Hanging Basket Liner Blues

Regular readers will know I've been an advocate of using hanging basket liner to represent grass for about 20 years now, resisting the more popular methods of grass application that have become available... until now. 

Having got the basic ground cover in place I was ready to start the application of hanging basket grass in my usual fashion by laying down neat PVA and applying the brushed hanging basket, letting it dry and pulling the backing off before manicuring it as desired. It failed, twice over. After several sessions I had a very patchy effect and several areas had no effective grass "growth".

I had used my usual PVA, twice. Some of the PVA was absorbed into the material and not bonding to the ground surface. This current PVA is a just post-Covid purchase and I'm not convinced it is as good as the old stuff. I then tried Gorilla PVA and had better results but not perfect, still ending up with some areas entirely not stuck down. I then tried a coat of Matt Medium on the next area to seal the surface first, but it made little difference. The photo above was the result - it may not look too bad in the photo but there should really be grass everywhere...

This is a closer view, PVA was applied across the whole area in front of the rocks!

I have put some of the issues down to the coldness of the workshop during the week I was laying down the grass, hovering a few degrees over freezing most of the time. I have had a few fails before but never to this level and frankly not to this level of disappointment. I have now stripped back a lot of the current grass, sealed the surface with Matt Medium and added a thin layer of ground foam to start again. At around the same time I fixed down the resin tree stump and blended in the ground surfacing around the base.

Whilst I am still a big proponent of this method of creating grass I decided that I could do without the hassle and I therefore bought myself an early Christmas present in the form of a small static grass applicator. Experimentation has begun...

Colin 

Twigging On

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of a twig pretending to be a tree as part of my sketching out of the scenery for 'odsock Corner. Shortly afterwards I started to rework the twig into a tree using some old Hornby wire foliage branches (from the Skale Scenics range 10-15 years ago), removing their lumpy foliage and supergluing them in place on the adapted truck.

At this point I did propose to use another twig to make something a little taller and narrower to better fit this location. It had only taken a couple of hours to get to this stage and I planned to store this  for future use elsewhere. However I then decided to make changes to the existing frame by pointing the branches upwards rather than outwards, and twisting in some extra smaller branches at the extremities. I then used modelling clay to smooth out the joins between the twig and the branches.

To further blend the wire branches to the trunk I mixed up some of my remaining scenic mix of paint/PVA and added in some tile grout to stiffen the mixture, I had hoped this would be a good basis for bark but it dried quite light.

Contrary to popular opinion, tree trunks are not brown, more a grey-brown-green mixture and to create this effect I started with grey primer and Humbrol brown spray paints, spraying uneven coats of them both to create a mottled effect. The brown can was splattering quite a bit and gave up shortly afterwards, another one to add to the shopping list!

To blend the colours together and add shadow into any recesses I gave the tree a wash of black-grey all over and when this was dry I dry-brushed grey-green over the lower trunk and branches, getting as far up as I could angling the brush between the branches. This gave a very pleasing effect and I had one of those "stop" moments before I went too far!

After all this work to the armature I feel that I have achieved a much better shape than I had initially created and a very satisfactory colour. It is now ready to add the foliage in due course before planting it in place on the layout alongside the modified Hornby tree (which requires a few further changes) and the recently purchased fir tree.

More soon...

Colin