Simple, cheap diorama base (hints, tips and tricks)

[Guest]

I use reptile vivarium sand Si, it has several different sizes of granule in it, the larger granules being lighter coloured than the rest, and looks like a pummelled gravel road in 1/35,

Plus, I should add, as most of my dios are based in Korea ...its the right colour too ....more by luck than judgement though

[eddiesolo]

I use reptile vivarium sand Si, it has several different sizes of granule in it, the larger granules being lighter coloured than the rest, and looks like a pummelled gravel road in 1/35,

Nice info thanks for that. Me being on a budget I use anything I have laying around lol. But, maybe...just maybe I may see if I can get a bag of the stuff. I thank you sir for being informative and of course, as always, very helpful...*that sounds sooooooooooooo smarmy and brown-nosey*

Si

[Guest]

The groundwork

Used reptile sand for the gravel tracks, Stuck with PVA wood glue, as i said above there's a few different grades of granule in it so gives a nice natural look i think. Its quite expensive for what it is but will last absolutely ages, if you know anyone with a lizard .. they may have some spare.

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Added the grass, this time im using static grass, again stuck with PVA, it's not expensive and gives a nice look, you can buy all sorts of gizmos for laying this down including an electric sieve that's 'supposed' to 'charge' the grass and get it to stick up, i found a tea strainer (metal or plastic) will do the job and it sticks up anyway (if you want to statically 'charge' the grass then hold a nylon comb to the sieve after you've combed your hair or rubbed it on the carpet ... it'll do the job and not cost you a tenner or so)

I mixed a very thin black wash .. again just as good as the propriety brands that are basically the same thing with a nifty label on them ... and splashed it all over the rocks, letting some dribble down and tint the grass on the edges.. this gives a bit of 'shadow' to the scene.

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a quick scatter of green 'moss'.... this is a railway type i found for 50p but you can make your own by getting cork placemats and sanding them with course paper to get a rough powder. this can be dyed with anything you wish, acrylic paint, fabric dye, green food colouring (even boil some water and get a green biro refill, cut it up and drop the bits ... and the cork granules.. into it, leave over night, then filter your nice green granules out with a fine sieve or a coffee filter)

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Next up ... making the foliage.

thanks for watching

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[Gern]

All good, useful stuff Col! Just one question. What did you use to fix the static grass?

Gern

[Guest]

What did you use to fix the static grass

Sorry Dave, missed that off.....all the above is stuck with PVA. (I've edited the thread as well)

[Guest]

That grass looks superb, I've never even heard of static grass before! Shows how out of touch I am nowadays.

Looks fantastic though and I really like the vegetation around the edges of the rocks, very realistic.

[Guest]

Thanks for the comments

Now for the foliage

The simplest way of making trees is to use twigs as the trunk (after all they are made of wood and are the right colour)

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The thing i find that makes them more realistic is if you make up some smaller branches and cover them in foliage, the same idea can be used to make shrubs and bushes

The method:

You need some wire (i use telephone cable because its solid core and not stranded, just strip off the plastic sleeve)

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Secure a pin/nail so you can wrap the wire, midpoint, around it and lay out one end flat on the bench secure the loose end so its straight and taught. cover this wire with contact adhesive then lay strands of bristles/flax/wool/paintbrush hairs etc across the wire. in this instance im using some garden twine that i have unravelled.

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lay the other end over the top of the strands and the wire and use a bar of some sort to start to twist the wire round (i have used a dremmel in the past but sometimes it's just too quick and snaps the wires)

the strands of material will become entwined in the wire twists and start to form little "bushes"

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When you have the effect you want just cut the wire wherever you need to separate them

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Next spray the little "bushes" with contact adhesive (this one's from halfords, cost £5 and will last for ages) you can use PVA stippled on with a brush.

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Then just cover the entire "bush" with what ever you want to use for leaves/foliage in this case im using some that i bought cheap mixed with some homemade, and some home made on its own to show the similarity.

You can use mixed herbs to good effect, as well as crushing up dried leaves and dying the with food colour.

If the inside structure shows through, it'll look like twigs under the leaves, i find the other method of covering clumps of sponge with foliage a bit too solid looking.

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To make your own foliage ..... it's as simple as buying different colours of washing up sponge and popping the into a kenwood chef / liquidiser and chopping them up into fine bits, you can add colour if you want to (food colouring is best as you can mix the colours to get a certain leaf colour you require)

When they're chopped up into a fine mush, pour them into a very fine sieve or filter them through coffee filters.

when the majority of the water has drained them tip the gloop out onto a board and allow to air dry, be careful not to put it in a draft as it ll blow everywhere

this is a selection of the colours and textures from different sponge.

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Attach them to your twigs in a natural way and you should have something that looks like this

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Obviously just glue them directly to the base if all you need is some shrubbery or bushes

Another effective method is using grape stems and covering them with foliage, credit from me to this idea goes to Ron (spanner)

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next update will be the finished item .....

thanks for looking.

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[Andy2035]

Hi Colin,

This is just the type of thing that really helps, thank you Sir...

Hopefully it will be made into a sticky now so it doesn't get lost...

Andy...

[Guest]

Thank you Andy,

If its worth being stickied, the ''powers that be'' are in charge with that

[Richi72]

Hello Colin,

thanks for taking the time to do this, some really helpful tips there mate.

thanks again

Cheers Richi

[monica]

very nice indeed Colin you know these big bits that come in packing i nver keep only try to keep the 5mm to 10 ml sheets

and after seeing how you have used them ,think i will keep some hanging about,

keep up the great work will be looking forward to next post

[aaron]

Great stuff Colin...very helpful.

[Gern]

Hope you don't mind Col.

I found that my local pet shop sells budgie grit and fishtank gravel cheaply (that's if you're not as lucky as Ron who seems to have an endless supply of this sort of stuff in his garden - I think he considers the whole of Cheshire to be his garden judging from the range of stuff he finds!). I got a couple of kilograms of each for about £6 in total. Like the vivarium sand Col has mentioned, there are some bigger bits in the budgie grit (although not many) and the gravel has a range of natural colours with both rough and smooth stones.

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Like Col says, you don't have to spend a fortune to buy the basic stuff you need. Next time you go to the seaside and have a picnic on the beach, fill a couple of empty sandwich boxes with sand or gravel, that'll be even cheaper!

Gern

PS Love the trees Col! Now, where can I get a blender from?

[Richi72]

Hello Gern,

you can sift the sand in different sizes, for more detail when u use for a sandy diorama.

Cheers Richi

[Guest]

Hope you don't mind Col.

Not at all Dave ... chip in mate

That bird grit is most usefull, As richard says you can sieve it for the different sizes.

This is the stuff (with added oyster shell) that i use in a jar to "sand" any small or awkward items ready for paint.. it's what Laurie calls his "Grit-Colin" method

I use reptile sand for bases mainly because i have a load of spare reptile sand ... coz we keep ... reptiles

You can cheat even further if you ever go to a shale beach coz its there in abundance .... just remember to wash it before you use it as the salt in it tends to make the PVA glue go a bit yellow and 'stringy' when it sets.

PS Love the trees Col! Now, where can I get a blender from?

You can pick up a "hand blender" from supermarkets, i have the twin speed Sainsburys budget job, cost less than a fiver.

Will be posting finished images up soon, the base is now about as close as i can get it to what i had pictured in me head