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.