Making your own clump foliage from upholstery foam

As i have to do some terrain for my ongoing Vietnam war project. I need a lot of clump foliage for my jungle terrain, so instead of buying it I thought about doing it myself. I know someone who does upholstery as a profession and he gave me offcuts of upholstery foam seen here:

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I cut it into smaller peaces with a pair of scissors and added these together with some water into a blender. I blended them for a few seconds and had this:

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So this doesn’t look like terrain clumps as the color is all wrong. So I put the still damp foam shreds int a bowl with household paint and some PVA:

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And this is what came out after mixing the foam shreds with the color:

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two different shades of green clump foliage and some brown:

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This took me about half an hour to do. The clumps have to dry now for 24h and will be ready to do a coarse scatter for the jungle bases and the bases of my miniatures.

This wasn’t my original idea to be fair, though I nicked it from Mel, aka the terrain tutor.

you can see a video by him about the process here

I will post more about my vietnam terrain as I create it.

 

“Das Boot” on the first ” Feindfahrt”

I managed to paint up the VIIc U Boat at the weekend. I am rather proud on how it came out. Hope you like it.

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An authentic picture:

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A size comparison with the warlord E boat:

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And with my Hunt class destroyer:

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The boat will be available for purchase here. Next will be a diving and a surfacing as well as a submerged U Boat. I think these could be useful in games.

An NVA head swap

I got the new North Vietnamese Army soldiers from Empress Miniatures in the post the other day. As there is not such a big variety at the moment ( there are many more to come from the talented Mr. Hicks!) I started to swop some heads on the miniatures. You can find other heads in the french indochine range of Empress.

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The one in the middle is the original miniature. The one on the left and right has a new head. There is a little green stuff round the neck missing at the moment.

Close ups of the two with new heads:

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And the next three:

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I will do another eight figures with a head swap and hopefully I have enough diversity in my NVA squads then.

The first cast of “Das Boot”

Here is the box for pouring the silicone mould:

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The poured silicone not jet cured:

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The cured mould and the first cast of “Das Boot”:

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The cast next to the Revell 1/350 VIIc:

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You can clearly see the difference between 1/300 ( in the background) and the 1/350 model now.

pictures of the finished model soon! I will put up a notice when the VIIc U Boat is available for purchase.

todays Grunt

Here is the next Grunt for my growing Vietnam war collection.

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This time it is a figure by Gringo 40 miniatures. An afro-american ( hope that is the political correct designation) GI. These are wonderfull sculpts and are only slightly bigger then the Empress miniatures . They get along quite well so that I will mix both ranges in my american force.

Painted again with Contrast paint from games workshop.

I got my plastic rainforest vegetation in the post yesterday so will start on some scatter scenery shortly.

Das Boot ready for the mould

The next ship or boat is ready to go into the silicone. I will do the mould today.

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I am really a bit frightened about how the air vents will show up on the resin cast. We will see tomorrow.

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If all works out well “Das Boot” will be available next week.