly impenetrable green stain around its inside perimeter. Soapy water wouldn't dent the stain, but isopropyl alcohol did and it's clean. If I eventually ruin the bowl, they're on eBay used for about $18 shipped. Wanted to mention this in case any of y'all give this thing a try.
