On Trees, and how to make them slightly less awful.

Trees. I hate trees. Luckily in 6mm there is a large array of cheap trees on eBay, but they aren't actually great on their own. They are shiny, the leaves fall off, and they are all perfectly shaped. I have been trying to figure this out for a while, and so here we go: Here is my tutorial for making stands of trees. 

1. Drill holes in MDF bases. I bought a huge box of bases on eBay that was like 1.9kg of assorted bases for £x. I can't remember. Maybe £10 or £20. The holes are the same width as the trunk of the cheap eBay trees from China. I did stands of 1, 2, and 5 trees for this experiment. 

2. Insert trees and attach with PVA glue. White glue? Elmers glue?

3. Texture the bases with my Vallejo texture paste. But insert your method of texturing here. My paste costs just under £10. This is my second tub since I started using it in 2016 or something. 

4. Messy part. I glued assorted bits of clump foliage to the tops of the trees. I watered down the PVA and just sort of went for it. My hands got messy and I found the most efficient way was to just drop clumps of foliage into the watered down glue, then scoop them out and press them onto the balding trees. You can see below that they are no longer perfectly uniform spheres. At this point I wanted to stop, but I figured the foliage would fall off at points and I should do my best to seal it on. I decided to carry on with two stand of trees to see if the rest of the method would work, and was happy with the result so went for it with all of them.

5. I sprayed the stands with a colour called Russett Brown. The can is from The Range and cost £6.99 probably. It is shiny, probably described as a satin sheen. At this point I got worried. I have had poor experience with this spray before and my memories came flooding back. 

6. I then sprayed them again with a green colour. Same place, same cost. You could see the darker brown colour underneath in places, which I liked. It would stop them being too monochromatic. Still too shiny though.

7. Paint the trunks with Vallejo Beige Brown. This is my go to wood colour. Rifle stocks, stacks of logs, fences, tree trunks. I gave them a heavy dry brush with a Citadel green that is so light it is almost yellow. The paint is in the other room though and I don't want to get up. At this point my fears started to dispell. I had a slight worry that they will all look a little too uniform in terms of colour, but shape is good. Also worth noting in some places you can still see the awful plastic green of the original leaves, but they tend to be on the underside, where I can't see it from wargaming height, so I ignored it.

8. Standard base colour. This was from The Works years ago and is still going strong. I use it exclusively for painting bases. I once used it to drybrush some T-34s and it was too shiny. 

9. Standard basing. I wash them with Cidadel Agrax Earthshade. This might be the most expensive part? Like I use this shade a lot, on all of my bases, and the little tub costs like a Fiver. At this point I breathed a sigh of relief. This is also the longest drying part. 

10. I painted the edges of the bases with some brown colour. I think it was Vallejo German Camo Brown. This is just to neaten it up. I could have gone a green, and maybe I should have.

11. Static grass in a few places (not too close to the trees, as grass struggles to grow around trees), and some blobs of clump foliage, this time that will stay as is. I then seal it all with a matt lacquer spray which got rid of any residual shine from the first layers of spray paint. Here they are in their woods. 

The next time I make tree stands I will likely try a few different shades of green, which will help my woods look a little less samey. All in all though, I am really pleased with them. If anything I am just annoyed that it has taken me nearly 10 years to be bothered to try something like this.