I’m working toward foresting a hillside with puffball trees (polyfiber balls coated with hairspray and rolled in a container of coarse ground foam). The general effect I’m seeking is there, but just this one small area (it’s not much more than a square foot) consumed an entire small bag of Woodland Scenics coarse ground foam.
The intent was to do the hillside on the quick and relatively cheap, but at this rate of foam consumption I’m going to bust my meager hobby budget! Is there some obvious step that I’ve overlooked that would stretch my foam supply further?
BTW, there’s a few “trees” in there that were done with an old bag of extra coarse turf - it didn’t adhere nearly as well to the polyfiber and doesn’t look nearly as good.
I think what’s using up the ground foam so fast is ‘rolling’ the puffballs in them. What I might suggest–and what I’ve done for a thick forested look is to tear the polyfiber and place them where you want on the layout, using whatever scenic cement you want to place them, and then sprinkling them instead of rolling them with the ground foam after spraying them. Then use another coat of hairspray to ‘fix’ the foam. You’ll find that you won’t be using as much ground foam and it will go a lot further with the same effect.
BTW, that looks GOOD! I don’t know what mixtures you’re using,but you also might want to think of mixing in just a little bit of either yellow or dull orange for color highlights, depending on which season you’re modeling.
Other than the fact that I would have put visible trunks on ALL the foreground trees and a few in the second row, I think that looks very good. Just go back over the spots that didn’t adhere well and use something a little stronger than hairspray: 3M spray adhesive, maybe?
Personally, I like this method of making forests (I use a big block of foam painted green to give height to the middle of mine, surrounded by 1-2 rows of hand made trees). I think it’s only “cheap” compared to using pre-made, store-bought trees (lots of $$), or making them yourself (lots of time). Those of us who model areas with lots of trees (like New England) are doomed to spend lots of money and time on forests.
Yeah, good point about the rolling – didn’t think about that. I spray and sprinkle after it’s on the layout myself. That way you only use ground foam on the parts you see, not the whole “tree”.
You know what though…you should be making your own ground foam. It’s cheap and you can vary the colors more for a better overall look.
You will need:
foam rubber (from an old cushion or something)
fabric dye - different shades of the colors you want
an old food blender (DO NOT USE THE WIFES BLENDER FOR THIS!)
a spaghetti strainer (you can get them at $ stores these days)
a bowl or pot of suitable size to work with the strainer (I use a plastic 5 gallon bucket)
old newspapers
hot water
Mix the dye and some hot water in the blender, then tear off small chunks of the foam and throw them into the mixture while the blender is running.
When you think the foam is ground small enough, pour the mixture through the strainer into the bowl.
When it stops dripping, dump the foam onto the newspapers and spread it out to dry. It will dry faster if you can put it in front of a nice sunny window.
Save the dye mixture - you can use it again.
If the foam isn’t fine enough just put it back into the blender again (dry) for a few seconds.
Looks great so far, except the bare spots. Maybe a spray of your favorite stuff, (wet white glue, hair spray, clear spray paint) and sprinkle a little fill in the bare spots?
I would switch to finer ground foam. The coarse won’t cover as much simply because it’s bigger, so there’s less “pieces” in the package. I use Scenic Express fine foliage, I get it in the large shaker, and it lasts seemingly forever.
I have a little outline on my puffballs on my website. Check it out…
The other trick is to combine more detailed trees in the foreground so the eye “believes” that the puffballs are actually trees.
Thanks for the input so far, guys. Really good stuff. Lee, I think I’ll give your way a go…
And Philip, thanks for that make-it-yourself ground foam link. I’d already read that article multiple times with great interest, and plan on getting around to doing just that. I can only imagine the reaction from my patient long-suffering wife, who’ll probably think my egg’s finally cracked: “You’re getting a WHAT?!? A blender? For your trains?”
With a spot of decent luck, perhaps I’ll have something in time for this week’s WPF.
Your ground foam yield sounds about right … if you use too light of a coat, then your puff balls will look fake, and not look like real trees.
The suggestion to use fine ground foam is not the proper texture for most deciduous trees in HO (unless the leaves are very small), as I discuss in my Scenery Forum Clinic (read my post on texture). Your puffball trees done using coarse ground foam look very good, but there are some ways to not spend so much money on ground foam. Fine ground foam should be used on conifers, but coarse ground foam is more correct for broadleaf deciduous trees.
One way is to make your own ground foam, but that’s rather tedious if you have lots of hills to cover with forest. The other option is to get a much larger quantity of foam in a bulk container … don’t get the foam in the small bags – you’ll go broke doing scenery that way. For example, you can get 4 lbs (64 oz.) of foam in “gallon jugs” from Scenic Express for $13. I’ve found this much foam will last for months of scenery modeling.
With all the talk about Poly Fiber, I’m wondering if it’s being found in a green color. I was going to go that route when I 1st started to scenic my layout, but all I could find was WHITE Poly Fiber… & I didn’t want to mess with painting. The different stores I went to, the ladies there didn’t know it came in green. I know Woodland Scenics has it in smaller quantities, but what about bulk ?
I’ve only seen the white. You can spray paint it. Dye it. Use craft paint to color it. All methods work. You can also use lichen instead of polly fiber. A little more expensive, but it looks better and you don’t have to color it first.
Edit-Woodland Scenics sells green polly fiber, but it’s not all that cheap.
A suggestion for having the “trees” look right is to use 3 ot more different colors of ground foam. If you look at a “forest”, the trees are not all the same color. They are not all the same on the same tree even. Varied colors on any vegetation helps create the illusion.
An example. The lawn at the house and the bandstand as well as the “field” on the side of the hill were done by mixing 3 different shades of green and two different sizes of ground foam together (primarily for the “field”) and then putting it on the layout. The Brush by the park was created with 3 different colors of WS clump foliage.
You can get black polyfiber fill – it works lots better for making trees than the white stuff.
Just google on “midnight dream batting” or “black heirloom batting” and you will find you can get a life-time supply of black quilt batting for about $20. The black batting works better in quilts with thin fabric than the white stuff and the finer quilting stores carry it. [swg]
Getting the black batting through this kind of outlet is a whole lot cheaper than buying the green fiberfill from Woodland Scenics, and it looks just as good as (or even better than) the green fiber fill.
Beats trying to make your own black fiberfill from the white stuff …
It’s the same as the white stuff, only black. I always pull the stuff apart to make it more “airy” and “see thru” when I use it – if that’s what you mean by “coarse” … [swg]
