It's Clump

Taking a break from the fascinating political turn of events that has happened this week in the UK (i.e. Brexit), my thoughts have turned (naturally) to wargame scenery.  Actually, there's no link at all but it's been an odd week.  Anyway, basically, with a certain amount of economic turmoil likely to lie ahead, my idea was that it is always good to save the pennies and, needing some scenery material, I decided to make my own clump foliage.

Sponges

This currently costs about £10 for a large bag but, with a small amount of effort, you can make it yourself much more cheaply.  My starting materials were a packet of kitchen sponges that I got for a pound (in the pound shop) and my plan was to use the method described in detail in the Shedwars Blog.

Billy Whizz

Therefore, the first thing I did was to cut up the sponges into small pieces with scissors and then whizz them up in an old blender, adding a little water to make it easier.  You can see what the product looks like in the bowl on the left

Like cake, only more so

This bowl has four sponges worth of bits in it, with most of the water squeezed out, to which was added some paint.  I happened to have some tubes of acylic paint lying around but anything water-based works fine.   I also added a little bit of white PVA glue to help it clump together.

And here's one I prepared earlier

Once mixed, the foliage was spread out over some tin foil on a tray to dry.  This can take quite a long time and in my case took about three days.  However, it turned out really well and I was very pleased with the result.  So I made some more with the 4 + 2 sponges I had left, producing some different shades of green this time.

Any colour you like as long as it's green

I reckon that all in all it cost me about £1.20 of materials, and a little time, to make £20 worth of clump foliage.  Well worth it.