HOME BREW SCENERY
Pete Magoun, MMR
There are innumerable scenery products out there, all of them"Priced to Move at ONLY $XX.xx)!!” On the other hand, there are innumerable scenery products available for far less money, a little imagination and some creativity. Lots of this stuff is free – it’s already in your yard or garden! This compilation is by no means exhaustive; it should, however, start you thinking about “new” materials applied with “standard” techniques. And by the way, these things have been around for decades—many of them were the First Choice or Only Way before all of the cool stuff we can buy today arrived in the marketplace.
Ground cover:
-Dried, ground leaves (Save Your Marriage! Buy your own blender!)
-Tea leaves
-Peat (must be sifted; may be toxic if inhaled)
-Dirt (demagnetize first!)
-Gravel (the Road Commission kind --demagnetize first!)
-Sand (Builders’ sand has a variety of uses; beach sand is good, very fine sand is great)
-Dyed sawdust (pure wood only; NO plywood, OSB, etc. – the dyes won’t work)
-Fake fur (treat with paint wash, let dry, comb out)
-Diatomaceous earth (Use with care—it’s toxic! Mix with pigments for use as roads, fields, etc. Sold in bags as swimming pool filter.)
-Infield dirt (buy it in bags, don’t steal it!)
Foliage:
-Tea leaves
-Pillow stuffing (pull out very thin, spray paint and use like poly-fiber)
-Kitchen brushes (buy your own!)
-“Wood brushes” (use the cheap kind with the tan bristle for great grasses
Trees:
-Astilbe
-Sedum
-Goldenrod (not to worry – it’s bee-pollinated, so you don’t have allergy issues)
-Baby’s breath
-Candy Tuft
-Wild Oregano
-Potentilla
-Smokebush
-Blueberry bush
-Bayberry bush
Home Brew Scenery2
Details:
-Stones
-Dead branches (cut to length for pulp loads, use as-is for downed trees, cut into the middle of branch nodes for stumps. Drill the bottom for round toothpicks, glue them in and shove into the layout)
-Kebab skewers (paint grimy black/gray, cut and use for logs, cordwood, etc. Split open for stove wood.)
-Scraps from wood kit building projects (alcohol/India ink wash and use for junk)
-Small bits of clear styrene make great “broken glass”
-Junk mail! Cut into small pieces and trash your towns! (Careful, though, trash is a relatively recent phenomenon)
-Anything Else that Looks Good ~ THIMK!!
Paints:
You don’t have to spend Big Bucks in a paint store to get good ground cover paint, either. Look for the cast-offs— the paints that have been returned because they’re too brown, red, etc. You want Flat paint, and failing that, ”Eggshell.” Since these are cast-offs, they’re usually available for a fraction of the price of new paint, and they work just as well. You’re going to cover them with ground covers anyway, so don’t get too picky!
Get Creative! Have Fun!!