The Wood for the Trees

Just the briefest of posts to highlight the birch trees featured in the previous post, 'Bigfoot!'  It needs to be said from the offset that this wasn't my idea at all, but instead one that I came across on the marvellous 'TerraGenesis' forum.  Unfortunately I can't find a name to credit, but whoever it was deserves a medal for the sheer brilliance of this design.  It called for a couple of 'ingredients' that I hadn't heard of before but with the power of the infoweb at my fingertips they were soon tracked down.  To make the three stands I used one pack of white paper covered wire at £1.69 and half a roll of white stem tape, used for bouquets, costing the princely sum of 65p!  The rest of the bits and bobs I already had lying around so there was no other additional cost; as I said earlier the design is brilliant!  I won't repeat the whole process here but have collaged some photographs together to illustrate the method.

1. Paper covered wire rolled in stem tape then marked with a Sharpie.

2. One pack of wire and the tape produced all the trees pictured.  They were fixed to MDF bases and textured.

3. I got a bit carried away with the painting and texturing of the bases, but wanted to have them match the recent additions to the livestock here at 'Awdry Towers'!  They really were that simple to make and helped in the staging of the photographs, but of course would work perfectly for gaming  too.  A few more interspersed with fir trees and you have instant forest, perfect for all those backwoods scenarios.

Whilst on the subject of  trees I picked these up from the 'The Model Tree Shop' and based them the other day.  Perhaps a little on the pricey side, but fantastic service and the etched brass fronds do look great.  Obviously the ideal would be to make one's own and recently I saw a wonderful post by Paul of "Paul's Bod's" fame.  However this project is on hold until I find a squirrel! (click the link to see what I'm wittering on about!)